 40 I am not so ignorant about glacial movement now, as I was when I took passage on the Gawner Glacier. I have read up, since I am aware that these vast bodies of ice do not travel at the same rate of speed. While the Gawner Glacier makes less than an inch a day, the Unterahr Glacier makes as much as eight, and still other glaciers are said to go twelve, sixteen, and even twenty inches a day. One writer says that the slowest glacier travels twenty-five feet a year, and the fastest four hundred. What is a glacier? It is easy to say it looks like a frozen river which occupies the bed of a winding gorge or gully between mountains, but that gives no notion of its vastness, for it is sometimes six hundred feet thick, and we are not accustomed to rivers six hundred feet deep. No, our rivers are six feet, twenty feet, and sometimes fifty feet deep. We are not quite able to grasp so large a fact as an ice river six hundred feet deep. The glacier's surface is not smooth and level, but has deep swales and swelling elevations, and sometimes has the look of a tossing sea whose turbulent billows were frozen hard in the instant of their most violent motion. The glacier's surface is not a flawless mass, but is a river with cracks or crevices, some narrow, some gaping wide. Many a man, a victim of a slip or a misstep, has plunged down one of these and met his death. Men have been fished out of them alive, but it was when they did not go to a great depth. The cold of the great depths would quickly stupefy a man, whether he was hurt or unhurt. These cracks do not go straight down. One can seldom see more than twenty to forty feet down them. Consequently, men who have disappeared in them have been sought for in the hope that they had stopped within helping distance, whereas their case, in most instances, had really been hopeless from the beginning. In 1864 a party of tourists was descending Mont Blanc and while picking their way over one of the mighty glaciers of that lofty region, roped together as was proper, a young porter disengaged himself from the line and started across an ice bridge which spanned a crevice. It broke under him with a crash and he disappeared. The others could not see how deep he had gone, so it might be worthwhile to try and rescue him. A brave young guy named Michel Payotte volunteered. Two ropes were made fast to his leather belt and he bore the end of the third one in his hand to tie to the victim in case he found him. He was lowered into the crevice. He descended deeper and deeper between the clear blue walls of solid ice. He approached a bend in the crack and disappeared under it. Down and still down he went into this profound grave. When he had reached a depth of eighty feet he passed under another bend in the crack and thence descended eighty feet lower as between perpendicular precipices. Arrived at this stage of one hundred and sixty feet below the surface of the glacier he peered through the twilight dimness and perceived that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at a steep slant to unknown deeps. For its course was lost in darkness. What a place that was to be in, especially if that leather belt should break. The compression of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow. He called to his friends to draw him up but could not make them here. They still lowered him deeper and deeper. Then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could. His friends understood and dragged him out of those icy jaws of death. Then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it down two hundred feet but it found no bottom. It came up covered with conglulations, evidence enough that even if the poor porter reached the bottom with unbroken bones a swift death from cold was sure anyway. A glacier is a stupendous, ever-progressing, resistless plow. It pushes ahead of it masses of boulders which are packed together and they stretch across the gorge right in front of it like a long grave or long sharp roof. This is called a moraine. It also shoves out a moraine along each side of its course. Imposing as the modern glaciers are they are not so huge as were some that once existed. For instance, Mr. Wimper says, at some very remote period the valley of Osta was occupied by a vast glacier which flowed down its entire length from Montblanc to the plain of Piedmont, remained stationary or nearly so at its mouth for many centuries and deposited there enormous masses of duke brie. The length of this glacier exceeded eighty miles and it drained a basin twenty-five to thirty-five miles across bounded by the highest mountains in the Alps. The great peaks rose several thousand feet above the glaciers and then as now shattered by sun and frost poured down their showers of rocks and stones in witness of which there are the immense piles of angular fragments that constitute the moraines of Ivrea. The moraines around Ivrea are of extraordinary dimensions. That which was on the left bank of the glacier is about thirteen miles long and in some places rises to a height of two thousand one hundred and thirty feet above the floor of the valley. The terminal moraines, those which are pushed in front of the glaciers, cover something like twenty square miles of country. At the mouth of the valley of Osta the thickness of the glacier must have been at least two thousand feet and its width at that part five miles and a quarter. It is not easy to get at a comprehension of a mass of ice like that. If one could cleave off the butt end of such a glacier, an oblong block two or three miles wide by five and a quarter long and two thousand feet thick, he could completely hide the city of New York under it. And Trinity Steeple would only stick up into it relatively as far as a shingle nail would stick up into the bottom of a Saratoga trunk. The boulders from Montblanc, upon the plain below Ivrea, assure us that the glacier which transported them existed for a prodigious length of time. Their present distance from the cliffs from which they were derived is about four hundred and twenty thousand feet. And if we assume that they traveled at the rate of four hundred feet per annum, their journey must have occupied them no less than one thousand fifty-five years. In all probability, they did not travel so fast. Glaciers are sometimes hurried out of their characteristic snail pace. A marvellous spectacle is presented then. Mr. Wimper refers to a case which occurred in Iceland in seventeen twenty-one. It seems that, in the neighborhood of the mountain Kotlugia, large bodies of water formed underneath or within the glaciers, either on account of the interior heat of the earth or from other causes, and at length acquired irresistible power tore the glaciers from their mooring on the land and swept them over every obstacle into the sea. Prodigious masses of ice were thus born for a distance of about ten miles over land in the space of a few hours, and their bulk was so enormous that they covered the sea for seven miles from the shore, and remained aground in six hundred feet of water. The denudation of the land was upon a grand scale. All superficial accumulations were swept away, and the bedrock was exposed. It was described in graphic language how all irregularities and depressions were obliterated, and a smooth surface of several miles area laid bare, and that this area had the appearance of having been planed by a plane. The account translated from the Icelandic says that the mountain-like ruins of this majestic glacier so covered the sea that as far as the eye could reach no open water was discoverable, even from the highest peaks. A monster wall or barrier of ice was built across a considerable stretch of land, too, by this strange eruption. One can form some idea of the altitude of this barrier of ice, when it is mentioned that from Hoftabreka Farm, which lies high up on a field, one could not see Hjodliffti Opposite, which is a fell six hundred and forty feet in height, but in order to do so had to clamber up a mountain slope east of Hoftabreka twelve hundred feet high. These things will help the reader to understand why it is that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work. The Alpine glaciers move, that is granted now by everybody, but there was a time when people scoffed at the idea. They said you might as well expect leagues of solid rock to crawl along the ground as expect leagues of ice to do it, but proof after proof was furnished, and finally the world had to believe. The wise men not only said the glacier moved, but they timed its movement. They ciphered out a glaciers gate, and then said confidently that it would travel just so far in so many years. There is record of a striking and curious example of the accuracy which may be attained in these reckonings. In 1820 the ascent of Mont Blanc was attempted by a Russian and two Englishmen with seven guides. They had reached a prodigious altitude and were approaching the summit. When an avalanche swept several of the party down a sharp slope of two hundred feet and hurled five of them, all guides, into one of the crevices of a glacier. The life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer which was strapped to his back. It bridged the crevice and suspended him until help came. The Alpenstock, or Baton of another, saved its owner in a similar way. Three men were lost, Pierre Balmat, Pierre Carrier, and Auguste Thaïraise. They had been hurled down into the fathomless great deeps of the crevice. Dr. Forbes, an English geologist, had made frequent visits to the Mont Blanc region and had given much attention to the disputed question of the movement of glaciers. During one of these visits he completed his estimates of the rate of movement of the glacier which had swallowed up the three guides and uttered the prediction that the glacier would deliver up its dead at the foot of the mountain thirty-five years from the time of the accident or possibly forty. A dull, slow journey, a movement imperceptible to any eye, but it was proceeding nevertheless and without cessation. It was a journey which a rolling stone would make in a few seconds. The lofty point of departure was visible from the village below in the valley. The prediction cut curiously close to the truth. Forty-one years after the catastrophe the remains were cast forth at the foot of the glacier. I find an interesting account of the matter in the Histoire du Mont Blanc by Stephen Darve. I will condense this account as follows. On the 12th of August, 1861, at the hour of the close of Mass, a guide arrived out of breath at the mairie of Chamonix and bearing on his shoulders a very legubrious burden. It was a sack filled with human remains which he had gathered from the orifice of a crevice in the Glacier des Beaussons. He conjectured that these were remains of the victims of the catastrophe of 1820, and a minute inquest immediately instituted by the local authorities soon demonstrated the correctness of his supposition. The contents of the sack were spread upon a long table and officially inventoried as follows. Portions of three human skulls. Several tufts of black and blonde hair. A human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth. A forearm and hand. All the fingers of the latter intact. The flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand preserved a degree of flexibility in the articulations. The ring finger had suffered a slight abrasion, and the stain of the blood was still visible and unchanged after forty-one years. A left foot, the flesh white and fresh. Along with these fragments were portions of waskets, hats, hobnail shoes, and other clothing. A wing of a pigeon, with black feathers, a fragment of an Alpenstock, a tin lantern, and lastly a boiled leg of mutton, the only flesh among all the remains that exhaled an unpleasant odor. The guide said that the mutton had no odor when he took it from the glacier. An hour's exposure to the sun had already begun the work of decomposition upon it. Persons were called for to identify these poor pathetic relics, and a touching scene ensued. Two men were still living who had witnessed the grim catastrophe of nearly half a century before. Marie Coutté, saved by his baton, and Julien Davoisu, saved by the