THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2856, 9 December 1908, Page 78

THE SKETCHER.

« I CAN SAVE THIS COUNTRY." WHERE BACON FAILED AND SUCCEEDED. "I know that I can save this country i and that nc one else can," j "I was the justest judge that was in I England these 50 years." These two striking statements fere made by Francis Bacon. The Honourable Society of Gray's, Inn celebrated the other day tiie anniversary of his slection, in October, 1608 (when Solicitor to the King), to the office of Treasurei to the House. A very fine appreciation oi Sir Francis appeared in The Times, In which It is argued that "whether he was a good man or not" he was at least "a great man." — A Great Man. — "Bacon was a great man — by the supi>eme powers of his mtnd, by the regal splendour of his plrilcsophical ambitions, by the lavish and lordlj prodigality of his intellectual riches, one of the greatest of all Englishmen — and that his lifelong association with Gray's Inn confers undying lustre on that ancient and honourable society is beyond all dispute. He entered Gray's Inn as a young man, he became a bencher at the very threshold of his public fortunes, he was Solicitor-generaJ when he wa.s .elected Tieasurer, it was from Gray's Inn that he eet forth as Lord Keeper lidmg in pomp to Westminster, it was to Giay's Inn that he found 'lis way back, a broken and a broken- hearted man after l;is tragic fall. There his thought was matuicd, there some of his greatest works were pondered and prepared 1 . — Bacon and Gray's Inn. — "The garden of the Inn, still an alluring haunt of ancient peace in the midst of the reek, and the riches, and the roar of modem London, was the special care of the author of the immortal essay 'Of Gardens' _; its masques and pageants, were superintended and prepared by the lordly author of the Essay 'Of Masques and Triumphs.' Truly if Bacon .vas in reality 'the meanest of mankind,' as Pope called him. jet Gray's- Inn, at any rate, could not but do him honour as also one of the 'wisest and brightest.' — Bacon as a Public Man. — "It must be admitted that in his charactei as a public man Bacon was no better than bis contemporaries, and that the ' Court of Queen. Elizabeth's latter days was not a. school in ivhicb highmindedmess could be leaimed or even practised ivith any advantage. His aims might be high, , and he might seek to «schew time-serving, but his fortunes were on the make, and he had tc stoop like the rest. The late Prof. Gardiner, probably the best -informed and •certainly not the least impartial and charitable of his biographers, candidly admits that in his treatment of Essex Bacon displayed 'poverty of moral nature' ; and thif. was not the only occasion on which tiie poison of Elizabeth's Court infected and degraded his soul. — Bacon's Duality of Character.— "By a significant coincidence i+ was in this very year 1608, the tercentenary of which is* now to be celebrated, that Bacon composed the 'Commentarius Solutus,' in which, as Prof. Gardiner tells us, 'great ideas jostle with small ones,' and the loftiest of projects, civil and philosophical, are associated with some of the lowest and least reputable precepts of personal intrigue and advancement. Here we have displayed that abiding duality of character which explains, though, it may not excuse, the darker and more doubtful episodes of Bacon's public career. The late Prof. Fowler held that most, if not all, of Bacon's public failings were d-ue to 'that eternal want of pence which vexes public men.' If so, Bacon wrote his own best apology when he said in the 'De Augmentis' that there are some men who are as soaring angels hi their love of knowledge and their zeal for its advancement, j yet in their cupidities they -ire but as creeping snakes. — Bacon's Great Boasts. — 'It was vo ineip covetoiiMiess, however. ! tl'ai tempted Bacon to .-.toop and fall. Hi;. v £io the spuit oi Chatham. "I know lliat I can >a\e this tountij and that no one i-Kc can J'ul Baton l.v ked Chatham* iikjiul integiity. He did not bave Ins i 'iiniiv. nor did he vivi- him^b Charged v. ;■! ( >n mpti'Mi in h.- hi^h <jfiu'e of LoiJ (. 'i.iii lloi . ho offered no defence, and loit.h (ii-UiiKd to plead the extenuating < ii< iiin-tani.es which posterity has adi.i tun! in Ins fa\our. Yf>t ho shall now 1 _, iii) c ay his own magnificent \eidict on ' linn-'jlf "I wa-> the justest judge that j v.i- in England the^e 50 ycai.« ; but it «ih tl'e justest censure in Parliament that uu, the*e 200 veai*-.' —A Sort of Machiavelli. — j "Machiavelli's disastrous attempt to ! found, on chicanery is redt-emed, j in the e_\ c.-, of many, by hi.- lofty Italian < patriotism. In civil life and affaii- Bacon was in ;-oine sort a Machiavelli — and yet, a Machiarelli lacking the giand style of his prototype, just as the ' statecraft" of Elizabeth's England wat not quite so much that of 'lions, foxes, catamount.--,' to hoi low Lord Morley's words, as that of Borgia'a Italy. May v.c not say, then, that Bacon's at her puny Machia\elliam wa- lx-d coined by the -upeib and spacious intellectual reach of the man who even m hi- youth had 'taken all knowledge to be hi*- piovinte'? That n'as the tiue Bacon, that was the root of his ,' greatness. It matters not whether his j positive contributions io the philosophy . of scientific method were great or small', : whether ha wa? a pioneer in untiodden ' way. of knowJ-edge or merely the herald w'p-) proclaims the majestic march of ' -iit'iv.-.-. not being liim.-'elt of the sacred bind, the "bucoinatoi," us he said of him- j , .^lf. who \ ent befoip the boat, but did I , not , nter the ba'tle- himself. j ■ —Bacon a- Scient.st — j "It may Up that, a^ Ifaivey bittoily said of him. he wiote oi .-cience like a Lord 1

