It was not that I was actually afraid. The guide
shouted to me: "Look neither to right nor left; look at your feet, and
turn out your toes!" I had only one thought--not to slip!--and out on
the ice I grew burningly hot. When at last I was across, I noticed that
I was shaking. Strangely enough, I was trembling at the _thought_
of the blue, gaping crevasses on both sides of me, down which I had
barely glanced, and yet I had passed them without a shudder. The
beginning of the crossing had been comparatively easy; it was only that
at times it was very slippery. But in the middle of the glacier,
progress was very uncomfortable; moraines, and heaps of gigantic blocks
lay in your path, and all sorts of stone and gravel, which melted
glaciers had brought down with them, and these were nasty to negotiate.
When at last you had them behind you, came le _Mauvais Pas_, which
corresponded to its name. You climbed up the precipitous side of the
rock with the help of an iron railing drilled into it. But foothold was
narrow and the stone damp, from the number of rivulets that rippled and
trickled down. Finally it was necessary at every step to let go the
railing for a few seconds. The ascent then, and now, was supposed to be
quite free from danger, and the view over the glaciers which one gained
by it, was a fitting reward for the inconvenience.
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