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BY MARIE B. BYLES
(The Sydney Bush Walkers, The H.H. Club,
The Rucksack Club (Sydney) N.S.W.)
MOUNT SANSATO, a "fan"—for two years it
was a dot on the map near the great S-shaped bend in the Yangtze River.
The map marked the mountain as 20,000 feet high, and the river, which
cut through the mountain massif, as 6,000 feet, and the mind conjured up
visions of the stupendous gorges through which it must pass. For about
six weeks we made our way across the mountains of Burma and the rivers
of Yunnan to the foot of the mountain. We travelled mainly on foot,
covering anything between 15 and 30 miles a day, and the mountaineering
equipment travelled with us on the backs of mules. It was the rainy
season, and, wearing shorts and carrying umbrellas, we were objects of
intense interest to the inhabitants of the villages through which we
passed.
When at last we approached the foot of the
mountain, it was swathed in the mists and rains with which the Black
Dragon (the rain god) shrouds it during the summer months, and we could
guess its whereabouts only by the compass.
The White Dragon Appears
After many weary weeks in a rainy camp at
its foot, the Black Dragon at length departed from the heavens and Mt.
Sansato stood forth, a great White Dragon piercing the blue, as
awe-inspiring and formidable as any dragon of the Celestial Empire. We
saw her in all her entirety, and woe betide the human being who sees the
whole of a dragon's body!
Two little lonely tents amid aching fields
of snowy white, the tooth-like ridge of the great White Dragon towering
four thousand feet above, the fierce, bitter winds of winter swirling
round—what hope had mortal beings against this queen of dragons? We
approached her from the east, and later from the north; but always she
rose sheer and adamantine, a long, shining ridge of white guarded by
lesser ridges, sharp and phantasmal, like the mountains of fairyland.
During the warm months of the year the
Black Dragon veils in mists and rain the rocks and ice of his great
white sister. Then winter sets in, and the winds and blizzards howl
around her until April and May, when the spring suns melt the snows and
hurl tremendous avalanches from the frozen heights to the abyss beneath.
In June, the Black Dragon once again mounts the heavens and the White
Dragon is hidden.
Some day Sansato will be climbed, for no
mountain is impossible. Probably the climbers will be ardent, young,
enthusiastic amateurs content to wait weeks, maybe, at her foot for one
little break in the monsoon rains, waiting with the rain and sleet
drenching their tent and the snows around them; and probably, too, they
will be those abnormal beings who strike an exceptionally good season.
We, alas! were perfectly normal people, in that we struck an
exceptionally bad one.
The last of Ancient China
Between the six persons in our party we
"bagged" about seven little peaks between 14,000 and 18,000 feet. That
may sound high to climbers in New Zealand, but it is not high in a place
where base camp was made at 11,000 feet. Then we turned to come back
through Kunming, which had recently been bombed by the Japanese. And
those seven little peaks were all we got for two years of patient
writing, research, reading and planning. But perhaps it was not so
little really, for we were privileged to see the last of ancient China,
because, if Japanese bombs do not destroy it, we and our westernism
will.
It is a sad but inevitable end: sad
because China is the most interesting of all the countries on earth. To
visit it is like stepping on to another planet or back into an ancient
civilisation come to life. Bush walking is not one of the recreations of
that civilisation; nor is mountaineering. Confucius, who is to the
Chinese what Christ is to Christendom, said that no filial son travels
afar or climbs in high places; so the would-be Chinese bush walker
starts off with an initial handicap, more especially as people in China
seem to take a lot of notice of what Confucius said. However, Confucius
also taught people to be tolerant, and that is why, however mad or
foolish, or even wrong, our chosen recreation seemed, we were
nevertheless treated kindly, and it was not the fault of the Chinese
that we were defeated by the Black Dragon and the White. |
