Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/137

The guide, having undertaken a contract, naturally wishes to get it satisfactorily completed at the earliest possible time. To this end, the way up the mountain is mapped out with great minuteness. The contractor knows to a second the time at which he should arrive at each rock and every ledge. The slightest variation from these standard times hurts his feelings and ruffles the serenity of his temper. There is, of course, no fun or merriment during the ascent. The travellers, pushed to the very utmost limit of their speed, are in no state to enjoy themselves; you might, indeed, as well ask a man trying to break the one mile cycling record to look at the view, or the members of an Oxford racing crew to see the point of a joke. The party is simply driven onward, checked only when the wind or legs of its Herr absolutely refuse to proceed a step further. During the short halt thus involved—usually designated breakfast, though no one ever eats anything—the amateurs gasp and pant and feel all, or more than all, the pangs of incipient mal de mer, whilst the guides gloomily commiserate themselves on the slowness of the Herrschaft. It is needless to say that the conditions essential to the pleasures of talk and contemplation enjoyed by the founders of the craft are wholly lacking. Woe to the town-bred Englishman, hurried along by a couple of Swiss peasants in the very perfection of wind and muscle.