barometer. These aged men entered and approached the table. Davoisu, more than eighty years old, contemplated the mournful remains mutely and with a vacant eye, for his intelligence and his memory were torpid with age. But Coutté's faculties were still perfect at seventy-two, and he exhibited strong emotion. He said, Pierre Balma was fair. He wore a straw hat. This bit of skull, with the tuft of blonde hair, was his. This is his hat. Pierre Carrier was very dark. This skull was his, and this felt hat. This is Balma's hand. I remember it so well. And the old man bent down and kissed it reverently, then closed his fingers upon it in an affectionate grasp, crying out, I could never have dared to believe that before quitting this world it would be granted me to press once more the hand of one of those brave comrades, the hand of my good friend Balmat. There is something weirdly pathetic about the picture of that white-haired veteran greeting with his loving handshake this friend who had been dead forty years. When these hands met last they were alike in the softness and freshness of youth. Now one was brown and wrinkled and horny with age, while the other was still as young and fair and blemishless as if those forty years had come and gone in a single moment, leaving no mark of their passage. Time had gone on, in one case, it had stood still in the other. A man who has not seen a friend for a generation keeps him in mind always as he saw him last, and is somehow surprised, and is also shocked to see the aging change the years have wrought when he sees him again. Marie Coutté's experience in finding his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he had carried in his memory for forty years is an experience which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps. Coutté identified other relics. This hat belonged to Auguste Tairas. He carried the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon the summit. Here is the wing of one of those pigeons. And here is the fragment of my broken baton. It was by grace of that baton that my life was saved. Who could have told me that I should one day have the satisfaction to look again upon this bit of wood that supported me above the grave that swallowed up my unfortunate companions? No portions of the body of Tairas other than a piece of the skull had been found. A diligent search was made, but without result. However, another search was instituted a year later, and this had better success. Many fragments of clothing which had belonged to the lost guides were discovered. Also part of a lantern, and a green veil with blood stains on it. But the interesting feature was this. One of the searchers came suddenly upon a sleeved arm projecting from a crevice in the ice-wall, with a hand outstretched as if offering greeting. The nails of this white hand were still rosy, and the pose of the extended fingers seemed to express an eloquent welcome to the long lost light of day. The hand and arm were alone. There was no trunk. After being removed from the ice, the flesh tints quickly faded out, and the rosy nails took on an alabaster hue of death. This was the third right hand found. Therefore all three of the lost men were accounted for beyond cavill or question. Dr. Hamel was the Russian gentleman of the party which made the ascent at the time of the famous disaster. He left Shamuni as soon as he conveniently could after the descent, and as he had shown a chilly indifference about the calamity, and offered neither sympathy nor assistance to the widows and orphans, he carried with him the cordial execrations of the whole community. Four months before the first remains were found, a Shamuni guide named Balmat, a relative of one of the lost men, was in London, and one day encountered a hail old gentleman in the British Museum who said, I overheard your name. Are you from Shamuni, Mr. Balmat? Yes, sir. Haven't they found the bodies of my three guides yet? I am Dr. Hamel. Alas, no, monsieur. Well, you'll find them sooner or later. Yes, it is the opinion of Dr. Forbes and Mr. Tyndale that the glacier will sooner or later restore to us the remains of the unfortunate victims. Without a doubt, without a doubt, and it will be a great thing for Shamuni, in the matter of attracting tourists, you can get up a museum with those remains that will draw. This savage idea has not improved the odor of Dr. Hamel's name in Shamuni by any means, but after all the man was sound on human nature, his idea was conveyed to the public officials of Shamuni, and they gravely discussed it around the official council table. They were only prevented from carrying it into execution by the determined opposition of the friends and descendants of the lost guides, who insisted on giving the remains Christian burial and succeeded in their purpose. A close watch had to be kept upon all the poor remnants and fragments to prevent embezzlement. A few accessory odds and ends were sold. Rags and scraps of the coarse clothing were parted with at the rate equal to about twenty dollars a yard. A piece of a lantern and one or two other trifles brought nearly their weight in gold, and an Englishman offered a pound sterling for a single breeches button. One of the most memorable of all the alpine catastrophes was that of July 1865 on the Matterhorn, already slightly referred to a few pages back. The details of it are scarcely known in America. To the vast majority of readers they are not known at all. Mr. Wimper's account is the only authentic one. I will import the chief portion of it into this book partly because of its intrinsic interest, and partly because it gives such a vivid idea of what the perilous pastime of outclimbing is. This was Mr. Wimper's ninth attempt, during a series of years, to vanquish that steep and stubborn pillar or rock. It succeeded, the other eight were failures. No man had ever accomplished the ascent before, though the attempts had been numerous. Mr. Wimper's Narrative We started from Zermatt on the thirteenth of July, at half-past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless morning. We were eight in number, Cross, Guide, Old Peter Taugwalder, Guide, and his two sons. Lord F. Douglas, Mr. Haddow, Reverend Mr. Hudson, and I. To ensure steady motion, one tourist and one native walked together. The youngest Taugwalder fell to my share. The wine-bags also fell to my lot to carry, and throughout the day, after each drink, I replenished them secretly with water, so that, at the next halt, they were found fuller than before. This was considered a good omen, and little short of miraculous. On the first day we did not intend to ascent to any great height, and we mounted accordingly, very leisurely. Before twelve o'clock we had found a good position for the tent at a height of eleven thousand feet. We passed the remaining hours of daylight, some basking in the sunshine, some sketching, some collecting. Hudson made tea, I coffee, and at length we retired, each one to his blanket-bag. We assembled together before dawn on the fourteenth, and started directly it was light enough to move. One of the young Taugwalder's returned to Zermatt. In a few minutes we turned the rib, which had intercepted the view of the eastern face from our tent platform. The whole of this great slope was now revealed, rising for three thousand feet like a huge natural staircase. Some parts were more, and others were less easy. But we were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment, for when an obstruction was met in front it could always be turned to the right or to the left. For the greater part of the way there was no occasion indeed for the rope, and sometimes Hudson led, sometimes myself. At six twenty we had attained a height of twelve thousand eight hundred feet, and halted for half an hour. We then continued the ascent without a break until nine fifty-five when we stopped for fifty minutes at a height of fourteen thousand feet. We had now arrived at the foot of that part which, seen from the riffle-burg, seems perpendicular or overhanging. We could no longer continue on the eastern side. For a little distance we ascended by snow upon the arete, that is, the ridge, then turned over to the right or northern side. The work became difficult and required caution. In some places there was little to hold. The general slope of the mountain was less than forty degrees, and snow had accumulated in, and had filled up the interstices of the rock face, leaving only occasional fragments projecting here and there. These were at times covered with a thin film of ice. It was a place which any fair mountaineer might pass in safety. We bore away nearly horizontally for about four hundred feet, then ascended directly toward the summit for about sixty feet, then doubled back to the ridge which descends towards Zermatt. A long stride round a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more. That last doubt vanished. The Matterhorn was ours. Nothing but two hundred feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted. The higher we rose, the more intense became the excitement. The slope eased off, at length we could be detached, and Cross and I dashed away, ran a neck and neck race which ended in a dead heat. At one forty p.m. the world was at our feet, and the Matterhorn was conquered. The others arrived. Cross now took the tent pole and planted it in the highest snow. Yes, we said, there is the flagstaff, but where is the flag? Here it is, he answered, pulling off his blouse and fixing it to the stick. It made a poor flag, and there was no wind to float it out, yet it was seen all around. They saw it at Zermatt, at the riffle, in the Val Tournage. We remained on the summit for one hour. One crowded hour of glorious life. It passed away too quickly, and we began to prepare for the descent. Hudson and I consulted as to the best and safest arrangement of the party. We agreed that it was best for Cross to go first and Hado second. Hudson, who was almost equal to a guide in sureness of foot, wished to be third. Lord Douglas was placed next, and Old Peter, the strongest of the remainder, after him. I suggested to Hudson that we should attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival at the difficult bit and hold it as we descended as an additional protection. He approved the idea, but it was not definitely decided that it should be done. The party was being arranged in the above order while I was sketching the summit, and they had finished, and were waiting for me to be tied in line when someone remembered that our names had not been left in the bottle. They requested me to write them down and moved off while it was being done. A few minutes afterward I tied myself to young Peter, ran down after the others, and caught them just as they were commencing the descent of the difficult part. Great care was being taken. Only one man was moving at a time. When he was firmly planted, the next advanced, and so on. They had not, however, attached the additional rope to rocks, and nothing was said about it. The suggestion was not made for my own sake, and I am not sure that it ever occurred to me again. For some little distance we too followed the others, detached from them, and should have continued so had not Lord Douglas asked me about three p.m. to tie on to old Peter, as he feared he said that Togwalder would not be able to hold his ground if a slip occurred. A few minutes later a sharp-eyed lad ran into the Monte Rosa Hotel at Zermatt, saying that he had seen an avalanche fall from the summit of the Matterhorn onto the Matterhorn Glacier. The boy was reproved for telling idle stories. He was right, nevertheless, and this was what he saw. Michelle Crows had laid aside his axe, and in order to give Mr. Haddo greater security was absolutely taking hold of his legs, and putting his feet one by one into their proper positions. As far as I know no one was actually descending. I cannot speak with certainty, because the two leading men were partially hidden from my sight by an intervening mass of rock, but it is my belief, from the movements of their shoulders, that Crows, having done as I said, was in the act of turning round to go down a step or two himself. At this moment Mr. Haddo slipped, fell against