Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.’
And on a winter night one feels more than ever the insignificance of such trifling excrescences as club huts and mountain inns. The parting genius loci has, perhaps, been sent with sighing ‘from haunted hill and dale’; but I strongly suspect that these white solitudes of eternal snow are still visited by the court of the Ice Queen.”
To tell the truth, I rather hope that the feminine section of that court leave the Aletsch severely alone, for our remarks that morning would have stood trimming. Why? Because, fearing concealed crevasses on the Aletsch-Firn, we roped. It was a miserable experiment. At rapid intervals Adolf sat down, in the rear, of course, as he never could do anything else but tail. Four sudden jerks, and four more bold ski-runners bit the dust. At times, somebody in the front of the train followed suit, an inspiration which necessitated a rapid swing on the part of those behind. We swung, of course, in opposite directions, and the tangled skein that ensued was enveloped in a mist of snow with a few oaths darting about. No wonder, for such evolutions “excyte beastlie and exstreme vyolence,” as Lunn found it expressed in his mind, so elegantly stored up with classical quotations, and we rapidly came to the conclusion that there was “a good deal to be said for being dead,” oh, much more than for roped ski-ing with Adolf.
CONCORDIA PLATZ.
To face p. 149.
Ski-running on a rope is only possible if every member of a party is a steady runner. I, for one, have always found its utility limited to providing a merry, rough-and-tumble entertainment, such as the Wiggle-Woggle, the Whirling Pool, and such-like helter-skelter performances in which ’Arry delights to jostle ’Arriet.
Meanwhile the quotation runs that:—
“The hunter of the East had caught
The mountain turrets in a noose of light.”