It happened that on the day following the Gornergrat trip we resolved
to take it easy. We slept late in the morning, had our lunch put up
for us at the hotel and wandered out with it in the direction of the
Staffel Alp, resolved not to go all the way unless we felt like it.
Now, we had been living a pretty strenuous life, and relaxing the
bent bow all at once was a little risky. We were in prime physical
condition, and the masculine half of the party, not having wholly
emerged from the colt stage, were distinctly feeling their oats.
I don’t wish to go into horrid details, but when it came time for
luncheon Belle Soeur and I found ourselves without any.

“I give you infants fair warning,” said I, “that if the bearer of the
common purse should be pushed too far, she might take her doll rags and
go home, and it might prove inconvenient.”

This threat referred to the fact that they had all given me their money
to take care of at the beginning of the trip, I being the one who made
the business arrangements and paid the bills and who was supposed to
be least likely to leave it all under a pillow. But Frater replied
jeeringly, “Oh, you can’t frighten me _that_ way! I’ve got eight francs
in my pocket!” And Antonio chimed in, “I’ve got six-fifty.”

“All right,” said I, “good-bye. Shall we go get some luncheon, Belle
Soeur?”

As soon as we were out of hearing on the path back to Zermatt, we began
to discuss what we should do. For one wild moment we considered the
expediency of just disappearing—taking a train and going off somewhere
and leaving the boys to settle the hotel bill with their fourteen
francs fifty as best they could. We soon decided that this would be
too low-down mean. So little by little we plotted the details of a
modified disappearance, including the fairy story which was supposed to
save our “face” and the boys’ at the hotel. We rushed in with an air
of great haste. Would they show us the time-table? Would they get our
bill ready? We had received word which made it necessary to curtail
our visit and go home immediately. We could not even wait for the two
gentlemen, who had gone on a long tramp and might not be back till
late. We would leave a note of explanation for them, and they would
doubtless take the first train. Yes, we would pay for _all_. It would
make it easier for them if they had _just_ time to catch a train. So
we hustled our belongings into our knapsacks, and I wrote a letter to
Frater saying we had decided to go to Leuk (on the hill) that evening
by rail, that they could rejoin us there on foot the next day if they
wished to, and that the second morning, if they had not appeared, we
would continue over the Gemmi Pass and home according to program. I
also mentioned that the hotel bill had been paid.

All this time we were momentarily expecting the arrival of the boys to
make their peace. But they did not come.

We took a belated lunch at the station buffet and had time to perfect
our plans a little further. We had all originally intended to walk from
Zermatt to Visp. It was an easy and pretty walk, and why should we give
it up? And what on earth could we do with ourselves for a whole day at
Leuk in that hot Rhone valley? But we had to get out of Zermatt. So we
bought our tickets to a little station called Randa, only six miles
away. And when we got there, having considerable daylight still on our
hands, walked five or six miles further to St. Niklaus.

We went to the Grand Hotel, which was not excessively grand, but
English curates and such like eminently respectable people were
boarding there. We felt that it would not just do for two lone females
to experiment in cheap lodgings.

The hotel did not quite rate clean napkins at each meal, so the curates
and their friends kept theirs from contamination by buttoning them up,
ring and all, in neat little embroidered shawl-strap covers. It was
beautifully in character, and we loved them for it. We were further
rejoiced by their signatures in the hotel register, especially that
of a very small, dapper, timid little clerical gentleman who in a
microscopic but superlatively correct hand described himself as a
“Clerk in Holy Orders.”

The excitement of our successful elopement had put us into the
highest spirits. We had enjoyed our walk greatly. And we had no
compunctions—ah, not the ghost of a one! But when, after the evening
meal was over, we had retired to our room in the Grand Hotel and
looked out on the darkening landscape, we began to wish we knew where
the boys were. We were tolerably sure they would be sleeping in the
open air that night. They would hardly waste any of their small hoard
on lodgings. It wouldn’t hurt them, of course. In fact, it would do
them good. But we wouldn’t greatly object, now that our dignity was
vindicated, to seeing those long-legged objects with knapsacks on backs
swing into view under our window. However, they didn’t. And we went to
bed and to sleep.

After an excellent breakfast next morning we started on our ten-mile
walk down the valley to Visp. We went along laughing and singing and
still enormously pleased with ourselves. We discussed from time to time
such questions as whether the pretty waitress had really given Frater
my letter, and whether the boys were now ahead of us or behind us on
the road. I was inclined to the former theory, but it all depended on
how soon after we left they had reached the Hotel du Trift. If they had
gotten there shortly after our departure, they would doubtless have
started immediately walking down the road to shorten the next day’s
tramp all they could, for it was about thirty-two miles from Zermatt to
Leuk on the hill. They should have spent the night in the vicinity of
Randa or even farther along. And people who sleep out of doors usually
do not sleep late in the morning. So doubtless they arose some two
hours earlier than we did and were very likely even now ahead of us. If
not, with their more rapid gait, they would soon catch up.

It was to meet this latter contingency that we decided it would be
a kind attention to leave bulletins along the road for them. I have
already alluded to our habit of putting notes of explanation for each
other in conspicuous places. I tore a leaf from my account book and
penciled on it “E. E. W. and M. F. W. passed this spot at 10:15 A. M.,
Aug. 10th, heading north, in excellent health.” Then folded it up and
put Frater’s and Antonio’s initials on the outside and pinned it to a
tree by the road.

After this we went along like Hop o’ My Thumb and his white pebbles,
leaving a bulletin every half hour. These were of various sorts. Some
gave little personal items about ourselves designed to allay any
anxiety they might be supposed to be feeling about us, such as “11:45
A. M., M. F. W. and E. E. W. have just had a light refection of fruit
and seltzer water and feel much refreshed.” Some were intended to
administer spiritual consolation to our young friends in case they
were feeling the pinch of any material want. Of this type was the text
“Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they
shall be filled,” and “_Allah ya tik_.” This last is an Arabic phrase
which my husband and I had picked up in Egypt. It signifies, “God will
provide for you,” and you say it to beggars when you don’t want to give
them anything yourself. One bulletin was really practical and informed
them that M. F. W. and E. E. W. would lunch at the station buffet at
Visp and take the two o’clock train to Leuk Susten.

As we approached Visp, it grew hotter and hotter and hotter. We reached
the station about one o’clock and, choosing a little table on the
shady side of the platform, ordered the most cooling lunch we could
devise.

It was at this time that our hearts began to melt (no wonder in such a
temperature) and we got rather sorry for the abandoned boys. The heat
waves were fairly dancing out in the Rhone valley, and it made our
heads ache just to think of walking ten miles in that fiery furnace
to Leuk Susten. And we doubted their having the wherewithal to buy
railroad tickets.

We watched along the road, expecting them every minute to appear in
sight.

“Shall we wait for the four o’clock train,” suggested Belle Soeur, “so
we can take them along with us?”

“But suppose they are _ahead_ of us and are actually at this minute
staving down that dreadful Rhone valley? Supposing they get there
before we do and don’t find us? We _said_ we’d be there, and they would
have no way of understanding our change of program. They’d be boiled
and worn out and penniless and would think themselves abandoned for
sure.” So we took the train and went on.

The truthful Baedeker says it is only a mile from Leuk Susten, the
station, to old Leuk on the hill, but Belle Soeur and I agreed as we
toiled up the shadeless road in the middle of the hot afternoon that it
was quite the longest mile we had ever traversed. It was a picturesque
little old place when we got to it, with a ruined castle and just two
inns, very modest looking, and obligingly side by side.

We got a room and bespoke another for the gentlemen of our party when
they should arrive. We cooled ourselves off by dint of bathing and
clean collars, sallied out and had a look at the ruins of the castle,
then found a turn of the road that commanded all the lower windings
to the railroad station, including a long bridge across the river,
and sat ourselves down to watch. Every time we saw two specks of
humanity approaching we were sure it was our boys. We developed various
theories. Perhaps they had economized on eating so as to come by rail
from Visp. If so, that later train was just in, and they ought to be
appearing any minute. A carriage was seen winding up the road. “Perhaps
they are in it,” suggested Belle Soeur; “it would be just like their
enterprise to charter a carriage and have themselves delivered C. O.
D.”

But they weren’t in the carriage. And the various pedestrians whom we
had taken for them turned into peasants returning from work, women,
priests, or commercial travelers, on nearer approach.

Twilight was stealing over the Rhone valley, and a little wistful sense
of loneliness was stealing over _us_. It had been a fine game, this
eloping, but we had now reached the time scheduled for it to end in a
happy reunion—all hands around and everything forgiven.

We went back to the hotel and got them to set a little table for our
dinner on the balcony outside the dining-room. Of course it was cooler
and in every way pleasanter out there. And it also commanded the street.

Afterwards, we sat at our window and watched that street till bed-time,
though we kept up a pretense of talking. Belle Soeur says that I jumped
up out of bed in the middle of the night and ran to the window because
somebody was walking by on the stone pavement. _I_ say _she_ did it.
Perhaps both stories are true.

XIII

According to what we had said in our Zermatt letter, if the boys had
not rejoined us by the morning of August 11th, we would continue over
the Gemmi Pass and back to Grindelwald by ourselves.

We talked over the pros and cons, but could see no reason for changing
this. We could not figure out any explanation for their not having
caught up with us, if they had made an effort to do so. The thirty-two
or three miles down grade on a good road, was a long day’s walk,
especially in view of the heat of the last part, but it was by no means
prohibitive. We had walked almost as far several times ourselves, and
the young men always gave us to understand that they had plenty of
reserve strength which _our_ style of walking made no drafts on. The
only inference seemed to be that they had stayed quietly in Zermatt and
sent home for money. We therefore felt that we had been abandoned, so
we cast the ungrateful wretches from our minds and started forth.

Strange to say, although deprived of the stimulus of masculine walking,
we kept nearer to the Baedeker time schedule this day than we had ever
done before. He allows three and a half hours for the walk from Leuk to
Leuk Baden, which we made in four.

It was rather warm all the way, for our rise in altitude was just about
balanced by the advance towards midday. For a long time we were looking
down into the Rhone valley and across to the mountains on the other
side, then we struck north towards the divide, and the foothills closed
up behind us.

We reached Leuk Baden about half-past eleven, got our lunch in a
restaurant that offered us a little table on a second-story balcony
overhanging the main street, visited the baths, which were at that hour
deserted, and continued on our way. We felt a mild curiosity to see the
patrons of the baths disporting themselves in the pools, but not enough
to keep us until the afternoon bathing hour.

The thermal establishments are large, though rather dingy. Besides many
corridors of private baths, there is the great common pool, where
everybody taking the cure is supposed to disport himself or herself for
several hours morning and afternoon standing up to the chin in water,
while the public gazes from a balcony. These rendezvous are said to
be very animated, with plenty of talking and singing. There are also
little trays floating around on which tea or other refreshments can be
served, or books, or writing materials placed. Why, in such prolonged
promiscuous soaking, the afflicted do not interchange microbes and
emerge with three or four diseases instead of one, I do not pretend to
say.

There is something peculiarly unattractive about skin diseases (which
is what the Leuk springs are used for) even if you call them cutaneous
disorders, and Belle Soeur and I gathered our garments particularly
close around us all the time we were there and avoided touching things.
It was partly because of this creepy, crawly feeling that we did not
wait for the bathing hour, and partly because we did not know how long
it might take us to climb the three-thousand-foot rock wall between us
and the pass. Baedeker says two and a half hours, and if it took us
twice that time, we would need the whole afternoon. It did not look
like a place where one would care to be caught after dark.

I do not suppose there is anything quite like the Gemmi Pass anywhere.
The cliff is absolutely vertical. It looks as if you could let down
a bucket by a rope from the top and pull it up full of water without
spilling. The Cantons of Berne and Valais built the path up it way back
in 1736-41, and a very excellent path it is, all hewn out of the solid
rock and winding back and forth in steep zigzags or round and round
like a spiral staircase. Baedeker says the path is five feet wide. I
should have put it at nearer three. But certainly it is wide enough
for entire safety, though a person inclined to dizziness would not
enjoy the look downward. The grade was so steep that our feet were bent
upwards in an acute angle to the axis of the leg, and the little-used
muscles involved ached for days afterwards.

It is possible to go up on horseback (though I think it much pleasanter
to trust to one’s own feet), but the authorities have not allowed the
descent to be made on horseback, since some fatal accidents occurred.
These incidents are commemorated by little tablets and monuments whose
inscriptions we read in passing.

It was a very interesting climb, and to our intense surprise, though
we did not hurry at all, and gave ourselves frequent brief rests, we
made it virtually in the Baedeker time. The ever-expanding view as
we mounted upward led us to expect a great treat when we reached the
summit, but as ill luck would have it, clouds closed in around us just
before we got there and we had to make a run for the hotel to avoid a
drenching.

We ordered tea, for it was cold up there, 7640 feet in the air, and
wrote letters and waited for it to clear off. We had intended to spend
the night at this hotel, but a restless spirit was upon us, the hotel
struck us as dreary, and it was still only the middle of the afternoon.
So when it stopped raining we pushed on.

