ew from the
top of Coropuna, nor could my companions. No sense of satisfaction
in having attained a difficult objective cheered us up. We all felt
greatly depressed and said little, although Gamarra asked for his
bonus and regarded the gold coins with grim complacency.

After we had rested awhile we began to take observations. Unslinging
the aneroid which I had been carrying, I found to my surprise and
dismay that the needle showed a height of only 21,525 feet above
sea level. Tucker's aneroid read more than a thousand feet higher,
22,550 feet, but even this fell short of Raimondi's estimate of
22,775 feet, and considerably below Bandelier's "23,000 feet." This
was a keen disappointment, for we had hoped that the aneroids would
at least show a margin over the altitude of Mt. Aconcagua, 22,763
feet. This discovery served to dampen our spirits still further. We
took what comfort we could from the fact that the aneroids, which
had checked each other perfectly up to 17,000 feet, were now so
obviously untrustworthy. We could only hope that both might prove
to be inaccurate, as actually happened, and that both might now
be reading too low. Anyhow, the north peak did look lower than we
were. To satisfy any doubts on this subject, Tucker took the wooden
box in which we had brought the hypsometer, laid it on the snow,
leveled it up carefully with the Stanley pocket level, and took a
squint over it toward the north peak. He smiled and said nothing. So
each of us in turn lay down in the snow and took a squint. It was
all right. We were at least 250 feet higher than that aggravating peak.

We were also 450 feet higher than the east peak of Coropuna, and
a thousand feet higher than any other mountain in sight. At any
rate, we should not have to call upon our fast-ebbing strength for
any more hard climbs in the immediate future. After arriving at
this satisfactory conclusion we pitched the little Mummery tent,
set up the tripod for the mercurial barometer, arranged the boiling
point thermometer with its apparatus, and with the aid of kodaks and
notebooks proceeded to take as many observations as possible in the
next four hours. At two o'clock we read the mercurial, knowing that
at the same hour readings were being made by Watkins at the Base Camp
and by the Harvard astronomers in the Observatory at Arequipa. The
barometer was suspended from a tripod set up in the shade of the
tent. The mercury, which at sea level often stands at 31