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Dr. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod Diary Entry Wednesday, 20 September 1905
Arrival in Darjeeling. Crowley comes to see us and receives a rather cold welcome; it doesn't look old. Righi [Alcesti de Righi] receives it even more wrong.
Once again we had to endure the death of the leeches and then, after having descended to 300’ above sea level at the Ranjit crossing at Singla Bazar, we now ride up the last hill to the top of which the sumptuous hotels of Darjeeling await us. Young girls come to bring drinks to our coolies, which doesn't help to give them legs, as many of them will be forced to stop on the way and will only arrive the next day at the end of their journey. On the evening of September 20th, we met at the Woodland Hotel in Darjeeling, the English cuisine and comfort, which we hadn't been used to for seven weeks.
If our expedition did not achieve the expected results, if the mourning came to darken our joys and plunge into sadness a beloved family and the comrades of our dear Alexis Pache [Alexis Pache], if, from the point of view of mountaineering itself, we did not break sensational records, more positive results and of a more scientific order allow us to attribute to this trip an honorable rank in the explorations of the Eastern Himalayas. Let's also remember that Whymper did it seven times before arriving at the Matterhorn and that for many years, Mont Blanc saw Saussure at his feet before letting him approach the summit. At each of their attempts, these pioneers pushed back the domain of the unknown, enriched Science with some new fact and, had they not collected anything, the memory of the efforts, the struggles, the defeats as well as the victories would have been more than enough to compensate them for the sacrifices imposed on them.
Poetry, which hovers indecisively above the most prosaic life in appearance, reclaims its rights and dominates, majestic and sublime, above the Mountain. The crowd may invade it, but there is still room for it up there. If one day, the solitude of the high mountain pastures, under the bitter breath of the glacier is no longer enough for her, let her take her flight to the Caucasus or the Himalayas. "Freedom of the mountains, happy possession of" oneself, happiness to run for adventure on the "unknown summits and deserts, to walk on "pure snow, to climb to the heavens," is nothing that better delights the heart with the religious and sweet joy of feeling alive in the "magnificent world of the Alps," said Javelle; and of the Himalayas, he could have added, if he had known their splendors. O my beautiful deserts of Baltoro and Kangchin- junga, O my proud granites, throwing your great golden arrows into the intense blue of the sky, at the first rays of the tropical sun, my snowy whites, so pure, sleeping like great polar lakes, in the midst of the most fantastic ridges that man will ever be given to contemplate! I cannot think of you without enthusiasm, but I would have liked to find a language worthy of your splendors, to express the emotions that you have so often given me and to be able to launch to all the echoes of the sky a hymn of gratitude and love.
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