, but have you
ever tried looking down five thousand feet at sixty degrees? It drags
the mind after it, and I could not bear to begin the descent.

However I reasoned with myself. I said to myself that a man should
only be afraid of real dangers. That nightmare was not for the
daylight. That there was now no mist but a warm sun. Then choosing a
gully where water sometimes ran, but now dry, I warily began to
descend, using my staff and leaning well backwards.

There was this disturbing thing about the gully, that it went in
steps, and before each step one saw the sky just a yard or two ahead:
one lost the comforting sight of earth. One knew of course that it
would only be a little drop, and that the slope would begin again, but
it disturbed one. And it is a trial to drop or clamber down, say
fourteen or fifteen feet, sometimes twenty, and then to find no flat
foothold but that eternal steep beginning again. And this outline in
which I have somewhat, but not much, exaggerated the slope, will show
what I mean. The dotted line is the line of vision just as one got to
a 'step'. The little figure is AUCTOR. LECTOR is up in the air looking
at him. Observe the perspective of the lake below, but make no
comments.

I went very slowly. When I was about half-way down and had come to a
place where a shoulder of heaped rock stood on my left and where
little parallel ledges led up to it, having grown accustomed to the
descent and easier in my mind, I sat down on a slab and drew
imperfectly the things I saw: the lake below me, the first forests
clinging to the foot of the Alps beyond, their higher slopes of snow,
and the clouds that had now begun to gather round them and that
altogether hid the last third of their enormous height.

Then I saw a steamer on the lake. I felt in touch with men. The slope
grew easier. I snapped my fingers at the great devils that haunt high
mountains. I sniffed the gross and comfortable air of the lower
valleys, I entered the belt of wood and was soon going quite a pace
through the trees, for I had found a path, and was now able to sing.
So I did.

At last I saw through the trunks, but a few hundred feet below me, the
highroad that skirts the lake. I left the path and scrambled straight
down to it. I came to a wall which I climbed, and found myself in
somebody's garden. Crossing this and admiring its wealth and order (I
was careful not to walk on the lawns), I opened a little private gate
and came