The difficulties of the next morning were severe, but our courage was high, for our goal was near.  At noon we conquered the last impediment—­we stood at last upon the summit, and without the loss of a single man except the mule that ate the glycerin.  Our great achievement was achieved—­the possibility of the impossible was demonstrated, and Harris and I walked proudly into the great dining-room of the Riffelberg Hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner.

Yes, I had made the grand ascent; but it was a mistake to do it in evening dress.  The plug hats were battered, the swallow-tails were fluttering rags, mud added no grace, the general effect was unpleasant and even disreputable.

There were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel —­mainly ladies and little children—­and they gave us an admiring welcome which paid us for all our privations and sufferings.  The ascent had been made, and the names and dates now stand recorded on a stone monument there to prove it to all future tourists.

I boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with a most curious result:  The summit was not as high as the point on the mountainside where I had taken the first altitude.  Suspecting that I had made an important discovery, I prepared to verify it.  There happened to be a still higher summit (called the Gorner Grat), above the hotel, and notwithstanding the fact that it overlooks a glacier from a dizzy height, and that the ascent is difficult and dangerous, I resolved to venture up there and boil a thermometer.  So I sent a strong party, with some borrowed hoes, in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig a stairway in the soil all the way up, and this I ascended, roped to the guides.  This breezy height was the summit proper—­so I accomplished even more than I had originally purposed to do.  This foolhardy exploit is recorded on another stone monument.

I boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this spot, which purported to be two thousand feet higher than the locality of the hotel, turned out to be nine thousand feet lower.  Thus the fact was clearly demonstrated that, above A certain point, the higher A point seems to be, the lower it actually is.  Our ascent itself was a great achievement, but this contribution to science was an inconceivably greater matter.

Cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower temperature the higher and higher you go, and hence the apparent anomaly.  I answer that I do not base my theory upon what the boiling water does, but upon what a boiled thermometer says.  You can’t go behind the thermometer.

I had a magnificent view of Monte Rosa, and apparently all the rest of the Alpine world, from that high place.  All the circling horizon was piled high with a mighty tumult of snowy crests.  One might have imagined he saw before him the tented camps of a beleaguering host of Brobdingnagians.