The Highest Inhabited House

Abstract

I SHOULD very much doubt the accuracy of the statement in NATURE of September 15, p. 78, that a dwelling at 17,100 feet in the Andes is the highest inhabited house in the world. I feel confident that this can be claimed to be the case in the Himalayas, probably in the Karakoram or Ladak chains in the north of Kashmir, where there are several high passes between the altitude of 18,000 and 19,000 ft. Within my own personal knowledge, the highest inhabited house (at least for a few weeks in the summer of each year) is near the summit of the Donkia Pass in the north of Sikkim, which is claimed by the Tibetans to be in Tibet, the height of the pass, according to the trigonometrical survey, being 18,100, and per aneroid 18,400 ft., at which height the amount of oxygen in the air is only about half that at sea-level. This is a stone hovel, and is occupied by a Tibetan guard or outpost of four or five men. It would be an easy matter for the inhabitants of the Tibetan Plateau to become acclimatised to that altitude, living, as they do, at a height of between 15,000 and 16,000 ft. I wonder, however, whether the rarefication of the atmosphere adversely affects their longevity, as is known to be the case with the monks of St. Bernard in the Swiss Alps.