The top of the Jungfrau-Joch comes rather like a bathos in poetry.  It rises so gently above the steep ice wall, and it is so difficult to determine the precise culminating point, that our enthusiasm oozed out gradually instead of producing a sudden explosion; and that instead of giving three cheers, singing “God Save the Queen,” or observing any of the traditional ceremonial of a simpler generation of travelers, we calmly walked forward as tho’ we had been crossing Westminster Bridge, and on catching sight of a small patch of rocks near the foot of the Moench, rushed precipitately down to it and partook of our third breakfast.  Which things, like most others, might easily be made into an allegory.

The great dramatic moments of life are very apt to fall singularly flat.  We manage to discount all their interest beforehand; and are amazed to find that the day to which we have looked forward so long—­the day, it may be, of our marriage, or ordination, or election to be Lord Mayor—­finds us curiously unconscious of any sudden transformation and as strongly inclined to prosaic eating and drinking as usual.  At a later period we may become conscious of its true significance, and perhaps the satisfactory conquest of this new pass has given us more pleasure in later years than it did at the moment.

However that may be, we got under way again after a meal and a chat, our friends Messrs. George and Moore descending the Aletsch glacier to the Aeggischhorn, whose summit was already in sight, and deceptively near in appearance.  The remainder of the party soon turned off to the left, and ascended the snow slopes to the gap between the Moench and Trugberg.  As we passed these huge masses, rising in solitary grandeur from the center of one of the noblest snowy wastes of the Alps, Morgan reluctantly confest for the first time that he knew nothing exactly like it in Wales.

XI

OTHER ALPINE TOPICS

The great st. Bernard hospice[59]

BY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES

The Pass of the Great St. Bernard was a well-known one long before the hospice was built.  Before the Christian era, the Romans used it as a highway across the Alps, constantly improving the road as travel over it increased.  Many lives were lost, however, as no material safeguards could obviate the danger from the elements, and no one will ever know the number of souls who met their end in the blinding snows and chilling blasts of those Alpine heights.

To Bernard de Menthon is due the credit of the mountain hospice.  He was the originator of the idea and the founder of the institution.  He has since been canonized as a saint and he well deserved the honor, if it be a virtue to sacrifice oneself, as we believe, and to try and save the lives of one’s fellows!  It is no easy existence which St. Bernard chose for himself and followers.  The very aspect of the pass is grand but gloomy.  None of the softness of nature is seen.  There is no verdure, no beauty of coloring, nothing but bleak, bare rock, great piles of stones, and occasional patches of fallen snow.  It is thoroughly exposed, the winds always moaning mournfully around the buildings....