Our route lay over an almost level plateau, very slightly down grade,
through a desolate region of bare rock with snow peaks on either
hand, past a bleak Alpine lake. We came in about an hour to another
inn, which we knew was the last shelter we should find till we reached
Kandersteg on the other side of the pass. But it was still early, and
we were in the mood for walking, so we kept on.

We passed through what Baedeker aptly calls “a stony chaos,” thence to
a “pasture strewn with stones and débris, which was entirely devastated
in September, 1895, by a burst of the glacier covering the slopes of
the Attels (11,930’) to the left. A tablet commemorates the six persons
who lost their lives on this occasion.”

Many glaciers were hanging above us here, all presumably liable to do
the same sort of thing at any moment. I do not imagine this was any
likelier to happen because of the absence of the boys, but I think
Belle Soeur and I felt the somber and menacing character of the scenery
more keenly than if we had been in their enlivening company.

When we reached tree level, all this desolation vanished. The path ran
through a forest along a ledge cut in the side of a gorge, and through
the foliage we had very lovely views of the leafy ravine and the
mountain slopes on the other side. The colors were especially beautiful
in the sunset glow, and we regretted that we could not linger to enjoy
it; but we had no very clear idea how much farther we had to walk, and
there was evidently not much daylight left.

We quickened our pace, and it was well we did so. The down grade was
now very steep and we could keep up a tremendous gait, though at some
risk of “toppling down from the sky.” At last we came to a place where
the gorge we had been following opened out into the Kander valley, and
we could see the village we were aiming for still a thousand feet at
least below us.

We thought we had been walking as fast as we could before. But we now
began a race with the oncoming darkness, under the stimulus of our
strong objection to spending the night in the very chilly atmosphere
of this high Alpine mountain-side, which quite outdid our previous
performances.

This path was not quite so steep as the one by which we had climbed
from Leuk Baden to the summit, nor was the rock wall as absolutely
perpendicular, but they were close seconds. We used our alpenstocks
practically as vaulting poles and came down in long kangaroo-like
leaps. We had still a remnant of twilight, as indeed was absolutely
essential to walking on this path. Darkness and the safe road at the
bottom arrived simultaneously, and we fairly groped our way the last
half mile to the first hotel, guided only by its lights.

To our great disgust we found the hotel full. We were just wound up to
last that far, and the few hundred yards to the next hotel seemed an
almost impossible exertion. Besides, the painful thought occurred to
us that maybe it was contrary to Swiss etiquette to take in unescorted
women after dark, and we would find all the hotels “full.” However,
this dreadful fear did not prove to be well founded, for at the next
hotel they had a room for us, and we retired to it joyously. It was a
sophisticated place with brass beds and electric bells and liveried
attendants, and we felt eminently safe and well cared for.

We had intended taking the diligence from Kandersteg to Frutigen, but
as we found it involved either starting at 5 A. M. or waiting till
afternoon, we resolved to walk the eight miles involved at our leisure
next morning.

This we did, interrupted only by a shower, which led us to call on a
peasant woman in her châlet. Our road was adorned by a ruined castle or
so, pertaining to extinct robber barons who used to lord it over the
valley. I remember the intense interest manifested by the postmaster
of an infinitesimal village post-office we passed, over a letter I
mailed there addressed to my husband in the Philippines. I had to give
him an epitome of our family history before I could get away. But
somehow his questions were only amusing, not annoying like those of
the man from Kokomo. In the one instance one instinctively felt the
questions an impertinence, in the other they were merely childlike.
What is it makes the difference?

Frutigen is a railway terminus. We took the train from here to Spiez on
Lake Thun, thence another to Interlaken, caught the afternoon express
to Grindelwald, and walked safe and sound into the Châlet Edelweiss.

XIV

Our first question, after greeting the Mother and the Babes, was,
“Have you heard from the boys? Do you know where they are?” The Mother
admitted that she had received a telegram from them at Leuk Susten the
day before, requesting money, and a letter that morning, and that they
would probably get home the next day.

They did, and the hatchet was buried, and we swapped yarns about our
adventures. It seems that after we left them on the mountain-side, they
decided it would be healthier for them not to return to the hotel till
our wrath had had time to cool. So they went on to the Staffel Alp, got
lost, and thought they would have to stay out all night, but finally
found the path and arrived home, footsore and weary, long after dark.
The pretty waitress handed them my letter and watched them read it, but
I understand they betrayed no unbecoming emotion for her satisfaction.
It seems that the claim of wealth they had made to us was a bluff.
When it came to the point, they could muster only about eight francs
between them! And then that unkind pretty waitress appeared with our
wash clothes which she had succeeded in getting back from the laundress
(we had arranged to have them sent after us by mail), and there was
four francs to pay on them, and the poor lads had to fill up their
knapsacks with Belle Soeur’s and my lingerie (that was the unkindest
cut of all) and go forth into the cold world with only four francs
between them.

They were too tired to go any distance. A mile or so out of Zermatt
they encountered a haymow and slept in it. Next morning they
breakfasted on dry bread and continued down the road to Visp, but not,
I take it, at a very snappy gait. They found a few of our bulletins,
including the one that told them when we were going to leave Visp, but
they arrived at the station just too late to catch us there. If we had
waited for the next train, as Belle Soeur suggested, what a beautiful
and touching reunion we might have had! They had started down that hot
Rhone valley about 3 P. M., still subsisting on dry bread, had tried
short cuts and brought up in marshes and had to retrace their steps.
Finally, they decided to give it up and lodged in another haymow. They
found next morning that they were still some miles from Leuk Susten, so
there was no chance of catching up with us. They therefore went to a
good hotel, had a bath and a square meal on their expectations and used
the last of their money to telegraph for funds. They got their reply
the same afternoon, but resolved to recuperate till next morning and
start fresh. So they passed over the Gemmi twenty-four hours behind us.

Apropos of Belle Soeur’s and my experiences by ourselves, I want
to say that everything went just as smoothly and pleasantly as if
we had had masculine escorts, and that so far as our example goes,
there would seem to be no reason why two sensible women should not
tramp over Switzerland by themselves if they feel like it. Still, I
should hesitate to advise it from instances that later came under my
observation of how objectionable the usually respectable Schweizer may
become under the influence of liquor.

The day after the boys’ return was the Mother’s birthday, and we
resolved to celebrate it by a picnic. But mark how soon bad habits
become fixed! We could not get through the day without splitting up
the party! The split, however, did not occur along the old line of
cleavage, so perhaps, on the whole, it had a healing effect.

It happened thus: Belle Soeur was making a birthday cake to be produced
at dinner, and Frater was making candy. The rest of us, therefore,
got ready before they did, and as the Younger Babe was a slow walker,
we started on ahead with him, the Mother, Antonio, Suzanne and I,
carrying the eatables for luncheon. The Elder Babe waited for the cake
and candy makers, who were to follow with the drinkables. We went to
the Wetterhorn Blick—a very beautiful spot on the hillside, with trees
and grass and, as the name indicates, a remarkably fine view of the
Wetterhorn and Upper Glacier.

We waited and waited and waited until starvation forced us to begin
eating. We went slowly at first, still hoping the belated ones would
appear. But they didn’t, and our appetites had grown meanwhile, so we
kept on till the last sandwich and crumb of cake disappeared. We hadn’t
a drop of anything to drink, but fortunately we had oranges, which
answered the purpose reasonably well.

When we went home to dress for dinner after a delightful day, we found
the absentees comfortably installed there. They had gotten lost and
couldn’t find us, so they went home and lunched by themselves. I don’t
know what they ate, but they certainly had plenty to drink!

We thought we would make another try at a united birthday excursion for
the Mother, and this time we really succeeded, although we again risked
going in two sections! This was to be an excursion to the temporary
terminus of the Jungfrau railroad then under construction. The Mother,
the Elder Babe and the luncheon went up to the Kleine Scheidegg by
train, while the pedestrian quartette walked up. We effected a junction
without difficulty this time and all proceeded together afoot to the
Eiger Glacier.

We led the Mother and the Babe right on to this glacier and sat them
and ourselves down upon it for luncheon. There were tourists coming and
going all the time, a place for tobogganing, a vender of postal cards,
and all that sort of thing. But it is a fine glacier notwithstanding
its pollutions.

After luncheon we boarded an ascending train and went through a long
tunnel to what was then the terminus, the Eigerwand station (9405 feet
high). One finds oneself in an artificial cavern hewn out of the rock,
and an opening in the side gives a fine bird’s-eye view (if one cares
for that sort of thing) of the Grindelwald valley, Interlaken and Lake
Thun. But it looks a good deal like a railway map.

Altogether, though we were glad to have taken the trip so as to be
sure we had not missed anything, we felt that the long ride in a dark
tunnel in order to enjoy this peep-show view which doesn’t begin to be
as fine as the one we left below us at the Scheidegg, was a good deal
of a fake. Doubtless when the road is finished, one will have something
well worth making the trip for, and I suppose the railroad must not be
blamed for gathering in what shekels it can in the meantime, as its
expenses of construction must be tremendous, but it is a _little_ bit
hard on the public!

We spent eleven days in Grindelwald this time, enjoying the
(comparative) comforts of home and recuperating for another trip.
It rained a good deal. But we managed to work in a number of walks
and another picnic or so, and we had some moonlight evenings of
surpassing loveliness. Frater ran across two Princeton men he knew in
the village one day, and I asked them to stay to dinner with a brave
show of hospitality, making rapid mental plans in the meantime for
the acquiring of two more forks, spoons, knives, plates and glasses.
However, they could not come, so it was all right.

It was during this period that the avalanches from the Wetterhorn
became so numerous. There is a sheer drop of four or five thousand feet
on the side towards the Grosse Scheidegg and at the top of it, sloping
back steeply, an immense accumulation of snow. The summer’s meltings
were beginning to tell on this, and every once in a while a great mass
would detach itself and come sliding down over the edge of the cliff
with a roar like thunder. It looked like a great foaming cascade, and
would often keep pouring for several minutes, so that the one who
first noticed it would call the others, who would leave what they were
doing and get to windows or veranda in time to see a part of it. These
phenomena came to be of daily occurrence, and we finally grew too blasé
to run to the window when called.

Another beautiful effect we enjoyed was the rainbow that almost always
followed a shower. One end of the bow generally came down in front of
the Mettenberg cliffs, just opposite us, and lost itself in the foliage
growing over the banks of the Lütschine.

Just before we left we had our first reminder of autumn in a snow-storm
which covered the Männlichen slopes in front of us and the Faulhorn and
Schwarzhorn ridges behind us with fine white powder.

XV

On the 27th of August we started out for our second trip, by rail this
time, looking quite conventional and civilized. The Mother and the
Elder Babe accompanied us as far as Thun.

From Interlaken to Thun we took the lake steamer. It is a pretty enough
trip, but everybody does it, and the presence of a swarming ant-hill
of tourists somehow spoils the pleasure of the Nature-lover, while
affording amusement to the specialist in humanity.

We watched many of our fellow-passengers with more or less interest,
but of them all there lingers in my memory only the old gentleman with
the Santa Claus white beard whose bare feet were encased in Greek
sandals. This with an otherwise entirely conventional get-up. We were
by no means the only ones whose attention was attracted by this devotee
of the barefoot cure. His strength of mind in braving popular curiosity
certainly deserved reward, and I hope he got it.

At Thun there is a castle of considerable external picturesqueness,
a church effectively located, quaint streets with highly elevated
sidewalks, and shops affording ample opportunities to buy the
crumbly Thun pottery. After seeing all these things and eating our
noon sandwiches at a shady little table in what would be accurately
described, I suppose, as a beer garden, whence we had a fine view of a
passing regiment of artillery, we started the Mother and Babe on their
way back to Grindelwald and ourselves boarded a third-class carriage in
the train for Berne.

The brief journey thither was without incident save for the time when
our compartment was snared by two billing and cooing young persons
whose aggressively new clothes as well as their demonstrative affection
proclaimed them a bride and groom. Perhaps it was because we were
foreigners or perhaps only because they were so conscious of being
legally and properly married that they took no more account of our
presence than if we had been signposts.

At Berne we resolved to lodge at a temperance hotel we had heard of,
our idea being that it would be cheap and that the temperance feature
guaranteed respectability. The experiment was reasonably satisfactory,
but not brilliantly so.

Frater called Berne a toy city. The phrase is happy. One feels oneself
in the world of Noah’s ark. The foolish painted fountains one meets
on every hand, above all the one with the ogre devouring the babies,
are surely intended for children and not for grown-ups. And it cannot
be conceived that any but children should take in a spirit of serious
admiration the mechanical toy which dwells in the famous clock tower,
where once an hour Father Time inverts his glass and the giants strike
on the drum, and at noon the procession of Apostles appears from one
open-snapping door above the clock and disappears jerkily into another.
It is an elaborated cuckoo clock on a large scale. And surely the
cuckoo clock also is for children.

Our good star led us to the cathedral late that afternoon just as a
violin and vocal rehearsal was being held. We had the big dim Gothic
church all to ourselves, and out of the choir-loft, from sources
invisible, floated a woman’s voice and the pure tones of a violin. That
was one of the perfect hours that Chance sometimes fashions for us
better than any Epicurean foresight could have planned.