him, and knocked him over. I heard one startled exclamation from Crows, then saw him and Mr. Haddo flying downward. In another moment Hudson was dragged from his steps, and Lord Douglas immediately after him. All this was the work of a moment. Immediately we heard Crows' exclamation. Old Peter and I planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks would permit. The rope was taught between us, and the jerk came on us both as on one man. We held, but the rope broke midway between Togwalder and Lord Francis Douglas. For a few seconds we saw our unfortunate companion sliding downward on their backs, and spreading out their hands, endeavoring to save themselves. They passed from our sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from the precipice to precipice onto the Matterhorn Glacier below, a distance of nearly four thousand feet in height. From the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them. So perished our comrades. For more than two hours afterward I thought almost every moment that the next would be my last. For the Togwalder's utterly unnerved were not only incapable of giving assistance, but were in such a state that a slip might have been expected from them at any moment. After a time we were able to do that which should have been done at first, and fixed rope to firm rocks in addition to being tied together. These ropes were cut from time to time and were left behind. Even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed, and several times Old Peter turned with ashy face and faltering limbs and said with terrible emphasis, I cannot! About six p.m. we arrived at the snow upon the ridge descending towards Zermatt, and all peril was over. We frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our unfortunate companions. We bent over the ridge and cried to them, but no sound returned. Convinced at last that they were neither within sight nor hearing, we ceased from our useless efforts, and, to cast down for speech, silently gathered up our things and the little effects of those who were lost, and then completed the descent. Such is Mr. Wimper's graphic and thrilling narrative. Zermatt gossip darkly hints that the elder Togwalder cut the rope when the accident occurred in order to preserve himself from being dragged into the abyss, but Mr. Wimper says that the ends of the rope showed no evidence of cutting, but only of breaking. He adds that if Togwalder had had the disposition to cut the rope, he would not have had time to do it. The accident was so sudden and unexpected. Lord Douglas's body has never been found. It probably lodged upon some inaccessible shelf in the face of the mighty precipice. Lord Douglas was a youth of nineteen. The three other victims fell nearly four thousand feet, and their bodies lay together upon the glacier when found by Mr. Wimper and the other searchers the next morning. Their graves are beside the little church in Zermatt. End of Chapter 41 Switzerland is simply a large, humpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it. Consequently, they do not dig graves, they blast them out with powder and fuse. They cannot afford to have large graveyards. The grass skin is too circumscribed and too valuable. It is all required for the support of the living. The graveyard in Zermatt occupies only about one eighth of an acre. The graves are sunk in the living rock and are very permanent. But occupation of them is only temporary. The occupant can only stay till his grave is needed by a later subject. He is removed then, for they do not bury one body on top of another. As I understand it, a family owns a grave just as it owns a house. A man dies and leaves his house to his son, and at the same time this dead father succeeds to his own father's grave. He moves out of the house and into the grave, and his predecessor moves out of the grave and into the cellar of the chapel. I saw a black box lying in the churchyard with skull and crossbones painted on it, and was told that this was used in transferring remains to the cellar. In that cellar the bones and skulls of several hundred of former citizens were compactly corded up. They made a pile eighteen feet long, seven feet high, and eight feet wide. I was told that in some of the receptacles of this kind in the Swiss villages the skulls were all marked, and if a man wished to find the skulls of his ancestors for several generations back he could do it by these marks, preserved in the family records. An English gentleman who had lived some years in this region said it was the cradle of compulsory education, but he said that the English idea that compulsory education would reduce basterdy and intemperance was an error. It has not that effect. He said there was more seduction in the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons, because the confessional protected the girls. I wonder why it doesn't protect married women in France and Spain. This gentleman said that among the poorer peasants in the Valais it was common for the brothers in a family to cast lots to determine which of them should have the coveted privilege of marrying, and his brethren, doomed bachelors, heroically banded themselves together to help support the new family. We left Zermatt in a wagon, and in a rainstorm too, for St. Nicholas about ten o'clock one morning. Again we passed between those grass-clad, prodigious cliffs, specked with wee dwellings peeping over at us from velvety green walls ten and twelve hundred feet high. It did not seem possible that the imaginary shammy even could climb those precipices. Lovers on opposite cliffs probably kiss through a spy-glass and correspond with a rifle. In Switzerland the farmer's plow is a wide shovel, which scrapes up and turns over the thin, earthy skin of his native rock, and there the man of the plow is a hero. Now here, by our St. Nicholas Road, was a grave, and it had a tragic story. A plowman was skinning his farm one morning, not the steepest part of it, but still a steep part, that is, he was not skinning the front of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves, when he absent-mindedly let go of the plow-handles to moisten his hands in the usual way. He lost his balance and fell out of his farm backward. Poor fellow, he never touched anything till he struck bottom fifteen hundred feet below. Note number one. This was on a Sunday. M. T. End of note number one. We throw a halo of heroism around the life of the soldier and the sailor because of the deadly dangers they are facing all the time, but we are not used to looking upon farming as a heroic occupation. This is because we have not lived in Switzerland. From St. Nicholas we struck out for visp, or vispach, on foot. The rainstorms had been at work during several days and had done a deal of damage in Switzerland and Savoy. We came to one place where a stream had changed its course and plunged down a mountain in a new place, sweeping everything before it. Two poor but precious farms by the roadside were ruined. One was washed clear away and the bedrock exposed. The other was buried out of sight under a tumbled chaos of rocks, gravel, mud, and rubbish. The resistless might of water was well exemplified. Some saplings which had stood in the way were bent to the ground, stripped clean of their bark, and buried under rocky debris. The road had been swept away, too. In another place where the road was high up on the mountain's face and its outside edge protected by flimsy masonry, we frequently came across spots where this masonry had carved off and left dangerous gaps for mules to get over, and with still more frequency we found the masonry slightly crumbled and marked by mule hoofs, thus showing that there had been danger of an accident to somebody. When at last we came to a badly ruptured bit of masonry, with hoof prints evidencing a desperate struggle to regain the lost foothold, I looked quite hopefully over the dizzy precipice, but there was nobody down there. They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in Switzerland and other portions of Europe. They wall up both banks with slanting solid stone masonry, so that from end to end of these rivers the banks look like the wharves at St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi River. It was during this walk from St. Nicholas in the shadow of the majestic Alps that we came across some little children amusing themselves in what seemed at first a most odd and original way, but it wasn't. It was in simply a natural and characteristic way. They were roped together with a string, they had mimic alpine stalks and ice axes, and were climbing a meek and lowly manure pile with a most blood curdling amount of care and caution. The guide at the head of the line cut imaginary steps in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a monkey budge till a step above was vacated. If we had waited we should have witnessed an imaginary accident, no doubt, and we should have heard the intrepid band Hurrah when they made the summit, and looked around upon the magnificent view, and seen them throw themselves down in exhausted attitudes for arrest in that commanding situation. In Nevada I used to see the children play at silver mining. Of course, the great thing was an accident in a mine, and there were two star parts—that of the man who fell down the mimic shaft, and that of the daring hero who was lowered into the depths to bring him up. I knew one small chap who always insisted on playing both of these parts, and he carried his point. He would tumble into the shaft and die, and then come to the surface and go back after his own remains. It is the smartest boy that gets the hero part everywhere. He is head guide in Switzerland, head miner in Nevada, head bullfighter in Spain, etc. But I knew a preacher's son, seven years old, who once selected a part for himself compared to which those just mentioned are tame and unimpressive. Jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginary horse cars one Sunday, stopped him from playing captain of an imaginary steamboat next Sunday, stopped him from leading an imaginary army to battle the following Sunday, and so on. Finally the little fellow said, I've tried everything, and they won't any of them do. What can I play? I hardly know, Jimmy, but you must play only things that are suitable to the Sabbath day. Next Sunday the preacher stepped softly to a back room door to see if the children were rightly employed. He peeped in. A chair occupied the middle of the room, and on the back of it hung Jimmy's cap. One of his little sisters took the cap down, nibbled at it, then passed it to another small sister, and said, Eat of this fruit, for it is good. The Reverend took in the situation, alas, they were playing the expulsion from Eden. Yet he found one little crumb of comfort. He said to himself, For once Jimmy has yielded the chief role. I have been wronging him. I did not believe there was so much modesty in him. I should have expected him to be either Adam or Eve. This crumb of comfort lasted but a very little while. He glanced around and discovered Jimmy standing in an imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown on his face. What that meant was very plain. He was impersonating the deity. Think of the guileless sublimity of that idea. We reached Vispac at eight p.m., only about seven hours out from St. Nicholas, so we must have made fully a mile and a half an hour. And it was all downhill too, and very muddy at that. We stayed all night at the Hotel de Soleil. I remember it because the landlady, the portier, the waitress, and the chambermaid were not separate persons, but were all contained in one neat and chipper suit of spotless Muslim. And she was the prettiest young creature I saw in all that region. She was the landlord's daughter, and I remember that the only native match to her I saw in all Europe was the young daughter of the landlord of a village in the Black Forest. Why don't more people in Europe marry and keep hotel? Next morning we left with a family of English friends and went by train to Brevet, and thence by boat across the lake to Uchi, Lausanne. Uchi is memorable to me, not on account of its beautiful situation and lovely surroundings, although these would make it stick