But following the tourists still farther up the mountain, we look with dismay at one of the icy crests along which they must presently advance. Not a charming place for a promenade, truly! Here it would seem that one should use an alpen-stock rather as a balancing-pole than as a staff. It is enough to make even a Blondin falter and retire. For, coated with a glare of ice, and bordered on either side by an abyss, the slightest misstep would inevitably send one shooting down this glittering slope to certain death in one of the vast folds of Mont Blanc's royal mantle.
ALPINE PERILS.
THE WEISSBACH.
Lifting now the telescope a little higher, we note another difficulty which mountain-climbers frequently encounter. For here they have come face to face with a perpendicular wall of ice which they must climb, or else acknowledge a defeat. The bravest, therefore, or the strongest, cuts with his ax a sort of stairway in this crystal barrier, and, making his way upward by this perilous route, lowers a rope and is rejoined by his companions. Imagine doing this in the teeth of such wind and cold as must often be met with on these crests! Think of it, when a gale is tearing off the upper snow, and driving it straight into the face in freezing spray like a shower of needles; when the gloves are coated with ice, and alpen-stocks slide through them, slippery as eels; and when the ice-bound rocks tear off the skin from the half-frozen fingers of the man who clings to them for life!
