My friend and I resolved to separate, and each to explore in a different direction, and to meet again in about a fortnight.
We accordingly parted, and I commenced exploring a wild track of mountainous country alone. Charmed with the wild beauty of the scene, as well as interested in its geological structure, I suffered my footsteps to lead me onward until hunger stole upon me. I had eaten nothing since the morning, and it was now getting late. One day at home without food is bad enough, but it is not to be compared with a day spent in the mountains, walking and climbing all the time.
I looked out for a châlet, but there was none visible. Meanwhile it grew dark, and I found myself benighted. There was not even a shed to rest under, so I was obliged to repose my weary limbs upon the cold, damp, rock, with such shelter from the night air as the dark pine trees afforded.
It was a strange, wild, scene the spot where I encamped. The spectre-like pines stretched forth their weird branches, drooping with bearded moss, like phantom Druids invoking a curse over this scene of desolation. The moon, peeping fitfully through the black clouds, lit up the glaciers on the mountain opposite. Here and there was a great pine torn up by the roots, or over-hanging the abyss below. Immense clumps of rock, grown over with dank moss, were interspersed through the dark pine forest. A small stream trickled over the large stones, pursuing its zig-zag course till it reached the valley below.
The howling of the wind and the occasional thunder of the avalanche from some neighbouring mountain lent a kind of terror to the scene, which I should have enjoyed, had I been in a more comfortable frame of mind. But, with the gnawing pains of hunger and the horrible feeling of doubt as to whether I should ever meet with any traces of civilisation where I might recruit my wasted energies, the beauty of the spot was shut from me, and I found it only a cold, damp, disagreeable retreat.
It was yet early in the night when I took up my quarters here, but it was dark and cloudy, and I put up at this place, despairing of finding a more hospitable lodging, on account of the darkness, besides which I was tired out. I had reposed in my uncomfortable quarters for, it might be, two or three hours, though without sleeping, when the clouds began to disperse and the sky was calm and serene, the moon bright and clear, so I thought I would leave my camping place and venture a little further, in the vague hope of finding some hospitable châlet where I might obtain fire and food.
I was now considerably rested from my fatigue, but the pangs of hunger grew ever more intense. I wandered on and on, till the pines grew less thick, and a wide extended view opened before me, when I fancied that I descried afar off in the valley a light. My heart began to revive. As I strode onward I saw below me a small lake, over which frowned dark toppling crags. The moon shone brightly over all.
Still keeping the distant châlet in sight, I could think of little else than the meal which would await me on my arrival; but while glancing casually over the lake illumined by the moonbeams, and the cliff that overhung it, my eye was suddenly arrested by an object, apparently a human being, clambering up a height that I should have imagined inaccessible to any mortal man. It literally overhung the lake.
At first I thought my eyes deceived me, but as I looked I was more and more convinced that it was a human being performing this feat. I had heard much of the daring of the Swiss mountaineers, but this beat anything I ever heard of, for the cliff, besides over-hanging, was comparatively smooth, being of slate, and there appeared nothing to hold on by.
"Could it really be a human being?" I asked myself. If so, it was so hideously misshapen as hardly to deserve the title. In spite of my hunger, I panted awhile in breathless anxiety to observe the course of this creature.