long in one's memory, but as the place where I caught the London Times dropping into humour. It was not aware of it, though. It did not do it on purpose. An English friend called my attention to this lapse, and cut out the reprehensible paragraph for me. Think of encountering a grin like this on the face of that grim journal. We are requested by Reuters Telegram Company to correct an erroneous announcement made in their Brisbane Telegram of the Second Inst, published in our Impression of the Fifth Inst, stating that, quote, Lady Kennedy had given birth to twins, the eldest being a son, unquote. The company explained that the message they received contained the words, quote, Governor of Queensland, Twins First Son, unquote. Being, however, subsequently informed that Sir Arthur Kennedy was unmarried and that there must be some mistake, a telegraphic repetition was at once demanded. It has been received today, 11th Inst, and shows that the words really telegraphed by Reuters' agent were, quote, Governor of Queensland, Twins First Sod, unquote, alluding to the Maryborough Gympic Railway in course of construction. The words in italics were mutilated by the telegraph in transmission from Australia, and reaching the company in the form mentioned above gave rise to the mistake. I had always had a deep and reverent compassion for the sufferings of the prisoner of Ceylon, whose story Byron had told in such moving verse, so I took the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of the Castle of Ceylon to see the place where poor Bonnevar endured his dreary captivity three hundred years ago. I'm glad I did that, for it took away some of the pain I was feeling on the prisoner's account. His dungeon was a nice, cool, roomy place, and I cannot see why he should have been dissatisfied with it. If he had been imprisoned in a St. Nicholas private dwelling where the fertilizer prevails and the goat sleeps with the guest, and the chickens roost on him and the cow comes in and bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have been another matter altogether. But he surely could not have had a very cheerless time of it in that pretty dungeon. It has romantic window slits that let in generous bars of light, and it has tall, noble columns carved apparently from the living rock, and what is more, they are written all over with thousands of names, some of them, like Byron's and Victor Hugo's, of the first celebrity. Why didn't he amuse himself reading these names? Then there are the couriers and tourists, swarms of them every day, what was to hinder him from having a good time with them? I think Bonnevar's sufferings have been overrated. Next we took the train and went to Mactigny on the way to Mont Blanc. Next morning we started about eight o'clock on foot. We had plenty of company in the way of wagon loads and mule loads of tourists and dust. This scattering procession of travellers was perhaps a mile long. The road was uphill, interminable uphill, and tolerably steep. The weather was blisteringly hot, and the man or woman who had to sit on a creeping mule or in a crawling wagon and broil in the beating sun was an object to be pitied. We could dodge among the bushes and have the relief of shade, but those people could not. They paid for a conveyance, and to get their money's worth they rode. We went by the way of the Tête Noire, and after we reached high ground there was no lack of fine scenery. In one place the road was tunneled through a shoulder of the mountain. From there one looked down into a gorge with a rushing torrent in it, and on every hand was a charming view of rocky buttresses and wooded heights. There was a liberal allowance of pretty waterfalls, too, on the Tête Noire route. About half an hour before we reached the village of Arcchentier, a vast dome of snow with the sun blazing on it drifted into view and framed itself in a strong V-shaped gateway of the mountains, and we recognized Mont Blanc, the monarch of the Alps. With every step after that this stately dome rose higher and higher into the blue sky, and at last seemed to occupy the zenith. Some of Mont Blanc's neighbors, Bear, Light Brown, Steeple-like Rocks, were very peculiarly shaped. Some were whittled to a sharp point and slightly bent at the upper end, like a lady's finger. One monster sugarloaf resembled a bishop's hat. It was too steep to hold snow on its sides, but had some in the division. While we were still on very high ground, and before the descent toward Arcchentier began, we looked up toward a neighboring mountaintop and saw exquisite prismatic colors playing about some white clouds which were so delicate as to almost resemble gossamer webs. The faint pinks and greens were peculiarly beautiful. None of the colors were deep, they were the lightest shades. They were bewitching, commingled. We sat down to study and enjoy this singular spectacle. The tints remained during several minutes, flitting, changing, melting into each other, pailing almost away for a moment, then reflushing, a shifting, restless, unstable succession of soft opaline gleams, shimmering over that air film of white cloud, and turning it into a fabric dainty enough to clothe an angel with. By and by we perceived what those super-delicate colors and their continuous play and movement reminded us of. It is what one sees in a soap bubble that is drifting along, catching changes of tint from the objects it passes. A soap bubble is the most beautiful thing and the most exquisite in nature. That lovely phantom fabric in the sky was suggestive of a soap bubble split open and spread out in the sun. I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble if there was only one in the world. One could buy a hat full of co-innours with the same money, no doubt. We made the tramp from Macpigny to Argentier in eight hours. We beat all the mules and wagons. We didn't usually do that. We hired a sort of open baggage wagon for the trip down the valley to Chamonix, and then devoted an hour to dining. This gave the driver time to get drunk. He had a friend with him, and this friend also had time to get drunk. When we drove off, the driver said all the tourists had arrived and gone by while we were at dinner. But, said he impressively, Be not disturbed by that. Remain tranquil. Give yourselves no uneasiness. There dust rises far before us. Rest you tranquil. Leave all to me. I am king of drivers. Behold!" Down came his whip, and away we clattered. I never had such a shaking up in my life. The recent flooding rains had washed the road clear away in places, but we never stopped. We never slowed down for anything. We tore right along over rocks, rubbish gullies, open fields, sometimes with one or two wheels on the ground, but generally with none. Every now and then, that calm, good-natured madman would bend a majestic look over his shoulder at us and say, Ah! you perceive. It is, as I have said. I am the king of drivers. Every time we just missed going to destruction, he would say with tranquil happiness, Enjoy it, gentlemen! It is very rare. It is very unusual. It is given to few to ride with the king of drivers, and observe. It is, as I have said, I am he. He spoke in French, and punctuated with hiccups. His friend was French, too, but spoke in German, using the same system of punctuation, however. The friend called himself the Captain of Mont Blanc, and wanted us to make the assent with him. He said he had more assents than any other man, forty-seven, and his brother had made thirty-seven. His brother was the best guide in the world, except himself. But he, yes, observe him well, he was the Captain of Mont Blanc. That title belonged to none other. The king was as good as his word. He overtook that long procession of tourists and went by it like a hurricane. The result was that we got choice of rooms at the hotel in Chamonix, than we should have done if his majesty had been a slower artist, or rather, if he hadn't most providentially got drunk before he left our chantier. End of Chapter 42 This is Chapter 43 of A Tramp Abroad. This Libre Box recording is in the public domain. A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain, Chapter 43 My Poor Sick Friend Disappointed Everybody was out of doors. Everybody was in the principal street of the village, not on the sidewalks, but all over the street. Everybody was lounging, loafing, chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested, for it was train time. That is to say, it was diligence time. The half-dozen big-diligences would soon be arriving from Geneva, and the village was interested in many ways in knowing how many people were coming, and what sort of folk they might be. It was altogether the livest-looking street we had seen in any village on the continent. The hotel was by the side of a booming torrent, whose music was loud and strong. We could not see this torrent, for it was dark now, but one could locate it without a light. There was a large, enclosed yard in front of the hotel, and this was filled with groups of villagers waiting to see the diligence's arrive or to hire themselves to excursionists for the morrow. A telescope stood in the yard, with its huge barrel canted up toward the lustrous evening star. The long porch of the hotel was populous with tourists, who sat in shawls and wraps under the vast, overshadowing bulk of Mont Blanc and gossiped or meditated. Never did a mountain seem so close. Its big sides seemed one's very elbow, and its majestic dome and the lofty cluster of slender minarets that were its neighbors seemed to be almost over one's head. It was night in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling everywhere. The broad bases and shoulders of the mountains were in a deep gloom, but their summits swam in a strange rich glow, which was really daylight, and yet had a mellow something about it, which was very different from the hard white glare of the kind of daylight I was used to. Its radiance was strong and clear, but at the same time it was singularly soft and spiritual and benignant. No, it was not our harsh, aggressive realistic daylight. It seemed properer to an enchanted land, or to heaven. I had seen moonlight and daylight together before, but I had not seen daylight and black night elbow to elbow before. At least I had not seen the daylight resting upon an object sufficiently close at hand before to make the contrast startling and at war with nature. The daylight passed away. Presently the moon rose up behind some of those sky-piercing fingers or pinnacles of bare rock of which I have spoken. They were a little to the left of the crest of Mont Blanc, and right over our heads. But she couldn't manage to climb high enough toward heaven to get entirely above them. She would show the glittering arch of her upper third occasionally, and scrape it along behind the comb-like row. Sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up like a statuette of ebony against that glittering white shield, then seemed to glide out of it by its own volition and power and become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disc with a black exclamation point of its presence. The top of one pinnacle took the shapely, clean cut form of a rabbit's head in the inkiest silhouette while it rested against the moon. The unillumined peaks and minarets hovering vague and phantom-like above us while the others were painfully white and strong with snow and moonlight made a peculiar effect. But when the moon, having passed the line of pinnacles, was hidden behind the stupendous white swell of Mont Blanc, the masterpiece of the evening was flung on the canvas. A rich, greenish radiance sprang into the sky from behind the mountain, and in this some airy shreds and ribbons of vapor floated about, and being flushed with that strange tint, went waving to and fro like pale green flames. After a while, radiating bars, vast, broadening, fan-shaped shadows, grew up and stretched away to the zenith from behind the mountain. It was a spectacle to take one's breath for the wonder of it and the sublimity. Indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and shadow streaming up from behind that dark and prodigious form and occupying the half of the dull and opaque heavens was the most imposing