Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/332

Rh wriggles and squeezings necessary to push his body through the narrow aperture. Then we had to quit the crack for a yard or two and scramble up a great slab at its side. Once more we got back into our crack and on and ever upwards till at length we emerged on the ridge. On the ridge do I say? No; on the very summit itself. Every peak in Europe, Elbruz alone excepted, was below us, and from our watch-tower of 17,054 feet we gazed at the rolling world. Turning to the left, a few steps brought me to the culminating point, and I sat down on its shattered crest. Huge clouds were by now wrapping Shkara in an ever darkening mantle, and the long ridge of Janga was buried in dense, matted banks of vapour, white and brilliant above, but dark and evil along their ever lowering under-edges. Koshtantau shone in its snowy armour, white against black billows of heaped-up storm. Elbruz alone was clear and spotless, and its vastness made it look so close that Zurfluh laughed to scorn my statement that our passes from Mujal to the Bashil Su were between us and it. He maintained and still believes that Elbruz is situated close to Tiktengen, and I defy all the surveyors of the Holy Russian Empire to convince him of error. A yellow look about the snow suggested, it is true, considerable distance, but the huge size and height of the enormous mass so dwarfed the intervening space that I am not surprised at his mistake.