VITTORIO SELLA. Kangchenjunga, Zemu Glacier, 1899, Sella number HS 56. 6.5x9" collodion print, printed 1901, mounted on 10x12" heavy brown board. Embossed with Vittorio Sella stamp in lower right of print. Inscribed in pencil mount verso: 56 Ranching [sic] / HS 56.

In 1899 Vittorio Sella joined Douglas Freshfield on an expedition to Kangchenjunga the third highest peak on planet earth and the most conspicuous of the Himalayan Peaks. Freshfield wrote about this in 1903, "[This is] the first Tour of Kangchenjunga made by Europeans...For almost all my illustrations I have to thank Signor Vittorio Sella, who also accompanied me. He has proved his skill as a mountain photographer in the Alps, in the Caucasus, and in Alaska. But he has never found a nobler or more varied field, or worked with more uniform success, than under the shadow of the highest Himalaya...The Himalayan chain is one thousand five hundred miles long...

My object, as I have already said, was to make the tour - to use an Alpine phrase, ' the High-level Tour' - of Kangchenjunga, passing as near the great mountain as might prove to be possible. This circuit had never been accomplished by any European. Sir Joseph Hooker came nearest to it fifty years ago" p. 20 "... To get round Kangchenjunga was not, therefore, the only object I set before me. I hoped also to be able to obtain, what the Indian Survey had been too fully employed elsewhere to be able to give geographers, a fairly accurate general delineation of the main glacial features of the group, and some material for comparing them with those of the Alps and the Caucasus. I trusted to be able to ascertain the number and length of the trunk ice- streams, to form an approximate estimate of the amount of ground covered by snow and ice, and to recognize any peculiarities that might distinguish the glaciers of Sikhim [sic] from those of more temperate regions." p. 29. Round Kangchenjunga: A Narrative of Mountain Travel and Exploration, by Douglas Freshfield, London, Edward Arnold 1903

Excellent: Minor wear, edge and corner wear. Mount has edge and corner wear; mount recto has a word erased out mount verso has tape marks.