An Artist in the Himalayas ... Illustrated by over 100 original sketches made on the journey

Front matter

AN ARTIST IN THE HIMALAYAS AN ARTIST IN THE HIMALAYAS By A. D. McCORMICK ILLUSTRATED BY OVER ioo ORIGINAL SKETCHES MADE ON THE JOURNEY LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE. All rights referred. PEEFACE TN this book, which certainly has no pre ■*- tensions to be literature, an art by no means within my province, I have attempted to give an idea of the picturesque aspect of the expedition rather than of the geographical portion. How admirably that was done by Sir William Conway is known now to all the world. But if our leader had attempted to tell everything, his book would have reached the proportions of a Biographical Dictionary or of the Encyclopædia Britannica ; and in confining it to reasonable limits he may thus have left a chance for one of the members of his expedition to contribute a more personal narrative.

The illustrations are merely reproductions from notes in my sketch book of any little incident or scene that may have struck me during the marches. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. CHELSEA TO KARACHI ... ... ... 1 II. KARACHI TO SRINAGAR ... ... 16 III. THE ROAD TO GILGIT ... ... ... 49 IV. BAGROT, DIRRAN, AND GARGO... ... 84 V. HUNZA-NAGYR ... ... ... ... Ill vi. mir and hispar ... ... ... 132 vii. hispar pass to askole... ... ... 154 viii. askole to the golden throne ... 168 ix. pioneer peak to askole ... ... 194 x. askole to scardu ... ... ... 221 xi. scardu to leh ... ... ... 240 xii. leh to srinagar ... ... ... 265 xiii. srinagar ... ... . . ... portrait ... ... ... ...

Frontispiece PAGE port said ... ... ... ... 1 terefa ... ... ... ... ... 3 lighthouse. entrance to port said ... 5 in the suez canal ... ... ... ... 8 on the steamer ... ... ... 10 entering aden ... ... ... ... 12 ADEN ... ... ... ... ... 14 OFF PORT SAID ... ... ... ... 15 AT KARACHI ... ... ... ■■• 16 ON THE INDUS ... ... ... ■■• 18 PARBIR ... ... ... ■•• ■•• 19 GURKHAS ... ... ... ■•• •■■ 20 A CLIMBING STUDY ... ... ... 22 COOLIE AT TANDIANI ... ... ... •■■ 23 GURKHA DANCING ... ... ... 27 SERVANTS BRINGING SUPPER ... ... ... 29 DEPARTURE OF JACK ... ... .. 31 AT DOMEL ... ... -•• ■•• •■• 32 AN EKKA ... ■•■ ••• ■•■ 35 EVENING IN CHINAR BAGH ... ... ... 37 BARRAMULA ... ... ••• ••• 38 X PAGE ON THE JHELAM, SRINAGAR ... ... ... 39 TOWING UP THE JHELAM ... ... ... 41 ON THE DAL LAKE ... ... ... ... 44 ON THE DAL LAKE ... ... ... 46 OUR BOATMAN ... ... ... ... 47 COOLIES AT BURZIL ... ... ... 49 LANDING BAGGAGE AT BANDIPUR ... ... 50 COOLIES AT SANARWAIN ... ... ... 52 SERVANTS' CAMP AT TRAGBAL ... ... ... 55 COOLIES ... ... ... ... 57 A COOLIE ... ... ... ... ... 58 COOLIES AT BURZIL ... ... ... 60 CAMP AT BURZIL ... ... ... ... 62 SERVANTS' CAMP AT ASTOR ... ... 63 COOLIES ... ... ... ... 64 NATIVE WOMEN AT ASTOR ... ... ... 66 HARCHO VILLAGE ... ... ... ... 67 A COOLIE ... ... ... ... 70 CAMP AT BAGROT ... ... ... ... 72 SNAKE PASS ... ... ... 85 SURVEYING ... ... ... ... ... 87 BY THE CAMP FIRE, BAGROT ... ... 95 INTERIOR OF NATIVE MILL, NOMAL ... 107 MOSQUE ON THE ROAD TO NAGYR ... ...

Chapter I. Chelsea To Karachi

EAELY iii the winter of 1891, Jack Eoudebush and I were sitting in my Chelsea studio with two other friends discussing not a little gloomily the difficulties of making a living at Art. We were by no means sure that our lack of success was not our own fault, and one of us had something to say about the immorality of big men doing no more with their strength than handle a brush when there was real work to be done in the world which was not purely decorative, though it might lead to decorations. We came to the conclusion that if things did not so improve as to signify to us that we were really wanted, we would try farming or cattle herding, or anything calculated to give some starved faculties a chance. One of my friends having been born in Africa, which he left when he was two years old, declared himself an authority on the prospects open to young men in that country, and suggested we should try it.

