A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

in this world. It would be hard to set a money value

upon any piece of earth that lies between that spot

and the empty realm of space. That man may claim the

distinction of owning the end of the world, for if there

is any definite end to the world he has certainly found it.

From here forward we moved through a storm-swept

and smileless desolation. All about us rose gigantic

masses, crags, and ramparts of bare and dreary rock,

with not a vestige or semblance of plant or tree or

flower anywhere, or glimpse of any creature that had life.

The frost and the tempests of unnumbered ages had battered

and hacked at these cliffs, with a deathless energy,

destroying them piecemeal; so all the region about

their bases was a tumbled chaos of great fragments

which had been split off and hurled to the ground.

Soiled and aged banks of snow lay close about our path.

The ghastly desolation of the place was as tremendously

complete as if Dor’e had furnished the working-plans

for it. But every now and then, through the stern

gateways around us we caught a view of some neighboring

majestic dome, sheathed with glittering ice, and displaying

its white purity at an elevation compared to which

ours was groveling and plebeian, and this spectacle

always chained one’s interest and admiration at once,

and made him forget there was anything ugly in the world.

I have just said that there was nothing but death

and desolation in these hideous places, but I forgot.

In the most forlorn and arid and dismal one of all,

where the racked and splintered debris was thickest,

where the ancient patches of snow lay against the very path,

where the winds blew bitterest and the general aspect was

mournfulest and dreariest, and furthest from any suggestion

of cheer or hope, I found a solitary wee forget-me-not

flourishing away, not a droop about it anywhere,

but holding its bright blue star up with the prettiest

and gallantest air in the world, the only happy spirit,

the only smiling thing, in all that grisly desert.

She seemed to say, “Cheer up!–as long as we are here,

let us make the best of it.” I judged she had earned

a right to a more hospitable place; so I plucked her up

and sent her to America to a friend who would respect

her for the fight she had made, all by her small self,

to make a whole vast despondent Alpine desolation stop

breaking its heart over the unalterable, and hold up its

head and look at the bright side of things for once.

We stopped for a nooning at a strongly built little inn

called the Schwarenbach. It sits in a lonely spot among

the peaks, where it is swept by the trailing fringes

of the cloud-rack, and is rained on, and snowed on,

and pelted and persecuted by the storms, nearly every day

of its life. It was the only habitation in the whole

Gemmi Pass.

Close at hand, now, was a chance for a blood-curdling

Alpine adventure. Close at hand was the snowy mass

of the Great Altels cooling its topknot in the sky

and daring us to an ascent. I was fired with the idea,

and immediately made up my mind to procure the necessary

guides, ropes, etc., and undertake it. I instructed

Harris to go to the landlord of the inn and set him

about our preparations. Meantime, I went diligently

to work to read up and find out what this much-talked-of

mountain-climbing was like, and how one should go about

it–for in these matters I was ignorant. I opened

Mr. Hinchliff’s SUMMER MONTHS AMONG THE ALPS (published

1857), and selected his account of his ascent of Monte Rosa.

It began:

“It is very difficult to free the mind from excitement

on the evening before a grand expedition–”

I saw that I was too calm; so I walked the room a while

and worked myself into a high excitement; but the book’s

next remark –that the adventurer must get up at two

in the morning–came as near as anything to flatting it

all out again. However, I reinforced it, and read on,