Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/343

290 fact that it was frozen till it could rival the tenacity of iron, urged me to examine the route and come down from my aerial perch. To follow the ridge was easy, and, if one trusted to luck and the cornice, would not have involved- an impossible amount of time; but we did not care to take this risk, and to hew steps. in hard ice, along the steep face below the cornice, would have been the work of days rather than hours. It was evident we had struck the ridge far too soon, and could only escape defeat by the reckless expedient of using the cornice as a high road.

Prudent councils prevailed, and we determined to retreat. From a convenient ledge, formed by a projecting rock, we mapped out various promising routes to the top of our peak; but the extraordinary clearness of the atmosphere, the absence of all wind, and the intense heat, were signs infallible of approaching bad weather. The day, indeed, was ours, but the morrow evidently belonged to the tempests and the snow storms. We ate our lunch in that state of modified happiness which is induced by failure on the one hand, and exquisite scenery, warmth, comfort, and sunshine on the other.

Much care was needed to regain the glacier shelf. The heat of the sun had loosened the bonds of ice by which the crumbling slope was held together. Swift and resistless was the rush of the dislodged rocks now and again upset, and