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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Saturday, 14 June 1902
Quite an exciting day. All my doubts have been cleared up. Conway has merely mis-named the Mustagh Luyma "Piale" as well as other similar trifling blunders. He has put "Bruce's Camp" about four miles too far E., and marked his own six marches as four. P. [Heinrich Pfannl] and W. [Victor Wessely] did not find any trouble, but say that Conway's map agrees "very as the nature," which I feel a diffidence about disputing. I think their positions are nearly, or quite right, but then they have not my native information, which makes the trouble with names, e.g., they look at any glacier and call it Piale, to fit their ideas of distance. Anyhow here am I at Pool Camp, with a splendid view of the Mitre Peak and a beast of a bed to lie on. The glacier has invaded this parau there is no pool, and the only maiden is soft mud. So they cleared away the moraine a bit and made a place for the tent. There is no wood, and water is distant. The dak (one man of it) came up at one o'clock with matches and meat, and all sorts of luxuries including a mysterious chit from P. and W. They (and the dak man) could not find any stone men on the glacier or moraine. My men are simply amazed. The guide must have been an idiot of the best—anyhow he lost his way. There is hardly a way to lose, some cavillers might say; but the fact remains that we built stone men till the moraine began to run short—there are only about ninety cubic miles of it in the district—and where P. and W. got the stones from to build their stone men I can't think. The great joke is, though, that the dak-wallah could not find any—and as they came after P. and W.—! I wonder if they will miss the stone man here. It is six feet high and solid. The men found a Lingua stone and put it on top: I have consequently dedicated the place to Shiva. There is a subtle joke in this, as Shiva is, par excellence, the destroyer, and I never yet saw a place which could be more thoroughly improved by annihilation. To complete my misfortunes, a tin of Digby Chicks—on which I had built great hopes—turned out bad, and my left boot is now nearly shorn of its nails. This everlasting moraine is terrible stuff to walk on—I am very much afraid O.E. [Oscar Eckenstein] and G.K. [Guy Knowles]—with the inferior leather of which their boots are made—will hardly get here. (This is a standard topic—I am delighted to put my views where they can't be contradicted). Of the meat sent up I selected only a small quantity for myself and gave the rest to the coolies. The tobacco which arrived was very little—I can't understand why O.E. did not lead-seal the bag. Perhaps he did—N.B. [Nota bene] to ask him. I have just been reading Milton, but when I came to the line "To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new" I shut him up in disgust.
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