THE MEXICAN HERALD

Mexico City, Mexico

24 April 1901

(page 2)

CLIMBER TO LEAVE.

Mr. Eckenstein May Explore the

Wilds of Canada and Alaska.

O. Eckenstein [Oscar Eckenstein], the British mountain-climber, who has been in this country for the past few months in company with the Chevalier O'Rourke [pseudonym of Aleister Crowley], expects to leave tonight for Veracruz where he will sail on the Ward line tomorrow for New York City.

Mr. Eckenstein will join a friend in New York and they may decide to make a journey into the unexplored regions of Canada and Alaska. Mr. Eckenstein, when busy, is a civil engineer.

Mr. Eckenstein is an Englishman by birth, but his parents are German. When a young man he attended the University of Bonn at Germany having as one of his college mates, the present emperor of Germany. Mr. Eckenstein said that in his younger days Emperor William was a very unpretentious fellow and one would not suppose from his actions and mode of living that he was to become ruler of a great country. He was of a strictly democratic temperament, said Mr. Eckenstein, and was a thorough student in school who was generally admired by all his fellow students. In speaking of the sensational reports printed concerning the kaiser's state of mind, Mr. Eckenstein is inclined to scoff. He said:

"I find that people are unable any longer to appreciate an honest statesman. In almost every nation under the sun and particularly in America, the politicians are subject to the influence of the rich. Other parts of the world are similarly affected. In Germany they have a ruler who says just what he thinks under all circumstances and he is sincere in what he says; so the people of the world are pleased to call him crazy, or suffering from incipient insanity. On the contrary the emperor is incensely sane. He believes in honesty and uprightness and square and open dealing with his people under all conditions and he tells them his ideas and his intentions."

Mr. Eckenstein is at present spending a few months vacation after a long period of engineering service and he was attracted to Mexico by the Chevalier with whom he had wandered over a great deal of the earth's surface. O'Rourke, who is a wealthy Scotch-Irishman, owning vast estates in different parts of the old country, will stay in Mexico until further orders.