Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/176

170 snow, rock, and ice had been skilfully erected at the top; in short, it was simply courting defeat to go on with our attempt. It appeared to us, however, that these complicated defences were likely to be merely the products of our guide's imagination, and were, perhaps, in part referable to an objection to carrying a heavy knapsack up to C. P. We therefore proceeded; but on reaching the top of the rocks known as the "breakfasting station," Gaspard gave us further details; this very slab had, it appeared, fallen, crashing down to the glacier several years since, leaving a blank, unbroken wall that could by no manner of means be ascended. We were struck dumb by this accumulation of difficulties; not only was the slab impassable by reason of the accumulated ice, but it was not even there! A state of affairs recalling to our minds the celebrated legal pleas entered relatively to the cracked jar—"We never had it. It was cracked when we had it. We returned it whole!"

Pasteur, however, by an interesting deductive argument, reached an equally gloomy conclusion. "It was," said he, "extremely unlikely that I should have the luck to get up the Grépon at all this year; now having been up once, it is absurd to suppose I shall get up a second time." He suggested we should tell the porters to halt at the foot of the couloir till we got to the col, and, if we found that we could not storm the Grépon ridge, we would shout