There followed a walk through the town past the bear pits (more of
the provisions for childhood’s amusement surely?) to a height called
the Schänzli, just above the river, where we dined pleasantly at an
out-door table with Berne at our feet, a long stretch of fertile
country on the other side, and the white-capped Bernese Alps we had
just left fringing the horizon. After the sunset tints faded away we
had the stars and the lights of the city till we got tired and returned
to our temperance hotel and the slumbers of the night.

Next morning we visited the federal buildings, old Rathhaus and several
parks and view points, all of very moderate interest, and took a train
about ten o’clock for Freiburg. Here we made our way to the Cathedral
to find out at what time the organ recital was due, and discovered, to
our great disgust, that this was the one day in the week when there
wasn’t any! We had lunch at another open-air restaurant, looked at two
or three things that Baedeker advised us to and took a walk across the
river to see the picturesque remains of the city’s medieval walls and
towers, whereby we just missed our train and had to take a limited an
hour later. We never, except by accident like this, traveled first
class in Switzerland, where even the third is perfectly clean and
comfortable,—far more so than second in Italy or southern France.

Freiburg is on the line between French and German Switzerland, and its
inhabitants, so far as our experience went, seemed to be all bilingual.

Somewhere on this trip we were supposed to get our first glimpse of
Mont Blanc, but we didn’t.

Arrived at Lausanne, we walked and walked and walked, looking for a
place to lodge. Frater had been feeling badly all day and was utterly
miserable by now, and we seemed to have wandered completely out of the
hotel region. I do not remember whether some one directed us to the
house we finally reached or whether a sign in the window proclaimed
that furnished rooms were let. Anyhow we found two vacant, reasonably
habitable rooms, and, under the circumstances, took them. They were not
especially attractive, but there was really nothing tangible, as I look
back at it, to indicate that the place was not perfectly respectable,
and I am at a loss to say why we were all so firmly convinced that it
was not. Possibly it was the undisguised astonishment with which the
maid-servant regarded us. Possibly.... No, I can’t define it. But I
know we were all on pins and needles till we got away next morning, and
the way Belle Soeur and I barricaded our door that night was a caution!

Nothing, however, in the least degree exciting occurred—not even an
attempt to over-charge us! Frater went to bed supperless with his
bilious attack, which worried me greatly for fear it might be oncoming
typhoid, due to the wayside water he had drunk, when he and Antonio
were living on dry bread between Zermatt and Leuk Susten. But it wasn’t.

Belle Soeur, Antonio and I started down for the lake of Geneva,
stopping by the way at a baker’s and a delicatessen shop to lay in the
wherewithal for a picnic supper. We chartered a row-boat and went out
on the lake. It was just past sunset and utterly lovely. We ate our
supper and decided we would stay out there a very long time. But pretty
soon it got quite rough and choppy, and our light went out, and we
found we hadn’t any matches. We made one or two unsuccessful attempts
to get some from another boat. Then we began to wonder how poor Frater
was faring all alone up there in that place we didn’t like. So we gave
it up and paddled ashore and went home.

Next morning, Frater was better, though not quite gay. We got our
coffee at a near-by restaurant and visited the castle and the somewhat
barren Gothic church, turned Calvinist, and saw a statue of that
doubtless gallant, but very injudicious local martyr of patriotism,
Major Davos, who tried to free poor Vaud from the grip of Berne before
the time was ripe for it, and succeeded only in losing his own life.

We took an inclined railroad that plunged us suddenly to the lake-side
again. Here, with a lot of other human cattle, we boarded a lake
steamer and set forth for Geneva. It was on this day, from the water,
that we got our first view of Mont Blanc, a very faint and distant one.

The steamer stopped at several places on the southern (French) coast
of the lake, and though we did not go ashore, Belle Soeur and I went
through the form of introducing the young men to the Pleasant Land of
France.

There was a little company of Italian musicians on board who seemed to
please Antonio in a gently melancholy fashion. Antonio was suffering
that day from a slight attack of homesickness.

In the early afternoon we landed at the quay in Geneva and were
immediately shanghaied. It was really funny, and turned out extremely
well.

We were still hard-jammed in the steamer crowd and barely off the
gang-plank, when a stout, motherly-looking, middle-aged woman asked me
in German whether we were strangers, and if so, where we were going to
lodge? I thought she had just come ashore with us and supposed she
was a guileless stranger and didn’t know where to go. So I told her
in my labored German that we also were strangers and to our infinite
regret were unable to offer her any advice. But _that_ wasn’t what she
wanted, and she buzzed on hopefully till by and by I got it through
my head that she had two furnished rooms she’d like to rent us and
that they were wonderfully clean and pleasant and home-like, and the
location central, and she would serve us breakfast and charge us only
three francs apiece for it and lodging, and we would really have great
difficulty in finding anything else so desirable at anything like the
price.

Sandwiched in with all this was a large amount of family history. They
were Germans from some Rhine town and had only been in Geneva a few
months. Her husband had come here to work. She could not get used to
it. Neither could she speak French, but she had a daughter who spoke it
very nicely. When her rooms became vacant, she went down to the pier
and watched the people come ashore from the boat and spoke to some one
who looked likely to understand German. She nearly always guessed
right, and they had had _such_ nice people in their rooms! Some such
charming Americans! Were _we_ by any chance Americans? Ah, she had
thought so as soon as she saw us. She seldom made a mistake.

I told her at first automatically, as a matter of course, that we did
not want her rooms, but she was not easily discouraged and prattled
artlessly on. Her apartment was very near. It could do us no harm to
_look_ at the rooms. We were nowise bound to take them.

After all, this was quite true, and though we had a number of
addresses, we had no special reason for going to any of them. She had
as honest a face as one could need to see. We had stayed at plenty of
places about which we knew absolutely nothing. We did not know less
about this good woman’s rooms. Clearly, we risked nothing by going
with her. So off we went, her babble of personal and professional
reminiscences running on like a brook.

The apartment was in a house not especially attractive from the
outside, but once we got within and saw its resplendent cleanliness
and almost luxury of furnishing, we knew we should search no farther.

Geneva is what is known as a handsome city. It is clean and modern
and tries to be like Paris. It has good hotels and shops and parks
and quays and drives and public monuments. We spent that afternoon
shopping and sight-seeing, took dinner at an open-air restaurant in the
Jardin Anglais, attended an organ recital at the cathedral, which was
considerably marred by the non-working of the blowing apparatus, and
decided as we walked home that we would have had all we cared for of
Geneva by 2 P. M. the following day.

I remember the gentle irony of the pretty waitress at the restaurant in
the Jardin Anglais. Frater, who was still feeling under the weather,
ordered two soft-boiled eggs and a cup of hot milk. Antonio, who
always manifested homesickness by mortification of the flesh, gave an
almost equally simple order and said he would drink _water_. He had
read somewhere that Geneva city water was safe. Belle Soeur and I, who
were hungry and _not_ homesick, ordered a substantial meal and a small
bottle of red wine. Having written this all down, the waitress turned
to Antonio and inquired with a demure smile whether the gentleman who
drank water would have it _hot_ or _plain_?

The next morning our landlady brought us a breakfast that was fit for
the gods. The _café-au-lait_ was excellent, the little rolls delicious,
the fresh butter pats exquisite, and the honey—where shall I find words
to describe its perfection? We all did well at that breakfast, but the
two boys, who had dined so frugally the night before, appeared to be
hollow to their toes. Like magic melted out of sight the heaping plate
of rolls, the great pots of coffee and milk, the dainty pats of butter,
and only a trace in the bottom was left of the pint jar of honey.
Really, it was shocking.

Later, Belle Soeur, Antonio and I, being in the sitting-room, heard
strange sounds of blind man’s buff and overturned chairs issuing
from the boys’ bedroom. Presently out rushed Frater with an anxious
hunted look, closely followed by the daughter of the house, who, her
face swollen with tooth-ache and tied up in a handkerchief, was not
at the moment of great personal attractiveness. “She wants to tell
me something!” groaned Frater. “For heaven’s sake, find out what it
is!” Apparently she had felt that her message was of a confidential
nature and should be communicated at close range, and Frater, who is
shy—at _times_—had tried to keep the center-table between them, and the
strange sounds we had heard were caused by his flight and her pursuit
around and around this table till he bolted for the door. At least such
is the not very gallant explanation he gave us later.

Balked in her desire to speak quietly to one of the gentlemen of the
party (the sterner sex being popularly supposed to be more liberal
in money matters), the young-woman-who-spoke-French got out to me
with great embarrassment her mother’s message—that she was _very_
glad we had enjoyed the breakfast, and that she was prepared to stand
by the price she had quoted to us the day before, but that she had
really not looked forward to such wholesale consumption of honey, and
would be actually out of pocket unless we would be willing to pay her
twenty-five centimes (five cents) apiece more. Of course if we didn’t
think it right——But we _did_, and so assured her!

That morning we called on some friends, a retired Rear Admiral and his
family, at one of the hotels, and had the novel sensation of talking
“American” for an hour or more, declined their invitation to lunch, got
our letters and a hamper of clothes from the post-office, shifted into
mountaineering costume again and returned our traveling outfit by the
convenient mail to Grindelwald.

Belle Soeur and Antonio had noticed the day before the bill-of-fare
of a restaurant outside its door, the prices of which had struck them
as the most phenomenally low they had ever seen, and the place looked
clean and respectable. It was on the other side of the river, on the
way to the train we were to take for Chamonix. So we resolved to get
our luncheon there.

It was not till we were inside and giving our order that we woke up to
the fact that it was a charitable institution—a sort of soup-kitchen
financially backed by a committee of ladies. A quick vote taken
showed that we declined to beat a retreat at that late date, so we
had a remarkably fine lunch, thanks to the charitable ladies, at the
interesting price of ten cents apiece. It included roast beef (a
big, tender, juicy slice), five cents, mashed potatoes, two cents,
bread, one cent, and seltzer water, two cents. We were later than the
conventional lunch hour and had the place to ourselves, so could not
judge who or what its usual patrons were; but evidently _we_ were
_raras aves_, to judge by the stir and amusement we created among the
employees.

XVI

There was nothing very scenically interesting about the trip from
Geneva to Chamonix. So far as I remember, we played cards all the way.
A certain thrill of emotion was experienced as we passed over the
French border. The boys felt it because it was the first time, Belle
Soeur and I because we were back again! The baggy red trousers of the
soldiers of the line loafing about the station—Heavens, how natural
they looked! Frater called them bloomers, but that was irreverent of
him.

Chamonix reminded us of Zermatt for being big and full of tourists,
and, as at Zermatt, we yearned to get out of the village. We went to a
hotel mentioned by Baedeker well up on the hillside, which must have
a fine view of Mont Blanc and the neighboring peaks when the weather
permitted. Just then, low-lying clouds shut them all out.

It was an attractive place, surrounded by a garden, rather more
sophisticated than the hotels we generally frequented. But being late
in the season, they gave us beautiful front rooms at very moderate
pension rates.

We laid our plans for an all-day’s excursion on the morrow and were
very much disgusted when we woke up to find it raining. We loafed
around the house rather disconsolately all the morning, writing letters
and playing cards.

After lunch it had stopped raining, though the sky was still overcast.
So we curtailed our intended expedition and started out. We betook
ourselves to a spot called Montanvert overhanging the Mer de Glace,
adorned, of course, by a restaurant, where we had tea and Belle Soeur
bought a pair of woolen socks. She was weak on nails in her soles,
and the socks, put on over her shoes, were to take their place while
crossing the glacier.

[Illustration: _Mont Blanc, Glacier des Bossons_]

There were streams of tourists here coming and going and quantities of
guides anxious to take us across, but we assured them that we had had
large experience in glaciers and needed no assistance. A timid-looking
bearded German overheard us thus assuring the last offering guide
and decided to combine safety and economy by following us. He said no
word of thanks, explanation or apology, but constituted himself our
shadow. Also, by the grace of God, he came through alive.

The crossing of the Mer de Glace is hummocky and requires climbing. It
is also slippery. But there is no danger involved of anything worse
than sitting down hard. The continuous procession of tourists passing
over makes losing one’s way quite out of the question, and the function
of the guide is only to lend a steadying hand to the aged and infirm
or to persons unsuitably dressed for scrambling. There is nothing at
all about the Mer de Glace to justify its reputation. It is simply an
average characteristic sort of glacier, very accessible to the general
tourist, and safe and easy to walk across.

The path on the other side, after running along the ridge of the
lateral moraine for a little distance, takes one down the famous
“Mauvais Pas.” It may have been “bad” at some prehistoric time, though
the vertical distance involved is so small (perhaps a hundred and
fifty feet to the surface of the glacier) that it can never have been
_very_ desperate. But now there are nice steps cut out in the rock
and an iron hand-rail let into the cliff to hold on by, and really
no one but a cripple, an old lady or a young child could find it
dangerous. Nevertheless, the French dramatic instinct has not failed
to take advantage of its traditional terrors. Two little boxes for the
poor are attached to the rock at the beginning and end of the “Pas”
with a request that the traveler express his gratitude to God for his
preservation by alms-giving. The whole thing was so delightfully Latin
and characteristic that we stopped and contributed.

It was a long way down through the woods and home, and we quickened our
steps till we were almost running the last mile or two, for we had a
strong interest in dinner and we knew that we were late.

