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Our single bottle of tea had given out, and we suffered with thirst for several hours. Again the word to start was given. We rose at once, but our stiffened legs quivered beneath us, and we leaned on our alpenstocks for support. Still we plodded on for two more weary hours, cutting our steps in the icy cliffs, or sinking to our thighs in the treacherous snow-beds.
I can believe that the silent people near by raise themselves up in their snow-beds to listen, each one recalling some ecstatic moment before the dream of life was shattered. There's a picture in the Pantheon at Paris, I remember; I believe it's called To Glory. One sees all the armies of the ages charging out of the middle distance with Death riding at their head.
The massive walls of the convent were a welcome sight as I waded through the snow-beds near the summit of the pass, and pleasant also was the courteous salutation of the brother who bade me enter. Instead of descending to Aosta, I turned into the Val Pelline, in order to obtain views of the Dent d'Erin.
With so many extensive snow-beds, one would naturally expect to find copious brooks and streams flowing down the mountain into the plain; but owing to the porous and dry nature of the soil, the water is entirely lost before reaching the base of the mountain.
In consequence, Raffl and we were compelled to carry two donkey-loads of baggage for half a mile over the snow-beds and boulders, followed by the sulking muleteer, who had deserted his donkeys, rather than be left alone himself.
Sometimes we were floundering with our heavy loads in the deep snow-beds, or scrambling on hands and knees over the huge boulders of the rocky seams. Two hours and a half of climbing brought us to the crest of the main southeast ridge, about one thousand feet below the base of the precipitous dome.
We crossed extensive snow-beds, by cutting holes in their steep faces, and rounded rocks in the bed of the torrent, dragging one another through the violent current, whose temperature was below 40 degrees.
The moose and deer and caribou will rise from their snow-beds and begin to eat the boughs of trees and saplings; a crust will have formed on the snow, and all the smaller animals, like foxes, lynx and wolves, will begin to travel again, and to prey upon others for food.
To the eye Ararat presents a gently inclined slope of sand and ashes rising into a belt of green, another zone of black volcanic rocks streaked with snow-beds, and then a glittering crest of silver. From the burning desert at its base to the icy pinnacle above, it rises through a vertical distance of 13,000 feet. Unlike many of the world’s mountains, it stands alone.
The most prominent effect of the steepness of the valleys is the prevalence of land-slips, which sometimes descend for 3000 feet, carrying devastation along their course: they are caused either by the melting of the snow-beds on the mountains, or by the action of the rains on the stratified rocks, and are much increased in effect and violence by the heavy timber-trees which, swaying forwards, loosen the earth at their roots, and give impetus to the mass.
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