Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/138

Rh The guideless climber is free from all these baneful and blighting influences. So long as there is time in hand, and very often when there is not, he prefers to lie on sheltered rocks and watch the ever changing shadows on the distant hills, or to peer down enormous depths on to the restless mists floating above the glacier. Toiling up snow slopes or screes at his top pace never commends itself to him—at such times every flat stone suggests a halt and every tiny stream deep draughts of water.

I once met a man who told me, at 11 a.m., that he had just been up the Charmoz. He seemed mightily proud of his performance, and undoubtedly had gone with extraordinary speed. "But why," I asked myself, "has he done it?" Can any one with eyes in his head, and an immortal soul in his body, care to leave the rugged beauty of the Charmoz ridge in order to race back to the troops of personally-conducted tourists who pervade and make unendurable the mid-day and afternoon at the Montenvers? And this is not exceptional; at Zermatt one may frequently meet men, early in the day, who have wantonly left the most beautiful and inmost recesses of the Alps, the Gabelhorn, Eothorn, or other similar peak, to hurry back to the brass bands and nigger minstrels of that excursionist resort. The guideless climber does none of these things; rarely is he seen returning till the last lingering