way I wished to descend was impossible, whereas
it finally turned out to have been easy and direct. I said I had told
them so, of course, and then we got on the lower glacier and on an
accursed moraine. It was now about noon. We had been going since two in
the morning. We came at last into a grassy valley, and presently stood
on the steep _debris_ slope above Mattmark. It was a steep run down the
zigzag path to the flat, which is partly occupied by the Mattmark Lake,
and at last we got to the inn. There we changed our things and had
lunch, and I and O---- once more fought over the glacier of the upper
snows, and the question as to whether we should climb on aesthetic or
gymnastic grounds. And though we did not reach the hotel at Saas-Fee
till the evening, that argument lasted all the way. But when he and I
get together, as we usually do when climbing comes on, we always quarrel
in the most friendly way upon that subject. But for my own part I
declare that I will never again do another pure snow-grind such as the
Schwartzberg-Weissthor for any other purpose than to fetch a doctor, or
to do something equally useful in a case of emergency. If climbing does
not try one's faculties as well as one's physique it is a waste of
labour.

ACROSS THE BIDASSOA

I came out of London's mirk and mist and the clouds of the Channel and
the rollers of the Bay to find sunshine in the Gironde, though the east
wind was cool in Bordeaux's big river. And then even in Bordeaux I
discovered that fog was over-common; brief sunshine yielded to thick
mist, and the city of wine was little less depressing than English
Manchester. But though I spent a night there I was bound south and hoped
for better things close by the border of Spain. And truly I found them,
though the way there through the Landes is as melancholy as any great
city of sad inhabitants.

The desolation of the Landes is an ordered, a commercial desolation.
Once the whole surface of the district bore nothing but a scanty
herbage. The soil is sand and an iron cement, or "hard-pan," below the
sand. Here uncounted millions of slender sea-pines cover the plain; they
stand in serried rows, as regular as a hop-garden, gloomy and without
the sweet wildness of nature. And every pine is bitterly scarred, so
that it may bleed its gum for traders. When the plantations are near
their full growth they are cut down, stacked to season slowly, and the
trees finish their existence as mine ti