MOUNTAINEERING IN THE ANDES.* THE sport of mountaineering was never

more flourishing than to-day, but mountaineering literature seems to have fallen on evil times. If our exploits are more remarkable in many ways than those of our fathers, we cannot write of them in the same way. Climbers like W ',roper, Moore, Leslie Stephen, and Mummery produced not only climbing records but good literature. We have still mountaineers who write well—Mr. G. Winthrop Young and Professor Norman Collie are cases in point—but too often a true love of mountaineering is joined with an illiterate style and a dubious taste. The other day we had Mr. S. Turner' sk Climbing Adventures in Four Continents, in which some respectable achievements were set out much in the same style as bicycle racing on a track might be described in a provincial paper. And now we have Miss Annie S. Peck, an American lady, who spent six years in a creditable attempt to find the apex of the American continent. Here is a book which no mountaineer should miss, for it is a story of infinite patience and sterling courage ; but he must be prepared to conquer many aversions. Miss Peck's style is the worst possible—awkward, slipshod, often illiterate. It forces upon the reader the solemn conviction that a certain kind of Amerieanese may bear very little relation to the English language. Nor is her manner better than her style. She is at once self-confident and irritable, prickly and com- placent. Whether her companions are Swiss guides, or American scientists, or local lunatics—and at different times she had them all—she is full of complaints about their be- haviour. No doubt she had a great deal to endure, but the reader would be grateful if less were said about it. The perpetual air of querulousness grows wearisome. Wo could wish her for her own sake an pea plus de gad. Yet before he finishes the book the odds are that the reader will be reconciled to the author. If her style suggests the suffragist leaflet, her patience and pluck are beyond criticism. Few people have ever climbed high mountains with more meagre resources, and when Miss Peck's indomitable foot is planted at last on the summit of Huascamn we breathe a sigh of relief that so much grit did not go unrewarded.

Her first expedition was in 1903, and its object was Mount Sorge. or Illampu, which Sir Martin Conway had failed to conquer a few years previously. The jumping-off ground for the Bolivian peak is La Paz, the capital, a city of 60,000 inhabitants, at the bottom of a calion 1,000 feet deep, and yet 12,000 feet above the sea. Miss Peck gives an interesting account of the place, but her attempts on the mountain were doomed to failure. She had reached an altitude of some 15,000 odd feet when her Indians became mutinous and her scientist remembered an early engagement at home. The ascent of the easy volcano, El Misti, was some small consolation, and on her road back she visited the Peruvian Cordillera. A year later she returned—without guides—for another attempt. Miss Peck's methods were peculiar, for though she had done no climbing since her last visit, and was thoroughly out of training, she hurled herself on the mountain as soon as she arrived. This time she made a gallant attempt, but once again the mettle of her companions was not equal to her own. Climbing steep and difficult ice alone was too much even for * High Mountain CHI:thing in Peru and Bolivia; a Search for the Apex of America. By Annie S. reek. London : T. Fisher Unwin. [128. lid. net.]

Irliss Peck, and she was compelled to give up. Her thoughts cow turned to the Peruvian giant Huascaran, which many rogazded as the loftiest peak in South America. To reach it you must go a considerable way north of Callao to the port

Loot of the great mountain. That journey up country is the best piece of description in the book. Miss Peck makes the reader understand the curious formation of the land with its barrier wall of black rock, and, beyond, the inner line of the snows. She had various adventures, received much kindness, and at Caraz fell in with what must ire an uncommon sight—a Peruvian suffragette. But at Yungay difficulties were again her portion. Huasearan con- .111AB of a north and a south peak, with a saddle between

them. Her first attempt on this saddle was from the east tater a toilsome journey round the mountain, for the glacier below the saddle on the west side seemed to be too terribly .arevassed to cross. Attended by a train of slightly intoxi- cated local gentlemen—a train which diminished rapidly as it ,proceeded-,she reached the ice-line, but retreitted before the multitude of avalanches. Clearly it was too late in the -Season for this route. She returned to Yungay and tried the western face, on which she succeeded in reaching a height of

18,000 feet, though still some 2,000 feet short of the saddle.

