Spongy meads, that soughed under the feet and grew steeper as one
rose, took up the first few hundred feet. Little rivulets of mere
dampness ran in among the under moss, and such very small hidden
flowers as there were drooped with the surfeit of moisture. The rain
was now indistinguishable from a mist, and indeed I had come so near
to the level belt of cloud, that already its gloom was exchanged for
that diffused light which fills vapours from within and lends them
their mystery. A belt of thick brushwood and low trees lay before me,
clinging to the slope, and as I pushed with great difficulty and many
turns to right and left through its tangle a wisp of cloud enveloped
me, and from that time on I was now in, now out, of a deceptive
drifting fog, in which it was most difficult to gauge one's progress.
Now and then a higher mass of rock, a peak on the ridge, would showr
clear through a corridor of cloud and be hidden again; also at times I
would stand hesitating before a sharp wall or slab, and wait for a
shifting of the fog to make sure of the best way round. I struck what
might have been a loose path or perhaps only a gully; lost it again
and found it again. In one place I climbed up a jagged surface for
fifty feet, only to find when it cleared that it was no part of the
general ascent, but a mere obstacle which might have been outflanked.
At another time I stopped for a good quarter of an hour at an edge
that might have been an indefinite fall of smooth rock, but that
turned out to be a short drop, easy for a man, and not much longer
than my body. So I went upwards always, drenched and doubting, and not
sure of the height I had reached at any time.
At last I came to a place where a smooth stone lay between two
pillared monoliths, as though it had been put there for a bench.
Though all around me was dense mist, yet I could see above me the
vague shape of a summit looming quite near. So I said to myself -
'I will sit here and wait till it grows lighter and clearer, for I
must now be within two or three hundred feet of the top of the ridge,
and as anything at all may be on the other side, I had best go
carefully and knowing my way.'
So I sat down facing the way I had to go and looking upwards, till
perhaps a movement of the air might show me against a clear sky the
line of the ridge, and so let me estimate the work that remained to
do.
