We, that is a little party of six Englishmen with six Oberland guides, who left the inn at 3 A.M. on July 20, 1862, were not, perhaps, in a specially poetical mood.  Yet as the sun rose while we were climbing the huge buttress of the Moench, the dullest of us—­I refer, of course, to myself—­felt something of the spirit of the scenery.  The day was cloudless, and a vast inverted cone of dazzling rays suddenly struck upward into the sky through the gap between the Moench and the Eiger, which, as some effect of perspective shifted its apparent position, looked like a glory streaming from the very summit of the Eiger.  It was a good omen, if not in any more remote sense, yet as promising a fine day.  After a short climb we descended upon the Gugg, glacier, most lamentably unpoetical of names, and mounted by it to the great plateau which lies below the cliffs immediately under the col.  We reached this at about seven, and, after a short meal, carefully examined the route above us.  Half way between us and the col lay a small and apparently level plateau of snow.  Once upon it we felt confident that we could get to the top....

We plunged at once into the maze of crevasses, finding our passage much facilitated by the previous efforts of our guides.  We were constantly walking over ground strewed with crumbling blocks of ice, the recent fall of which was proved by their sharp white fractures, and with a thing like an infirm toad stool twenty feet high, towering above our heads.  Once we passed under a natural arch of ice, built in evident disregard of all principles of architectural stability.  Hurrying judiciously at such critical points, and creeping slowly round those where the footing was difficult, we manage to thread the labyrinth safely, whilst Rubi appeared to think it rather pleasant than otherwise in such places to have his head fixt in a kind of pillory between two rungs of a ladder, with twelve feet of it sticking out behind and twelve feet before him.

We reached the gigantic crevasse at 7.35.  We passed along it to a point where its two lips nearly joined, and the side furthest from us was considerably higher than that upon which we stood.  Fixing the foot of the ladder upon this ledge, we swung the top over, and found that it rested satisfactorily against the opposite bank.  Almer crept up it, and made the top firmer by driving his ax into the snow underneath the highest step.  The rest of us followed, carefully roped, and with the caution to rest our knees on the sides of the ladder, as several of the steps were extremely weak—­a remark which was equally applicable to one, at least, of the sides.  We crept up the rickety old machine, however, looking down between our legs into the blue depths of the crevasse, and at 8.15 the whole party found itself satisfactorily perched on the edge of the nearly level snow plateau, looking up at the long slopes of broken neve that led to the col....