Chancellor. But if all men of science could have written and thought like Ba-con the 'New Atlantis' might no longer be, what it still is in large measure and in many of its widei potentialities, nerely a magnificent dream. For 'with or without precise knowledge/ writes the late Mr Reynolds in his masterly introduction to the 'Essays,' 'there are some points of style in wl ich Bacon ne\ *c fails. He i:as always magnificence of diction, amplitude j of promise, an outline of wide range,, and ; an almost divine satisfaction in the work |as rery good.' These are supreme g "<ts and qualities, nor is it only m 6ty!<? that Bacon stands on a pinnacle of his own. — The Stir and Th-rust »f Thought. — '"The stir and thrust of 7 iis thought are all-compelling. It is no hyperbole to apply the language of Keats's sonnet, 'On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer' to the young student when he fiist passes, as Di Fowler says, 'from the dry manuals of logic to the profound and brilliant pages of Bacon,' pages where aphorism after aphorism sparkle*, in the light of truth and wisdom, into innumerable 'gems lof purest ray serene.' This is Bacon's j incomparable" gift to his countrymen and tc mankind." |« TO THE TOP Of THE CONIWENL" ! ASCENT OF THE HIGHEST PEAK IN NORTH AMERICA. Mount Al'Kinley is the highest peak on ; the North American Continent, reaching as It does a height of 20 3 390 ft. The top !is therefore .rithin 4000 ft of the highest recorded point reached by man. But, uni like all other great mountains which have been climbed — liks Aconcagua, Kabru. and Trisul — it Tises practically from the flats. The ice begins at a. little over 1000 ft above sea level, so that there are some j 19,000 ft of aoiid rook and snow work. ' Moreover, to g«t to its base 500 or 600 j m/il^s of frozen swamp and jungle have to be covered, where transport difficulties ] must always be acute, and where the traveller must spend most of his time drenched to the skin and devoured by mosquitoes. Finally the mountain i 6 within, sight of the Arctic Circle, and. theshort summer is made uncertain by the j conflicting cuncnts which meet on the Alaskan shores. Dr Cook, who made the ascent along with Mr Edward Burrille, hal already won fame as an. Antarctic explorer, and undoubtedly the feat was as | much one of Polar travel as of mountaineering proper. It was a most remarkable achievement, possible only to men of splendid physique and iron determination. There was no question of a comfortable high-level camp, and a rush thence to the summit, such as is the fashion of most Himalayan mountaineers. The top was t only reached by the two climbers sleeping , out for several consecutive nights among , the high snows. The performance seems ( to us to set the conquest of Everes* well j within the domain of jjossibility. * The j Arctic character of the mountain puts its 20,000 odd feet on the same plane as the 29,000 ft of the Himalayan, peak, and if, as is probable, the actual climbing on the north ide of Everest does not begin till over 20.000£t, the mountaineering difficulties or the- Alaskan, peak are actxialby the greater of the two. However I this may be, D x Cook's performance de- | serves to stand in the very first rank I of Alpine conquests, and his countrymen ma.y well be proud of it. Ihe first attempt was made in 1903, and, 1 was naturally no more than a prospecting* expedition, 'since the geography of the , district was almost unknown. From the I little settlement of Tyonok the explorers attempted to push their /ray, partly by i river and partly by pajek- horses, into the , M'Kinlay basin. ''It rained almost inces- ■ santly," says Dr Cook in his book just published, ''To the Top of the Continent." The men were always soaked to their skins, their boots were continually filled with ice water, and the hoises were wel ;uid bleeding fiom . wounds." About half-way tliey came, into I a better country, w Inch &&eins to have been a paradise for bi^ game. "Gieat gorges and curnoii'- nth rushing milky streams led to the toiiL'iie'- <>l unnamed I glacieis. Below a sub-arctir forest of 1 mystery .vit.li its miknoun smaU life and tin -clad unm.ilf. : dbove the par;tdi&e of the Ivai. iitot«-t\ caribou, and sheep." The hunting w.i* not very &ucce?sfnl, for the expedition earned only one old rifle, and it did not shoot straight. They teached the we<-teiri side ot Mount M'Kinley. and found that tiie c heer vr!aei*>r-hung precipices offered no way of accent. They then made a rc<onnaissanoe of the eastern side, and after some important topographical work return-ed l>ome. The next exi-udition ©et out in 1906. This time a motor boat was taken, and the Yeiitnji River Mas ascended as far as the mouth of the Kahilitna. In these jxirt. 1 -- it d<..-> not do to make a town your objective. Di Cook was aiming at a miners' ramp called Youngstown, but on the r<"-ad he met a miner who informed him that he was taking the town down •stream in hi.s boat. They went up the Kahilitna till they were in sight of Mount ; M'Kinlevv. and the "e&ult of the survey j con\ inoed them that the only probable ] atcent was by tbe north-we&torn ridge. , They accordingly took boat up -he fSus-itna j and the Chuhtna Riveis, and went through a series of misfortunes which would have f driven any le.<-s determined explorers . home. "To climb Alaskan mountains," says Dr Cook, "we should be web- footed l and duck- feathered and wing-finned like c the penguin," and another member }f the party pronounced the ascent of Mount c -U'Kinley a marine tu>k. They gave up * all hope of reaching the top, and resolved a to devote themselves to the ;xploration t of Ruth Glacier, nhich comes down on I tlie south-east. When they '•cached the foot of the glaciei. however, they thought c they taw a way of getting to the base of I the mountain, and a possible route up the \ northern shoulder. The boat *as har- a boured, a base camp was formed, and t happily the we«itHer changed. Though it \ was now the beginning of September, and I therefore vcr^ late ia ta« season, a period c