The next morning it was raining again! This was disgusting. We decided,
however, that as it had stopped about noon the day before, perhaps it
would do so this time. So we ordered our luncheon put up and started
out on the Mont Blanc trail. Besides, I wanted to try the exercise and
fresh air cure on a cold I was catching. The microbe had established
itself in my throat the morning previous, when I was sitting on the
balcony outside my window, waiting for it to stop raining. An old
gentleman sitting on _his_ balcony directly overhead was sneezing and
sneezing with great violence. In the midst of so much fresh air, it
did not occur to me to think of infection, till all at once I felt a
raw scratchiness in the mucous membrane of my throat, and I knew that
the “invasion” had taken place. I tried to drive the beast out with
listerine, but unfortunately there was only a spoonful left in the
bottle. So then I tried the mountain air. It was my misfortune that it
could be had just then only in combination with rain.

It is only just to say that this explanation of the origin of my cold
was not accepted by my companions, who preferred to lay it on the
weather. But they were all able to bear witness later to the highly
contagious nature of the malady. Personally, I was and am convinced
that my three months of out-door life in all weathers had seasoned me
beyond any peradventure of catching cold because my shoes were damp.

It was only drizzly, for the most part. When a hard downpour came,
we stopped and took shelter under a shed or dense-leafed tree. Some
distance up the mountain-side, but still within the tree belt, we came
upon a lonely little refreshment hut, where we stopped and ordered
coffee and hot milk to go with our cold lunch from the hotel. It was
raining pretty hard just then, and we spread out our lunch hour as
long as possible, keeping up each other’s spirits by a very conscious,
but reasonably successful effort. Evidently it looked all right from
the outside at least, for when we came to go, the proprietress of the
châlet, a sad-eyed little Frenchwoman, begged us almost with tears to
stay longer,—not to feel that we must order anything more either, but
just to stay and not go out in the rain. She would _love_ to have us
stay, we were young and had _le cœur gai_, and it did her good to look
at us and listen to us, although she could not understand what we were
saying!

However, though thanking her for her tribute to our gay hearts and
not ungrateful (I at least) for that incidental tribute to our
extreme youth, we decided it was time to move and pushed on up the
mountain-side. After half an hour or more we passed the more elaborate
Pavilion de la Pierre Pointue, and then all at once found ourselves on
the brink of the Glacier des Bossons.

I do not know whether on a clear day it would have seemed so enormous,
so awe-inspiring. The rain had turned into snow drifting lazily down on
us. The clouds were all around, above, below. Out of the clouds above
flowed that huge ice-mass,—vast, measureless, tossed like waves of the
sea suddenly frozen. Down below us the clouds swallowed it again. What
we saw was gigantic. Who could tell how much more there might be hidden
in the clouds? The Pavilion was lost behind a corner of rocks. It might
have been a thousand miles away, and any other trace of humanity as
well, for aught that we could see. We seemed to be in the very heart of
Nature—huge, untrammeled, primordial.

The cold and the increasing thickness of the snow-storm drove us down,
but it was glorious while it lasted.

The next morning at breakfast we observed for the last time the amiable
manners of the young Frenchman with the downy moustache who always
kissed his father, mother and two sisters on the forehead before
sitting down to his coffee, and admired once more the embroidered
napkin-covers of the English family. Then we asked for our bill. The
sun was really out that morning and the clouds looked as if they might
lift, but we did not feel that we could stay longer in Chamonix.
Antonio’s time in Switzerland was growing very limited, and we must
give him a few days to rest at the Châlet Edelweiss before starting on
the homeward journey.

The amiable French proprietress blandly presented us with a bill about
twice the size agreed upon. Then followed heavy weather. If there is
anything under heaven I hate, it is an altercation over a bill, but my
three companions stood expectantly beside me, and I _can_ be voluble
in French when I have to be. So I girded up my loins and did my duty.
Back and forth we hurled the language, up and down we shrugged our
shoulders, using hands and eye-brows to intensify our effects. She was
much bigger than I, and her voice was louder. Also she had doubtless
had more practice. But the Three stood firm behind me to block retreat,
and the consciousness of being in the right presumably buoyed me up.

All at once, without the slightest warning of an approaching change of
front, the proprietress dropped her blustering voice, yielded the point
at issue with an incredible gracefulness, made out the bill anew in the
way it ought to be, and devoted the last few minutes of our stay to
making an agreeable impression. The clouds were lifting. Ah, we should
have a view of Mont Blanc before we left! Quick, François, bring the
big telescope and have it all ready. Ah—ah—joy! There go the clouds!
There at last is Mont Blanc!

There it was, and we were very glad we did not have to leave Chamonix
without seeing it. But aside from this academic satisfaction, Mont
Blanc is very disappointing,—a wide, rounded excrescence on a long
mountain range, hardly any higher apparently than the surrounding
peaks, some of which are infinitely more picturesque in form. In fact,
the dominating feature of the Chamonix scenery is not that broad lumpy
saddle-back of Mont Blanc, but the serrated rows of needle peaks called
Aiguilles rising black above the snow, uptilted rock-strata worn away
by erosion, the most spectacular objects, except the Matterhorn, in all
the Alps.

A party who had ascended Mont Blanc the day of our arrival, before
the rain came on, and had been imprisoned at the summit ever since,
were taking advantage of this first clearing to get down. Through the
telescope we could see them plainly—little moving black specks on the
snow field, descending towards the Grands Mulets.

We left them presently, Madame and François and the rest of the hotel
staff in a perfect ferment of amiability and politeness, and walked up
the valley to Argentière, then, sharply turning to the left, followed
the diligence road over the Tête Noire.

XVII

Going over the Tête Noire is another of the things that everybody does,
and like most things that are so easy, hardly worth while. I do not
mean that there is no good scenery on the road, but there is nothing
that quickens the pulse or sets one to breathing deep.

Perhaps I may do less than justice to the Tête Noire road because of
my bodily sensations while passing over it. I certainly was not happy
that day. The beast in my throat had downed me. I had a headache and a
fever, a cold in the head, and an unpleasant sense of collapsibility in
the legs.

Every few miles I stopped at some wayside inn or refreshment booth and
ordered a liqueur glass of kirsch (which is a local form of liquid
fire) and a few lumps of sugar, and, by dipping the sugar in the
nostrum, was able little by little to absorb its fieriness, whereby the
legs afore-mentioned acquired an artificial stiffening that carried
them a few miles farther.

Antonio was greatly distressed at this immoral method by which I
kept going. I think he had visions of my becoming a dipsomaniac in
consequence of that day’s tippling. If he had only known how unpleasant
the kirsch was, he would have been less alarmed.

The day passed somehow. There were showers here and there to add to
the rawness of my throat. We passed back into Switzerland about noon.
At dinner-time we began arriving at Martignys. There are an indefinite
number of them spread out for miles—old town, new town, and railroad
station. The last named was our destination. After dinner at the Hotel
de la Gare (a function in which I was not personally interested, though
I took another kirsch), we boarded a crowded train for Sion. I have
seldom been so glad to get anywhere as I was to get to bed in the Sion
hotel that night. I was sorry for poor Belle Soeur having to share my
room, for I was well aware of the infectious character of the microbe
I was harboring, but as they had no more vacant ones (or said they
hadn’t), there seemed to be no help for it.

The next day I felt worse. Belle Soeur nobly offered to stay with me
at Sion till I got well and let the boys continue the trip without us.
But I did not want to break up the party, and knowing I was bound to be
miserable that day _anywhere_, decided it might as well be on the road.
So Frater filled his pocket flask with kirsch instead of cognac, and
off we started over the Rawyl.

Now, the Rawyl is one of the least traveled passes in Switzerland.
Baedeker, who takes it in the reverse direction from ours, gives a very
inadequate description of the path, and says it takes ten and a half
hours from Lenk to Sion, and that a guide is desirable. We ought to
have taken warning from that ten and a half hours, for Baedeker’s times
allow for no stops and assume a pretty swinging gait. But we wanted to
go home that way, and we trusted to luck.

We did not get such an early start as we intended, and we took the
wrong road out of Sion and walked an extra mile or so before we got
set right. Those of us who had been brave enough to dig through the
Swiss histories were mildly interested in the roofless, windowless,
grinning skulls of castles that crowned the hill-tops over the town,
the Bishop’s and the Baron’s. They used to have such lively times in
Sion between their two sets of tyrants!

As always, it was sizzling hot in the Rhone valley, and we were glad as
our road lifted us out of it. We went through a fine fruit belt as we
rose, and I regret to say we plucked a plum or a pear or an apple quite
frequently as we walked along.

At Ayent, about half-past ten, we came to what we knew was the last
settlement. Here we fortified ourselves with a second _café-au-lait_,
and laid in a stock of bread, sweet chocolate and hard-boiled eggs.
Then we turned our backs on civilization and went on. We knew we had to
leave the wagon road soon, but were in great doubt where, till a very
intelligent peasant came along who gave us directions we could really
follow. He also told us that we were two days’ journey from Lenk—which
hardly sounded encouraging.

That day seemed to me about a hundred years long. Would there never be
an end to this picking up of one foot and setting down of the other?
And I had to keep _pushing_ the old things so to make them move! No
wonder I was tired. My head weighed about a ton, and had a red-hot and
very tight iron band around it. And every bone in my body ached. Oh,
_bless_ the old man at Chamonix! At Ayent I had happened to look in
a glass that hung on the dining-room wall, and the reflection I saw
fairly frightened me for its ugliness. Did that shiny red nose, those
bleary red eyes, that blotchy red face really belong to _me_?

By lunch-time we were among the high pastures and had opened up a
pretty broad view of the Valais mountains, our old friends around
Zermatt on the other side of the Rhone. We came upon a spring which had
been piped to a trough for the cattle, and, as we were very thirsty,
thought we would risk drinking from it, when, fortunately, we looked
closer and saw the water was alive with long squirming hair-thin eels!
They were the most uncanny-looking beasts I almost ever saw. Antonio
suggested picking them out, as they were extremely visible, and
drinking the expurgated water, but somebody objected that the water
must be full of their eggs and that it would be so unpleasant to have
them hatch—afterwards. So we ate our chocolate and hard-boiled eggs and
bread, and kept our thirst for future reference.

We felt that we must surely come upon the cattle pretty soon and that
then we could buy some milk. The afternoon was half gone, however,
before we saw a trace of anything alive, and then it was a very small
boy leading a pig way off in the distance. We hailed him and with some
difficulty made him understand that we wanted to buy milk. The patois
of that region is a fearful and wonderful thing. He agreed to lead us
to the cow châlets, but as it was away from our path, and seemed very,
very far, we were several times on the point of giving up the quest.
However, he kept encouraging us, assuring us we were nearly there,
and finally emerging over a grassy shoulder, we came upon the herd of
several hundred cows in a sort of pocket.

It was the milking hour, and we could not have struck it better for
our wants. The head-man, or Senn, I suppose, escorted us up to the
cheese-hut and gave us stools to sit on, while he ladled out foamy warm
milk from a bucket in a half gourd and passed it first to one and then
another, apologizing for his lack of conveniences. Imagine a dozen men
living up there for four months on end with never a cup or a bowl or a
ladle among them except this solitary gourd!

There were two huge iron caldrons under which fires were burning and
into which the men poured their buckets of milk as they brought them
in. This was to make cheese. We asked them to sell us some, but they
said they were not allowed to. They gave us, however, a bit of the
old, last year’s cheese which they ate themselves and declined any
remuneration for it. As it was a present, it would be impolite to say
what we thought of it.

All the men crowded into the hut and gazed at us with interest, but
only the two intelligent ones in charge did any talking. Perhaps the
others spoke only patois, but they were of the utterly stupid heavy
type I have already referred to.

We asked about our route, and they told us it was absolutely out of
the question for us to get over the pass that day, as we were not more
than half way, and it was already four o’clock. We must pass the night
at the châlets of Nieder Rawyl, the last pastures on this side of the
summit. Would the people there give us shelter, I asked. The man smiled
and shrugged his shoulders. “They will have to,” he said.

Very much refreshed by the milk and the little rest, we bade farewell
to our friends and made our way back to our path, then onward at a
quickened pace, lest darkness come upon us before we reached the huts
of Nieder Rawyl. We were getting pretty high now, and the wind that
blew down from the snow belt made us feel that a night in the open air
would not be a pleasant experience.

For me, the last hour of walking that afternoon was a nightmare, my
head swimming with weakness and fever, my feet staggering foolishly. I
kept on because I had to. Fortunately, we had no difficult climbing to
do, nothing requiring steadiness, no precipices to skirt, just a steep,
stony path.

About six o’clock we came in sight of a group of stone cheese
and cattle huts, which we knew must be what we were in search of.
The milking and cheese-making were just over, and a group of men
were standing in a doorway. We went up and addressed the most
intelligent-looking. Could they give us shelter for the night? The sun
had already set behind the mountains, the long shadows were falling
over the valley. It was perfectly obvious that we could not go on into
that bare region of rock and snow beyond. Very gravely and courteously
the head-man assured us that he had no way of making us comfortable,
but that what they had was at our service.

