The Demon Guide; or, the Gnome of the Mountain.—The Geologist's Story.
Some twenty years ago, when I was on a scientific tour in the mountains of Switzerland with a friend of mine, who travelled with the same object as myself, a strange incident occurred to me, which I have never been able satisfactorily to explain. We journeyed in each other's company daily, each carrying with him a geologist's hammer and a light travelling bag slung round one shoulder, for the purpose of collecting specimens of various minerals, fossils, etc., that we might find during our march.
We jogged along merrily enough together, each day bringing home some rare specimen or other. We were both in full vigour of health, and both capital climbers. Mountain air and exercise had given us marvellous appetites, and I never remember being in better spirits in my life. As we were not pushed for time or money, and were on a scientific expedition instead of what is called a pleasure trip, it was less our object to scour large tracts of country than to stroll leisurely through the district, making observations by the way.
Travelling, therefore, both with the same object, and not obliged to hurry onward, we had nothing to try our tempers, as ordinary tourists have, who travel in company and usually fall out with each other by the way because one with short wind can't keep up with his longer-winded companion.
Nothing, perhaps, is more trying to the temper than being obliged to keep pace with a well-trained mountaineer if you yourself happen to be out of training. To see him striding on ahead with the most perfect ease and enjoyment, whilst you are toiling and sweating, and puffing and gasping in the rear, parched with thirst and ready to drop with fatigue; perhaps knee deep in snow, plunging about like a porpoise, in the frantic attempt to keep up with your well-trained companion.
Why, the treadmill is a joke to it! How you curse your folly for coming to visit such barbarous places, and how you internally vow never to leave home again. How inconsiderate of your companion to leave you so far behind, as if you did not belong to his party. He seems to ignore you, and you feel the slight. He ought to keep pace with you, not you with him, you think.
How you hate him for his rude health and long wind; and should he so far forget himself as to add insult to injury by bawling after you to "come on," and not "lag behind;" or call you by some such name as "slow coach," "stick-in-the-mud," or other choice epithet, oh, then it is not to be borne. Your ire is raised beyond due bounds. You could stab him if you only had him near enough, and a weapon handy.
If any of my friends who content themselves with taking their daily walk of a mile or so on level ground fancy that this is an exaggeration of the state of a man's feelings when the body is tired out and the nerves on the stretch, I recommend him to try a trip in some mountainous district when out of training, and to choose as companion some well-trained son of the mountains.
As I observed before, gentlemen, my friend and I were not wont to fall out in this way with one another, and we took our journey very easily, chipping out a fossil here and a crystal there, conversing the while on secondary and tertiary formations, volcanic eruptions, alluvial deposits, debris, quartz, and marl, mica, slate, talc, calc, etc., etc.
Thus we journeyed on together day after day for weeks, until we found that the face of the country changed suddenly. Two mountain ranges branched off almost at right angles from one another.