To return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide, and then I shall be done with him.  After leaving the ram tied to the rope, he had wandered at large a while, and then happened to run across a cow.  Judging that a cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took her by the tail, and the result justified his judgment.  She nibbled her leisurely way downhill till it was near milking-time, then she struck for home and towed him into Zermatt.

CHAPTER XXXVIII [I Conquer the Gorner Grat]

We went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram had brought us.  The men were greatly fatigued.  Their conviction that we were lost was forgotten in the cheer of a good supper, and before the reaction had a chance to set in, I loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed.

Next morning I was considering in my mind our desperate situation and trying to think of a remedy, when Harris came to me with a Baedeker map which showed conclusively that the mountain we were on was still in Switzerland—­yes, every part of it was in Switzerland.  So we were not lost, after all.  This was an immense relief; it lifted the weight of two such mountains from my breast.  I immediately had the news disseminated and the map was exhibited.  The effect was wonderful.  As soon as the men saw with their own eyes that they knew where they were, and that it was only the summit that was lost and not themselves, they cheered up instantly and said with one accord, let the summit take care of itself.

Our distresses being at an end, I now determined to rest the men in camp and give the scientific department of the Expedition a chance.  First, I made a barometric observation, to get our altitude, but I could not perceive that there was any result.  I knew, by my scientific reading, that either thermometers or barometers ought to be boiled, to make them accurate; I did not know which it was, so I boiled them both.  There was still no result; so I examined these instruments and discovered that they possessed radical blemishes:  the barometer had no hand but the brass pointer and the ball of the thermometer was stuffed with tin-foil.  I might have boiled those things to rags, and never found out anything.

I hunted up another barometer; it was new and perfect.  I boiled it half an hour in a pot of bean soup which the cooks were making.  The result was unexpected:  the instrument was not affecting at all, but there was such a strong barometer taste to the soup that the head cook, who was a most conscientious person, changed its name in the bill of fare.  The dish was so greatly liked by all, that I ordered the cook to have barometer soup every day.  It was believed that the barometer might eventually be injured, but I did not care for that.  I had demonstrated to my satisfaction that it could not tell how high a mountain was, therefore I had no real use for it.  Changes in the weather I could take care of without