He led us to a little one-room stone hut. It had no windows, and the
door consisted of a couple of boards to keep the cattle from straying
in, I suppose. It did not keep out the mountain wind, but as there
was no other means of ventilation, perhaps it was as well. There was
a raised stone platform to build a fire on. Our host brought us some
sticks and started them blazing and hung an iron kettle full of milk
over the fire to heat for us. He owned a granite-ware cup and a sort
of spoon whittled from a cow’s horn, which he placed at our service.
There was a long wooden bench which we drew up in front of the fire and
sat on while we made our supper of sweet chocolate and hot milk. Our
bread and eggs were gone by now.

About half the hut was occupied by a raised wooden sleeping platform,
covered with musty-looking hay. Four greasy gray blankets were there,
too, which were put at our disposal. They were not inviting-looking,
but the bitter Alpine cold was getting into our bones, and we were in
no position to pick and choose. We did not even take our shoes off, but
each wrapping a blanket outside of whatever coats and wraps we had with
us, disposed ourselves on the hay pile and awaited slumber. Personally,
I could not have held up my head another minute if the world had been
coming to an end. But tired as I was, I could not sleep.

Our host and another man came in and sat on the bench, heated milk
and drank it with their supper, which consisted of hunks of black
bread and strips of last year’s cheese, which they cut off with their
pocket-knives from a stone-hard slab. When they had finished eating
they still sat on the bench and kept up a desultory talk. Hours passed
and they still stayed. At last one of them lay down on the platform
by the embers of the fire and the other stretched himself out on the
bench. Whether they slept or not I cannot say, but their conversation
ceased. We had been wondering why they stayed so late, but it dawned
upon us then that, having given us their beds and blankets, they had
no place else to go. Belle Soeur and I exchanged whispered comments
still from time to time, but at last she also went to sleep. Frater and
Antonio had dropped off first of all like nice tired children.

After this I kept vigil with the fleas. Their name was legion. I have
met this voracious animal in various parts of the world, Italy, Egypt,
California and Japan, but never in such concentrated swarms! What
between them and my headache and fever, and the place I was in, and the
company I was keeping, I did not succeed in forgetting my miseries till
daylight was appearing wanly in the doorway.

There had been the pigs, too. It seems our hut was built on a steep
slope, and though we had entered it from the level of the ground, in
the back it had a basement. This was occupied by the pigs. And surely
those brutes must have had uneasy consciences, for all night long they
kept up the most unholy noises! There were also waves of odor from the
piggery, which surged up to us from time to time.

Our hosts had gone out about their work when I woke up, and my
companions were starting the fire for breakfast. I did not feel
very gay, but the fever was gone and my head was very much clearer,
especially after I had bathed it in the chilly brook outside. We ate
some more chocolate and drank some more milk and were ready to set out
on our way.

When we wished to settle for our entertainment, we found our hosts were
charging only for the milk we had consumed, and were quite dazzled by
our munificence in adding five francs for lodging. Evidently they did
not expect it in the least, and had given up their beds and blankets to
us in a spirit of true hospitality.

One of the men offered to show us the path if we could wait about
half an hour till he finished his work, but as we had had no great
difficulty in finding the path so far, we fallaciously argued that it
would be the same the rest of the way, and declined with thanks.

About half a mile beyond the huts the path came to an abrupt end at
the beginning of an open meadow, bounded on the far side by a wall of
rock. Somewhere beyond that meadow the path began again and led up the
rock wall into the Alpine wilderness above. But where? No scanning
by the eye could reveal it. Each of us had a different theory as to
likelihood. We crossed the meadow and skirted the base of the cliff
looking for that vanished path.

At the extreme right, a stream tumbled down a gully in a series of
cataracts. By the near bank there had been a slide of stones and
loose earth, making a place several hundred feet in height, which,
though terrifically steep, was not, like most of the wall, absolutely
perpendicular. Above this we saw a horizontal line in the rock, which
_might_ be the path.

Somewhat dubiously we decided to try. I never encountered anything more
discouraging than that slide of loose stones. With every step we took
upward we slid back about nine-tenths of a step. Sometimes more. And we
were never sure that we would be able to stop ourselves till we struck
bottom. The higher we went, the more precarious and crumbly it became.
We clambered on all fours. Belle Soeur and I could never have gotten up
if the boys had not helped us. Antonio dubbed it the Gutter Spout of
Heaven. I don’t know about the Heaven part, but the Gutter Spout was
all right.

We kept encouraging each other with the nearer approach of that
horizontal line in the rocks. When at last we got there, breathless and
exhausted, we found it was _not_ a path, but merely a natural ledge.
How far it led, or whether it led _anywhere_, we did not know.

Belle Soeur’s heart was making itself felt just then, so we had to sit
down to let her recover, and while doing so, we held a council of war.
We were about half-way up the rock wall now, and none of us wanted
to throw away all the time and labor we had put in getting there by
going back. Also, since the waterfall marked the extreme right-hand
boundary of the rock wall, the path, if it existed at all, must lie
to the left. Therefore, by following our hard-won ledge to the left,
we should cross the path,—unless indeed the ledge came to an end too
soon. At all events we decided it was worth trying, so as soon as Belle
Soeur’s heart had returned to the normal, we started. After edging our
way along the ledge in a gingerly fashion for about fifteen minutes,
our faith was rewarded, for we made out an unmistakable path zigzagging
upward, and had no further difficulty in reaching it.

The joy of finding one’s path again is so great that I do not know but
it makes worth while having lost it! With renewed vigor we climbed
upward to the plateau-like region of snow drifts and rock ledges that
awaited us, which some ironist has named the “Plain of Roses.” We
should have had fine views of the Valais mountains but for the clouds
which enveloped them. Our immediate foreground was wild and desolate
enough, but as none of the peaks were more than two thousand feet
higher than we were, our views lacked grandeur of outline. For pure
bleak Alpine solitude, though, the walk of the next few hours was
unrivaled.

We quenched our thirst with handfuls of snow from the virgin drifts
around us. This is said to be a bad thing to do, but we experienced no
ill effects either on this or other occasions. At noon we sat down on a
rock and ate cheese and chocolate. This was the fourth meal we had made
from this combination of foodstuffs, with the addition of milk at the
second and third, bread at the first and hard-boiled eggs at the first
and second. This time there were no accessories. None of us felt much
of a craving for either cheese or chocolate for some time thereafter.

The summit of the pass (just under eight thousand feet) is marked by a
shelter hut and a great wooden cross, whose bare arms, stretched out
over the wilderness of rock and snow, have a singular impressiveness.
The cross marks the boundary between the cantons of Valais and Berne.

Another hour’s walking, past a cold gray Alpine lake, brought us to the
northern edge of the plateau, where the green and fertile Simmenthal
lay spread out at our feet between the piled-up Bernese mountains.

Our path plunged down steeply now, and about three o’clock we reached
the outpost of civilization, what Baedeker calls a rustic inn—at
Iffigen Alp. We asked with lively interest what they had to eat and
found they had neither meat nor eggs. What _did_ they have, then?
Coffee, milk, bread, butter, honey and cheese.

We balked at the last-named, but ordered a large supply of everything
else. As soon as the maid brought it in, we told her to begin getting
ready a second installment just as large. And how we did eat! Was
_ever_ anything so good as that bread and butter and honey, except the
long drafts of _café-au-lait_ that washed it down?

All day long my health had been improving and my cold disappearing, and
this ambrosial meal seemed to complete the cure. We asked for soap,
water and towels, combed our hair before a looking-glass, put on clean
collars, and looked so respectable that we hardly knew each other. For
myself, I felt as if I had just returned to life and the joy of it from
a most unpleasant dream. The treatment I had given my influenza had
been heroic,—a sort of kill-or-cure. But it had happened to cure, and
in a phenomenally short time. The rest of the family, who took their
share comfortably at home, also took longer to get over it.

Greatly refreshed, we left the “rustic inn” of blessed memory and swung
happily down the path past the pretty Iffigen waterfalls. We soon
found ourselves on a wagon-road which led us in the course of a few
miles to Lenk, a village of considerable size with thermal springs and
the attendant hotels and health-seekers. The specialty here is throat
and nose trouble.

We spent the night at Lenk and in the morning walked the eight and a
half miles down the valley to Zweisimmen.

[Illustration: _Bach Lake_ (_Faulhorn Route_)]

The Simmenthal is famous for its cattle, and as we happened to have
struck the day on which they were coming home from the high pastures,
the whole eight and a half miles was through a procession of moist
milky cattle. Sometimes they filled the road so that it required
ingenuity to get past. They were big, handsome, sleek creatures, and
seemed to be perfectly gentle.

The Rawyl wilderness separates not only the two cantons, but the two
languages as with a sharp knife. There is no lapping over at the edges.
The herdsmen at Nieder Rawyl spoke French, but no German, and the
waitress at Iffigen Alp spoke German and never a word of French.

Zweisimmen is the railway terminus. Here we took train to Spiez, and
hence to Interlaken and home in the usual manner.

Thus ended the second trip.

XVIII

The next eight days we consecrated, none too joyously, to the
influenza. Frater and Belle Soeur came down with it almost immediately
and simultaneously and were put in quarantine. We were determined, if
possible, to protect the Mother from contagion, as a cold is a long
and serious matter with her. So the two invalids were shut up in the
dining-room with books and easy-chairs and a cribbage-board and had
their meals served there till they emerged from the fever and sneezing
stage. Just as they were convalescent, the two Babes and the domestic
staff got it, but in a very light form. Then Antonio, who had been
boasting of his immunity, succumbed and had to postpone his intended
departure. At last everybody emerged triumphant from quarantine. And it
had been successful. The Mother escaped contagion.

Antonio was to leave for Paris, Liverpool and New York next day, the
14th of September, and we were all very sad at the thought of the
first break in our happy family. Also we wanted to make the most of
the remaining time, so (it sounds singularly idiotic written down in
black and white after this lapse of sobering time) we sat up all night!
The Mother retired about midnight. Frater had already done so, but we
decided he had better get up.

Then followed an interesting “rough-house” in which the young men took
the star rôles and Belle Soeur and I acted as chorus. It would be
difficult to give an adequate history of the night, but it involved
an exciting amount of lockings out and lockings in, climbing to the
second-story balcony, and the smashing of a kitchen window by a group
of “outs” who wished to be in. This brought Anna and Suzanne to their
windows above in great excitement, followed by some disgust when they
learned it was only “_Les Messieurs qui s’amusent_.”

Between three and four we invaded the kitchen and made coffee and
ate up the cake on hand. Then we played cards till breakfast time.
Subsequently, most of those concerned took a nap. The housekeeper and
mother of a family, however, was unable to.

Belle Soeur also was unable to slumber long, as she had promised to
produce a birthday cake before noon. For this same day which was to
witness the flitting of Antonio was further made notable as the eighth
anniversary of the appearance on this mundane stage of the Elder Babe.
It had been arranged that the birthday feast, including ice-cream
from the village confectioner’s and the birthday cake with its eight
candles, was to occur at midday, so that Antonio might take part in it.

It was not a wonderfully gay little party, though we strove to make
it so, for we all felt that this was the beginning of the end of a
fairy-story summer, the breaking up of our little band of Arcadians.

It was raining in doleful sympathy as we walked down to the station
with the departing Antonio and stood on the platform watching the
chunky little train that bore him away to the every-day workaday world
outside of Switzerland.

We missed him very much. The “tropical bird,” as we had occasionally
called him, had certainly brought an element of color and brilliancy
into our gray Anglo-Saxon lives.

The next day we had a diversion in the shape of an entirely unexpected
call from an American friend, who stayed to dinner and spent the
evening with us, but flitted away by an early train the following
morning.

It was a very blue and brilliant morning (the rainclouds all dissolved
and scattered), and we set forth on the Elder Babe’s real birthday
party, which the weather and Antonio’s departure had made impossible on
the day itself. It was to be a glacier party and involve a guide and
roping!

We picked out the guide haphazard from the little group we passed just
before reaching the Upper Glacier. He was a heavily-bearded, short, but
powerfully built man of between forty-five and fifty, and his name was
Fritz Biner. We were destined to know him much better a little later.

The Mother started out with us, but decided she was not equal to
the trip, so we left her with her share of the lunch at the Châlet
Milchbach on the lateral moraine, from the veranda of which she could
watch our progress.

We turned over the small boy to the special care of the guide, who
fastened their two waists together with his rope. Then, for nearly a
thousand feet, we scrambled up the right bank of the glacier, with
the occasional aid of ladders fastened to the rock, till we reached
the level part above the ice-fall, where the trail crosses to the
Gleckstein Club hut and the summit of the Wetterhorn. Here, on the edge
of the glacier, we sat down and ate our luncheon.

Then we were all roped together and proceeded to the opposite side of
the hummocky, but not perilous, glacier, whence, leaving the trail to
the summit, we followed a narrow goat path on a horizontal ledge of
the Wetterhorn cliff known as the Enge. It was nothing that presented
any terrors to the older members of the party, who by this time had
their heads pretty well seasoned against dizziness, but it would have
made the writer extremely nervous to conduct her small son along such a
ledge, in view of the (probably) thousand-foot drop at our left, had
he not been securely roped fore and aft.

