own eyes that they knew where they were, and that it
was only the summit that was lost and not themselves, they cheered up
instantly and said with one accord, let the summit take care of itself.

Our distresses being at an end, I now determined to rest the men in camp
and give the scientific department of the Expedition a chance. First,
I made a barometric observation, to get our altitude, but I could not
perceive that there was any result. I knew, by my scientific reading,
that either thermometers or barometers ought to be boiled, to make them
accurate; I did not know which it was, so I boiled them both. There was
still no result; so I examined these instruments and discovered that
they possessed radical blemishes: the barometer had no hand but the
brass pointer and the ball of the thermometer was stuffed with tin-foil.
I might have boiled those things to rags, and never found out anything.

I hunted up another barometer; it was new and perfect. I boiled it half
an hour in a pot of bean soup which the cooks were making. The result
was unexpected: the instrument was not affecting at all, but there was
such a strong barometer taste to the soup that the head cook, who was
a most conscientious person, changed its name in the bill of fare.
The dish was so greatly liked by all, that I ordered the cook to have
barometer soup every day.

It was believed that the barometer might eventually be injured, but I
did not care for that. I had demonstrated to my satisfaction that it
could not tell how high a mountain was, therefore I had no real use for
it. Changes in the weather I could take care of without it; I did not
wish to know when the weather was going to be good, what I wanted to
know was when it was going to be bad, and this I could find out from
Harris's corns. Harris had had his corns tested and regulated at the
government observatory in Heidelberg, and one could depend upon them
with confidence. So I transferred the new barometer to the cooking
department, to be used for the official mess. It was found that even a
pretty fair article of soup could be made from the defective barometer;
so I allowed that one to be transferred to the subordinate mess.

I next boiled the thermometer, and got a most excellent result; the
mercury went up to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. In the opinion of the
other scientists of the Expedition, this seemed to indicate that we had
attained the extraordinary altitude of two hundred thousand f