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eruptions, which  we hailed to do.  We accordingly took our chance and went across the  slopes 
until the rocks began to burn our feet through our boots.   We  recognized that it was hopeless to 
proceed. 
We decided to make for the farm and soon reached a belt of virgin  jungle where the chapparal and 
fallen timber made it almost impenetrable.  The trees were so thick that we could rarely see the 
sky.  The only  indication for progress was to keep on down hill.  The slopes were  amazingly 
complicated, so that at any moment we might have been facing  east, south or west.  The dust of 
the rotten timber almost choked and  blinded us.  We suffered tortures from thirst, our water 
supply being  extremely limited.  Night fell; it was impossible to see our hands in  front of us.  We 
accordingly lit a fire to 
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keep off the jackals and other possibilities, which we heard howling round  us.   We naturally began 
to discuss the question of direction; and I said,   "The moon will rise over there", and laid down my 
axe as a pointer.   Eckenstein independently laid down his, after a rather prolonged mental   
calculation.  When the moon rose we found that my axe was within five   degrees and his within ten 
degrees of the correct direction.  This was   only one of many such tests; and I do not see in the 
least how I knew,   especially as astronomy is one of the many subjects of which my knowledge  is 
practically nil.  In spite of innumerable nights spent under the stars,  I can recognize few 
constellations except the Great Bear and Orion. 
Besides my sense of direction on the large scale, I have a quite  uncanny faculty for picking out a 
complicated route through rocks and ice  falls.  This is not simply a question of good judgment; for 
in any given  route, seen from a distance, there may always be a passage, perhaps not  twenty feet 
in height, which would   render the whole plan abortive.  This  is especially the case with ice falls, 
where much of the route is  necessarily hidden from view.  Obviously, one cannot see what is on 
the  other side of a s‚rac whose top one has theoretically reached.  Yet I have  never been wrong; I 
have never been forced to turn back from a climb once  begun. 
I have also an astonishing memory for the minutest details of any  ground over which I have passed.  
Professor Norman Collie had this quality  very highly developed, but he paid me the compliment of 
saying that I was  much better than he was himself.  This too, was in my very early days when  he 
was teaching me many quite rudimentary points in the technique of rock  climbing.  Again, we have 
a question of subconscious physical memory.  I  am often quite unable to describe even the major 
landmarks of a climb  which I have just done, but I recognize every pebble as I come to it if  asked 
to retrace my steps.  Efforts on my part to bring up a mountain into  clear consciousness frequently 
create such a muddle in my mind that I  almost wonder at myself.  I make such grotesque mistakes 
that I am not far  from doubting whether I have been on the mountain at all: yet my limbs   possess 
a consciousness of their own which is infallible.  I am reminded   of the Shetland ponies (see Wilkie 
Collin's The Two Destinies) which can  find their way through the most bewildering bogs and mist.  
This faculty   is not only retrospective --- I can find my way infallibly over unknown   country in any 
weather.  The only thing that stops me is the interference   of my conscious mind. 
I have several other savage faculties; in particular, I can smell  snow and water, though for ordinary 
things my olfactory sense is far below  the average.  I cannot distinguish perfectly familiar perfumes 
in many  cases; that is, I cannot connect them with their names. 
Eckenstein and I were both exceedingly expert at describing what lay 
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behind any mountain at which we might be looking.  In his case, the  knowledge was deduced 
scientifically; in mine, it was what one must call  sheer clairvoyance.   The nearest I could get to 
understanding his methods  was judging by the glow above the ridge of a mountain whether the 
other  side was snow-covered, and estimating its steepness and the angle of its  rocks by analogy 
with the corresponding faces of the mountains behind us,  or similar formations elsewhere.   I