except the mule that ate the glycerin. Our great achievement
was achieved--the possibility of the impossible was demonstrated, and
Harris and I walked proudly into the great dining-room of the Riffelberg
Hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner.

Yes, I had made the grand ascent; but it was a mistake to do it in
evening dress. The plug hats were battered, the swallow-tails were
fluttering rags, mud added no grace, the general effect was unpleasant
and even disreputable.

There were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel--mainly ladies and
little children--and they gave us an admiring welcome which paid us for
all our privations and sufferings. The ascent had been made, and the
names and dates now stand recorded on a stone monument there to prove it
to all future tourists.

I boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with a most curious result:
THE SUMMIT WAS NOT AS HIGH AS THE POINT ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE WHERE I
HAD TAKEN THE FIRST ALTITUDE. Suspecting that I had made an important
discovery, I prepared to verify it. There happened to be a still higher
summit (called the Gorner Grat), above the hotel, and notwithstanding
the fact that it overlooks a glacier from a dizzy height, and that the
ascent is difficult and dangerous, I resolved to venture up there and
boil a thermometer. So I sent a strong party, with some borrowed hoes,
in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig a stairway in the soil all
the way up, and this I ascended, roped to the guides. This breezy height
was the summit proper--so I accomplished even more than I had originally
purposed to do. This foolhardy exploit is recorded on another stone
monument.

I boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this spot, which purported to
be two thousand feet higher than the locality of the hotel, turned out
to be nine thousand feet LOWER. Thus the fact was clearly demonstrated
that, ABOVE A CERTAIN POINT, THE HIGHER A POINT SEEMS TO BE, THE LOWER
IT ACTUALLY IS. Our ascent itself was a great achievement, but this
contribution to science was an inconceivably greater matter.

Cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower temperature the
higher and higher you go, and hence the apparent anomaly. I answer that
I do not base my theory upon what the boiling water does, but upon what
a boiled thermometer says. You can't go behind the thermometer.

I had a magnificent view of Monte Rosa, and apparently all the rest of
the Alpine world, from that hi