Legend of the Himalayas

An old explorer's legend cropped up again last week--the "Abominable Snowmen" of the Himalayas. Reporting on his sixth expedition to Mt. Everest, British Explorer Eric Shipton described in the London Times a hard, four-day climb to a great glacier near the high peak of Menlungtse. There, in the thin snow, he found the well-marked footprints of a strange, four-toed creature. Sen Tensing, the native guide, identified the tracks as the spoor of two "Yetis"--the same weird ogres first reported by an Everest expedition of 30 years ago.

According to awestruck natives, the Abominable Snowmen are half-man, half-beast. They have toes at the heels of their feet to help them climb and they live on human flesh, with an occasional yak thrown in. Their long matted hair falls over their eyes when they run downhill. The female is as deadly as the male, but is hampered by huge, pendulous breasts that she tosses over her shoulders when she wants to move in a hurry.

After the first report, the legend of the Snowmen was unheard of for nearly 16 years. Then another roving Englishman found the tracks of a barefooted "man," high in the valley of the upper Salween, the "Black River of Tibet." Soon afterward another high-altitude Himalayan traveler came across a similar line of tracks. He persuaded his sulky porters to follow them in the direction the toes pointed. Even the terrified Tibetans felt fairly safe: they knew that if a man followed an Abominable Snowman's tracks with the toes pointing forward, he was only going where the Snowman had been.

Back home in England, scientists decided that these latest tracks belonged to some kind of bear--Ursus arctos isabellinus, perhaps. One Everest climber suggested that the prints had been made with snowshoes manufactured by the Snowmen. Yet no one was really satisfied.

Last week Explorer Shipton was still not prepared to settle the argument once & for all. But he admitted that Sen Tensing, his porter, claimed to have seen one of the monsters once in Tyangbochi. It was about 5 ft. 6 in. tall, said Sen. It was covered with reddish-brown hair but had a hairless face. Explorer Shipton was "convinced "of Sen's sincerity."

At London's Natural History Museum, scientists read Sen's description and decided it sounded familiar. Rummaging around in the museum basement, they found the dusty carcass of a Langur monkey, a four-toed beast that lives on the snowy Himalayan slopes near Katmandu, capital of Nepal. To a frightened Tibetan, announced the scientists, the Langur might well look half-human and thoroughly abominable.

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