and impressive marvel I had ever looked upon. There is no simile for it, for nothing is like it. If a child had asked me what it was, I should have said, humble yourself in this presence, it is the glory flowing from the hidden head of the Creator. One falls shorter of the truth than that, sometimes, in trying to explain mysteries to the little people. I could have found out the cause of this awe-compelling miracle by inquiring, for it is not infrequent at Mont Blanc, but I did not wish to know. We have not the reverent feelings for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into the matter. We took a walk down Street, a block or two, and a place where four streets met and the principal shops were clustered, found the groups of men in the roadway thicker than ever, for this was the exchange of Chamonix. These men were in the costumes of guides and porters, and were there to be hired. The office of that great personage, the guide and chief of the Chamonix Guild of Guides, was nearby. This guild is a close corporation and is governed by strict laws. There are many excursion routes, some dangerous and some not, some that can be made safely without a guide and some that cannot. The Bureau determines these things. Where it decides that a guide is necessary, you are forbidden to go without one. Neither are you allowed to be a victim of extortion. The law states what you are to pay. The guides serve in rotation. You cannot select the man who is to take your life into his hands. You must take the worst in the lot, if it is his turn. A guide's fee ranges all the way up from a half-dollar, for some trifling excursions of a few rods, to twenty dollars according to the distance traversed and the nature of the ground. A guide's fee for taking a person to the summit of Montblanc and back is twenty dollars, and he earns it. The time employed is usually three days, and there is enough early rising in it to make a man far more healthy and wealthy and wise than any one man has any right to be. The porter's fee for the same trip is ten dollars. Several fools—now, I mean several tourists—usually go together and divide up the expense, and thus make it light. For if only one foo—tourist, I mean—went, he would have to have several guides and porters, and that would make the matter costly. We went into the chief's office. There were maps of mountains on the walls, also one or two lithographs of celebrated guides, and a portrait of the scientist de Saussure. In glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots and batons, and other suggestive relics and remembrances of casualties en Montblanc. In a book was a record of all the ascents which have ever been made, beginning with numbers one and two, being those of Jacques Balmain and de Saussure in 1787, and ending with number 685, which wasn't cold yet. In fact, number 685 was standing by the official table, waiting to receive the precious official diploma which should prove to his German household and to his descendants that he had once been indiscreet enough to climb to the top of Montblanc. He looked very happy when he got his document. In fact, he spoke up and said he was happy. I tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at home who had never traveled and whose desire all his life has been to assent Montblanc, but the guidance chief rather insolently refused to sell me one. I was very much offended. I said I did not propose to be discriminated against on the count of my nationality that he had just sold a diploma to this German gentleman, and my money was as good as his. I would see to it that he couldn't keep his shop for Germans and deny his produce to Americans. I would have his license taken away from him at the dropping of a handkerchief. If France refused to break him, I would make an international matter of it and bring on a war. The soil should be drenched with blood, and not only that, but I would set up an opposition show and sell diplomas at half price. For two cents I would have done these things too, but nobody offered me two cents. I tried to move that German's feelings, but it could not be done. He would not give me his diploma. Neither would he sell it to me. I told him my friend was sick and could not come himself, but he said he did not care a verdantes finish. He wanted his diploma for himself. Did I suppose he was going to risk his neck for that thing and then give it to a sick stranger? Indeed, he wouldn't, so he wouldn't. I resolved then that I would do all I could to injure Mont Blanc. In the record book was a list of all the fatal accidents which happened on the mountain. It began with the one in 1820 when the Russian Dr. Hamel's three guides were lost in the crevice of the glacier, and it recorded the delivery of the remains in the valley by the slow-moving glacier forty-one years later. The latest catastrophe bore the date 1877. We stepped out and roved about the village awhile. In front of the little church was a monument to the memory of the bold guide Jacques Balmat, the first man who ever stood upon the summit of Mont Blanc. He made that wild trip solitary and alone. He accomplished the ascent a number of times afterward, a stretch of nearly half a century lay between his first ascent and his last one. At the ripe old age of seventy-two he was climbing around a corner of a lofty precipice of the pique du midi, nobody with him, when he slipped and fell. So he died in the harness. He had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go off stealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible gold among those perilous peaks and precipices. He was on a quest of that kind when he lost his life. There was a statue to him, and another to de Saussure in the hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door of a room upstairs bore an inscription to the fact that that room had been occupied by Albert Smith. Balmat and de Saussure discovered Mont Blanc, so to speak, but it was Smith who made it a paying property. His articles in Blackwood and his lectures on Mont Blanc in London advertised it and made people as anxious to see it as if it owed them money. As we strolled along the road we looked up and saw a red signal light glowing in the darkness of the mountain side. It seemed but a trifling way up, perhaps a hundred yards, a climb of ten minutes. It was a lucky piece of sagacity in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met and get a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb to that lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose. The man said that that lantern was on the Grand Mule, some sixty-five hundred feet above the valley. I know by our Riffelberg experience that it would have taken us a good part of a week to go up there. I would sooner not smoke at all, and take all that trouble for a light. Even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this mountain's close proximity creates curious deceptions. For instance, one sees with a naked eye a cabin up there beside the glacier, and a little above and beyond he sees the spot where that red light was located. He thinks he could throw a stone from one place to the other, but he couldn't, for the difference between the two altitudes is more than three thousand feet. It looks impossible from below that this can be true, but it is true nevertheless. While strolling around we kept the run of the moon all the time, and we still kept an eye on her after we got back to the Hotel Portico. I had a theory that the gravitation of refraction, being subsidiary to atmospheric compensation, the refrangibility of the Earth's surface would emphasize this effect in regions where great mountain ranges occur, and possibly so even handed impact the oddick and idyllic forces together, the one upon the other, as to prevent the moon from rising higher than twelve thousand two hundred feet above sea level. This daring theory had been received with frantic scorn by some of my fellow scientists, and with an eager silence by others. Among the former I may mention Professor H.Y., and among the latter Professor T.L. Such is professional jealousy. A scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself. There is no feeling of brotherhood among these people, indeed they always resented when I call them brother. To show how far their ungenerosity can carry them I will state that I offered to let Professor H.Y. publish my great theory as his own discovery. I even begged him to do it. I even proposed to print it myself as his theory. Instead of thanking me he said that if I tried to fasten that theory on him he would sue me for slander. I was going to offer it to Mr. Darwin whom I understood to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to me that perhaps he would not be interested in it since it did not concern heraldry. But I am glad now that I was forced to father my intrepid theory myself, for on the night of which I am writing it was triumphantly justified and established. Montblanc is nearly sixteen thousand feet high. He hid the moon utterly. Near him is a peak which is twelve thousand two hundred and sixteen feet high. The moon slid along behind the pinnacles and when she approached that one I watched her with intense interest, for my reputation as a scientist must stand or fall by its decision. I cannot describe the emotions which surged like tidal waves through my breast when I saw the moon glide behind that lofty needle and pass it by without exposing more than two feet four inches of her upper rim above it. I was secure then. I knew she would rise no higher and I was right. She sailed behind all the peaks and never succeeded in hoisting her disk above a single one of them. While the moon was behind one of those sharp fingers, its shadow was flung a thwerp the vacant heavens, a long, slanting, clean-cut, dark ray, with a streaming and energetic suggestion of force about it, such as the ascending jet of water from a powerful fire-engine affords. It was curious to see a good strong shadow of an earthly object cast upon so intangible a field as the atmosphere. We went to bed at last and went quickly to sleep, but I woke up after about three hours with throbbing temples and a head which was physically sore outside and in. I was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy, unrefreshed. I recognized the occasion of all this. It was that torrent. In the mountain villages of Switzerland and along the roads one has always the roar of the torrent in his ears. He imagines it is music and he thinks poetic things about it. He lies in his comfortable bed and is lulled to sleep by it. But by and by he begins to notice that his head is very sore. He cannot account for it. In solitudes where the profound a silence reigns, he notices a sullen, distant, continuous roar in his ears, which is like what he would experience if he had seashells pressed against them. He cannot account for it. He is drowsy and absent-minded. There is no tenacity to his mind. He cannot keep hold of a thought and follow it out. If he sits down to write, his vocabulary is empty. No suitable words will come. He forgets what he started to do and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes closed, listening painfully to the muffled roar of a distant train in his ears. In his sound asleep the strain continues. He goes on listening, always listening intently, anxiously, and wakes at last harassed, irritable, unrefreshed. He cannot manage to account for these things. Day after day he feels as if he had spent his nights in a sleeping-car. It actually takes him weeks to find out that it is those persecuting torrents that have been making all the mischief. It is time for him to get out of Switzerland then, for as soon as he has discovered the cause, the misery is magnified several fold. The roar of the torrent is maddening then, for his imagination is assisting. The physical pain it inflicts is exquisite. When he finds he is approaching one of those streams, his dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track and avoid the implacable foe. Eight or nine months after the distress of the torrents had departed from me, the roar and thunder of the streets of Paris brought it all back again. I moved to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for