Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/307



the faithful climber is, in his essence, a thoroughly domesticated man and rarely strays from his own home, the Alps, a spirit of unrest occasionally takes hold upon him and drives him forth to more distant regions. Seized with such a fit of wandering, the first days of July, 1888, found me camped on the right bank of the Bezingi glacier, where, in the cool air of the snow fields, on slopes white with rhododendron and with the silent unclimbed peaks above, I could rest from the rattle and roar of trains, the noise of buffets and the persecutions of the Custom-houses.

My sole companion was Hainrich Zurfluh, of Meiringen. The experience of ten days' continuous travel, culminating in two and a half days on the peculiarly uncomfortable Tartar saddle—we had ridden from Patigorsk to Naltcik, and thence to Bezingi and the foot of the glacier—had sufficed to make him a confirmed pessimist.