HIGH ALTITUDES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18760, 13 January 1923, Page 6

HIGH ALTITUDES

FILM RECORD OF EVEREST. PICTURES AT 23,000 FEET UP. Tiie kincma tograph had never been taken into Tibet before this year (writes the London correspondent of tho Manchester Guardian). Captain J. B L. Noel, who took a series of pictures, worked under extraordin-

ary difficulties. The almost continuous wind and dust storms were enough to break a photographer’s heart, but Captain Noel did first-rate work. He carried hie camera many thousand feet higher than a camera has been taken before, and to make sure of re-

sults, he developed his films on the spot—partly in a tent near tho Rongbuk glacier, 16,500 ft high, and partly in a dark room built in the old fort at Gyantse. When the fi’m was wet it froze, and when it was dry

it sparked on the slightest friction in the very dry air, and it was impossible to keep the dust out. If he had not told these things during a

special screening before the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club, one would hardly have known it from the screen pictures. Only the kinematograph could give such a living commentary on the tales of the climbing men.

AMONG THE TIBETANS. Tho most fascinating part of the record are the pictures of the social and religious life of the engaging Tibetans. A wonderful series was obtained of a religious festival held at the Rongbuk Monastery, whoso Chief Lama is held to be the incarnation of a god. The monastery is, as it were, glued to the side of a hill in full view of the sacred mountain which the Englishmen were to climb. The camera showed the ceremonious reception of General Bruce by the Holy Lama, who was seated in god-like impassivity. The Lama was a great friend td the expedition, it having been explained to him that it was the solemn duty of the Alpine Club to climb as near os they could to Heaven. There were wonderful ritualistic

dances before the Lama, in which monks in strange costumes and masks impersonated devils. Their purpose is to teach the devout what spirits,, good or bad, they will meet in the next world. ; The scene was grotesque without the horror of savagery, and the audience of pilgrims that gathered from all over Tibet seemed to, be enjoying it as a dramatic sh-uv. Tlnse ritual dances are accompanied by solemn music which Mr Somerville recorded. There were pictures of the little stone cells on the bleak mountain side in which hermits are immured,' for many years, being fed by the monks through the hole; and one of the most astonishing things caught by the photographer was a pilgrim who was making his way to the monastery over hundreds of miles by measuring bis length along the ground. He lay down flat, rose up again where his head had been, and so continued. One saw

Tibetan workmen mending the roof of a truipic and dancing and singing rythmically ns they did so, a practice which might add interest to tlia paving of our streets. The Tibetans seem to be light-hearted, friendly, and full of curiosity. 'BUFFETS ON*THE SNOW.

On the way from Ealimpong up to the snow Captain Noe!'got some beautiful pictures of the tropical forests and swift rivers —a region of perpetual rain and steamy Heat. He photographed the wild hill people, the remotest of human beings. Afterwards he crossed the barren Tibetan plains with their eternal dust storms. The attack on

the mountain is illustrated by a beautiful series of pictures of the great Rongbuk glacier and the enormous gleaming ice cliffs arflund which a way was painfully made. Up the North Co! tho camera showed ns the terrible wind flinging great clouds of snow over the peaks like the eruptions from a volcano.

No descriptions or set photographs have given anything like the impression of what tin actual climbing was like at these alti-

tudes as does the film picture, taken by Captain Noel with a powerful telephoto lens, of Mallory, Norton, Somerville, and’ Morahead coming down after they had reached 27,000 ft. The climbers are «een aa little black puppets crawling down a great sheet of enow, and! half-hidden in the snow-dust whirled about them. These photographs, taken at a height cf 23,000 ft, are easily a record in kinema photography.