Take The
Diablerets On The West, And The Wetterhorn On The East, And They Are
The Flanking Bastions Of Another Great Wall, The Bernese Oberland.
And
these two walls are parallel, with the Rhone in between.
Now these two walls converge at a point where there is a sort of knot
of mountain ridges, and this point may be taken as being on the
boundary between Eastern and Western Switzerland. At this wonderful
point the Ticino, the Rhone, the Aar, and the Reuss all begin, and it
is here that the simple arrangement of the Alps to the west turns into
the confused jumble of the Alps to the east.
When you are high up on either wall you can catch the plan of all
this, but to avoid a confused description and 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 176 of 361
Words from 47798 to 48093
of 97758
