Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/241

196 angle of the ice rapidly steepened till it verged on the perpendicular. This excessively steep part of the gully did not exceed ten or twelve feet in height, and, once above it, a slope of fifty degrees led upwards towards practicable rocks. Before, however, sufficient rope could be paid out to enable me to reach them, it was necessary that the rest of the party should advance. Unluckily, though good footing on firm rock, well sheltered from falling stones, was easily accessible on the right, it was impossible to reach it without cutting away the fringes and sheets of ice masking certain intervening slabs. To do this would have involved the rest of the party, who were immediately underneath and sixty or seventy feet below, in serious danger. For ice of this sort is extremely apt to flake away in large plate-like masses, and the cliff below being practically perpendicular, these masses would have alit with resistless force on Slingsby and Collie, who were exactly in the line of fire. Indeed, the tiny fragments of ice hewn out of the solid slope above the traverse called forth many remarks of a deprecatory character. From subsequent discussion it appears that whilst to those below these fragments appeared, each and all, larger than an average sérac falling with a velocity considerably greater than that which astronomers ascribe to light; to those above they seemed comparable to finest grains of sand drifting on the wings of softest breezes.