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 feet above sea-level.  Science places the line of eternal snow at about ten thousand feet above sea-level.  There was no snow where we were, consequently it was proven that the eternal snow-line ceases somewhere above the ten-thousand-foot level and does not begin any more.  This was an interesting fact, and one which had not been observed by any observer before.  It was as valuable as interesting, too, since it would open up the deserted summits of the highest Alps to population and agriculture.  It was a proud thing to be where we were, yet it caused us a pang to reflect that but for that ram we might just as well been two hundred thousand feet higher.

The success of my last experiment induced me to try an experiment with my photographic apparatus.  I got it out, and boiled one of my cameras, but the thing was a failure; it made the wood swell up and burst, and I could not see that the lenses were any better than they were before.