peace. About midnight the noises dulled away and I was sinking to sleep when I heard a new and curious sound. I listened. Evidently some joyous lunatic was softly dancing a double shuffle in the room over my head. I had to wait for him to get through, of course. Five long, long minutes. He smoothly shuffled away, a pause followed, then something fell with a thump on the floor. I said to myself, There! He is pulling off his boots. Thank heavens he is done. Another slight pause. He went to shuffling again. I said to myself, Is he trying to see what he can do with only one boot on? Presently came another pause and another thump on the floor. I said, Good! He has pulled off his other boot. Now he is done. But he wasn't. The next moment he was shuffling again. I said, Confound him, he is added in his slippers! After a little came that same old pause and right after it that thump on the floor once more. I said, Hang him! He had on two pairs of boots. For an hour that magician went on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed as many as twenty-five pair and I was hovering on the verge of lunacy. I got my gun and stole up there. The fellow was in the midst of an acre of sprawling boots and he had a boot in his hand shuffling it. No, I mean, polishing it. The mystery was explained. He hadn't been dancing. He was the boots of the hotel and was attending to business. End of Chapter 43 This is Chapter 44 of A Tramp Abroad. This Liebervox recording is in the public domain. A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain, Chapter 44, I Scale Mont Blanc. By Telescope. After breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix, we went out in the yard and watched the gangs of excursioning tourists arriving and departing with their mules and guides and porters. Then we took a look through the telescope at the snowy hump of Mont Blanc. It was brilliant with sunshine and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly five hundred yards away. With the naked eye we could dimly make out the house at the Pierre Poitu, which is located by the side of the Great Glacier and is more than three thousand feet above the level of the valley. But with the telescope we could see all its details. While I looked a woman rode by the house on a mule and I saw her with sharp distinctness. I could have described her dress. I saw her nod to the people of the house and rain up her mule and put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. I was not used to telescopes. In fact I had never looked through a good one before. It seemed incredible to me that this woman could be so far away. I was satisfied that I could see all these details with my naked eye. But when I tried it that mule and those vivid people had wholly vanished and the house itself was become small and vague. I tried the telescope again and again everything was vivid. The strong black shadows of the mule and the woman were flung against the side of the house and I saw the mule's silhouette wave its ears. The telescopulist, or the telescopulariat, I do not know which is right, said a party were making a grand assent and would come in sight on the remote upper heights presently. So we waited to observe this performance. Presently I had a superb idea. I wanted to stand with a party on the summit of Mont Blanc merely to be able to say I had done it, and I believe the telescope could set me within seven feet of the uppermost man. The telescoper assured me that it could. I then asked him how much I owed him for as far as I had got. He said, one frank. I asked him how much it would cost to make the entire assent. Three franks. I had once determined to make the entire assent. But first I inquired if there was any danger. He said, no, not by telescope, said he had taken a great many parties to the summit and never lost a man. I asked what he would charge to let my agent go with me, together with such guides and porters as might be necessary. He said he would let Harris go for two franks, and that unless we were unusually timid he should consider guides and porters unnecessary. It was not customary to take them when going by telescope, for they were rather an encumbrance than a telescope. He said that the party now on the mountain were approaching the most difficult part, and if we hurried we should overtake them within ten minutes and could then join them and have the benefit of their guides and porters without their knowledge and without expense to us. I then said we would start immediately. I believe I said it calmly, though I was conscious of a shudder and of a pailing cheek in view of the nature of the exploit I was so unreflectingly engaged in. But the old dare devil spirit was upon me, and I said that, as I had committed myself, I would not back down. I would ascend Mont Blanc if it cost me my life. I told the man to slant his machine in the proper direction and let us be off. Harris was afraid and did not want to go, but I heartened him up and said I would hold his hand all the way, so he gave his consent, though he trembled a little at first. I took a last pathetic look upon the pleasant summer scene about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass and prepared to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows. We took our way carefully and cautiously across the great glacié des beaux-sons, over yawning and terrific crevices, and among imposing crags and buttresses of ice which were fringed with icicles of gigantic proportions. The desert of ice that stretched far and wide about us was wild and desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us were so great that at times I was minded to turn back, but I pulled my pluck together and pushed on. We passed the glacier safely and began to mount the steeps beyond with great alacrity. When we were seven minutes out from the starting point we reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect, an apparently limitless continent of gleaming snow was tilted heavenward before our faces. As my eye followed that awful aclivity far away up into the remote skies it seemed to me that all I had ever seen before of sublimity and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this. We rested a moment and then began to mount with speed. Within three minutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us and stopped to observe them. They were toiling up a long slanting ridge of snow. Twelve persons roped together some fifteen feet apart, marching in single file and strongly marked against the clear blue sky. One was a woman. We could see them lift their feet and put them down. We saw them swing their Alpenstocks forward in unison, like so many pendulums, and then bear their weight upon them. We saw the lady wave her handkerchief. They dragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way, for they had been climbing steadily from the grand mullet on the Glacier des Poissons, since three in the morning, and it was eleven now. We saw them sink down in the snow and rest and drink something from a bottle. After a while they moved on, and as they approached the final short dash of the home stretch we closed up on them and joined them. Presently we all stood together on the summit. What a view was spread out below. Away off under the northwestern horizon rolled the silent billows of the Farnes Oberland, their snowy crest glinting softly in the subdued lights of distance. In the north rose the giant form of the wobble-horn, draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunderclouds. Beyond him, to the right, stretched the grand processional summits of the Cisalpine Cortillera, drowned in a sensuous haze. To the east loomed the colossal masses of the yodel-horn, the futile-horn, and the dinner-horn, their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun. Beyond them shimmered the faint far line of the goths of Jubilpour and the agrile des Aligarnie. In the south towered the smoking peak of Popocatapetl, and the unapproachable altitudes of the peerless Scrabble-horn. In the west-south the stately range of the Himalayas lay dreaming in a purple gloom. And thence all around the curving horizon the eye roved over a troubled sea of sun-kissed alps, and noted here and there the noble proportions and the soaring domes of the bottle-horn, and the saddle-horn, and the shovel-horn, and the powder-horn, all bathed in the glory of noon, and mottled with softly gliding blots, the shadows flung from drifting clouds. Overcome by the scene we all raised a triumphant, tremendous shout in unison. A startled man at my elbow said, "'Con found you! What do you yell like that for right in the street?' That brought me down to Chamonix like a flirt. I gave that man some spiritual advice, and disposed of him, and then paid the telescope man his full fee, and said that we were charmed with a trip and would remain down and not re-ascend and require him to fetch us down by telescope. This pleased him very much, for, of course, we could have stepped back to the summit and put him to the trouble of bringing us home if we wanted to. I judged we could get diplomas now, anyhow, so we went after them. But the chief guide put us off with one pre-texture or another during all the time we stayed in Chamonix, and we ended up by never getting them at all. So much for his prejudice against people's nationality. However, we worried him enough to make him remember us and our assent for some time. He even said once that he wished there was a lunatic asylum in Chamonix. This shows that he really had fears that we were going to drive him mad. It was what we intended to do, but lack of time defeated it. I cannot venture to advise the reader one way or the other as to ascending Mont Blanc. I say only this. If he is at all timid, the enjoyments of the trip will hardly make up for the hardships and sufferings he will have to endure. But if he has good nerve, youth, health, and a bold, firm will, and could leave his family comfortably provided for in case the worst happened, he would find the assent a wonderful experience, and the view from the top, a vision to dream about, and tell about, and recall with exaltation all the days of his life. While I do not advise such a person to attempt the assent, I do not advise him against it. But if he elects to attempt it, let him be warily careful of two things. Choose a calm, clear day, and do not pay the telescope man in advance. There are dark stories about his getting advance payers on the summit and then leaving them there to rot. A frightful tragedy was once witnessed through the Chamonix telescopes. Think of questions and answers like these on an inquest. Coroner, you saw deceased lose his life? Witness. I did. C. Where was he at the time? W. Close to the summit of Mont Blanc. C. Where were you? W. In the main street of Chamonix. C. What was the distance between you? W. A little over five miles as the bird flies. This accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the disaster on the Matterhorn. Three adventurous Englishmen—C. Note I—Sir George Young and his brothers James and Albert—end of Note I—of great experience in mountain climbing made up their minds to ascend Mont Blanc without guides or porters. All endeavours to dissuade them from their project failed. Powerful telescopes are numerous in Chamonix. These huge brass tubes mounted on their scaffoldings and pointed skyward from every choice vantage ground have the formidable look of artillery, and give the town the general aspect of getting ready to repel a charge of angels. The reader may easily believe that the telescopes had plenty of custom on that August morning in 1866, for everybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was on foot, and all had fears that misfortune would result. All the morning the tubes remain directed toward the mountain heights, each with its anxious group around it, but the white deserts were vacant. At last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who were looking through the telescopes cried out, There they are! and sure enough far up on the loftiest terraces of the Grand Plateau, the three pygmies appeared, climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit. They disappeared in the corridor and were lost