Description | He hopes that 'poor Melie' is well. He is between rows of wooden barracks with iron roofing. He described their locality as far as he can within the fog, and his view of mountains. In looking for Kunchinjunga [Kangchenjunga] he suspected that Johnny [John Herschel] saw it, who could, claiming that William was blind, until a brighter gleam of light illuminated the peak. William describes his feelings in seeing the mountain through [William] Waterfield's binoculars: 'Massive as Atlas they lay piled in shelving rows...but yet so light and transparent that they seemed icebergs floating on a murky sea'. He recounts the talk of the barracks sergeant and his red face, and those of other Europeans 'for some few days every man and woman with a white face looked like an arsenic eater to my eyes'. |