Rivers of Ice

by R. M. Ballantyne

This was indeed true. Nothing is more deceptive to an inexperienced eye than the apparent distance of a high mountain-top. When you imagine that the plain below is miles and miles away, and the peak above close at hand, you find, perhaps, on consulting your watch, that the plain cannot be very far distant, and that the greater part of your work still lies before you. It requires no small amount of resolution to bear up against the depression of spirit caused by frequent mistakes in this matter.

Owing to the increasing height and power of the sun, the snow beyond the Petit Plateau soon became soft, and the steepness of the ascent increasing, their advance became slower, and their work much more laborious. A pleasant break was, however, at hand, for, on reaching the Grand Plateau, they were cheered by the sun’s rays beaming directly on them, and by the information that they had at length reached their breakfast-point.

It may not be a very romantic, but it is an interesting fact, that the joys connected with intellectual and material food are intimately blended. Man, without intellectual food, becomes a “lower animal.” What intellectual man is without material food, even for part of a day, let those testify who have had the misfortune to go on a pic-nic, and discover that an essential element of diet had been forgotten. It is not merely that food is necessary to maintain our strength; were that so, a five minutes’ pause, or ten at the outside, would suffice, in Captain Wopper’s phraseology, to take in cargo, or coal the human engine; but we “rejoice in food,” and we believe that none enjoy it so much as those whose intellectual appetite is strong. If any doubters of these truths had witnessed the Professor and his friends at breakfast that morning on the Grand Plateau, they must have infallibly been convinced.

“What a gourmand he is!” whispered Lewis to the Captain, in reference to the man of science, “and such a genial outflow of wit to correspond with his amazing indraught of wittles.”

The Captain’s teeth were at the moment fixed with almost tigerish ferocity in a chicken drumstick, but the humour and the amazing novelty—to say nothing of the truth—of Lewis’s remark made him remove the drumstick, and give vent to a roar of laughter that shook the very summit of Mont Blanc—at all events the Professor said it did, and he was a man who weighed his words and considered well his sentiments.

“Do not imagine that I exaggerate,” he said, as distinctly as was compatible with a very large mouthful of ham and bread, “sound is a motion of vibration, not of translation. That delightfully sonorous laugh emitted by Captain Wopper (pass the wine, Slingsby—thanks) was an impulse or push delivered by his organs of respiration to the particles of air in immediate contact with his magnificent beard. The impulse thus given to the air was re-delivered or passed on, not as I pass the mutton to Dr Lawrence (whose plate is almost empty), but by each particle of air passing the impulse to its neighbour; thus creating an aerial wave, or multitude of waves, which rolled away into space. Those of the waves which rolled in the direction of Mont Blanc communicated their vibrations to the more solid atoms of the mountain, these passed the motion on to each other, of course with slight—inconceivably slight—but actual force, and thus the tremor passed entirely through the mountain, out on the other side, greatly diminished in power no doubt, and right on throughout space.—Hand me the bread, Lewis, and don’t sit grinning there like a Cheshire cat with tic-douloureux in its tail.”

At this Slingsby laughed and shook the mountain again, besides overturning a bottle of water, and upsetting the gravity of Antoine Grennon, who chanced to be looking at him; for the artist’s mouth, being large, and also queerly shaped, appeared to the guide somewhat ludicrous. Sympathy, like waves of sound, is easily transmitted. Thus, on the Captain making to Antoine the very simple remark that the “mootong was mannyfeek,” there was a general roar that ought to have brought Mont Blanc down about their ears. But it didn’t—it only shook him. Laughter and sympathy combined improve digestion and strengthen appetite. Thus the Professor’s brilliant coruscations, and the appreciative condition of his audience, created an enjoyment of that morning’s meal which was remembered with pleasure long after the event, and induced an excessive consumption of food, which called forth the remonstrances of the guide, who had to remind his uproarious flock that a portion must be reserved for the descent. To the propriety of this Lewis not only assented, but said that he meant to continue the ascent, and rose for that purpose, whereupon the Doctor said that he dissented entirely from the notion that bad puns increased the hilarity of a party, and the Captain, giving an impulse to the atmosphere with his respiratory organs, produced the sound “Avast!” and advised them to clap a stopper in their potato-traps.

Even at these sallies they all laughed—proving, among other things, that mountain air and exercise, combined with intellectual and physical food, are conducive to easy-going good humour.

It is not impossible that the tremors to which Mont Blanc had been subjected that morning had put him a little out of humour, for our mountaineers had scarcely recommenced their upward toil when he shrouded his summit in a few fleecy clouds. The guide shook his head at this.

“I fear the weather won’t hold,” he said.