that I should have imagined
inaccessible to any mortal man. It literally overhung the lake.

At first I thought my eyes deceived me, but as I looked I was more and
more convinced that it was a human being performing this feat. I had
heard much of the daring of the Swiss mountaineers, but this beat
anything I ever heard of, for the cliff, besides over-hanging, was
comparatively smooth, being of slate, and there appeared nothing to hold
on by.

"Could it really be a human being?" I asked myself. If so, it was so
hideously misshapen as hardly to deserve the title. In spite of my
hunger, I panted awhile in breathless anxiety to observe the course of
this creature.

"Surely some madman," thought I, "tired of his life."

Every moment I expected to see his foot slip and to hear a splash in the
lake below; but no, the being, whatever it was, crawled steadily upwards
like a huge spider, till it gained the summit of the cliff. I then lost
sight of it. A few steps further on led me to the spot the climber had
reached, when soon among the lengthened shadows of the pines, I descried
a shadow which was not that of a tree.

I approached, and as the moon lit up the object in my path, I beheld a
sight that made my blood freeze to look upon. It was one of those
hideous cretins which inhabit the valleys of all mountainous countries.

I started, and the idiot, who gazed at me vacantly at first, seemed to
have sense enough to be aware of the impression he had made, and to take
a fiendish delight in the effect that he had produced. The aspect of
this being was the most frightful of anything I had ever seen in human
shape. He could not have exceeded four feet in height, but the breadth
of his shoulders was such as to make his figure a complete square. His
neck was short, and his head, which was enormous, was covered over with
scant sandy hair. The complexion was ghastly; the lips thin and livid,
the nose flat and spreading, and the eyes, which were an immense
distance apart, pale green and fishy; the face was round and broad, and
though generally idiotic in expression, was lit up at times with a look
of intelligence, mixed with the most preternatural cunning and
malignity. The muscular development of the upper part of this strange
figure was prodigious, and the arms were so long that the fingers all
but touched the ground, but the legs were extremely short and misshapen,
the feet being monstrous. His back was round as a camel's, and fro