to sight during an hour. Then they reappeared and were presently seen standing together upon the extreme summit of Mont Blanc. So all was well. They remained a few minutes on that highest point of land in Europe, a target for all the telescopes, and were then seen to begin dissent. Suddenly all three vanished. An instant after, they appeared again two thousand feet below. Evidently they had tripped, and been shot down an almost perpendicular slope of ice to a point where it joined the border of the upper glacier. Naturally the distant witness, supposed they were now looking upon three corpses. So they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently saw two of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third. During two hours and a half they watched the two busying themselves over the extended form of their brother, who seemed entirely inert. Chamonix's affairs stood still, everybody was in the street. All interest was centred upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stage five miles away. Finally the two, one of them walking with great difficulty, were seen to begin dissent, abandoning the third who was no doubt lifeless. Their movements were followed step by step until they reached the corridor and disappeared behind its ridge. Before they had had time to traverse the corridor and reappear twilight was come, and the power of the telescope was at an end. The survivors had a most perilous journey before them in the gathering darkness, for they must get down to the Grand Millet before they would find a safe stopping-place, a long and tedious dissent, and perilous enough even in good daylight. The oldest guides expressed the opinion that they could not succeed, that all the chances were that they would lose their lives. Yet those brave men did succeed, they reached the Grand Millet in safety. Even the fearful shock which their nerves had sustained was not sufficient to overcome their coolness and courage. It would appear from the official account that they were threading their way down through those dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o'clock in the morning or later, because the rescuing party from Chamonix reached the Grand Millet about three in the morning and moved dense toward the scene of the disaster under the leadership of Sir George Young, who had only just arrived. After having been on his feet 24 hours in the exhausting work of mountain climbing, Sir George began the reassent at the head of the Relief Party of Six Guides to recover the corpse of his brother. This was considered a new imprudence as the number was too few for the service required. Another Relief Party presently arrived at the cabin on the Grand Millet and quartered themselves there to await events. Ten hours after Sir George's departure toward the summit, this new relief were still scanning the snowy altitudes above them, from their own high perch among the ice deserts ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any living thing appearing up there. This was alarming. Half a dozen of their number set out, then early in the afternoon, to seek and succour Sir George and his guides. The persons remaining at the cabin saw these disappear, and then ensued another distressing wait. Four hours passed without tidings, then at five o'clock another relief consisting of three guides set forward from the cabin. They carried food and cordials for the refreshment of their predecessors. They took lanterns with them too. Night was coming on, and to make matters worse, a fine cold rain had begun to fall. At the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent, the official guide-in-chief of the Mont Blanc region undertook the dangerous descent to Chamonix all alone to get reinforcements. However, a couple of hours later at seven p.m., the anxious solicitude came to an end and happily. A bugle note was heard, and a cluster of black specks was distinguishable against the snows of the upper heights. The watchers counted these specks eagerly. Fourteen. Nobody was missing. An hour and a half later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin. They had brought the corpse with them. Sir George Young tarried there but a few minutes, and then began the long and troublesome descent from the cabin to Chamonix. He probably reached there about two or three o'clock in the morning, after having been afoot among the rocks and glaciers during two days and two nights. His endurance was equal to his daring. The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George and the relief parties among the heights where the disaster had happened was a thick fog, or partly that and partly the slow and difficult work of conveying the dead body down the perilous steeps. The corpse, upon being viewed at the inquest, showed no bruises, and it was some time before the surgeons discovered that the neck was broken. One of the surviving brothers had sustained some unimportant injuries, but the other had suffered no hurt at all. How these men could fall two thousand feet almost perpendicularly and live afterward is a most strange and unaccountable thing. A great many women have made the ascent of Montblanc. An English girl, Miss Stratton, conceived the daring idea two or three years ago of attempting the ascent in the middle of winter. She tried it, and she succeeded. Moreover she froze two of her fingers on the way up. She fell in love with her guide on the summit, and she married him when she got to the bottom again. There is nothing in romance in a way of a striking situation which can beat this love scene in mid-heaven on an isolated ice-crest with a thermometer at zero and an arctic gale blowing. The first woman who ascended Montblanc was a girl aged twenty-two, Manmousel-Marie Paradi, 1809. Nobody was with her but her sweetheart, but he was not a guide. The sex then took a rest for about thirty years, when Ammousel-Dangeville made the ascent, 1838. In Chamonix I picked up a rude old lithograph of that day which pictured her in the act. However I value it less as a work of art than as a fashion plate. Miss Dangeville put on a pair of men's pantaloons to climb it, which was wise. But she cramped their utility by adding her petticoat, which was idiotic. One of the mournfulous calamities which men's disposition to climb dangerous mountains has resulted in, happened on Montblanc in September 1870. Monsieur Daar tells the story briefly in his Histoire du Montblanc. In the next chapter I will copy its chief features. End of Chapter 44. This is Chapter 45 of A Tramp Abroad. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain, Chapter 45, a catastrophe which cost eleven lives, perished at the verge of safety. On the 5th of September 1870 a caravan of eleven persons departed from Chamonix to make the ascent of Montblanc. Three of the party were tourists. Mr. Randall and Bean, Americans, and Mr. George Corkendale, a Scotch gentleman. There were three guides and five porters. The cabin on the Grand Millet was reached that day. The ascent was resumed early the next morning, September 6. The day was fine and clear, and the movements of the party were observed through the telescopes of Chamonix. At two o'clock in the afternoon they were seen to reach the summit. A few minutes later they were seen making the first steps of the descent. Then a cloud closed around them and hid them from view. Eight hours passed. The cloud still remained. Night came. No one had returned to the Grand Millet. Sylvan Couté, keeper of the cabin there, suspected a misfortune, and sent down to the valley for help. A detachment of guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedious trip and reached the cabin a raging storm had set in. They had to wait. Nothing could be attempted in such a tempest. The wild storm lasted more than a week without ceasing, but on the seventeenth Couté with several guides left the cabin and succeeded in making the ascent. In the snowy wastes near the summit they came upon five bodies, lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude which suggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there while exhausted with fatigue and hunger and be numbed with cold, and never knew when death stole upon them. Couté moved a few steps further and discovered five more bodies. The eleventh corpse, that of a porter, was not found, although diligent search was made for it. In the pocket of Mr. Bean, one of the Americans, was found a notebook in which had been penciled some sentences which admit us in flesh and spirit, as it were, to the presence of these men during their last hours of life, and to the grisly horrors which their fading vision looked upon, and their failing consciousnesses took cognisance of. Tuesday, September 6. I have made the ascent of Mont Blanc with ten persons, eight guides, and Mr. Corkendale and Mr. Randall. We reached the summit at half-past two. Immediately after quitting it, we were enveloped in clouds of snow. We passed the night in a grotto hallowed in the snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and I was ill all night. September 7. Morning. The cold is excessive. The snow falls heavily and without interruption. The guides take no rest. Evening. My dear Hessey, we have been two days on Mont Blanc in the midst of a terrible hurricane of snow. We have lost our way, and are in a hole scooped in the snow at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. I have no longer any hope of descending. They had wandered around and around in the blinding snowstorm hopelessly lost in a space only a hundred yards square, and when cold and fatigue vanquished them at last they scooped their cave and lay down there to die by inches, unaware that five steps more would have brought them into the truth path. They were so near to life and safety as that, and did not suspect it. The thought of this gives the sharpest pang that the tragic story conveys. The author of the histoire du Mont Blanc introduced the closing sentences of Mr. Bean's pathetic record thus. Here the characters are large and unsteady. The hand which traces them is become chilled and torpid. But the spirit survives, and the faith and resignation of the dying man are expressed with a sublime simplicity. Perhaps this notebook will be found and sent to you. We have nothing to eat. My feet are already frozen, and I am exhausted. I have strength to write only a few words more. I have left means for C's education. I know you will employ them wisely. I die with faith in God, and with loving thoughts of you. Farewell to all. We shall meet again in heaven. I think of you always. It is the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims with a merciful swiftness. But here the rule failed. These men suffered the bitterest death that has been recorded in the history of those mountains, freighted as that history is with grisly tragedies. Mr. Harris and I took some guides and porters, and ascended to the Hotel des Pyramides, which is perched on the high moraine which borders the Glacier des Beaussons. The road led sharply uphill all the way through grass and flowers and woods, and was a pleasant walk barring the fatigue of the climb. From the Hotel we could view the huge glacier at very close range. After a rest we followed down a path which had been made in the steep inner frontage of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself. One of the shows of the place was a tunnel like cavern which had been hewn in the glacier. The proprietor of this tunnel took candles and conducted us into it. It was three or four feet wide and about six feet high. Its walls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich blue light that produced a lovely effect and suggested enchanted caves and that sort of thing. When we had preceded some yards and were entering darkness we turned about and had a dainty sunlit picture of distant woods and heights framed in the strong arch of the tunnel and seen through the tender blue radiance of the tunnel's atmosphere. The cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and when we reached its inner limit the proprietor stepped into a branched tunnel with his candles and left us buried in the bowels of the glacier and in pitch darkness. We judged his purpose was murder