Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/101

Rh the idea that a woman is not a fit comrade for steep ice or precipitous rock, and, in consequence, holds it as an article of faith that her climbing should be done by Mark Twain's method, and that she should be satisfied with watching through a telescope some weedy and invertebrate masher being hauled up a steep peak by a couple of burly guides, or by listening to this same masher when, on his return, he lisps out with a sickening drawl the many perils he has encountered.

Alexander Burgener, however, holds many strange opinions; he believes in ghosts, he believes also that women can climb. None the less it was with some surprise that I heard him say, "You must go up the Teufelsgrat." Now the Teufelsgrat, as its name implies, is a ridge of exceptional enormity, and one, moreover, that a few days previously, while we were ascending the Matterhorn, he had pointed out to me as the very embodiment of inaccessibility. I was proud of the compliment, and we solemnly shook hands, Burgener saying the while that the nominal proprietor of the ridge and all his angels should not turn us back, once we were fairly started.

For the benefit of those who may not be well acquainted with the Alpine possessions of his Satanic Majesty, it may be pointed out that the Teufelsgrat is the south-western ridge of the Täschhorn. A short distance north of the Täsch-Alp