Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/254

248 tower known at the Montenvers as the "Sugar Loaf." So confident were we that this was the true line of ascent, that we wondered why none of the guides and travellers who haunt the Mer de Glace had taken this most obvious route, but we ascribed it to that lack of initiative which is fast becoming the main characteristic of the Alpine guide and his ever roped Monsieur. Little did we dream that buried in an early number of the AplineAlpine [sic] Journal is a full description of an ascent made by this very ridge twenty-nine years ago. Curiously enough, Messrs. Hudson, Kennedy and Hodgkinson did not realise the many advantages of their climb, and advised future travellers to give the preference to the uninteresting and stone-swept slopes by which Mr. Whymper had effected the first ascent. The mountaineering fraternity accepted this erroneous teaching, and for thirty years have wearied their muscles and imperilled their skulls on the longer, less interesting, and far more dangerous southern face. Since the memory of Mr. Hudson's ascent has so completely died out, and since the scenery and the ridge are all that the keenest enthusiasts could wish, I may perhaps be pardoned for relating our experiences, even though they may constitute but a twice-told tale.

Immediately on our arrival at the Montenvers last year we engaged a porter, and early the next morning we stretched our cramped and railway stiffened legs in a slow and decorous march to the