However, it turned out that it was only a chaplain.  I had laid in an extra force of chaplains, purposely to be prepared for emergencies like this, but by some unaccountable oversight had come away rather short-handed in the matter of barkeepers.

On the following morning we moved on, well refreshed and in good spirits.  I remember this day with peculiar pleasure, because it saw our road restored to us.  Yes, we found our road again, and in quite an extraordinary way.  We had plodded along some two hours and a half, when we came up against a solid mass of rock about twenty feet high.  I did not need to be instructed by a mule this time.  I was already beginning to know more than any mule in the Expedition.  I at once put in a blast of dynamite, and lifted that rock out of the way.  But to my surprise and mortification, I found that there had been a chalet on top of it.

I picked up such members of the family as fell in my vicinity, and subordinates of my corps collected the rest.  None of these poor people were injured, happily, but they were much annoyed.  I explained to the head chaleteer just how the thing happened, and that I was only searching for the road, and would certainly have given him timely notice if I had known he was up there.  I said I had meant no harm, and hoped I had not lowered myself in his estimation by raising him a few rods in the air.  I said many other judicious things, and finally when I offered to rebuild his chalet, and pay for the breakages, and throw in the cellar, he was mollified and satisfied.  He hadn’t any cellar at all, before; he would not have as good a view, now, as formerly, but what he had lost in view he had gained in cellar, by exact measurement.  He said there wasn’t another hole like that in the mountains —­and he would have been right if the late mule had not tried to eat up the nitroglycerin.

I put a hundred and sixteen men at work, and they rebuilt the chalet from its own debris in fifteen minutes.  It was a good deal more picturesque than it was before, too.  The man said we were now on the Feil-Stutz, above the Schwegmatt—­information which I was glad to get, since it gave us our position to a degree of particularity which we had not been accustomed to for a day or so.  We also learned that we were standing at the foot of the Riffelberg proper, and that the initial chapter of our work was completed.

We had a fine view, from here, of the energetic Visp, as it makes its first plunge into the world from under a huge arch of solid ice, worn through the foot-wall of the great Gorner Glacier; and we could also see the Furggenbach, which is the outlet of the Furggen Glacier.

The mule-road to the summit of the Riffelberg passed right in front of the chalet, a circumstance which we almost immediately noticed, because a procession of tourists was filing along it pretty much all the time. [1] The chaleteer’s business consisted in furnishing refreshments to tourists.  My blast had interrupted this trade for a few minutes, by breaking all the bottles on the place; but I gave the man a lot of whiskey to sell for Alpine champagne, and a lot of vinegar which would answer for Rhine wine, consequently trade was soon as brisk as ever.