A month later we bade him farewell in the East India Docks, for he was off to the Cape for at least six months ; and only a fortnight later my other friend, who was an architect and surveyor, greeted me with the news that he had obtained a government appointment on the West Coast of Africa. His task was to be surveying and designing buildings in a sunburnt, desolate land, the haunt of many fevers. But he was glad all the same, and rejoiced at getting away to something, after living on sucking his artistic thumbs in a Chelsea by-street. And then Jack and I were left to wonder if we were ever going to get our chance of malaria and wild travel and strange adventure in the unknown. Eor what I knew was bounded on the east by London, and on the west by Belfast. I pined for something better than reading stories of places and things.

Jack, who knew many places and phases of life, pined only for something new. But our time was coming. One day Jack came in big with exciting news. His friend Mr. Conway (now Sir William M. Conway) was to lead a surveying and climbing expedition through the Himalayas, and through parts of it which meant real original exploration. He thought of taking an artist with him, and so, said Jack, it was just possible that he might select me. He had seen some work of mine which had pleased him. If Art had led so far it had done something, I began to see some use in it, even beyond boiling pots and painting pictures which the world unanimously refused to buy or even to look at. But it was only a chance after all, until one evening when my friend Jack came to me in a state of radiant happiness, bringing Conway with him.

" Here," said he, " is Conway; he wants to speak to you." When he asked me if I should like to go to the Himalayas to sketch, I was nearly replying by asking him if a duck would swim, but restrained my enthusiasm, and merely remarked weakly that I should like it very much. Conway said it was possible he might take me, and pumped me as to my views of painting mountains ; for most artists certainly manage to make molehills of them, and he wanted them to look like real hills. My experience of mountains was not at that time great, in fact, I think the Mourne Mountains in County Down were the nearest to an apology for a mountain which I had seen, but I managed to make him believe that if there was any man who could and would do the trick loftily, I was that man. After a few days of fevered expectation I had a telegram saying, " I have arranged for you to go to Himalayas.

Conway." But what of Jack ? He declined to be left out in the cold. Of the four who had dis cussed misery and Art, one was at the Cape, another at Lagos, and the third was booked for the Karakoram Mountains. It was ob viously impossible that the fourth should stay in England, and study life coldly in marble, or make counterfeit presentments of indiffer ent people in common clay. Perhaps it was his indignation that heated him over much and left him a victim to the ! draughts of my studio,; but he immediately had! influenza and was threatened with con gestion of the lungs, and had to be transferred to a nursing hospital under the care of my friend, Dr. Tom Robinson. It was some time before I discovered the little plan he had concocted, but when I found him egging on the doctor to prescribe a sea voyage for him, I began to have some suspicions; these were converted into amused certainty when he gloomily suggested that he was a likely subject for consumption, and that from what he had heard of Davos and other mountain stations, a high altitude was the very thing to prevent any evil results follow ing his illness.

When the doctor agreed that there was something in this view, Jack coolly suggested the Himalayas as a new place to test modern theories in, and asked whether it would be too far. And of course the end of it was that Jack worked his point, and was admitted to our adventurous band. He made a good recovery at once, and only coughed badly when any one threw doubts on his ability to climb or to stand the hard ships which are always to be looked for on original explorations. So now the numbers of the expedition were full up. It was composed of Conway ; Lieu tenant the Honourable C. G-. Bruce, of the 1st Battalion 5th Gurkhas ; Zurbriggen, a well-known Swiss guide from Macugnaga ; Colonel Lloyd-Dicken — who only went with us to Gilgit ; 0. Eckenstein ; Jack Roudebush, and myself. And taking us all round, with very few exceptions, I think we were a hard and fit crowd to do almost anything.

The world knows now all about our leader ; but it is a curious thing that a man, who up to that time had been principally known as a writer on Art, should almost suddenly blossom into a man of action, and a born leader of men. Of late, people who know very little have called him " a man of one book." In remembering his travels they have forgotten his " Wood-cutters of the Netherlands," a most learned and valuable contribution to the history of engraving, to say nothing of other equally important works.* But to those who went with him into the Hima layas he certainly stands more as the man of deeds than the man of words. His en durance of toil, his tact in the management of many races of men, his unfailing readiness of resource, and his absolute foresight, mark him as one among a thousand. That he made the expedition a success we all know, but few know the difficulties with which he contended, nor the happy, bright temper with which he combated them.