and robbery, so we got out our matches and prepared to sell our lives as dearly as possible by setting the glacier on fire if the worst came to the worst, but we soon perceived that this man had changed his mind. He began to sing in a deep melodious voice and woke some curious and pleasing echoes. By and by he came back and pretended that that was what he had gone behind there for. We believed as much of that as we wanted to. Thus our lives had been once more in imminent peril, but by the exercise of the swift sagacity and cool courage which had saved us so often we had added another escape to the long list. The tourist should visit that ice cavern by all means for it is well worth the trouble, but I would advise him to go only with a strong and well-armed force. I do not consider artillery necessary, yet it would not be unadvisable to take it along if convenient. The journey going and coming is about three miles and a half, three of which are on level ground. We made it in less than a day, but I would counsel the unpracticed, if not pressed for time, to allow themselves to. Nothing is gained in the Alps by overexertion. Nothing is gained by crowding two days' work into one for the poor sake of being able to boast of the exploit afterward. It will be found much better in the long run to do the thing in two days, and then subtract one of them from the narrative. This saves fatigue and does not injure the narrative. All the more thoughtful among the Alpine tourists do this. We now called upon the guide-in-chief and asked for a squadron of guides and porters for the ascent of the Mont-en-Vers. This idiot glared at us and said, You don't need guides and porters to go to the Mont-en-Vers? What do we need then? Such is you! An ambulance! I was so stung by this brutal remark that I took my custom elsewhere. Be-times next morning we had reached an altitude of five thousand feet above the level of the sea. Here we camped and breakfast. There was a cabin there, a spot is called the Caillet, and a spring of ice-cold water. On the door the cabin was a sign in French to the effect that one may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes. We did not invest. What we wanted was to see a dead one. A little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the new hotel on the Mont-en-Vers and had a view of six miles right up the Great Glacier, the famous Mer de Glace. At this point it is like a sea whose deep swales and long rolling swells have been caught in mid- movement and frozen solid. But further up it is broken up into wildly tossing billows of ice. We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine and invaded the Glacier. There were tourists of both sexes scattered far and wide over it everywhere, and it had the festive look of a skating rink. The Empress Josephine came this far once. She ascended the Mont-en-Vers in 1810, but not alone. A small army of men preceded her to clear the path, and carpet it, perhaps, and she followed under the protection of sixty-eight guides. Her successor visited Chamonix later, but in far different style. It was seven weeks after the first fall of the empire and poor Marie-Louise, ex-Empress, was a fugitive. She came at night and in a storm, with only two attendants, and stood before a peasant's hut, tired, bedraggled, soaked with rain, the red print of her lost crown still girdling her brow, and implored admittance, and was refused. A few days before the adulations and applause of a nation were sounding in her ears, and now she was come to this. We crossed the mer de glace in safety, but we had misgivings. The crevices in the ice yawned deep and blue and mysterious, and it made one nervous to traverse them. The huge round waves of ice were slippery and difficult to climb, and the chances of tripping and sliding down them and darting into a crevice were too many to be comfortable. In the bottom of a deep swale between two of the biggest of the ice waves, we found a fraud who pretended to be cutting steps to ensure the safety of tourists. He was soldiering when we came upon him, but he hopped up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough for a cat, and charged us a franc or two for it. Then he sat down again to doze till the next party should come along. He had collected blackmail from two or three hundred people already that day, but had not chipped out ice enough to impair the glacier perceptibly. I have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it seems to me that keeping tollbridge on a glacier is the softest one I have encountered yet. That was a blazing hot day, and it brought a persistent and persecuting thirst with it. What an unspeakable luxury it was to slake that thirst with the pure and limpid ice water of the glacier. Down the sides of every great rib of pure ice poured limpid rills in gutters carved by their own attrition. Better still, wherever a rock had lain, there was now a bowl-shaped hole with smooth white sides and bottom of ice, and this bowl was brimming with water of such absolute clearness that the careless observer would not see it at all, but would think the bowl was empty. These fountains had such an alluring look that I often stretched myself out when I was not thirsty and dipped my face in and drank till my teeth ached. Everywhere among the Swiss mountains we had at hand the blessing not to be found in Europe except in the mountains, of water capable of quenching thirst. Everywhere in the Swiss Highlands brilliant little rills of exquisitely cold water went dancing along by the roadsides, and my comrade and I were always drinking and always delivering our deep gratitude. But in Europe, everywhere except in the mountains, the water is flat and insipid beyond the power of words to describe. It is served lukewarm, but no matter, ice could not help it. It is incurably flat, incurably insipid. It is only good to wash with. I wonder it doesn't occur to the average inhabitant to try it for that. In Europe the people say contemptuously, nobody drinks water here. Indeed, they have a sound and sufficient reason. In many places they even have what may be called prohibitory reasons. In Paris and Munich, for instance, they say, Don't drink the water. It is simply poison. Either America is healthier than Europe, not withstanding her deadly indulgence in ice water, or she does not keep the run of her death rate as sharply as Europe does. I think we do keep up the death statistics accurately, and if we do, our cities are healthier than the cities of Europe. Every month the German government tabulates the death rate of the world and publishes it. I scrapbooked these reports during several months, and it was curious to see how regular and persistently each city repeated its same death rate month after month. The tables might as well have been stereotyped, they varied so little. These tables were based upon weekly reports showing the average of deaths in each one thousand population for a year. Munich was always present with her thirty-three deaths in each one thousand of her population, yearly average. Chicago was as constant with her fifteen, or seventeen, Dublin with her forty-eight, and so on. Only a few American cities appear in these tables, but they are scattered so widely over the country that they furnish a good general average of city health in the United States, and I think it will be granted that our towns and villages are healthier than our cities. Here is the average of the only American cities reported in the German tables. Chicago deaths in one thousand population annually sixteen. Philadelphia eighteen. St. Louis eighteen. San Francisco nineteen. New York the Dublin of America twenty-three. See how the figures jump up as soon as one arrives at the Transatlantic list. Paris twenty-seven. Glasgow twenty-seven. London twenty-eight. Vienna twenty-eight. Augsburg twenty-eight. Braunschweig twenty-eight. Königsberg twenty-nine. Cologne twenty-nine. Dresden twenty-nine. Hamburg twenty-nine. Berlin thirty. Bombay thirty. Warsaw thirty-one. Breslau thirty-one. Odessa thirty-two. Munich thirty-three. Strasbourg thirty-three. Pest thirty-five. Kassel thirty-five. Lisbon thirty-six. Liverpool thirty-six. Prague thirty-seven. Madras thirty-seven. Bucharest thirty-nine. St. Petersburg forty. Trieste forty. Alexandria Egypt forty-three. Dublin forty-eight. Calcutta fifty-five. Edinburgh is as healthy as New York twenty-three, but there is no city in the entire list which is healthier except Frankfurt on the main twenty. But Frankfurt is not as healthy as Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, or Philadelphia. Perhaps a strict average of the world might develop the fact that where one in one thousand of America's population dies, two in one thousand of the other populations of the earth succumb. I do not like to make insinuations, but I do think the above statistics darkly suggest that these people over here drink this detestable water on a sly. We climbed the moraine on the opposite side of the glacier, and then crept along its sharp ridge a hundred yards or so in pretty constant danger of a tumble to the glacier below. The fall would have been only one hundred feet, but it would have closed me out as effectually as one thousand, therefore I respected the distance accordingly, and was glad when the trip was done. A moraine is an ugly thing to assault headfirst. At a distance it looks like an endless grave of fine sand, accurately shaped and nicely smoothed. But close by it is found to be made mainly of rough boulders of all sizes, from that of a man's head to that of a cottage. By and by we came to the Movedpa, or the Villainous Road, to translate it feelingly. It was a breakneck path around the face of a precipice forty or fifty feet high and nothing to hang on to but some iron railings. I got along slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, and finally reached the middle. My hopes began to rise a little, but they were quickly blighted. For there I met a hog, a long-nosed, bristly fellow, that held up his snout and worked his nostrils at me inquiringly. A hog on a pleasure excursion in Switzerland, think of it. It is striking and unusual. A body might write a poem about it. He could not retreat if he had been disposed to do it. It would have been foolish to stand upon our dignity in a place where there was hardly room to stand upon our feet, so we did nothing of the sort. There were twenty or thirty ladies and gentlemen behind us. We all turned about and went back, and the hog followed behind. The creature did not seem set up by what he had done. He had probably done it before. We reached the restaurant on the height called the Chapeau at four in the afternoon. It was a memento factory, and the stock was large, cheap, and varied. I bought the usual paper-cutter to remember the place by, and had Montblanc, the Mauvais Pas, and the rest of the region branded on my Alpenstock. Then we descended to the valley and walked home without being tied together. This was not dangerous, for the valley was five miles wide and quite level. We reached the hotel before nine o'clock. Next morning we left for Geneva on top of the diligence under shelter of a gay awning. If I remember rightly, there were more than twenty people up there. It was so high that the ascent was made by ladder. The huge vehicle was full everywhere, inside and out. Five other diligence's left at the same time, all full. We had engaged our seats two days beforehand to make sure, and paid the regulation price, five dollars each. But the rest of the company were wiser. They had trusted Bedecker and waited. Consequently some of them got their seats for one or two dollars. Bedecker knows all about hotels, railway, and diligence companies, and speaks his mind freely. He is a trustworthy friend of the traveller. We never saw Montblanc at his best until we were many miles away. Then he lifted his majestic proportions high into the heavens, all white and cold and solemn, and made the rest of the world seem little and plebeian and cheap and trivial. As he passed out of sight at last, an old Englishman settled himself in his seat and said, Well, I am satisfied. I have seen the principal features of Swiss scenery. Montblanc and the Goitre. Now for home.