of dry, still weathei set in, and the explorers' hopes revived. With no heavier equipment than light silk tents, warm, sleeping -obes, and a moderate amount of food — a weight of 401k fox each climber — they set out to tramp up the glacier: The story now nears its end. Pitching camp on the high glacier, they "saw the stars through the silk mesh "of bbc tent as clearly as at night m lower lands.'-' They climbed higher and higher till they reached the dividing ridge between the Yukon and the Susitna, nnd found themselves "in the firing line of clouds irom the tropic and the arctic." They built fchemeelves an Eskimo hut in the snow, and next morning began the last 8000 ft of their climb. The first part was a very steep arete of &nmv, broken by great gendarmes of cliff, which had to be turned : — • We continued our sharp ascent . . , of the knife edge of the north arete, around a great spur, _fron> cornice ty cornice, cresting sheer cliffs over which there was a sickening drop of 10,000 ft into the mysteries of the lower aTctic world, and then began the awful task of making a ladder foi 2Cooft. With eternity but an easjr step belew every moment of this climb, we went from - hanging glaciers to snow slopes,' from blue grottoep to pink pinnacles, from

security to insecurity, with the thunder-

ing rush of avaJanehes on both sides. They camped that night on an ice slop© of nearly 60deg, lashing- themselves to. thair axee. Few c timbers can ever have spent a might; of such daager and discomfort. Next day they passed the steeps and came on to the easier slopes above 16,300 ft. The clouds were- now below them, and they walked ip a world, of bhin

air a<nd essential colounsi. The next night — the fifth of their climb — they built a snow house, and the following day managed with immense effort to climb another 2000 ft. Weak aojd feverish., they ucee from their last camp, and. tottesad-^JO steps at a. Time — tip the last 2QOQft. When they finally stood on the baxe- granite* of the summit, they scarcely realised their conquest. This is what they sa-vr: — It was September 16-, the tempera trare 16deg be-low zero, fchx? altitude 20,390 ft. The Arctic Circle was in sight, so was ' the Pacific Ocean. We were- interested mostly, not in the <fo*tant scenes, but in • the very strange anomaly of our immediate surroundings. It was 10 o'clock , in the moMiing, the sky was as black ; as midmight. At our- fteet the snow glittered ,wtHl a ghastW HgM. A* the eye ran dtown we saw the- upper olouds ' drawn out in long strings, and; still fur-, ther down the big cumulus forms, and through the gap faa» below, seemingly in the interior >i Ihe earth, bits of

rugged landscape. The frightful uncanny aspect of the outJook made as dizzy. Fifty thousand sq_uar« miles- of our arctic wonderland were spread out

(wider our enlarged horizon, but we could see it only in sections. Various trains of moving clouds screened- the lowlands and- entwined the lecser peaks. We could see narrow, silveryi bands marking the coaxse of tihe Yukon and the Xanana, while to the south,

looking over pearly clouds, we- had, an unobstructed view. Mount Sugitna, 100 mil«e away in- a gaceat gpees. ■ expanse, was busk 9. step in, the run of distance. The icy cones of fcha buraiij# volcanoes, Riedoubt, Illiajnua, and» Ghmaiboisu the last 200 miles a-way, -wsere* clearly visible with their rising vapour*. StilJ, farther the point of Kenai Peninsula, and beyond, the broad sweep of tbe Pacific

250 miles away !

Dr Cook's seven days' climb is something new in mountaineering annals, and muet cause us to revise some of ouxtheories. .The story is most graphically told, the dc.-criptions of sceiwry show consideiable literary art, and the book ia illustrated with" many excellent photographs. — Spectator.