And to choose a man like Bruce, of the Gurkhas, as one of the expedition, showed his knowledge of men. For Bruce, too, had the disposition which is full of fight and * A history of Flemish Art, a work on the Literary Remains of Albert Drurer, a study of Reynolds and Gainsborough, and " The Dawn of Art," which deals with pre-historic Art, and the Arts of Chaldæa, Assyria, Egypt, and other early civilisations. courage, with the power and weight that can absolutely crush obstacles. He and his Gurkhas were an infinite help to us. And while England has men like him to lead, and those he commands to follow, she may sit serene on the sunny side of India's northern boundary. But Bruce was not with us all the time, while Zurbriggen never left us. Though Conway had not known him before, there is little doubt that if he were to lead another difficult expedition, it would be a great dis appointment to him if he were unable to have the gallant and fiery but skilful Swiss, who was capable of boiling over like a geyser, and of subsiding afterwards in a most placid pool.

Mountains to him existed to be climbed; while he climbed he sang or jodelled. And he had his ambitions of book making. He made sketches or notes all the time, and often when he had outpaced us on a difficult piece of road, he would sit down and make new notes while we toiled up the slopes behind him. Bruce had gone on to India before us, as his leave was up, and Colonel Dicken also ; we were to meet both of them at Abbot tabad. The rest of us got to know each other well before we reached India ; and as I heard the yarns of those who had done the strenuous things I wished to do, I often had moments when I feared that I should not reach the standard of excellence to which they had attained. But I meant doing my best, and so did Jack. The voyage out was a revelation to me and a fit preface to something stranger still.

We went out on a cargo steamer — not in one of the big passenger boats — and having very few fellow travellers, we were much freer than we should otherwise have been. The comparative slowness of our passage was nothing to me when everything was of such infinite interest. I even enjoyed the pitch and toss of a good rough time in the Bay of Biscay; and fighting our way through the Straits of Gibraltar with a strong easterly gale blowing in our teeth gave me plenty of time to make notes of Teresa and the Rock, for with wind and current against her the Ocampo made no very rapid headway. But it was not till we reached Port Said that the real interest of the passage com menced ; for trivial as it seemed afterwards when I had known the glory of India and the real Orient, it is at any rate the Gate of the East.

One sees the motley of two contending civilizations in that city of roughs and outcasts ; and there are camels in the streets ; then the thousand-time described scene of the demon-like coolies loading the coal, yelling and surging aud moaning strange cries, as they run up and down the gang planks, caught hold of me. I watched them in the cloud of dust, and as I choked I dreamed, and the Old World and the East opened out to me. Jack and I went ashore with the doctor of the ship, who told us he knew all about the place. I daresay he knew something of it, but not all, for when our curiosity led us from one thing to another until we seemed near disaster, I don't think he fancied himself then. For we got by the merest chance into some kind of a low den in which there were strange ruffians and dancing girls, and all sorts of devilry, and on our attempting to crush out through them in the darkness, I found myself in a passage leading into a street, but barred by an iron grating.

I was the only one caught, for the rest were outside, and the crowd round me were by no means calculated to cheer me. I seized hold of one and threatened to shoot him if I wasn't let out. As my friends on the other side of the bars were threatening them with the police, they finally let me go, and I decided on having a better guide next time I went exploring the purlieus of an Eastern town. Then came the Suez Canal, and the strange aspect of the deserts with their herds of camels. By day we dreamed under the awning. But I wrote to my two friends in Africa, telling where I was and whither I was going ; I felt quite sorry for them. They w7ere staying in such common and common-place parts of the world, while I was drifting through enchantment to some thing stranger still. But night in the Canal is the most wonder ful : when one ties up to let another boat pass, one sees at first its white eye, the big search-light, that grows and grows and turns the sand into piles of drifting snow ; then it shoots over and past, and the gloomy ship glides by with its unknown folk who cheer.

And then on again through the lakes, by day shallow and green, but at night dark waters illuminated with lighted buoys, till they look like a Chinese garden. Then came Suez, with the old town in the distance, and the neat white buildings of the Canal officials round the Canal's mouth into the Red Sea ; the seas are bright green, and the cliffs burn bright red, and are reflected redly. But this I did not see till my return. In the dull, hot sea we only wearied for India. We forgot our longings for a time in Aden, for that was the Orient without a doubt. It was not the dirty swirl of two opposing civilisations as at Port Said. We saw the Camel Market, and rubbed shoulders with twenty races, and drank thick coffee in windowless coffee divans, while outside the sun was glowing like molten steel.

