lly are they pleased to carp
at the views from high summits. I have been constantly asked, with a
covert sneer, "Did it repay you?"--a question which involves the
assumption that one wants to be repaid, as though the labour were not
itself part of the pleasure, and which implies a doubt that the view is
really enjoyable. People are always demonstrating that the lower views
are the most beautiful; and at the same time complaining that
mountaineers frequently turn back without looking at the view from the
top, as though that would necessarily imply that they cared nothing for
scenery. In opposition to which I must first remark that, as a rule,
every step of an ascent has a beauty of its own, which one is quietly
absorbing even when one is not directly making it a subject of
contemplation, and that the view from the top is generally the crowning
glory of the whole.

It will be enough if I conclude with an attempt to illustrate this last
assertion: and I will do it by still referring to the Oberland. Every
visitor with a soul for the beautiful admires the noble form of the
Wetterhorn--the lofty snow-crowned pyramid rising in such light and yet
massive lines from its huge basement of perpendicular cliffs. The
Wetterhorn has, however, a further merit. To my mind--and I believe most
connoisseurs of mountain tops agree with me--it is one of the most
impressive summits in the Alps. It is not a sharp pinnacle like the
Weisshorn, or a cupola like Mont Blanc, or a grand rocky tooth like the
Monte Rosa, but a long and nearly horizontal knife-edge, which, as seen
from either end, has of course the appearance of a sharp-pointed cone.
It is when balanced upon this ridge--sitting astride of the knife-edge
on which one can hardly stand without giddiness--that one fully
appreciates an Alpine precipice. Mr. Justice Wills has admirably
described the first ascent, and the impression it made upon him, in a
paper which has become classical for succeeding adventurers. Behind you
the snow-slope sinks with perilous steepness towards the wilderness of
glacier and rock through which the ascent has lain. But in front the ice
sinks with even greater steepness for a few feet or yards. Then it
curves over and disappears, and the next thing that the eye catches is
the meadowland of Grindelwald, some 9,000 feet below. I have looked down
many precipices, where the eye can trace the course of every pebble that
bounds down the awful slopes, and where I have