The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-19

the art of rope ana axe climbing of which we were masters. The mutually impart cautions and exhortations to give no slack to the rope, move one at Ia time, get at each move the utmost double hold of feet and axe, and the like, added their part to the Gest of the safe in fact, to the imagination it was adventure. Indeed, however simple and a very Blodin-like procedure-so thin and taunt, like a thread, that edge was
 stretched, so acute was the angle in
 which the slopes met when judged by
 the distances which reached down on either side.
 The ladder of our aurrete was not, af- ter all, thrown directly up to the breach We Were to try, but on one side, to Judgement made by some rocks fallen from above. From this we had to work our way round a sort of bastien of rock, which held us off from the actual floor of the breach or chimney. It seem- ed almost to overhang the gulf below,
 affording only some slight cracks and ledges for foot and hand holds, along
 which we must edge to reach the rocks hat made the floor of the breach. There were thre stages in the passage beyond, first a stiff chamber, then the pause on
 the saddle, where you had choice of drop on either side of the mountain,
 and to the left, overhanging the depths
 on either side, too smooth and steeply pitched shelf of rock.
 All the members of our party passed
 these crises without slip, and so might possibly have done the chimney
 alone. As it was, we were roped to-
 gether so that the whole strength be- fore and behind was ready to support each man as he moved. Any too imag- inatiye reader may rest assured that every climber was as safe in that peril
 ous passage as ever was babe in nurses arms, though (and that was was the beauty of it) it did not seem to the man himself
 The most sensational situation-and wonder what mountain can furnish one
 more so-was sitting astride that sad
 de. Probably ones feet were thrust
 some distance apart, but it was so 0AAltoll III VIC " Ol LllG QCplll AONl II OlllNAl one could look that l thought my legs
 were quite vertical, that if I should
 kick off my shoes they would fall on
 the Lily glacier below in sight of each
 other-if they did not go down the
 same creyasse. It was place where
 you could guess at the feelings of witch astride a broomstick on the way
 to the moon But the really ticklish and difficult thing was working up the pitch of the shelf above, iwth really nothing to hold onto only the combined ad- hesive surface of your whole prostrate
 preson to keep you or move yon on, a
 progress in which the friction of every
 button was an essential item.
 The ridge once gained through the breach it was by contrast with easy, speed that we reached the summit. Yet
 the rope was out of place, and that lit- tie bit of ridge work would be well come addition to the zest of climbing could we find 1t in the White Mountain Imagine yourself on a ridge as high as the Presidential range above the val leys, but fined down so thing that only rarely you could find foothold on the edge. but must warp your way back an forth either side of 1t, and you have
 an idea of the meaning of ridge on the mountains of this range Evc1 when we reached the the summit
 made our resting place on ledge low the top, not finding the seat above lcomfortable for the reason Bismark had in mind when describing the objection
 to. armaments in time of peace, he said
 that "bayonets were not not made to sit down on."