The young person in question, though enjoying himself greatly, was
clearly troubled by a little doubt whether this highly delectable
roping had not been gotten up as part of the stage-setting to amuse
_him_ and not because it was necessary. He had imbibed a fine scorn
for the tourists who rope themselves to a guide while ascending the
pleasant path to the Châlet Milchbach, just so as to say they have done
it, and he clearly did not wish to belong to any such tribe himself.
However, when we had gotten almost to the end of the ledge and were
just about to unfasten the ropes, the sheer drop beneath us having
decreased to perhaps fifty feet, the Babe, growing careless, twisted
his feet somehow, slipped and slid straight out in the air and was
brought up sharply by the rope. This happy incident removed all doubt
from his mind and persuaded him, as nothing else could have done, that
the roping had been a genuine mountaineering necessity!

Down among the grassy pastures at the end of the Enge we found the
Mother waiting for us (who fortunately for her peace of mind had _not_
seen the falling incident), and the united family tramped home together
in great content.

Not, however, till we had made a partial engagement with Fritz Biner.
We asked him whether the end of the following week would be too late in
the season to go over the Strahlegg; for we had developed an ambition
to wind up our last long pedestrian trip, which we were about to start
on, with a bit of genuine mountaineering. He assured us it would not
be and expressed a desire to act as our guide. We politely voiced the
pleasure it would give us to have him, but indicated that it would
seem simpler to take a guide from the Grimsel than to have him come
over to meet us there. He replied justly that if a Grimsel guide
should accompany us to Grindelwald, he would have to go back again,
which would be just as far as for him to go over after us. He further
suggested that at the Grimsel they would decline to take us over
without two guides, or at all events a guide and a porter, whereas he,
having seen what expert climbers we were (!), would gladly undertake
to bring us over single-handed. This argument appealed to us, though
we left the matter open that day in order to make inquiries concerning
Biner’s reputation. The result being favorable, we arranged to
telegraph him from Andermatt what day he was to meet us at the Grimsel.

XIX

Two days later, we were once more on the road, Frater, Belle Soeur
and I. We were going up over the Faulhorn to Lake Brienz on the other
side, and just because it was so easy to step out of our back door and
start up the slope and we had no prick of a train to catch, we lingered
around over last words and last preparations a good hour longer than
we should have done. And for some reason that day we did not walk with
our usual snap. So we reached the summit at tea-time instead of at
lunch-time.

It had been a very beautiful trip up, with the Grindelwald valley
sinking lower and lower, and the white peaks behind the Eiger and
Wetterhorn opening up more and more. The Schreckhörner are wonderfully
impressive from this view and the Finsteraarhorn attains nearly the
majesty that belongs to it. The early part of the way the prospect is
framed by the fir trees through which one looks. Above the tree belt
the foreground is still by no means lacking in picturesque incidents,
chief among which are the cold round little Bach lake and the jagged
Röthihorn and Simelihorn peaks.

On the summit, which is nearly nine thousand feet high, there is a very
solid little stone hotel constructed to withstand the terrible storms
which sweep over so exposed a spot. Toward Lake Brienz the drop is very
steep,—almost precipitate at first. One looks way over to Lake Lucerne,
Pilatus and Rigi. But when we came there that region was covered with
fleecy white clouds, which looked like a great churned-up foamy lake,
with little mountain-peak islands rising above it here and there. The
effect was singularly beautiful—much more so than any topographic
clearness could have been.

As we drank our tea and enjoyed the view, we made inquiries of the
proprietor as to our path downward to Giessbach on Lake Brienz. He
tried to dissuade us from attempting it, saying the path was long,
rough, and hard to find, and we could not possibly get there before
dark. He said that professional delicacy prevented his urging us to
remain where we were over-night, which would obviously be the most
sensible thing to do, so he would suggest our going to the Schynige
Platte, where we _could_ arrive before dark and have a fine path all
the way. The Schynige Platte is an excursion place on a lower spur
of the Faulhorn ridge, connected by rack and pinion railway with
Interlaken. We had resolutely kept away from it all summer and had no
notion of visiting it now. Neither did we want to stay all night at the
Faulhorn. So we resolved to try for Giessbach and trust to luck to get
_some_ shelter if we did not make our destination.

The proprietor disapprovingly pointed out our route as far as he could.
No one had been that way for some days, and in the meantime there had
been a heavy fall of snow, so the first part of our progress was not
rapid, as we sunk half-way to the knees at each step.

After passing a curious rocky pinnacle like an upward-pointing finger,
which had been our first land-mark, we got rid of the snow and were
able to descend quite rapidly across a rock-strewn plain. It was here
that we heard the Whistling Marmots and marked one more of our life
ambitions achieved.

I do not know why we had yearned so intensely all summer for whistling
marmots, but we had,—even more than for edelweiss, which is too
obvious. Baedeker has a way of mentioning them in very solitary
places like the Gries Pass or the Rawyl, but we had never met them as
scheduled. We had seen a marmot in captivity in Grindelwald, but he
was a very sad and depressed little furry beast who would never have
dreamed of whistling. But here, when we were least thinking of them,
we must have walked right into a marmot colony. We heard their little
voices calling to each other, whistling unmistakably, and saw them
scurrying to their holes among the rocks as we approached.

We lost our trail a dozen times, but having some abandoned cheese huts
just above the woods to direct ourselves to, it did not greatly matter.

Once among the trees, how dark it got all of a sudden! We took the
wrong path and found ourselves on the edge of nothing, retraced our
steps and started again. We were going just as fast as we could, racing
with the darkness, but we soon realized that, so far as Giessbach was
concerned, the race would be a losing one. It was so piercingly cold
that a night in the open air sounded painful, and we kept on in the
hope of finding _something_.

Just in the last moment of twilight we emerged from the thick woods
onto a grassy shoulder upon which was an empty cow-shed. Above it was
a loft full of hay. On the ground was a ladder. Nothing was locked.
Perhaps fifteen hundred feet below us we could see the roofs of a group
of huts, which appeared to be inhabited—about such a place as Nieder
Rawyl. It was very doubtful if we could find our way down to them
through the woods, so dark had it become, and we decided that a clean
hayloft to ourselves would be better than the hospitality they could
offer anyhow. So we decided to stay. Fortunately we had ample left from
our luncheon to serve us for supper, and by skimping a bit, we could
save something for breakfast.

We spent a long time trying to start a bonfire at which to warm
ourselves and dry our snow-wet shoes. It could have been done by
using loose boards which we saw lying around outside, but we had
conscientious scruples against making ourselves quite so much at home
(or _some_ of us had) and tried to construct the fire from brush
gathered in the woods, all of which appeared to be water-soaked.

At last, however, Frater’s bonfire skill triumphed, and we sat down
around a cheerful little blaze and steamed out our very chilly
water-logged shoes and dress skirts and watched the moon rise over the
mountain top. Then, when sufficiently warm, dry and sleepy, we climbed
up the ladder into the loft, buried ourselves deep in the hay, and were
soon lost to consciousness.

Anybody who has a lingering idea that there is something poetic in
sleeping among the fragrant hay of a loft, had better revise his views.
It is distinctly tickly and scratchy and full of dust. And the rats run
in and out. However, it is clean and warm, and if you’re tired enough,
it will serve.

In the early gloaming we were awakened by voices outside. Two men were
circumnavigating our hut engaged in earnest discussion. Probably they
belonged in the huts below, had seen our bonfire the night before and
had come up to find out what damage had been done. Being satisfied on
this point, they departed. The ladder was standing against the side of
the barn where the loft door was and Belle Soeur’s alpenstock was lying
on the ground below, so they must have known we were still there, but
they did nothing to disturb us. Meanwhile we, having nothing to gain
by an interview, lay low and held our peace. Each of us thought that
the other two were asleep and he or she was the only moral coward,
but we found later that we were three of a kind! Really, though, the
consciousness of being a trespasser _does_ put one at a disadvantage,
and the inability to communicate freely with a patois-speaking
peasantry increases the handicap.

After our involuntary hosts had taken themselves away, we emerged from
our several nests and picked the wisps of hay from each other. It was
very cold and gray at that hour, and the inadequate fragments of stale
sandwiches left from the day before were not the most cheering sort
of breakfast. When we had consumed the last crumb and performed scanty
ablutions in an ice-water brook near by and left everything snug and
tight at our late lodgings, we started downward. Our muscles were
painfully stiff at first, but gradually limbered up.

About nine o’clock we reached an outlying refreshment house overhanging
the Giessbach, whose course we had been following for some time, and
here we stopped for a belated, but much appreciated, _café-au-lait_.

The rest of the day was, from the point of view of a trio of tramps
who had spent the night in a hayloft after forgathering with whistling
marmots, distinctly civilized and commonplace. We reached the level
of Lake Brienz and skirted it to the upper end where the Aar flows in
from the Meiringen Valley. We cut across to the Brünig Pass road and
followed the gentle grade upward, lunching late (in view of the nine
o’clock breakfast) at a roadside restaurant.

[Illustration: _Brienz Village and Lake_]

Not only railroad and carriages, but even automobiles go over the
Brünig, so it can be imagined that it is not strenuous climbing, nor
are its views, though attractive, grandiose.

After leaving the summit, we fairly annihilated space, and by
dinner-time had reached the village rejoicing in the euphonious name
of Giswil. We put up at a rather comfortable inn where we seemed to be
the only guests, but the proprietor’s children appeared so incredibly
numerous that we decided he had gone into the hotel business to get
their groceries at trade rates.

I asked the maid waiting on us at dinner what time the train left for
Lucerne in the morning. She said she wasn’t sure, and would I come down
and examine the time-table in the lower hall? It was a very large and
complex sheet, some three feet by six, but I thought I could master a
time-table—_any_ time-table. We all have our little vanities. I took
plenty of time at it and at last found the column and the correct
direction and emerged triumphant with the information that the train
left at 7.15, and accordingly gave careful directions that our coffee
was to be ready at 6.30 and we were to be called at 6.

Things were just a trifle late next morning, and as we were not sure
of the distance to the station, we bolted our breakfast and hurried
about the paying of our bill and walked at an uncomfortably rapid gait,
arriving with just the desirable five minutes to spare, according to
our watches. To our surprise the ticket office was closed. So were the
baggage office and the freight office. There was not an employee in
sight. Were our watches wrong? Had the train already left? Even so, it
seemed incredible that the premises could have been completely deserted
so quickly. At last, having nothing else to do, I began to study the
time-tables on the walls. And then I made a discovery. The train we
were trying to take ran only on Sundays and the 12th of May, and it
wasn’t either! The regular week-day train wasn’t due for an hour.

I wish to say that the conduct of my companions at this juncture was
truly magnanimous. The laugh was very distinctly on me, but they didn’t
laugh it. They expended all their risibility on the 12th of May. That
annual date on which our train ran seemed to tickle their funny-bones
exquisitely. They never once reproached me for the too-hastily
swallowed coffee and the precious minutes of sleep that might have
been, but wandered off to visit the cemetery or some such cheerful
spot, while I read Baedeker and kept guard over the knapsacks in the
waiting-room.

If there _had_ been a train when we thought and we had only five
minutes before it was due, we certainly should have missed it, for I
think it took the station-master a good twenty minutes to make out our
tickets. They involved a whole ten miles of railroad travel from Giswil
to Alpnachstad, and a boat trip from there to Lucerne. The tickets
were long folding affairs in many sections, as for a trip across the
continent, filled in at many places with writing (there was also a book
in which the poor man had to write an extraordinary amount), and I
think they cost us eighteen cents apiece!

The approach to Lucerne by boat instead of by train must be a very
pleasant one in any respectable sort of weather, but our day had turned
into a gray drizzle with a gale of freezing wind. Mists and clouds shut
out all the mountains, and the face of the lake was lashed into a
sort of impotent baby fury. It was this kind of a day, I am sure, when
Gesler had Tell unbound to take charge of the imperiled row-boat. It
was not perilous on a modern lake passenger boat, but neither was it
joyous.

[Illustration: _Lucerne, Old Covered Bridge and Water Tower_]

XX

When we arrived at Lucerne nobody shanghaied us in the pleasant Geneva
way, and as it was not even lunch-time, we resolved to walk about and
explore the town before deciding where to lodge. We fed the ducks and
swans, wandered over the covered wooden bridge inspecting the quaint
old paintings of the Dance of Death, beat around through the older
part of the town, and all at once coming back to the river, beheld the
Gasthaus zu Pfistern.

We had no sooner seen it than we recognized our fate. The wall toward
us was covered with frescoes representing a great tree spreading from
cellar to garret, from whose branches, instead of fruit, hung coats of
arms. Away up near the top in very big figures was the date 1579. Down
below stood a gigantic warrior in coat of mail with curling plumes. He
was a very satisfying warrior. The hotel was built directly upon the
river’s brink and its lowest story was hollowed out in lovely arcades,
where a fruit market was held.

Let no one suppose it was a stylish hotel. It had been chosen as the
headquarters of the noncommissioned officers of the artillery regiment
stationed at Lucerne. The dining-room was full of cartridges and flags
belonging to them and trophies of the Schützenfest societies which
also met there. Otherwise I imagine the patronage was chiefly from the
smaller class of commercial travelers. Of tourists, there was never a
hint.

