Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/184

178 been contemplating for a week or more, had to give place to yet another ascent of the Grépon.

The horrors of the valley of stones on a dark night were vainly conjured in their most hideous form. The utmost concession that aged limbs could obtain was permission to gîte high on the rocks above the lower fall of the Nantillon glacier. I am aware that youthful climbers scorn gîtes, and regard a night spent in plunging head first into deep and gruesome holes as an excellent restorative previous to a difficult ascent. With this view I was once in full accord, but the rolling years have given strength to the arguments in favour of camping out; and now a shelter tent, a sheepskin mattress, and an eiderdown bag are resistlessly attractive, when compared with an early start, interminable stones, and the tortures of a folding lantern—that instrument from which "no light, but rather darkness visible," is shed.

Like everything else in the Alps, a night out is in itself a great pleasure. In no other way can one see such gorgeous sunsets, such "wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist," such exquisite effects of fading light playing amongst fantastic pinnacles of tottering ice. To watch the night crawling out of its lair in the valley and seizing ridge after ridge of the lower hills till the great white dome of Mont Blanc towers alone above the gathering darkness, is a joy that is hidden to dwellers in