So now draw your moral and conclusion. Will it not be that you should walk round and round a large relief model of the Alps when planning your winter excursions? This you could easily do if some kind patron of Alpinism would provide you in London with a copy, cast in metal for durability, of the Geneva plaster relief.
Would the reader like to know, after this long lecture, how I take the refreshment, and smoke the pipe—in my case it has always been a cigar—which I should like to offer him now? He is welcome to my den.
I scoop out the snow, in the manner of dogs, to the depth of 2 feet, or thereabouts. I lay my ski across the cavity thus formed. Pressed close together, they roof in about one-third of the opening. I put my feet in the hole, wrap them up in my empty rucksack, bend my knees and sit on the ski. Before me, on the snow shovelled up with my hands in the shape of a tray, I display the contents of my larder. Then I plant my sticks behind me, one supporting each shoulder. Thus, my armchair, dining-room, and table are all ready. I wait upon myself, as is usual at lunch, and when the time has come for the blissful smoke, I lazily stretch my legs across the empty table and lean back, looking into immensity through the puffs. When the time comes when I should like a nap, I find that the sticks at my back invite me to recline by gradually giving way. I lay them flat on the snow, spread my cloak over them and, thus comfortably padded, I pull my cap over my eyes, and try hard to convince myself that it is a cold midwinter day. The smoke ceases to rise, the cigar end drops and—— This is all vanity no doubt, but is mine not better than that of many a wiser man?
Old Egger at Kandersteg, who received me with a cheery handshake on completion of the trip described in this chapter, had seen me start about a year before on my traverse of the Bernese Oberland. He expressed satisfaction at seeing me again, though with another companion, and said he thought we had been rather long. But when I told him that another trip had been thrown in, as well as my companion changed, he insinuated with a smile of great intelligence that we had had time to grow very thirsty. It was, he said, a grand thing for Kandersteg that it had been at the beginning of the first trip and at the end of the second. So he would drink our healths. And we honoured him likewise.
CHAPTER IV
THE SKI-RUNNER OF VERMALA
Vermala—The mysterious runner—The Plain of the Dead—Popular beliefs—The purification of the grazings—A haunted piece of rock—An awful noose is thrown over the country-side—Supernatural lights and events—The Babel of tongues—The Saillon and Brigue testimonies—The curé of Lens and his sundial—The people’s cure—The Strubel—Chauffage central—Did I meet the Ski-runner of Vermala?—My third ascent of the Wildstrubel—A night encampment on the glacier—Meditations on mountains, mountaineers, and the Swiss—How to make café noir—Where to sleep and when not to—Alpine refuges—The old huts and the new—The English Alpinists and the Swiss huts—The Britannia hut.
