I

318 THE PELMO.

and their companions. For us, who followed an adroitand confident leader, there was little difficulty in thefeat; but the happy boldness of our predecessor, who,when his companion’s courage failed him, himself ledthe way, did not the less impress us. Mr. Ball, weagreed, had here proved himself in the body as well asin the spirit the true ‘ Alpine Guide .’

Having all wound or scrambled past the corner asinstinct led us, we followed round yet another bay thefaithful ledge. At last the precipice above us brokeback, and our guide announced that all difficulty wasat an end. And so it proved, at least as far as nervesand gymnastics were concerned. But to keep up thepace he now set us was no slight task. We raced up-wards through the mists at true chamois-hunter speed,over 'steep slopes, now of large broken crags, now ofsmaller and less cohesive fragments, up low cliffs, thenover more slopes, until we began to think the mountaininterminable. At last, where a stream, the hidden roarof which was often heard, flashed for a moment intolight, I was glad to call a halt. Two buttresses ofrock, the ends of the topmost ridge of the Pelmo,loomed largely, and, despite our exertions, still loftilyoverhead ; a glimmer of ice shone between them.

We soon came to the glacier, a sheet of uncrevassedice, sloping slightly from south to north, and filling thelarge but from below unseen and unsuspected hollowwhich lies between the horseshoe-shaped battlementsof the mountain. ‘ If the water of the ocean,’ writesProfessor Huxley , ‘ could be suddenly drained away weshould see the atolls rising from the sea-bed like vasttruncated cones, and resembling so many volcaniccraters, except that their sides would be steeper than