feet, towered Mount Everest. To the right was Dhawalagiri, reaching
twenty-six thousand eight hundred feet, and relegated to second place
since the measurement of Mount Everest.

Evidently Robur did not intend to go over the top of these peaks; but
probably he knew the passes of the Himalayas, among others that of
Ibi Ganim, which the brothers Schlagintweit traversed in 1856 at a
height of twenty-two thousand feet. And towards it he went.

Several hours of palpitation, becoming quite painful followed; and
although the rarefaction of the air was not such as to necessitate
recourse being had to the special apparatus for renewing oxygen in
the cabins, the cold was excessive.

Robur stood in the bow, his sturdy figure wrapped in a great-coat. He
gave the orders, while Tom Turner was at the helm. The engineer kept
an attentive watch on his batteries, the acid in which fortunately
ran no risk of congelation. The screws, running at the full strength
of the current, gave forth a note of intense shrillness in spite of
the trifling density of the air. The barometer showed twenty-three
thousand feet in altitude.

Magnificent was the grouping of the chaos of mountains! Everywhere
were brilliant white summits. There were no lakes, but glaciers
descending ten thousand feet towards the base. There was no herbage,
only a few phanerogams on the limit of vegetable life. Down on the
lower flanks of the range were splendid forests of pines and cedars.
Here were none of the gigantic ferns and interminable parasites
stretching from tree to tree as in the thickets of the jungle. There
were no animals--no wild horses, or yaks, or Tibetan bulls.