long hours before we could hope to see the sun himself,
yet the whole air soon grew warmer after the splendid
birth of the day."

He gazed at the lofty crown of Monte Rosa and the wastes
of snow that guarded its steep approaches, and the chief
guide delivered the opinion that no man could conquer
their awful heights and put his foot upon that summit.
But the adventurers moved steadily on, nevertheless.

They toiled up, and up, and still up; they passed
the Grand Plateau; then toiled up a steep shoulder
of the mountain, clinging like flies to its rugged face;
and now they were confronted by a tremendous wall from
which great blocks of ice and snow were evidently in the
habit of falling. They turned aside to skirt this wall,
and gradually ascended until their way was barred by a "maze
of gigantic snow crevices,"--so they turned aside again,
and "began a long climb of sufficient steepness to make
a zigzag course necessary."

Fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a moment
or two. At one of these halts somebody called out,
"Look at Mont Blanc!" and "we were at once made aware
of the very great height we had attained by actually seeing
the monarch of the Alps and his attendant satellites
right over the top of the Breithorn, itself at least
14,000 feet high!"

These people moved in single file, and were all tied