How we reveled in it! The clean little bedrooms looked out pleasantly
over the river and city. But it was the dining-room that charmed us
most, with its great blackened old sideboard twenty feet broad and the
red wine poured from huge stoneware flagons. They had a genius of a
cook at that place and another genius presiding over the dining-room.
I know not whether she was an employee or the proprietor’s wife or
daughter, but she was a most cheerful, capable, tactful young woman who
put everyone in a good humor on the spot. She told us something of the
history of the house. It had been built in 1579 as a guildhall for the
bakers, whose ancient name, now obsolete, was Pfistern. The original
frescoing had been preserved outside, with only the necessary touching
up from time to time. This great dining-room, with its huge rafters and
lofty ceiling, had been the original meeting-place of the craftsmen.
Except that she was evidently a very busy person, I think we should
have lingered to talk to her half the afternoon instead of going out to
see the city.

Once outside we did, perforce, _faute de mieux_, what everybody
does, visited the ghastly War and Peace Museum, the curio shops and
Thorwaldsen’s Lion.

The next morning was scheduled for the ascent of Rigi, but the weather
continued too thick. We spent the forenoon about Lucerne, shopping,
having a look at the old city ramparts and the two-spired church. We
still had a lingering hope that it might clear off in time for us to go
up Rigi by rail. But it did not, and we took an afternoon steamer for
Tell’s Chapel, which marks the spot where he is supposed to have jumped
ashore that day of the storm, pushing away the boat with his foot as
he did so, and thus escaping Gesler’s vengeance and getting the chance
to arouse the slumbering revolt against Austrian tyranny.

The Tell Chapel, with its paintings of incidents in Tell’s life, is
a sort of national pilgrimage spot whose sacredness is not greatly
reduced by the fact that all educated Swiss now admit that Tell himself
was a myth. It is only sentimental foreigners who know nothing about
him but his name and the apple story and perhaps Schiller’s play, who
insist on believing in his reality.

From the chapel we walked along the very beautiful Axenstrasse that
skirts the lake to its terminus at Flüelen, regretting the clouds
which shut out all but the nearest mountains. Thence we continued by
ordinary highroad to Altdorf, where the hat and apple incidents are
supposed to have taken place. They have a rather fine but aggressively
modern statue of Tell and his little son (erected in 1895) in the
village square. During the summer the villagers play Schiller’s Tell,
once a week, I think. We had intended to time our visit to Altdorf for
one of these representations. But the week devoted to influenza had
delayed us just too long, and the dramatic season was over. The place
is so accessible to tourist routes that the play has probably become
sophisticated anyhow.

We dined that evening at an inn near the station and played cards
to keep awake till the St. Gotthard train came along. It was a slow
and crowded train, and we were very glad to arrive about 11 P. M. at
Goschenen and follow the porter of the Lion to that very excellent
hotel.

Next morning we were up betimes and starting afoot over the St.
Gotthard carriage road. It is a very fine piece of engineering,
zigzagging back and forth in long loops to keep the grade easy. The
scenery is, like that of the Simplon, Tête Noire and other carriage
roads, picturesque rather than magnificent. One of the chief scenic
elements is furnished by the Reuss, a foamy mountain stream whose
course the road follows, the interest culminating at the famous Devil’s
Bridge.

Everybody knows the story which has been attached, with local
modifications, to numerous other bridges and buildings, about the
engineer who, finding his task too great for human skill, invoked the
aid of the Prince of Darkness. This potentate gave his assistance
in return for the soul of the first passenger who should cross the
bridge. Whereupon the engineer, taking a mean advantage of the Devil’s
confiding nature, drove over a dog.

On the face of the rock above the bridge there is a very crude painting
much reproduced on local postal cards of his Satanic Majesty, very
black, with horns and tail and breathing fire from his nostrils,
jumping back in surprised disgust before the polka-dotted animal of
uncertain species who is trotting across the bridge.

What interested us more than the hackneyed devil legends was the
armored gate with loop-holes for musketry, whereby the Swiss government
can, when it chooses, effectually close this road. In connection with
the mountain batteries known to exist on surrounding heights, this gate
would seem to make it practically impossible for an invading army to
get by.

[Illustration: _The Banks of the Reuss, Saint Gotthard Pass_]

While discussing the thoroughness of the Swiss defenses, we recalled
the death of an Italian staff-officer a few weeks before who had
“accidentally fallen off of a precipice” while taking notes in the
forbidden Swiss zone, and we decided we did not care to explore the
near-by heights.

Not far from here was the scene of a fight during the Napoleonic wars,
and a monument with an inscription in exotic characters is dedicated to
the Russians who fell there.

At Andermatt quite a large detachment of troops is stationed, and
indeed we met members of the Swiss citizen soldiery all along this road.

It was our intention to go to the summit of the pass and then return to
Hospenthal for the night, but a thick snow-storm shut in around us, and
at the fork, which we afterwards learned was only about a mile from the
Hospice at the summit, we evidently took the wrong branch, and arriving
nowhere, grew discouraged and turned back. We lost nothing in the way
of scenery, as it was impossible to see ten feet in any direction.

At a considerably lower level we came upon a little road-house and
entered to get thawed out. Frater and I called for hot milk, but Belle
Soeur rashly ordered coffee. I do not know of what strange herb this
drink was brewed. Certainly not the coffee bean. We suspected catnip
mixed with a decoction of hay. The color was green and the flavor
incredibly unattractive. Belle Soeur decided that she also preferred
milk.

We put up that night at the Hotel de la Poste in Hospenthal, than
which I never saw a cleaner nor more severely plain little inn. The
postmaster’s wife ran it, and we found her a most admirable Hausfrau.
The postmaster was, I don’t doubt, a most worthy character also, but
he and I had a battle royal over my mail because I had no passport
to claim it with. I told him a visiting card was enough at Geneva
or Lucerne, and he said the postal authorities there must be very
lax. I showed him Frater’s passport, which he said was all right for
_him_, but no good for _me_. However, he handed me out my letters
after a while, but declined to turn over a package which Anna, in
a characteristic spasm of caution, had had the unhappy thought of
registering. I knew just what articles it contained and told him in
detail, even to the darns, requesting him to open the package if he
wished to verify my statement. This suggestion seemed to alarm the old
man, and he turned it over to me intact, fortifying himself only by
taking my signature and address in a dozen or so different places. But
he regarded me with strong disapproval, and frowned when we met, and
I suspect his kind old wife put an extra egg or so into the omelet to
make up!

Hospenthal is a rather quaint little village dominated by a robber
baron’s castle—at least, I think he was a robber baron. Anyhow it makes
a good photograph, and we took several next morning as we started out,
rejoicing in sunshine and blue sky.

We bought some black bread and cheese to carry along for luncheon (all
we could get, but it turned out delicious—no hardship at all), had the
village shoemaker drive some new nails into our soles, and swung off
gayly to the right on the Furka Pass road. This, with the Grimsel, is
one of the most interesting of the carriage-road passes, the scenery
toward the end being quite wild and Alpine. The sparklingly clear and
bracing atmosphere added much of course to our enjoyment.

At a road-house where we stopped to get something liquid after the
dryness of our admirable bread and cheese, we found the wall adorned
by a charcoal cartoon of slightly bibulous aspect, left probably by
some traveling artist in lieu of paying his bill, and the following
ingenious poem:

    “Das Wasser ist von jeder Zeit
    Die Best von aller Menschengaben.
    Mir aber lehrt Bescheidenheit
    Man muss nicht stets vom Besten haben.”

Which may be translated: Water is at all times the best of all the
gifts to man. Modesty, however, teaches us that we should not always
take the best.

We had intended stopping for the night at the hotel on the summit of
the pass, but were so unfavorably impressed by the financial shiftiness
of the polyglot clerk who airily told us that he spoke equally well
“_französisch_, _englisch_, _italienisch_—_Was Sie wollen_,” and tried
to double the Baedeker prices on us, that we turned him down and
walked on. Truth to tell, we felt grave doubt as to whether we should
find any other accommodation short of the Rhone Glacier Hotel, which it
would have been highly inconvenient for us to go down to. But principle
is a great thing, and we were prepared to sacrifice ourselves for it.

Luck was with us, though, and we found the Bellevue, a first-class
hotel on the upper brink of the Rhone Glacier, still open, though
preparing to close on the morrow. We enjoyed an excellent dinner and
night’s rest after watching the lovely views of glacier, valley and
snow mountains pass through the various phases of sunset, twilight and
full moon.

In the morning we started out with a guide across the glacier and over
the Nägelis Grätli, a stony height on the far side, from which the
views are very fine, and the path descends directly to the Grimsel
Hospice.

To our surprise we found ourselves making far better time than the
Baedeker schedule. We mentioned this to the guide, who said that
the path across the glacier had been shortened several years ago,
but Baedeker hadn’t found it out yet. “Everything in this world
changes, except Baedeker,” he said, and was so much flattered by
our appreciation of his _bon mot_ that he repeated it at ten-minute
intervals during the rest of the trip.

As soon as we saw our way clear ahead, we sent back our guide, who
was a little unduly addicted to his cognac bottle as well as to his
Baedeker anecdote, and continued alone.

The Grimsel Hospice and the two turquoise lakes lay right below us. A
yodel came floating up through the clear air, and standing out in front
of the hotel we soon identified the stocky form of Fritz Biner waiting
for us.

XXI

At the Grimsel we received and sent off mail, including Belle Soeur’s
and my knapsacks, that we might be in the lightest possible marching
order. We also invested in provisions,—ground coffee, cheese, bread,
chocolate and hard-boiled eggs. And Frater, at Biner’s suggestion,
humbled his pride so far as to purchase an alpenstock. Also we indulged
in an excellent lunch.

The weather had been beautiful all the morning, as it had been the
day before, but it did not look so well after luncheon. The sky was
graying, and there was a suggestion in the air of approaching snow.
However, it was not definitely bad and might be all right by morning,
so Biner thought there was no reason for postponing our start.

The method of crossing the Strahlegg is to leave the Grimsel in the
afternoon and spend the night at the Dollfus Pavilion, one of the
Alpine Club refuge huts, and get a very early start for the long day’s
trip to Grindelwald. There is another club hut, the Schwarzegg, on the
Grindelwald side of the pass, where the second night can be spent if
one is belated—a most fortunate circumstance for us as it turned out.

Biner broke to us the news that there was another party besides
ourselves of three “gentlemen” going to start over the Strahlegg that
afternoon. We were quite disappointed at this, for we wanted the club
hut to ourselves, and the scenery, too, for that matter, and had
supposed that so late in the season there would be no trouble about
it. However, it was the fortune of war, and it seemed foolish to wait
over another day and risk bad weather to escape them. Biner seemed to
be rather pleased at the prospect. He said it would make it much easier
and safer for us to join forces with the other party and all be roped
together for the next day’s climb. We reserved decision on this point.

Shortly after lunch we started forth, so as not to be hurried. The
other party were ahead of us. Our way led over glacier débris and along
a moraine, stony, scrambly, but presenting no difficulties. We seemed
to be charging directly at the Finsteraarhorn. The “Infant Aar” had
been lost to sight in the great glaciers that gave it birth. We were
approaching the heart of the High Alps at last.

By way of acquiring information, I asked Biner as we walked along of
what nationality the gentlemen might be who belonged to the other
party. The question visibly embarrassed him. “They are Swiss,” he said.
“But—well, they are _not_ gentlemen. They are employees of the Grimsel
hotel, which is about to close for the season, and they are going home
this way for pleasure. They are all good mountaineers, so they will be
very useful to us.” A little more questioning elicited the fact that
they were the chief cook, the barber, and a stableman who often served
as porter to climbing parties and hoped some day to be a guide. We
were rather relieved than otherwise by this information. Tourists, if
underbred, might have proved annoying in such close quarters, but these
people would doubtless be entirely unobtrusive.

The Dollfus Pavilion is a thick-walled stone hut built on a cliff
overhanging the glacier. The altitude is 7850 feet. By the time we
reached it, the evening winds were holding high and chilly carnival
around it and the clouds were closing down.

As we opened the door of the hut, we stepped into an atmosphere almost
unbreathable with wood smoke from the stove combined with liquor
fumes from a steaming kettle. Half-choking, we beat a hasty retreat
into the open air. The occupants of the hut rushed out with exuberant
hospitality, begging us to come in and get warm and partake of the
“tea” they were brewing. The smoke would soon be gone. The fire had
been hard to start, but was all right now. We thanked them, but said
we preferred the outer air for the present. These self-effacing hotel
employees did not seem to be turning out exactly as we had expected. We
had not reckoned on the cognac.

It was cold outside and getting colder. Snowflakes began sifting down
on us. Had there been any possibility of getting back to the Grimsel we
certainly would have done so. But it was out of the question at that
time. Presently Biner came out and said our supper was ready. He had
had nothing to prepare except the coffee.

The smoke had cleared away, so we could see the room, its furniture and
occupants. There was a long deal table with a bench at each side, set
with enamel ware cups and plates. There was a small but energetic stove
and a simple outfit of cooking utensils. These were all furnished by
the Alpine Club. Printed notices on the wall requested those availing
themselves of the hut to leave everything clean and in order. An open
door showed us the hut’s other room. It contained a raised platform
heaped high with straw, long enough for a dozen people to sleep on in a
row. On a cord above were hung a generous supply of gray blankets.

