Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/271

226 stream ran down one's neck, or the stone on which one was sitting became suddenly submerged, our altruistic feelings carried us away, and led us to express earnest and heart-felt prayers, that these varied blessings might be promptly removed and placed within convenient reach of Dives and other suffering humanity.

As the night wore on the rain ceased, and fog wrapped us in a dense, black obscurity. About 4 a.m. this obscurity began to get luminous, and by five o'clock the opaque wall by which we were surrounded emitted sufficient light to enable tea brewing and other culinary operations to proceed. Cheered by the varied pleasures which a breakfast under Hastings's auspices invariably grants, we decided that the weather might not be as bad as it looked—it was quite evident that by no manner of means could it be worse. In consequence, we determined to go up the glacier on the chance that sun and wind might sweep away the all-pervading fog.

The search for axes and knapsacks was carried on under great difficulties, it being absolutely impossible to see two yards in front of one's nose. Indeed, outside our great and glorious Metropolis, the just source of pride to every Briton, it has never been my fate to grope in a thicker and more utterly opaque atmosphere. After scrambling over many stones we found the glacier, and, feeling our way through a few crevasses, reached a fairly