The mountain gloom is often most pronounced below the snow-line.
One of our earlier climbs took us from the Wildstrubel Hut to the Wildhorn, and thence without incident to the head of the Rawyl gorge. Here the paths divide, the westerly to Sion, the easterly to Montana. At the dividing paths my brother and I started cheerily along that which leads to Montana. One of our two companions was a middle-aged man who considered that the experience gained in some camping expedition in Africa had given him an instinct for locality. He assured us that Montana would be found on the western flanks of the gorge. Analogous reasoning would lead one to look for Murren on the slopes of the Scheidegg. We did not like to break up the party, lest further knowledge won on the veldt should have even more disastrous results. So on we wandered, while the dividing gorge dropped ever further and further below. I do not know what provoked the final outburst. Perhaps they reminded us of our youth, a sore subject. They were the kind of men who ‘have no hesitation in contradicting those younger than themselves.’ At any rate we parted. They chanced upon a peasant who guided them home by midnight, a barren victory, for had they followed our advice we should all have been home by tea. Meanwhile we two scrambled down some fifteen hundred feet to the boiling torrent. This we crossed by a fallen tree. A faint track led thence to the lower of the two ‘bisses’ that run along the great sweep of the mountain-side. These ‘bisses’ are an ingenious attempt to harness the waters that would otherwise flow to waste, and to convey them at a uniform gradient through a country that is all ups and downs. The stream guided into troughs is carried across the face of the precipices. The troughs and planks, which afford a passage to the engineer and to chance but astute visitors, are supported on poles driven into the face of the cliff. Even in the daytime the lower ‘bisse’ is not oversafe, for the water escapes at intervals and trickles over the planks. By the time we reached it night--a sullen overclouded night--had fallen. Slowly we began to feel our way through the darkness, cautiously creeping along the slippery treacherous platform that hung poised above the thunder of the river. Childish nightmares had often centred round mountain cataracts, and to this day there is something uncanny in the turbid fury of an Alpine stream. We were soon filled with useless hatred for the unending tumult from below. Above the gorge a crag loomed out of the night and looked down upon us with malicious contempt. At such moments the mountains seem to develop a treacherous and repellent personality. There is something inhuman in the grim relish with which they seem to watch a desperate struggle.