For the past two weeks I have been relaxing in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. I was born and raised here. I miss the mountains when I am away, like all highlanders. My namesake, Sir Francis Younghusband, was also enamoured with the mountains. He spent his youth traversing the passes of northern India and Central Asia, a foot soldier in the Great Game of the 19th Century.

When Sir Younghusband was older he became the president of the Royal Geographic Society (RGS) and started a committee which funded a number of trips to conquer the world’s largest peak: Chomolungma aka. Mount Everest (29,028 feet). He wrote about the attempts on Everest in the 20’s and 30’s in a book entitled Everest – The Challenge.

I received a 1936 edition of the book from Dr. ARW for a wedding present. I took this time of holiday in the mountains to finally sit down and read it. The book is a very interesting read, not only for the heroic accounts of the would-be conquerers of Everest, but to read the interesting outlook on life of Sir Francis himself. In the second half of the book Sir Francis ponders on topics as diverse as universal religion, evolution, astronomy and the existence of alien life.

Sir Francis warns European mountaineers who might make light of Himalayan “superstitions” and beliefs of higher powers. Sir Francis believes the Europeans should accept and encourage these beliefs because (pp. 151-2):

They are in the hands of such a Power””?and so is the European mountaineer himself. And the more the Himalayan hill-men and the European mountaineer realize their common kinship as creatures of that power … the more likely they are to be successful in their common endeavour.

The ability of the mountaineers to adapt to the adverse conditions of increasingly higher altitudes solidified Sir Francis’ belief in Darwin’s theories. On page 175 he talks about the realities of nature:

The result is a stern, selfish, and sometimes brutal struggle for existence, in which the fittest survive, and the weak, and the old, and unfit, go to the wall.

Sir Francis had an interesting outlook on humanity and nature, combining deep spirituality and belief in a higher power with Darwinian natural selection. These views were influenced by the mountains and the stars of the roof of the world. This book was written in 1936. I couldn’t dredge up any contemporary reviews on the net, but I am really curious to see how controversial this view would have been in the 30’s. Sir Francis is famous for his controversial views later in life, and the religious groups and he was involved with. Hopefully we will hear more about that from Chirol in the near future.

One final note: the FP Blog posted about mapping mountainous terrain of Afghanistan and noted that George Everest, the surveyor Mount Everest was named after, actually pronounced his name split into two syllables: “Eve-rest.”

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