suspension bridges. This one was evidently very old, for it had been
weathered and wasted until it was the most dangerous and inaccessible
that ever lay in my way. The width of the crevasse was here about fifty
feet, and the sliver crossing diagonally was about seventy feet long;
its thin knife-edge near the middle was depressed twenty-five or thirty
feet below the level of the glacier, and the upcurving ends were
attached to the sides eight or ten feet below the brink. Getting down
the nearly vertical wall to the end of the sliver and up the other side
were the main difficulties, and they seemed all but insurmountable. Of
the many perils encountered in my years of wandering on mountains and
glaciers none seemed so plain and stern and merciless as this. And it
was presented when we were wet to the skin and hungry, the sky dark with
quick driving snow, and the night near. But we were forced to face it.
It was a tremendous necessity.

Beginning, not immediately above the sunken end of the bridge, but a
little to one side, I cut a deep hollow on the brink for my knees to
rest in. Then, leaning over, with my short-handled axe I cut a step
sixteen or eighteen inches below, which on account of the sheerness of
the wall was necessarily shallow. That step, however, was well made; its
floor sloped slightly inward and formed a good hold for my heels. Then,
slipping cautiously upon it, and crouching as low as possible, with my
left side toward the wall, I steadied myself against the wind with my
left hand in a slight notch, while with the right I cut other similar
steps and notches in succession, guarding against losing balance by
glinting of the axe, or by wind-gusts, for life and death were in every
stroke and in the niceness of finish of every foothold.

After the end of the bridge was reached I chipped it down until I had
made a level platform six or eight inches wide, and it was a trying