Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/92

Rh was soon hopelessly lost, so we worked our way towards the torrent and followed its left bank to the moraine.

I do not wish to make any heart ache by recalling the feelings that followed an unwholesome and indigestible supper at 8 p.m., a sleepless night, and a still less digestible breakfast at 1 a.m.; truth, however, compels me to admit that when these feelings were further accentuated by a loose and very inferior moraine lit by the flickering light of a farthing dip in a Bouvier bottle, I agreed most fully in the short and comprehensive denunciation of things in general which various masculine lips now and again expressed. As we tripped and stumbled up the endless stones we became aware that the day was breaking, and by the time we reached the snout of the Weingarten glacier, Monte Rosa was blazing in brightest sunlight. We halted a few minutes in order that Burgener might consider which of two rock couloirs immediately in front of us would offer the best route. I will confess this problem did not arouse my enthusiasm, and, turning my back to the cliffs, I watched the stately advance of the great red sun, as it drove the last lingering darkness from the lower snow fields.

Burgener's survey was soon completed, the men once more swung the knapsacks on to their shoulders, and we strode across the moraine and loose stones towards the couloir nearest the