Background
Francis Younghusband was born in 1863 at Murree, British India, to a British military family, being the brother of Major-General George Younghusband and the second son of Major-General John W. Younghusband and his wife Clara Jane Shaw.
(In 1924 Mount Everest remained unclimbed. Two British exp...)
In 1924 Mount Everest remained unclimbed. Two British expeditions had already tackled what was known to be the highest mountain on Earth. The first, in 1921, found a route to the base. The second, in 1922, attempted the summit, reaching a record height of 27,320 feet before retreating. Two years later, a team that included Colonel E.F. Norton, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine returned to the Himalaya.Armed with greater knowledge and experience, confidence was high. But they were still climbing into the unknown. How high could they climb without supplementary oxygen? Would the cumbersome oxygen equipment help them climb higher? Could they succeed where others had failed, and make the first ascent of the highest mountain on earth? Before they could find out, tragedy struck - George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, climbing high on the mountain, vanished into the clouds.First published in 1925, and reissued now for only the second time, The Fight for Everest 1924 is the official record of this third expedition to Everest. The compelling narrative by Norton and other expedition members, and Mallory's vivid letters home, present a gripping picture of life in the Himalaya.Notes and observations from the entire team show how far knowledge of the mountain and of high-altitude climbing had advanced by 1924, and make recommendations for future Everest attempts. As well as the full original text and illustrations, this edition reproduces some of Norton's superb pencil sketches and watercolours along with previously unpublished materials from his private archive. These include original planning documents from the expedition, Mallory's last note to Norton, and a moving letter to Norton from Mallory's widow. Together, they add up to complete one of the most fascinating mountaineering books ever written.
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( A famous explorers view of the value to the world of t...)
A famous explorers view of the value to the world of the quest for natural beauty. A book of joy for the lover of nature and of mountain scenery in its grandest and most sublime aspects. With deep insight the president of the Royal Geographical Society pleads for renewed life in the science of geography through a study of the natural beauty of each region. He well illustrates this in a remarkably beautiful description of the varied zones of life which extend from the tropical plains of India to the snowy heights of the Himalayas. Nowhere else may one find greater luxuriance and variety of flowers, plants and trees, of insects, birds and animals. Here we see life revealing itself in myriad forms, each adapting itself to environment, but ever striving to rise to higher levels and to more perfect development. When man is reached we see him likewise in many stages of growth, rising from an intelligent animal to unfoldment as a conscious spiritual being, capable of self-mastery, and of communion with the heart of nature .In Sir Franciss interpretation of nature the visible universe is a spiritual one, the seen is but a manifestation of the unseen, and all life is purposive. In the inmost heart of nature and of man, giving life to them and perfecting their upward growth, we find God. -The Bookman, Volume 55, March, 1922 CONTENTS Preface Introduction PART I Chapter I. The Sikkim Himalaya. The sacred Ganges--A beneficent power--Beauty of the plains--First sight of the Himalaya Chapter II. The Teesta Valley. Mystery of the forest--The gorges --Sequestered glens Chapter III. The Forest. Butterflies--Ferns--Orchids--Flower friends--Rhododendrons--Temperate vegetation--Primulas--Artic vegetation--The range of vegetation Chapter IV. The Denizens of the Forest. Butterflies--Moths--Birds --Reptiles--Mammals--Animal beauty--Primitive man--Higher races Chapter V. The Sum Impression. Two views of Nature--Variety of life--Intensity of life--The battle of life--Adaptation and selection --Purposiveness--Purposeful structures--Interdependence--Organising Activity--Gradation--Care of offspring--the Activity not mechanical but Spiritual--Nature's end--a Common aspiration Chapter VI. Kinchinjunga. The foothills--Darjiling--A vision of the mountain--Full view--Mountain grandeur--Dawn on the mountain --Sunset on the mountain Chapter VII. High Solitudes. Kashmir--Barren mountains--Dazzling peaks--Purity of beauty Chapter VIII. The Heavens. Desert sunsets--Tibetan sunsets--The stars--The whole universe our home--A Heavenly Presence Chapter IX. Home Beauty. One's own country--Woman's beauty --Love and beauty--Their Divine Source--Wedding--Divine union --The Inmost Heart of Nature Chapter X. The Nature of Nature. A spiritual background--Purpose in Nature--Higher beings--No confining plan--Immanent Spirit --Collective personality--England a Person--Nature a Person--Moved by an ideal--The ideal in plants--The ideal in animals--The ideal in the world Chapter XI. Nature's Ideal. Battling with physical Nature--Battling with man--In tune with Nature--At the heart of the Universe is Love--Divine fellowship is Nature's Ideal Chapter XII. The Heart of Nature. Picturing the Ideal--The Ideal Man--Man and woman--Perfecting the Ideal--Discipline necessary --Leadership--Nature's method--Our own responsibility--The lovability of nature--God at the Heart of Nature PART II Natural Beauty and Geography Presidential Address to the Royal Geographical Society An Address to the Union Society of University College, London
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(Elibron Classics. Replica of 1896 edition by John Murray,...)
Elibron Classics. Replica of 1896 edition by John Murray, London. This is an illustrated edition. Oversize maps are available as a free download. Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, KCSI, KCIE (31 May 1863 31 July 1942, Dorset was a British Army officer, explorer, and spiritual writer. He is remembered chiefly for his travels in the Far East and Central Asia; especially the 1904 British expedition to Tibet, which he led, during which a massacre of Tibetans occurred, and for his writings on Asia and foreign policy. Younghusband held positions including British commissioner to Tibet and President of the Royal Geographical Society.
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( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
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explorer officer spiritual writer
Francis Younghusband was born in 1863 at Murree, British India, to a British military family, being the brother of Major-General George Younghusband and the second son of Major-General John W. Younghusband and his wife Clara Jane Shaw.
