Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/298

292 mists of evening crawled slowly along its slopes. Behind our tent towered the great cliffs of Dych Tau. There is something in huge unclimbed peaks, especially when seen by the light of ebbing day, which is strangely solemn. Jest and joke are pushed aside as profanation, and one gazes on the tremendous cliffs with feelings closely akin to those with which the mediæval pilgrim worshipped at some holy shrine. The lengthening shadows fell athwart its face and showed deep gullies and jagged ridges, ice-glazed rocks and vast pitiless slabs of unbroken granite. From crack to gully and gully to ridge we traced a way till it emerged on a great smooth precipitous face where, as Zurfluh piously remarked, we must hope that "Der liebe Gott wird uns etwas helfen." We watched the last flicker of simlight play round its topmost crags, and then crept into the shelter of tent and sleeping bags. The hardier Tartar refused the proffered place beside us, and, having washed his head, his feet and hands, in due accordance with the ritual of his creed, laid down in the open beside a great rock (not impossibly the same as that beside which Messrs. Woolley, Holder, and Cockin camped a few weeks later). Zurfluh regarded these proceedings with much sad interest, feelling certain that the bitter wind would freeze him to death before morning.

At 1 a.m., Zurfluh, who had kept awake to bemoan the Tartar's slow and pitiable decease,