Filling the Blanks in Maps

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21216, 10 December 1938, Page 12

Filling the Blanks in Maps

PLANNED EXPLORATION OF THE HIMALAYAS

After notable ascents in Europe and i i Africa, Mr Eric Shipton of the British | Mount Everest Expedition made four ’ | long journeys to the Himalaya. With i ;H. W. Tilman he recently tackled I Everest again; he was the first to unveil the Sanctuary of Nanda Devi; and he has achieved thirty new peaks and ; passes in the eastern and western i Himalaya. Now he writes in “Blank lon the Map” of Ins turning to the ■ | north-east, to the solitudes of Kara-1 i koram. In this book he appears es- I sentially as an explorer, subordinating the climbing of peaks to the task of plotting and filling in a great blank on the map. His party surveyed 1,800 square miles of one of the most difficult mountain fastnesses in the world in less than four months, and J. B. Auden, one of the band, has revealed the geological structure of the terrain. Mr Tilman includes a chapter on one of his independent journeys away from the ! main party, and Michael Spender, the fourth English member of the expedition, appends an interesting article on map-making. If Mr Ship ton writes with undue modesty, he has nevertheless the pen of a poet, and the stout heart and resolution of an Elizabethan adventurer. The tour took the party through Kashmir into Baltistan, thence to the Karakoram Range and over it into the Shakesgam Valley. Sir Francis Younghusband’s amazing crossing of the treacherous Mustagh Pass fifty years ago is recounted; and we travel on with the young explorers through the Baltoro Glacier, encountering with them delays, fevers, torrential streams, heat, cold, and hunger, abyssmal ravines, snow-blindness, the treachery of crevasses, problems of fuel and food transport, and a hundred unexpected things that the layman would never imagine could crop up out of a wellordered expedition. We are impressed with the loyalty cf the eight pig-tailed Sherpas and appalled at the systematic t defection of one hundred’ Baltis whose numbers soon dwindled to less than : half a dozen. We learn the unwisdom i of two men travelling alone over an j unknown glacier, and wonder at Ship- • ton’s escape from a long fall into a I freezing sub-glacial lake, and are amazed to discover that the ice of the Crevasse Glacier is 2,000 feet thick. The book is written with such charm that the reader becomes a boy again j and believes that he himself has dis- : covered the Aghil Pass and first set • eyes on the Shaksgam and Zug Shaksi gam rivers. There is some sly comment > on the difficulty of naming new fcai tures aptly and for posterity, and i many light page deals with such serious ■ matters as hunting, starving, sleeping, ■ feasting, yarning, and doing without ,! a pipe. (One member of the party i left his tobacco behind in order to be i able to take along a copy of Tolstoi ■ and E. M. Forster’s “A Passage to • India”—weight being a necessary con- : sideration.) ’ Mr Shipton scorns competition, pub-licity-hunting, and record-breaking—-’r anything that detracts from the real . and primary value- of mountaineering, of which he says: “The real purpose ’ of climbing should be to transmute 1 it into a way of living, however tem--1 porary, in an environment which ’ appeals to the individual.” Amen to that! The plates are numerous and excellent, and there is a full map explanatory of the journey and its ach--1 ievement. The book, which is finely • produced, will appeal to all lovers of ■ sportsmanship that is unselfish; but ' the very accounts of hardship will s cause many a visionary youth to think twice before deciding on Himalayan or Karakoram conquests.

Himalaya Again Geoffrey Gorer, author of “Himala- | < yan Village” first learned the language ! j of the Lepchas (who inhabit the re- I serve of Zongu in the State of Sikkim, ' ‘ under the western slopes of Kinchen- J junga), and then spent some months living with the villagers whom he ‘ studied at first hand. He has written 1 a detailed and intimate account of ’ this Mongoloid race; and he divides 1 his work into three sections so that : he can give us pictures of the materia! ! and formal society of the Lepchas, then 1 less formal phases of their life, before : he gathers both impressions together s in a final section that traces the history : cf certain individuals. Thus he sue- 1 ceeds in giving us a framework of their ! society, the impact of culture on the ■ people, and complete pictures of incu- ; viduals who are the product of that - culture and society. The Lepchas are a dwindling tribe ’ with a proneness to suicide, and there ■ is evidence that they are conscious of : their inferiority to the encroaching Nepali in the struggle for survival and of their dependence not on themselves.! but on State protection, for continued i existence as an entity. Mr Gorer has ’ fortunately studied this little-known i people before change and decay have done their worst. While the Lepchas have vivid and i exact memories, they have no number sense, do not dramatise, are tolerant, j contented, and indifferent, and are | preoccupied with sex, which is never ; regarded romantically. Youth is the ■ best period of their lives, the people j no longer weave, and, while they are almost omniverous, hunting is falling into desuetude—and they hunt with bamboo pipe and poisoned darts. Personal quarrels are the concern of everybody, and no efforts are spared to ' prevent them cr to stop them once ' they are launched. The monks have an annual ceremony to destroy the • trinity of devils—enmity of speech.' thought, and deed—who cause quarrelling. They are a mild-mannered people who are eternally exploited by moneylenders and “trading friends,” their mandal or chieftain holds an hereditary appointment, and there is little actual crime among them. The rules of law and order are clearly set forth, as also are the complicated laws . of kinship and marriage. This is a book that will appeal to | other than anthropologists, because it | is a human document in the sense that | the author made individual contacts,; maintained them, won the friendship ' and confidence of the tribesmen and j women, and never forgets that a tribe ■ is a collection of individuals with vary- i ing characteristics. Back to Amazonia It never rains but it pours. In the | past season we have had so many' books—good, bad, and hardly worth publishing—on Amazonia that one' would cry “Halt!” Earl Parker, author ! of “Journey to Manaos” went from • Cuidad. Bolivia, to the Orinoco, the ; Atabapo, the Guinia, and the Rio! Negro to Manaos while he was cn-1 gaged by the Carnegie Institute of Washington as an itinerant observer of terrestrial magnetism. He has nothing to say that Ullman in his grand book on the whole of Amazonia lias not said better and with greater authority, and one suspects that this ' 1 cok is an afterthought to a scientific •. xpedition. The chapters on the Indians. missions, curare, the collapse of the rubber market, in Brazil, and especially his panegyric on Manaos itself are singularly thin; and the writer j finds himself obliged at times to delve ! back a year or two into the history of i this once unexplored but now quite i

exhausted mine of unreality to eke out its pages. There is much of manana, the decay of industry, Ford’s rubber factory, the flying and biting things; but the author does agree with reputable writers that he never sighted a beast of prey, and that often even monkeys and I birds were conspicuous by their absence. On the other hand, Mr Hansen writes wittily and w’ell of his hosts and the labour he engaged; but the best chapter in the book is the last on the meaning and value of the study of terrestrial magnetism. [“Blank on the Map,” by Eric Shipton London: Hodder and Stroughton. “Himalayan Village. ’’ by Geoffrey Gorer. London: Michael Joseph. “Journey to Manaos,’’ by Earl Parker Hanson. London: Gollancc.l