Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/287

 CHAPTER XII. DYCH TAU. HOUGH the faithful climber is, in his essence, a thoroughly domesticated man and rarely strays from his own home, the Alps, a spirit of unrest occasionally takes hold upon him and drives him forth to more distant regions. Seized with such a fit of wandering, the first days of July, 1888, found me camped on the right bank of the Berzingi glacier, where, in the cool air of the snow fields, on slopes white with rhododendron and with the silent unclimbed peaks above, I could rest from the rattle and roar of trains, the noise of buffets and the persecutions of the Custom-houses.

My sole companion was Heinrich Zurfluh, of Meiringen. The experience of ten days' continuous travel, culminating in two and a half days on the peculiarly uncomfortable Tartar saddle—we had ridden from Patigorsk to Naltcik, and thence to Bezingi and the foot of the glacier—had sufficed to make him a confirmed pessimist. "Es gefällt mir nicht " was the burden of his song, and though this phrase may, perhaps, be regarded as