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But I look forward with pleasure to the completion of the Jungfrau railway to the summit. I hope that the Swiss engineers will carry it through the mountain, and down along the side of the great Aletsch glacier to the Bel Alp and so to Brieg. That would be a glorious route to the Simplon tunnel and Italy!
Similar disappointment was experienced by my friend Escher upon the great glacier of Aletsch. My failure, however, taught me to sink the next set of stakes ten or fifteen feet below the surface of the ice, instead of five; and the experiment was attended with happier results.
They spent a long day on the ice of the Aletsch glacier, but they reached the inn on its eastward side with magnificent appetites a little late for dinner. Amanda had revealed an unexpected gift for nicknames and pretty fancies.
Afterward I visited the sea of ice which, under the name of the glacier of Aletsch, flows from the Jungfrau, the Monch, and the Eiger toward Brieg; thence I went to the glacier of the Rhone, and from there, establishing my headquarters at the Hospice of the Grimsel, I followed the glacier of the Aar to the foot of the Finsteraarhorn.
At the top they found themselves on a terrace, beyond which a far more moderate slope led to the Col of Roththal, overlooking the Aletsch valley on one side, the Roththal on the other. From this point the ascent was more and more steep and very slow, as every step had to be cut. Their difficulties were increased, also, by a mist which gathered around them, and by the intense cold.
And the Mont Blanc range itself is but a portion of the great glacial world of Switzerland, the area occupied by which is computed at 900 square miles. Two-thirds of these send their waters to the sea through the channel of the Rhine. The most extensive of these glaciers is the Aletsch glacier, which is fifteen miles in length.
Jacob warned them therefore that they must make all speed, and that any one who felt himself unequal to a forced march should stay behind. No one responded to his suggestion, and they were presently on the road. Passing Lake Meril, with its miniature icebergs, they reached the glacier of the Aletsch and its snow-fields, where the real difficulties and dangers of the ascent were to begin.
In this great semicircular space, inclosed by the Jungfrau, the Monch, and the lesser peaks of this mountain group, lies the Aletsch reservoir of snow or neve. As this spot presented a natural pause between the laborious ascent already accomplished and the immense declivities which lay before them yet to be climbed, they named it Le Repos, and halted there for a short rest.
This moraine forms a dam across a trough in the valley wall, and holds back the waters of a beautiful lake, about a thousand feet in length and five hundred in width, shutting it in just as the Lake of Meril in Switzerland is held in its basin by the glacier of Aletsch.
George and Moore descending the Aletsch glacier to the Aeggischhorn, whose summit was already in sight, and deceptively near in appearance. The remainder of the party soon turned off to the left, and ascended the snow slopes to the gap between the Mönch and Trugberg.
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