d to help you to follow
the marvellous, Hannibalian and never-before-attempted charge and
march which I made, and which, alas! ended only in a glorious
defeat--to help you to picture faintly to yourselves the mirific and
horripilant adventure whereby I nearly achieved superhuman success in
spite of all the powers of the air, I append a little map which is
rough but clear and plain, and which I beg you to study closely, for
it will make it easy for you to understand what next happened in my
pilgrimage.

The dark strips are the deep cloven valleys, the shaded belt is that
higher land which is yet passable by any ordinary man. The part left
white you may take to be the very high fields of ice and snow with
great peaks which an ordinary man must regard as impassable, unless,
indeed, he can wait for his weather and take guides and go on as a
tourist instead of a pilgrim.

You will observe that I have marked five clefts or valleys. A is that
of the _Aar,_ and the little white patch at the beginning is the lake
of Brienz. B is that of the _Reuss._ C is that of the _Rhone;_ and all
these three are _north_ of the great watershed or main chain, and all
three are full of German-speaking people.

On the other hand, D is the valley of the _Toccia,_ E of the _Maggia,_
and F of the _Ticino._ All these three are _south_ of the great
watershed, and are inhabited by Italian-speaking people. All these
three lead down at last to Lake Major, and so to Milan and so to Rome.

The straight line to Rome is marked on my map by a dotted line ending
in an arrow, and you will see that it was just my luck that it should
cross slap over that knot or tangle of ranges where all the rivers
spring. The problem was how to negotiate a passage from the valley of
the Aar to one of the three Italian valleys, without departing too far
from my straight line. To explain my track I must give the names of
all the high passes between the valleys. That between A and C is
called the _Grimsel;_ that between B and C the _Furka._ That between D
and C is the _Gries_ Pass, that between F and C the _Nufenen,_ and
that between E and F is not the easy thing it looks on the map; indeed
it is hardly a pass at all but a scramble over very high peaks, and it
is called the Crystalline Mountain. Finally, on the far right of my
map, you see a high passage between B and F. This is the famous St
Gothard.

The straightest way of all was (1) over the _Grimsel,_ then, the
moment