It is a glaring, white-hot hell, and the buildings in the open almost blind one with the reflected light. The clothes the people wear are extreme in tint, they shine in primary colours ; but many are half naked, as we wished to be before our time was done. Then we went on board and watched the boys swim or dive as if they were fish and in their native element. All this time, both ashore and at sea, I was perpetually sketching and painting, trying to screw my tones up to the light and colour : and everything I did aunoyed and disgusted me, my brightest work looked black ; pure vermilion seemed as if it was fit to paint a water-can with, but it was no use to an artist, and as to pure ultramarine, the sea knocked it out of time clean and for ever. So working, dreaming, and playing loo, we weiit on eastward through the Arabian Sea and across the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

There for the first time I saw the phosphorescence of the sea. The steamer cut her way through hollow golden green fire and strange green bronze, and the bow waves, going off into the darkness, looked like flaming serpents lazily rolling in dark oil. Sometimes we lay on deck, and before sleeping watched the blood-red moon sink below the horizon. Like the sinking sun it touched the sea aud flattened its orb, and then it bit into the water, and as it gradually went under its wake glittered, and glittering died, until its upper limb alone remained like a strange star that was suddenly extin guished. So we came to Karachi and were at last in India.

Chapter II. Karachi To Srinagar

KARACHI is now to me only a big burning blot of colour — sashes, turbans, and fierce sunlight. But there is no glamour of any kind about the modern built town. It is ugly and vilely dusty, and most of the streets are named after a Mackintosh, or some other Scotchman ; it seemed as if Scotland owned or built it. But I hadn't much of it to endure, for we left by the 10 p.m. train, and ran off into moonlit plains of enchantment, mystery, and wonder. I could not wake myself out of the dream — for I was in a dream surely — I might pinch myself if I liked, but the vision would not pass. And so we ran on through the night. At Badau we stopped for breakfast. And much of the wonder was gone from me. For instead of the cool moonlight and low tones, which were suggestive only, came the brutal realism of direct sunlight in a tired, weary landscape, where all the trees and shrubs were thick with dust.

As we stopped at each station, from the carriages which held natives protruded a hundred lean, bare, uncanny arms and hands, each with a little brass pot, to be filled from the water-skin of the bhesti, who yelled " Pawnee ! Paw-nee ! " till his throat must have been dry enough to need his whole supply. But as we ran on and came nearer the Indus the landscape began to look greener and fresher and more promising. And when we crossed the great river we had one beautiful bit of scenery. For on an island, round which the broad stream swept, stood a fort and some rajah's palace, and by it were curious boats which dark-skinned natives were loading. As I looked down through the lattice-work of the bridge, I again seemed to think that nothing was real and that I dreamt once more. After another night in the train we were in Lahore, and in real India at last.

We took a carriage and drove to the Fort. A very stolid and excessively English Tommy Atkins showed us over the beautiful old palace, with its inlaid and perforated marble screens, and its walls covered with myriad strange decorations. On the roof we had a grand view of the great mosque with its walled courtyard, the square roofed houses of the town that vibrated in the intense heat, and of the cool, green, distant landscape with its trees. We went through the town, and it was coloured Pandemonium. Once we caught sight of some young natives playing cricket, but that familiar thing was swallowed up in a moment by a strange blaze of colour that made my head fairly reel with its intensity. The crowded natives, through whom our driver forced his way, cursed him pictur esquely, but salaamed humbly to his fares ; and the din of their jabbering was most infernal and deafening.

To come to the railway station was like leaving some gigantic show. And now I knew the East had never been painted. And I doubted greatly if it ever would be. Conway and Jack decided to stay the night in Lahore, but Zurbriggen, Eckenstein, and I went on to Hassan Abdal. When we reached it at noon next day we found tongas and ekkas waiting for us, and we dashed off over well-kept roads and past villages with all their native life open to view, dancing der vishes here, and women spinning there, and amid general salaams came to Abbottabad, to find Bruce and Dicken expecting us. I slept, and was awakened by jackals. They made me jump at first. But that was nothing, and had to be put up with in India. I could only think of the time and the place and the work to be done when Conway came next day.

As I have said, or implied, I had never seen a snow mountain. And in deed I had never till this trip been in any country outside the limits of the British Isles. So suddenly to find myself in the neighbourhood of the highest mountains in the world was, in spite of all my mental preparation for them, an exceedingly strange experience to me. For now, when the voyage was over and the railway journey done, it seemed to me that all the intermediate steps were wiped out. I forgot the seas and skies of the voyage ; and the quick run through the plains and the foothills almost to the heart of the first chain of the Himalayas was no more than a dream. I had come at one step into a land of visions. This feeling of strangeness never quite left me through all the journey, for no sooner did I become accustomed to the work and the constant risks than I had to face something newer and something greater still, which renewed a feeling in me which resembled fear, and was perhaps rather wonder.