Henceforth Sorata was forgotten, and Huascaran became the object of Miss Peck's ambition. She became thoroughly

.v.xclimatized in the valley, made many friends, and seems to have acquired a fair knowledge of Spanish, so that her next .attempt should be made under more favourable auspices.

It came in 1906, but funds were so scarce that she could not Afford any Swiss guides. Her companion was a lunatic of the neighbourhood, who seems to have been possessed of con- eiderable agility and all the courage of his condition. Few men—let alone women—would undertake the ascent of an unknown and difficult snow peak without guides and in such company. The inevitable happened. Two attempts

-were made, and the companion, apart from prancing about on the most dangerous ice slopes and getting lost, proved quite luseless, and Miss Peck had to retreat. Of the discomfort of siiCh climbing we can judge from her own account " To sit in cramped quarters with bundles and bags by my side, take off high-laced boots, change stockings, got into Eskimo trousers, pull out and make use of my toilet articles, cold-cream, Pond's Extract., Japanese stoves, comb and braid my hair, when half dead. with fatigue and stiff with the cold—well, it was the hardest kind of labour."

After a visit to the great copper mines of Cerro de Paces and a first ascent of-a rock peak at the source of the Amazon, Miss Peck returned to New York to prepare for the final assault upon Huascaran. With some trouble she raised sufficient funds to provide for two good Swiss guides, and attacked the west side of the mountain when the weather and the condition of the snow were in her favour. The difficulties seem to have been the muclacrevassed glacier and at its head an almost

perpendicular wall of ice just below the saddle. "The wall was so nearly vertical that in taking a step I was twice embarrassed by my knee striking the snow above, although the calf of my leg was perpendicular." On the first attempt one of the guides was absent from illness, but Miss Peck and the other guide surmounted the wall, reached the saddle, and ascended some distance up the final slope of the north peak. They were driven back after having spent nine nights on the

snow since the climb began. The highest proof of Miss Peck's quality is that after this she tried again. With the two guides she reached the saddle in two days from the snow- line. Unfortunately a high wind rose in the night, and the last part of the ascent next day was undertaken under very .difficult weather conditions, One of the guides proved a hero; the other had the misfortune to be badly frost-bitten in his Lands and feet. The summit of the north peak was safely reached, and the descent began. This was the worst part of the business, for darkness fell and the cold was unbearable. At length the tent on the saddle was reached, and in the morning the party, slowly and painfully, retraced their steps down the lee-wall and the glacier.

"As I rode down the valley," Miss Peck writes, "and looked up at that great magnificent mountain conquered at last, after iso many years of struggle, days and weeks of hardship, and

now at such cost, I felt almost like shaking my fist at it and

saying, 'I have beaten you at last, and I shall never go up there again I'" It was a splendid performance carried through in the teeth of difficulties which to most people would have seemed insuperable, and Miss Peck well deserved the medal bestowed upon her by the Government of Peru. In the Preface she announces her willingness to make further exploration among the high snows provided she is properly equipped with funds, but adds that never again will she set out so meagrely equipped "as to be compelled to serve as porter, cook, photographer, scientific man, and general boss, all at the same time." We hope the funds will be forthcoming, for we are familiar with few climbers of Miss Peck's dogged spirit. She stuck to Huascaran much as Whymper stuck to the Matterhorn. It is a disagreeable habit of unknown peaks to disappoint their conquerors. Miss Peck estimated the height of the mountain at 23,000 feet. Unfortunately the triangulation of the peak by a French expedition gives it as just under 22,000 feet. This is, of course, less than Kahn" and the height attained by the Duke of the Abruzzi in the Kara- koram; it is less even than Aconcagua. Miss Peck, however, has made the second highest ascent yet made on the American continent, and the highest for a woman.