The Clouds, The Mist, Were Denser Than Ever In That Early Morning; One
Could Only See The Immediate Road.
The cold was very great; my clothes
were not quite dried, but my heart was high, and I pushed along well
enough, though stiffly, till I came to what they call the Hospice,
which was once a monk-house, I suppose, but is now an inn.
I had
brandy there, and on going out I found that it stood at the foot of a
sharp ridge which was the true Grimsel Pass, the neck which joins the
Bernese Oberland to the eastern group of high mountains. This ridge or
neck was steep like a pitched roof - very high I found it, and all of
black glassy rock, with here and there snow in sharp, even, sloping
sheets just holding to it. I could see but little of it at a time on
account of the mist.
Hitherto for all these miles the Aar had been my companion, and the
road, though rising always, had risen evenly and not steeply. Now the
Aar was left behind in the icy glen where it rises, and the road went
in an artificial and carefully built set of zig-zags up the face of
the cliff. There is a short cut, but I could not find it in the mist.
It is the old mule-path. Here and there, however, it was possible to
cut off long corners by scrambling over the steep black rock and
smooth ice, and all the while the cold, soft mist wisped in and out
around me.
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