He was a mountaineer from the country near Quito, a man who had been down to the sea and had seen the world, a reader of books in an original way, an acute and enterprising man, and he was taken on by a party of Englishmen who had come out to Ecuador to climb mountains, to replace one of their three Swiss guides who had fallen ill.  He climbed here and he climbed there, and then came the attempt on Parascotopetl, the Matterhorn of the Andes, in which he was lost to the outer world.  The story of that accident has been written a dozen times.  Pointer’s narrative is the best.  He tells how the little party worked their difficult and almost vertical way up to the very foot of the last and greatest precipice, and how they built a night shelter amidst the snow upon a little shelf of rock, and, with a touch of real dramatic power, how presently they found Nunez had gone from them.  They shouted, and there was no reply; shouted and whistled, and for the rest of that night they slept no more.

As the morning broke they saw the traces of his fall.  It seems impossible he could have uttered a sound.  He had slipped eastward towards the unknown side of the mountain; far below he had struck a steep slope of snow, and ploughed his way down it in the midst of a snow avalanche.  His track went straight to the edge of a frightful precipice, and beyond that everything was hidden.  Far, far below, and hazy with distance, they could see trees rising out of a narrow, shut-in valley—­the lost Country of the Blind.  But they did not know it was the lost Country of the Blind, nor distinguish it in any way from any other narrow streak of upland valley.  Unnerved by this disaster, they abandoned their attempt in the afternoon, and Pointer was called away to the war before he could make another attack.  To this day Parascotopetl lifts an unconquered crest, and Pointer’s shelter crumbles unvisited amidst the snows.

And the man who fell survived.

At the end of the slope he fell a thousand feet, and came down in the midst of a cloud of snow upon a snow-slope even steeper than the one above.  Down this he was whirled, stunned and insensible, but without a bone broken in his body; and then at last came to gentler slopes, and at last rolled out and lay still, buried amidst a softening heap of the white masses that had accompanied and saved him.  He came to himself with a dim fancy that he was ill in bed; then realized his position with a mountaineer’s intelligence and worked himself loose and, after a rest or so, out until he saw the stars.  He rested flat upon his chest for a space, wondering where he was and what had happened to him.  He explored his limbs, and discovered that several of his buttons were gone and his coat turned over his head.  His knife had gone from his pocket and his hat was lost, though he had tied it under his chin.  He recalled that he had been looking for loose stones to raise his piece of the shelter wall.  His ice-axe had disappeared.