SACRED TO THE GODS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20454, 4 January 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

SACRED TO THE GODS.

SPIRITS OF MOUNTAINS.

BAN ON MOUNT EVEREST.

POWER OF SUPERSTITION

Intrepid men are still waiting to scale Mount Everest, near whoso summit tho two young Englishmen Irvine and Mallory mysteriously disappeared when tho last gallant assault upon tho height was made. Tho new climbers are barred, not by danger but by superstition.

Tlio only feasible route is up that side of tho mountain which must bo approached from Tibet. Tho Tibetan Government refuses permission to climbers from religious and benevolent reasons. Tho Dalai Lama of Tibet declares that another attempt would but re-awaken the anger of tho goddess of the mountain!

It was ever thus with mountains and high hills says an English writer. Places hidden in cloud and mist and bevond tho

foot of normal man have always been regarded as tho abode of either gods or terrible spirits. That has been so among the most learned men in the world, and it is still true of all the world's illiterates.

Any good climber may., scale Mount Olympus in Thessaly to-day, for its highest peak is less than ten thousand feet above sea-level. But who among the greatest of the ancient Greeks imagined such an effort by a mortal? To them Olympus was tho eternal dwelling placo of the gods—sacred, terrible. They pictured a cloudless summit whose lower levels were ever curtained by the hands of the gods. There dwelled the father of the. gods, great Zeus himself, directing the processes, of the heavens and the Earth; from there he dispensed justice and mercy,-from there he struck down offenders with his forked lightnings or crushed them with his thunderbolts.

There was the gateway to heaven, of which the summit of Olympus was itself part. There the Seasons kept, tho portals, * letting out the deities when they visited Earth 'and closing the gates upon them as they returned. The gods whose dwelling was in the heavens met there daily to feast on ambrosia and drink celestia* nectar; and the gods of Earth and sea when summoned attended there also.

To day :i stout-hearted British bov may scale Olympus, once so venerated and dreaded by the greatest minds in the world.

We find barbarous versions of the same faith to-day among savage peoples who dwell within sight of mountains. The spectre of the Bi-ockcn is a legend enshrining the belief of Europeans, but the legends of Ruwenzori, Africa's greatest mountain, have not yet found a poet or recorder.

An English friend of the writer, having accumulated a series of holidays in the Dark Continent, determined to devote his vacation to the mountain instead of coming home, and spent all his ready money in organising a native party t?rHecompany him.

As the climb proceeded the natives grew more and more reluctant to go on, more and more terrified of the spirits which, they assured him, devoured all who invaded tlic sanctity of their retreat. At last, when half the journey had been done, when great swamps had been crossed and fallen forests overcome, tho traveller awoke one morning to find himself alone.

The natives had fled in tho night. They had scattered or carried off the stores, thev had thrown away beyond all recovery all the skins of rare birds and animals which ho had collected. . The spirit of the mountain had conquered.