o the back of one of Sir E.
Landseer's lions. The ordinary tourists--the old man, the woman, or the
cripple, who are supposed to appreciate the real beauties of Alpine
scenery--may look at it comfortably from their hotel. They may see its
graceful curve, the long straight lines that are ruled in delicate
shading down its sides, and the contrast of the blinding white snow with
the dark blue sky above; but they will probably guess it to be a mere
bank--a snowdrift, perhaps, which has been piled by the last storm. If
you pointed out to them one of the great rocky teeth that projected from
its summit, and said that it was a guide, they would probably remark
that he looked very small, and would fancy that he could jump over the
bank with an effort. Now a mountaineer knows, to begin with, that it is
a massive rocky rib, covered with snow, lying at a sharp angle, and
varying perhaps from 500 to 1,000 feet in height. So far he might be
accompanied by men of less soaring ambition; by an engineer who had been
mapping the country, or an artist who had been carefully observing the
mountains from their bases. They might learn in time to interpret
correctly the real meaning of shapes at which the uninitiated guess at
random. But the mountaineer can go a step further, and it is the next
step which gives the real significance to those delicate curves and
lines. He can translate the 500 or 1,000 feet of snow-slope into a more
tangible unit of measurement. To him, perhaps, they recall the memory of
a toilsome ascent, the sun beating on his head for five or six hours,
the snow returning the glare with still more parching effect; a stalwart
guide toiling all the weary time, cutting steps in hard blue ice, the
fragments hissing and spinning down the long straight grooves in the
frozen snow till they lost themselves in the yawning chasm below; and
step after step taken along the slippery staircase, till at length he
triumphantly sprang upon the summit of the tremendous wall that no human
foot had scaled before. The little black knobs that rise above the edge
represent for him huge impassable rocks, sinking on one side in scarped
slippery surfaces towards the snow-field, and on the other stooping in
one tremendous cliff to a distorted glacier thousands of feet below. The
faint blue line across the upper neve, scarcely distinguishable to the
eye, represents to one observer nothing but a trifling undulation; a
second, perhaps, knows that it means