Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/227

Rh snow, well hardened, clung to the rift with great tenacity, and gave us a path when the rocks refused one. In half-an-hour we got to the top of the great snow-slope, Walker said—"Let us glissade;" the guides—"No, it is too steep." Our friend, however, started off at a standing glissade and advanced for a time very skilfully; but after a while he lost his balance, and progressed downwards and backwards with great rapidity, in a way that seemed to us very much like tumbling head over heels. He let go his axe, and left it behind, but it overtook him and batted him heartily. He and it travelled in this fashion for some hundreds of feet, and at last subsided into