Considerably to our disgust, we found that the other party’s supper and
ours were to be celebrated simultaneously. But in this refuge provided
for all alike, we clearly had no right to object, if their own sense
did not show them the desirability of keeping to themselves. Our guide,
on the other hand, positively declined to sit down at the table with
us, whether to set his fellow-countrymen a good example or simply
because he was on duty (which they were not), I do not know.

We gave Belle Soeur the protected seat in the middle. Frater had the
barber next to him, and the stable man was next to me, the cook beyond.

Let me now state that the cook was, so far as we were concerned, an
entirely respectable and unobjectionable member of society. If he drank
too much of their precious tea and cognac mixture, he did not show it,
and he did not obtrude himself on us in any way.

The barber did not show any signs of intoxication at this time, but he
was an unthinkably unpleasant little beast, curled, powdered, perfumed,
dressed in a flamboyant tourist costume which included plaid golf
stockings and knickerbockers, and possessed of a most colossal nerve.
He evidently regarded himself as a lady-killer. He knew a few words
of English, and armed with them he proceeded to be polite to Belle
Soeur. Belle Soeur can be pretty chilly when she likes and Frater’s
snubs were of the knockdown variety, but nothing seemed to make any
impression on the barber’s cuticle. He had a camera along and offered
to take our pictures in the morning. This was finally declined so that
he understood it, but it took a battle-ship’s broadside to do it. He
appeared to be sure that our feet must be cold and wet and that we were
too timid to avail ourselves of the fleece-lined wooden shoes which are
part of the outfit of an Alpine hut. From the time of our arrival at
the front door to our retiring for the night, he urged these shoes upon
us at fifteen-minute intervals.

During supper the barber and the stableman vied with each other in
pressing upon us each and every article of their rather elaborate menu.

The stableman was in the maudlin and verbose stage. He assured us
that among the eternal snows of the upper Alpine regions all social
distinctions are obliterated, and high and low, rich and poor, meet on
a plane of equality. (This in explanation of their sharing the table
and benches with us, I suppose.) I said unresponsively that there
could be no objection to anyone’s poverty and lowliness so long as he
was sober and respectable. At this he almost dissolved into tears and
confided to me that he knew he had drunk too much, that it was a very
bad thing to do, that he was very sorry, but what would you? After a
summer’s hard work, the first day of freedom, etc.

Meanwhile, Frater, who could not follow the German, was wanting to know
whether my neighbor was saying anything sufficiently objectionable to
merit personal chastisement. I reassured him, and we tried to keep
up the conversation among ourselves, ignoring our neighbors. But
they declined to stay ignored and kept offering this, that, and the
other article of food or drink. They seemed unable to believe that
our declining these overtures was prompted by anything but shyness.
“The High Alps are not like cities,” the stableman explained. “In the
High Alps all men are brothers and share all things equally. No one
feels any hesitation in either giving or receiving. We are so small
and helpless in the hands of God! We must do all we can to help one
another.”

Shall I ever forget that hideous meal? We got through as quickly as
possible and left the table. It was snowing too hard and was too
bitterly cold to go outdoors again. We went through into the other
room and shut the door and held a council of war. Should we sit up all
night? That would involve returning next day to the Grimsel. We clearly
could not sit up all night and take the trip over the Strahlegg, too.

It had seemed a matter of course to Belle Soeur and me at the Nieder
Rawyl cheese-hut to roll up in blankets and go to sleep in an
apartment shared by our escorts and two cowherds. It was physically
uncomfortable, but not in the least morally so. But the thought of
dividing that hay-heaped sleeping-shelf with those drunken animals in
the next room was revolting to the point of nausea. It was impossible.

Biner joined us for a few minutes and came to our rescue with a
suggestion. We could curtain off a portion of the shelf for Belle Soeur
and me with blankets. No sooner said than done. We chose our end, and
in front and on the unprotected side hung blankets. It was arranged
that Frater was to sleep immediately outside and Biner next to him, so
that the precious trio of fellow-Alpinists would be kept at as great a
distance as possible.

When we had completed our arrangements, we sat down and tried to
distract our minds by playing cards. It was one of the saddest games
I ever indulged in. In the next room, free from the restraint of our
presence, the revelry waxed more and more boisterous as the cognac
tea circulated. I was a bit worse off than the others for catching a
word here and there of the talk. It did not make me happier to realize
that they were talking about _us_. I learned afterwards that they were
arranging the order in which the combined parties were to be roped next
day. But the fragments that I caught had a singularly unpleasant sound.
I did not wish to be a sensationalist and I knew the limitations of
my German, so I did not say anything to the others about it, but I am
afraid my game of cards was _distrait_.

This was my birthday. I had spent the previous ones in very various
quarters of the world and in very various company—but never anything
like this before, and may the like never be my lot again!

Belle Soeur and I now retired to our tent, which, after all, gave us as
much privacy as one gets in a sleeping-car, and Frater rolled himself
along our only unprotected boundary. Naturally, we did not sleep. Aside
from our nervousness, the men in the next room were making too much
noise. I have no means of knowing how late they kept it up, but it must
have been till after midnight. There were moments when they seemed to
be quarreling violently, and we half-hoped they would wind things up
neatly by cutting each others’ throats. At other times they were merely
hilarious.

All at once the door opened, and they rolled in, still noisy, and
bringing with them such a smell of concentrated liquor as I never
imagined. They paused and gazed at the blanket-wrapped form of Frater.
“_Ist das der Herr?_” whispered the barber to one of his companions.
From the depths of the blankets I heard my brother’s voice growl in
disgusted English, “No, you thundering fool, I’m the two ladies.”

The revelers now disposed themselves for slumber, but for another hour
or two we heard their giggles and whispers, and the alcohol fumes in
the close air were unspeakably nauseating. From time to time Frater
pressed my hand under the blanket curtain to reassure me, and I did as
much for Belle Soeur.

We were of course in no physical danger. Not only could Frater and the
guide have easily handled the trio, but Frater could have done it,
I doubt not, single-handed. But the unpleasantness of it was beyond
words. We felt as if a month of spiritual Turkish baths would hardly
make us clean.

I have told this somewhat unsavory story in all its unsavoriness as a
warning to others, the moral being that a party including ladies should
never plan for a night in an Alpine Club hut unless they are assured of
having it to themselves. Mountaineering is not _all_ poetry, and there
might be terrors encountered beside which crevasses and avalanches
become attractive.

XXII

Their over-night celebration did not prevent our fellow-travelers
from getting up about four o’clock so as to get a good start over the
pass. We told Biner we would arise later and that he need not serve
our breakfast till after the others had gone. They finished their
breakfast, but still did not start. At last it dawned upon us that they
were waiting for _us_.

We called Biner and expressed our sentiments. We thought we had been
sufficiently emphatic before, but we left no doubt in his mind this
time that no earthly consideration would induce us to make the trip
in such company and that if he felt unable to take us over the pass
in safety alone as he had agreed to do, we would give up the trip and
return to the Grimsel.

He started to tell us that the men were entirely sober this morning,
and were excellent mountaineers, but I cut him off with a “_Ganz und
gar unmöglich_.” We added that the weather was more than doubtful and
that last night’s fall of snow would make the trip more dangerous and
more difficult. In that case, we said, we would wait over till the
next day and see if conditions improved. Biner sighed and returned
to the next room, where he made known our decision, and the trio of
objectionables started, the irrepressible barber being the only one who
had the nerve to bid us farewell.

We now emerged and had our breakfast. We had pretty much decided to
stay at the Pavilion till next day, sending Biner back to the Grimsel
for firewood and provisions. It had stopped snowing, but the sky
was black and the clouds hung low. However, about eight o’clock it
lightened up a bit, and Biner said he thought it would do to start. It
was late, but there was always the Schwarzegg hut in case we could not
make Grindelwald.

We were glad enough to escape a day of inaction. So we bundled
ourselves up and started. My costume included winter flannels, heavy
shoes, high gaiters, corduroy jacket and skirt, a flannel shirtwaist,
a jersey of Frater’s, buckskin gloves, and my broad-brimmed felt hat
tied down over my ears with a veil. This had the double advantage of
keeping it from blowing away in some precarious spot where I could
not use my hands and of keeping my ears from freezing. My costume,
however, was inadequate. I should have had woolen or fur-lined gloves
and fleece-lined shoes. My fingers, toes, cheeks, and nose were all
frost-bitten before the day was over, and the suffering caused by the
cold was intense.

Biner was the only one who had woolen gloves, and he shared them
with us, keeping one hand gloved in order to have the use of it, the
other glove circulating among us three. I do not think we could have
kept the use of our hands through the day had it not been for this
periodical thawing out of one hand at a time. But how it did hurt!
Biner should of course have seen that we were provided with these
things before starting, but I fancy he credited us with more knowledge
of mountaineering than we had.

A short distance from the hut we were roped, Biner first, I next, as
interpreter, Frater next and Belle Soeur bringing up the rear. We
walked up the Unteraar Glacier to its origin, where the Lauteraar
Glacier and Finsteraar Glacier come together, then followed this latter
to the outlet of the Strahlegg Firn, up which we turned.

The snowfall of the night before made it necessary for Biner to sound
each step ahead of him with his ice-pick. It happened several times
that the pick encountered no resistance, and Biner, kicking aside the
loose snow would uncover a fissure or air-hole in the ice which had
been completely covered. This delayed us somewhat, but the air was so
cold and thin, and we were in such poor condition, comparatively, after
our almost sleepless night, that I doubt if we could have gone much
faster had the surface of the ice been clear.

The Strahlegg Firn is a great snow pile, very steep of surface, flowing
between huge walls of rock, on the right the Lauteraarhörner, on the
left the Finsteraarhorn and Fiescherhorn. Down this gully, as we turned
up it, swept a bitter icy wind that almost took our breath away. We
had been ascending rapidly since leaving the Dollfus Pavilion and were
now not far from the ten-thousand foot level. The thinness of the air
made it seem almost impossible to get enough oxygen to walk with. Each
breath was a labor, each step forward a triumph of mind over matter.
And it seemed each minute as if that terrible wind would blow our
flickering life-force out like a candle flame.

It would have been sensible, of course, to turn around and go back. But
who likes to accept defeat? And we kept hoping, with baseless optimism,
that we had done the worst and would soon strike something easier.

At noon we had climbed nearly to the top of the firn and stopped in the
shelter of a big bowlder for lunch. Ahead of us loomed a perpendicular
rock wall eight hundred feet high, as we subsequently learned from one
of Tyndall’s Alpine books. It looked higher. At its summit was the
alleged Strahlegg Pass, which we knew lacked just five feet of eleven
thousand. There was no sign of a path or any way of getting up, but we
knew human beings went over there quite frequently, and we supposed
that on nearer approach some sort of a trail would disclose itself.
We did not question the guide about it. The atmosphere did not lend
itself to extended conversation. We kept our breath for the serious
business of life.

It was a great relief to get out of the wind, but the snowdrift we
sat down in was by no means warm, and our feet were by now extremely
painful. Just here Belle Soeur had an attack of mountain sickness and
had to lie down flat in the snow and couldn’t eat her share of the
bread and cheese. If she was going to do it, though, it was mighty
fortunate she chose lunch-time rather than a little later. The luxury
of this meal did not tempt us to linger long, and we were soon under
way again. We had not even unroped.

In the midst of this primeval solitude we suddenly saw a human being.
Nothing could have surprised us more. It was a little black speck of a
man appearing on the upper brink of the rock wall and starting to climb
down. Was it one of the party who had gone on ahead of us, turning back
to seek help after an accident? Biner said not. Biner also said that
unless he was a professional guide, it was very foolhardy of him to
try to get over alone, and that no guide who knew the route would ever
try to come down where he was starting to make the descent. Presently
his interest increased to the point of saying that the man would
infallibly be killed if he didn’t turn around and go back. We were
horrified. But it was impossible to warn the man at such a distance,
even by gesture.

It shows how absorbing our own peril soon became that we presently
forgot all about him, and when we thought of him some hours later could
only _hope_ he got through all right. As we heard nothing subsequently
of a fatal accident or of anybody’s disappearing, though we made
numerous inquiries, I suppose he escaped.

He made things unpleasant for us for a time by detaching stones and
rock fragments in his climbing which hurtled downwards with destructive
force. We made quite a detour to the right to get out of the danger
zone.

We were now at the foot of our rock wall, and there was no path, no
trail, no ledge, no deviation from the vertical. Still we might have
turned back, but we did not. The very preposterousness of the thing
held us. It was _impossible_ that there shouldn’t be some way of
getting up this cliff, which was not yet apparent!

We started. Biner felt above his head with the point of his ice-pick
till he found a crack which held it firm. Then, with surprising agility
for a man of his age and build, he drew himself up till he could reach
it with his fingers, having previously located some little protuberance
or incision where he could rest his toe. Keeping his grip with one
hand, he leaned over and helped me up with the other. Frater climbed
to the place I had just vacated and pulled Belle Soeur up as Biner had
pulled me. By the time we realized the horror of it, we went on because
it seemed on the whole easier than to go back.

All the way up that eight hundred feet of rock wall, there was never
a ledge large enough to rest on with the entire two feet at once! I