an echo. But
it does one's moral nature good to linger there at sunset or in the
early morning, when tourists have ceased from traveling; and the jaded
cockney may enjoy a kind of spiritual bath in the soothing calmness of
scenery....

We, that is a little party of six Englishmen with six Oberland guides,
who left the inn at 3 A.M. on July 20, 1862, were not, perhaps, in a
specially poetical mood. Yet as the sun rose while we were climbing the
huge buttress of the Moench, the dullest of us--I refer, of course,
to myself--felt something of the spirit of the scenery. The day was
cloudless, and a vast inverted cone of dazzling rays suddenly struck
upward into the sky through the gap between the Moench and the Eiger,
which, as some effect of perspective shifted its apparent position,
looked like a glory streaming from the very summit of the Eiger. It was
a good omen, if not in any more remote sense, yet as promising a fine
day. After a short climb we descended upon the Gugg, glacier, most
lamentably unpoetical of names, and mounted by it to the great plateau
which lies below the cliffs immediately under the col. We reached this
at about seven, and, after a short meal, carefully examined the route
above us. Half way between us and the col lay a small and apparently
level plateau of snow. Once upon it we felt confident that we could get
to the top....

We plunged at once into the maze of crevasses, finding our passage much
facilitated by the previous efforts of our guides. We were constantly
walking over ground strewed with crumbling blocks of ice, the recent
fall of which was proved by their sharp white fractures, and with a
thing like an infirm toad stool twenty feet high, towering above our
heads. Once we passed under a natural arch of ice, built in evident
disregard of all principles of architectural stability. Hurrying
judiciously at such critical points, and creeping slowly round those
where the footing was difficult, we manage to thread the labyrinth
safely, whilst Rubi appeared to think it rather pleasant than otherwise
in such places to have his head fixt in a kind of pillory between two
rungs of a ladder, with twelve feet of it sticking out behind and twelve
feet before him.

We reached the gigantic crevasse at 7.35. We passed along it to a point
where its two lips nearly joined, and the side furthest from us was
considerably higher than that upon which we stood. Fixing the foot of
the ladder upon this ledge, w