Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/360

354 inherent in the race, and one cannot find a higher stake—at all events in these materialistic days, when Old Nick will no longer lay sterling coin against the gamester's soul—than the continuity of the cervical vertebrae; and this is the stake that the mountaineer habitually and constantly wagers. It is true the odds are all on his side, but the off-chance excites to honesty of thought and tests how far decay has penetrated the inner fibre. That mountaineering has a high educational value, few, who have the requisite knowledge to form a fair judgment, would deny. That it has its evil side I frankly admit. None can look down its gloomy death-roll without feeling that our sport demands a fearful price.

Mountaineering being a sport not wholly free from danger, it behoves us to consider the directions from which this danger may come, and the methods by which it may usually be met and conquered. Amongst the mountains, as elsewhere, "the unexpected always happens." It is the momentary carelessness in easy places, the lapsed attention, or the wandering look that is the usual parent of disaster. It may appear that to this extent dangers are avoidable, and the high authorities referred to above justified in their optimism. But which of us can boast that his attention to the slope and his companions never flags, that his eyes are always on the watch for falling stones, for