These Perilous Things Are
Built Against The Perpendicular Face Of A Cliff Two Or
Three Hundred Feet High.
The peasants, of both sexes,
were climbing up and down them, with heavy loads on
their backs.
I ordered Harris to make the ascent, so I
could put the thrill and horror of it in my book, and he
accomplished the feat successfully, though a subagent,
for three francs, which I paid. It makes me shudder yet
when I think of what I felt when I was clinging there
between heaven and earth in the person of that proxy.
At times the world swam around me, and I could hardly keep
from letting go, so dizzying was the appalling danger.
Many a person would have given up and descended, but I stuck
to my task, and would not yield until I had accomplished it.
I felt a just pride in my exploit, but I would not
have repeated it for the wealth of the world. I shall
break my neck yet with some such foolhardy performance,
for warnings never seem to have any lasting effect on me.
When the people of the hotel found that I had been
climbing those crazy Ladders, it made me an object of
considerable attention.
Next morning, early, we drove to the Rhone valley and took
the train for Visp. There we shouldered our knapsacks
and things, and set out on foot, in a tremendous rain,
up the winding gorge, toward Zermatt. Hour after hour we
slopped along, by the roaring torrent, and under noble
Lesser Alps which were clothed in rich velvety green
all the way up and had little atomy Swiss homes perched
upon grassy benches along their mist-dimmed heights.
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