In 1881 he entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned as a subaltern in the 1st King's Dragoon Guards in 1882. Educated at Clifton College and Sandhurst, he was commissioned in the First Royal Dragoon Guards.
Francis Younghusband duly entered the army and was posted to India in 1882. The lure of exploration in mountainous frontiers of strategic importance took him, on leave in 1886, across central Asia from Manchuria through Inner Mongolia and Sinkiang—regions where Russian interest was evident—to Kashmir, which he entered by the exacting Mustagh Pass. Accepted into the Foreign Service of the Indian government, he reconnoitered Russian activities in Hunza, where he crossed the extremely difficult, unexplored Saltoro Pass.
In 1891 Younghusband again encountered the Russians in the Pamir, and he was arrested and deported from territory claimed by them. On leave in 1895, he covered for the London Times the relief, from attack by local tribesmen, of the northwestern outpost of Chitral. When stationed there earlier, Younghusband had met George Curzon, traveling privately in Asia. -
In 1903 Curzon, then viceroy of India, chose Younghusband to lead a mission to negotiate with the Tibetans, who were encouraging Russian overtures while contumeliously rejecting neighborly relations with India. Progress was inhibited by disagreement between the clear-sighted viceroy and the vacillating Balfour ministry in London; but, after prolonged Tibetan obstruction on the chilly Himalayan border, approval was given for a military expedition through unmapped mountain tracks and eventually to Lhasa itself.
Reaching Lhasa in August 1904, he was urged to conclude a treaty speedily and withdraw before winter. Slow communications with London precluded an exchange of views, and the favorable response of the Tibetans to Younghusband's generous integrity led him to include in the final terms two conditions advantageous to India but which went beyond his brief. They were reversed by London; and, through the animosity of the secretary of state for India, St. John Brodrick, who suspected he had flouted orders at Curzon's instigation, Younghusband though awarded a knighthood was also officially reprimanded. That injustice to a remarkable achievement was only redressed 17 years later by a subsequent administration. Meanwhile, showing no bitterness, Younghusband enjoyed four years as the Resident in Kashmir before retiring at the age of 47.
Thereafter, as president of the Royal Geographical Society, Younghusband, characteristically, promoted expeditions to Mt. Everest. But the dominant interest in the remaining years of his long life was a mystical idealism, present at all times, that inspired him to lead with vigorous but benign enthusiasm a crusade for worldwide religious unity.
He is remembered for his travels in the Far East and Central Asia; especially the 1904 British expedition to Tibet, led by him, and for his writings on Asia and foreign policy. Younghusband held positions including British commissioner to Tibet and President of the Royal Geographical Society.
Severely incapacitated in a motor accident, during World War I he worked for the India Office in London and founded a society called The Fight for Right.
Elected president of the Royal Geographical Society in 1919, he sponsored the first four Everest expeditions.
In 1891, Younghusband received the Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire, which was upgraded to Knight Commander in 1904.
In 1917, he was awarded the honour of Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India.
He was also awarded the Kaisar-I-Hind Medal (gold) in 1901 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 1905.
(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
(The Heart of a Continent, a Narrative of Travels in Manch...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
( A famous explorers view of the value to the world of t...)
(In 1924 Mount Everest remained unclimbed. Two British exp...)
(Elibron Classics. Replica of 1896 edition by John Murray,...)
Biographer Patrick French described Younghusband's religious belief as one who was brought up an Evangelical Christian, read his way into Tolstoyan simplicity, experienced a revelatory vision in the mountains of Tibet, toyed with telepathy in Kashmir, proposed a new faith based on virile racial theory, then transformed it into what Bertrand Russell called 'a religion of atheism. '
Ultimately he became a spiritualist and "premature hippie" who "had great faith in the power of cosmic rays, and claimed that there are extraterrestrials with translucent flesh on the planet Altair. "
During his 1904 retreat from Tibet, Younghusband had a mystical experience which suffused him with "love for the whole world" and convinced him that "men at heart are divine. " This conviction was tinged with regret for the invasion of Tibet, and eventually, in 1936, profound religious convictions invited a founder's address to the World Congress of Faiths (in imitation of the World Parliament of Religions). Younghusband published a number of books with what one might call New Age themes, with titles like The Gleam: Being an account of the life of Nija Svabhava, pseud. (1923); Mother World (in Travail for the Christ that is to be) (1924); and Life in the Stars: An Exposition of the View that on some Planets of some Stars exist Beings higher than Ourselves, and on one a World-Leader, the Supreme Embodiment of the Eternal Spirit which animates the Whole (1927). The latter drew the admiration of Lord Baden-Powell, the Boy Scouts founder. Key concepts consisted of the central belief that would come to be known as the Gaia hypothesis, pantheism, and a Christlike "world leader" living on the planet "Altair" (or "Stellair"), exploring the theology of spiritualism, and guidance by means of telepathy.
Younghusband allegedly believed in free love ("freedom to unite when and how a man and a woman please"), marriage laws examined as a matter of "outdated custom. " One of Younghusband's domestic servants, Gladys Aylward, became a Christian missionary in China.
He was an active member of many clubs and societies. Younghusband was elected President of the Royal Geographical Society in 1919, and two years later became Chairman of the Mount Everest Committee which was set up to coordinate the initial 1921 British Reconnaissance Expedition to Mount Everest.
Younghusband was a self-possessed, resolute, and fearless leader.
In 1897 Younghusband married Helen Augusta Magniac, the daughter of Charles Magniac, MP. Augusta's brother, Vernon, served as Younghusband's private secretary during the expedition to Tibet.
The Younghusbands had a son who died in infancy, and a daughter, Eileen Younghusband (1902–1981), who became a prominent social worker.
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