e of Mount Everest.

Having accomplished the ascent, they now settled themselves down as
comfortably as they could upon their narrow perch to enjoy at leisure
the magnificent view spread out around them, a view such as no human eye
had ever before looked upon, and which even _they_ would probably never
have another opportunity of beholding. The atmosphere, most
fortunately, was exceptionally clear and transparent, not a vestige of
cloud or vapour being anywhere visible; the view was therefore
unobstructed to the very verge of the horizon, which extended round them
in a gigantic circle measuring _four hundred and eighteen miles in
diameter_.

Northward of them stretched the vast plains of Thibet, the only object
worthy of notice being the river Sampoo, which, although sixty miles
distant, was distinctly seen as it issued from the purplish-grey haze of
the extreme distance on their left, meandering along the plain beneath
for a visible distance of nearly two hundred miles before its course
became again lost in the haze on their right hand. Eight and left of
them stretched the vast mountain chain of the Himalayas, their wooded
slopes and countless peaks and cones presenting a bewildering yet
charming picture of variegated colour, sunlight and shadow, as they
dwindled away on either hand until all suggestion of local colouring was
swallowed up and lost in an enchanting succession of increasingly pure
and delicate soft pearly greys, which merged and melted at last into the
vague shapeless all-pervading purple-grey of the horizon. Glancing
immediately around and beneath them their blood curdled and their brains
whirled with the vertigo which seized them as they peered appalled and
shrinkingly down upon the sharp crags, the sheer precipices, the
steeply-sloping snow-fields with their lower edges generally overhanging
some fathomless abyss, the great glaciers, the awful crevasses spanned
here and there by crumbling snow bridges--the effect of the scene being
heightened and intensified in its impressive grandeur by the deathlike
silence which prevailed, broken only by the occasional thunderous roar
of an avalanche far below. The scene was absolutely fascinating in its
appalling sublimity; but it was a relief to turn the eye further afield
until it rested to the eastward upon the grandly towering mass of
Everest's rival, snow-capped Kunchinjinga, which reared its giant crest
aloft to a height of twenty-eight thousand five hu