A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

One marches continually between walls that are piled

into the skies, with their upper heights broken into

a confusion of sublime shapes that gleam white and cold

against the background of blue; and here and there one

sees a big glacier displaying its grandeurs on the top

of a precipice, or a graceful cascade leaping and flashing

down the green declivities. There is nothing tame,

or cheap, or trivial–it is all magnificent. That short

valley is a picture-gallery of a notable kind, for it

contains no mediocrities; from end to end the Creator

has hung it with His masterpieces.

We made Zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine hours out

from St. Nicholas. Distance, by guide-book, twelve miles;

by pedometer seventy-two. We were in the heart and home

of the mountain-climbers, now, as all visible things

testified. The snow-peaks did not hold themselves aloof,

in aristocratic reserve; they nestled close around,

in a friendly, sociable way; guides, with the ropes and

axes and other implements of their fearful calling slung

about their persons, roosted in a long line upon a stone

wall in front of the hotel, and waited for customers;

sun-burnt climbers, in mountaineering costume, and followed

by their guides and porters, arrived from time to time,

from breakneck expeditions among the peaks and glaciers

of the High Alps; male and female tourists, on mules,

filed by, in a continuous procession, hotelward-bound from

wild adventures which would grow in grandeur very time

they were described at the English or American fireside,

and at last outgrow the possible itself.

We were not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home

of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations;

no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous

Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine

summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining

a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize him,

while looking straight at him at short range. I would rather

face whole Hyde Parks of artillery than the ghastly forms

of death which he has faced among the peaks and precipices

of the mountains. There is probably no pleasure equal

to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is

a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can

find pleasure in it. I have not jumped to this conclusion;

I have traveled to it per gravel-train, so to speak.

I have thought the thing all out, and am quite sure I

am right. A born climber’s appetite for climbing is hard

to satisfy; when it comes upon him he is like a starving

man with a feast before him; he may have other business

on hand, but it must wait. Mr. Girdlestone had had

his usual summer holiday in the Alps, and had spent it

in his usual way, hunting for unique chances to break

his neck; his vacation was over, and his luggage packed

for England, but all of a sudden a hunger had come upon

him to climb the tremendous Weisshorn once more, for he

had heard of a new and utterly impossible route up it.

His baggage was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend,

laden with knapsacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens

of milk, were just setting out. They would spend

the night high up among the snows, somewhere, and get

up at two in the morning and finish the enterprise.

I had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it down–

a feat which Mr. Girdlestone, with all his fortitude,

could not do.

Even ladies catch the climbing mania, and are unable to

throw it off. A famous climber, of that sex, had attempted

the Weisshorn a few days before our arrival, and she

and her guides had lost their way in a snow-storm high up

among the peaks and glaciers and been forced to wander

around a good while before they could find a way down.

When this lady reached the bottom, she had been on her

feet twenty-three hours!

Our guides, hired on the Gemmi, were already at Zermatt

when we reached there. So there was nothing to interfere

with our getting up an adventure whenever we should