Now that we have learned how glaciers, wild flowers, and butterflies get up into this high world, by climbing up here ourselves in the beautiful springtime, the next thing, I suppose, is to climb down again. But first just look over the edge here and you can get some notion of how high we are, not merely in feet and figures, as we have it in the table of mountain heights in our geography, but in actual feeling.
"What are those little blocks, all ruled off like a chessboard, away down there?"
"Those are the little Swiss farms with the gray roads between."
"And those small white things among the farms that look like pieces of grit?"
"Those are the Swiss villages."
"And the black specks on the slopes of the mountain?"
"Those are tourists with their guides, coming up. People, no doubt, whom we should like to know, but we shall have an interesting new acquaintance travelling down with us. You've met some of his family, no doubt, for he's an ice man. There are several of these ice men always travelling down on the glaciers."
THE OLD MAN OF BALISTAN
Where would you say, judging from the head-dress of the man in the middle, this scene is located? Somewhere in Asia, wouldn't you? For in Asia the natives, particularly the Mahometans, wear turbans, as you would learn by simply looking up "turban" in a dictionary. And wouldn't those summer helmets lead you to suppose that this is a hot climate, in spite of the great ice-pillar and the snow-field? And don't those helmets suggest Englishmen? Now, where in Asia would you find vast mountains, a hot climate, Mahometans, and Englishmen together? Yes, to be sure, in the Himalayas of India. And that's just where an expedition of English scientists came across this grotesque creature of stone and ice one summer day, on a glacier in Balistan. So I just called him "The Old Man of Balistan."