But even in all the toil and danger, the glory of the unknown gave me many compensations. After our arrival in Abbottabad, we found that instead of leaving at once as we had planned, we had to wait nearly three weeks for our luggage. But the officers of the garrison were more than hospitable, and made our visit so pleasant, that only our work and the desire we had to go on and upward could have drawn us away. My first attempt at climbing was a rank failure, though the hill was only 4,000 feet high, and easy grass slope at that ; yet with a few days' practice I began to feel somewhat firmer on my legs, and could get along fairly well. In this country it is never any trouble taking sketching materials, for one can order any loafing native who is hanging about to carry them for two or three pice, and every ounce of weight tells if one is not used to climbing.

This, at least, made things easier for me. Bruce had arranged a trip to Tandiani — a summer resort of the Europeans of Abbotta bad — and a beat for game about the hills there next day. All the morning active prepara tions were going on ; laughing Gurkhas here, there, and everywhere, bundling up food and blankets, and loading mules with the spirits of a lot of schoolboys off for a holiday. At last all were ready— thirteen Gurkhas in the glory of white, lemon, purple, and pink turbans, seven mules, and six coolies, making a most imposing expedition. Bruce, Jack, and I, with Zurbriggen, left at noon, and as the climb was nothing but an afternoon's rim to the men of the place, who, in fact, think nothing of going there and back in a day, Bruce thought we should be at the top by half-past four at least.

It was a bad calcula tion, as he found out later, with two such green ones as Jack and I. The first half of the way was pleasant, though very hot, and the unusual character of the scenery and of the natives kept my mind from dwelling on the fatigue that was growing upon me. The newness of it all wras delightful. There were smiling and salaam ing natives working on the road or in their patches of field, and Bruce's saluta tion of " Salaam Gi" made them all grin as if they were delighted to see us. Parbir, who had been with Bruce in England, was trying to sing "Two Lovely Black Eyes," while his companions sang and shouted and larked about, as if they were on Plumstead Marshes instead of a road as steep as a ladder. There were many rests for us by the way, for every brook and waterfall was an excuse, and the much-sought-after tobacco was given with unsparing hand to fill the Gurkhas' chelum — which they suck through a wet rag, and hand round to each other — to make the delay a little longer.

When about half-way up, and after a longer rest than usual below what looked an impossible pine-covered hill, Bruce said we must make haste or we should be benighted, and to be out on the mountain without shelter was more than any of us could stand. Jack and I said we were ready, but when the boys coolly started up this impossible slope, it was with sinking hearts that we looked at each other and began to climb ; and worst of all was the fact that it was fun to everybody else. Our pace grew slower and slower ; from twenty yards at a time it came to ten, and then to five, to two and one, and then a dead stop. Jack and I were done. Bruce picked me up on his broad back for a yard or two, but I was too much for him, and he put me down. After resting for a few minutes, I suddenly and unaccount ably felt all right.

Perhaps it was the sight of Jack on a Gurkha, for it would have made a goat laugh to see a soldier about four feet nothing climbing on hands and knees with a six foot three man on his back, and one Gurkha ready to take the other's place, and all as cheerful as crickets. But night was coming on fast, and Jack having actually become unconscious, the situation was serious, for the winter snow, not yet melted, had obliterated the path. Very soon night was upon us, and the dark gloom of the thick pine forest, lit with a dim light from the snow, the dark forms of the Gurkhas in advance looking for the way, the slow march with our heavy burden, the bitter cold, and the silence, for none spoke, made a most impressive scene. At last a break in the trees disclosed the hut, and soon we were all round a roaring fire, and Jack, revived with the heat and soup (got ready by Bruce's bearer, Rahim Ali, who had arrived with the mules hours before by the regular mule-road), was soon sitting up, vowing to live and die for the Gurkhas.

And well they deserved all praise, for, tired as they must have been, they were running about making everything as comfortable for us as they possibly could. The next morning the great event of the trip was to come off. Bruce started with the Gurkhas to beat the hills round a certain point at which we were to wait with the rifles ; bear and all other sorts of game were looked for. After an interminable wade through soft snow and pine woods, we came to the point we were to stay at and sat down. Not a sound broke the stillness, and I almost forgot the hunting. Fortunately I had brought out my sketching materials, and time and game were forgotten in the joy the prospect gave me. For there were hills and valleys covered with pines far down below me, black in the gloom of the shadows climbing up and up into the sunlight, and then against the hot blue sky above, where some leafless giants burnt and bare spread out their skeleton arms, I caught glimpses of far-off snowy peaks glistening in the sunlight.