Empedocles?

Empedocles

Those, who admired the dauntless courage of the Englishmen who attempted Mt. Everest, may yet pause to reconsider their hopes for those men's eventual success. The Anglo-Saxon race has the fine courage and the strong physique to undertake such feats. But is the world, after all, not the loser thereby? Would it not be better to leave these attempts to the Latin races? These feats are of little practical value; they are in the nature of magnificent gestures made by men in the face of the eternal. Are not the Latin races better equipped to enjoy such gestures and to bring back for humanity a more eloquent and inspiring record of achievement ?

Last week, one Signor Barolo of the Italian Alpine Club ascended Mt. Etna and then made, singlehanded, the dangerous descent into the crater. Notable as this feat was, it did not compare, in the endurance of hardships, great hazards and magnificent feats, with the circumstances which must attend an attempt on Everest. Yet when Signor Barolo returned he gave out these remarks to the press: "I went carefully and slowly, testing the ground with my stick at each step and I managed, at last, to get down the steep sides of the crater. My progress was also hampered by evil-smelling volcanic gases, which came up wherever there was a small fissure in the ground. At the bottom of the crater, I walked for a few yards quite easily upon what I discovered to be a mass of hardened snow, protected by a thick strata of ashes.

"I crawled down toward the mouth, which opens almost in the center of the crater, and looked in. The sides are very steep and inaccessible. The only way to penetrate into the inmost secrets of the volcano would be to come with companions and be let down by ropes-- a fascinating adventure, which I hope to undertake if I live and if the god of mountains protects me. From invisible depths, columns of irritating gases made me cough badly.

"I drew back and looked around me--it was a beautiful and terrible sight. The gloomy walls of the crater rose up on all sides, splashed here and there by red and yellow patches and lit up fantastically by the sunlight. The smoke rose up from the mouth in great curves and spread itself about in the crater, but, fortunately, nearly always in the opposite direction from where I was standing. I raised my voice and repeatedly called out to my companion, whom I could just see above me on the edge of the crater, in order to try the famous echoes, which answered me like the growls of infernal deities."

An Anglo-Saxon would probably have summarized this experience with a shrug of the shoulder: "Nothing at all. Damned dirty hole."