Although I do not remember having seen any instances in California of the woodpecker which bores holes in trees and then neatly fits an acorn in, I have serious doubts as to the likelihood of the explanation commonly given. It is said the woodpeckers do it to encourage grubs—that they thus make a kind of grub farm. If so, why do they leave these acorns in? They do not perpetually renew them. Besides, there is no more need for them to trouble about the future than there is for the jays who made our almond stores. If I may venture to suggest an explanation—to make a guess, perhaps a wild one, at this acorn mystery—is it altogether impossible that the woodpeckers have imitated the jays? I have noticed that the jays get careless as to the size or accessibility of the hole they drop provisions into—indeed they will place them sometimes in little more than a rugosity or wrinkle of the bark. I have often found odd almonds on an oak tree which were only laid on the branch. The woodpeckers have probably mimicked the jays, and in so doing have naturally endeavoured to make the holes they had themselves drilled for other purposes serve them the same turn that the bigger holes did the jays. They have joined their work with play. It must be remembered that in a climate like California, where birds find it very easy to make a living all the year round, they are likely to have much time at their disposal, which would be occupied in a colder, less fruitful district. I should not be surprised to learn that there were many odd examples of useless instincts still surviving on the Pacific slope; for doubtless many of its birds found their way there from the east over the Rockies and Sierra Nevada.



IN CORSICA

Once, no doubt, Corsica was a savage, untamed, untrimmed kind of country, and a man's life was little safer than it is to-day in the neighbouring island of Sardinia. There were brigands and bandits and families engaged in the private warfare of the vendetta, so that things were as lively and exciting as they get in parts of Virginia at times. Killing was certainly no murder, and even yet the vendetta flourishes to some extent. There is nothing harder than to get a high-spirited southern population ready to acknowledge the majesty of the law. The attitude of the inland Corsican, even to this day, is that of a young East-Ender whom I knew. When he was asked to give evidence against his particular enemy, he replied, "But if I do, they'll jug him, and I won't be able to get even with him." He preferred handling the man himself.

Yet nowadays Corsica has greatly changed from what it was in Paoli's time. French justice is a fairly good brand of justice after all. The magistrates administer the law, and the system of military roads all over the island makes it easy for the police to get about. When a criminal gets away from them he has to take to the hills and to keep there. It is such solitary fugitives who still give the stranger a notion that the country is essentially criminal. But he is a bandit, not a brigand. He may rob, but he does not kidnap. His idea of ransom is what is in a man's pockets, not what his Government will pay to prevent having his throat cut. After all, there is such a thing in England as highway robbery, and in Corsica robbery is usually without violence. If a bandit is treated as a gentleman he will be polite, even though he points a gun at a visitor's stomach and requests him to hand over all he happens to have about him.

I went to Corsica from Leghorn with a friend of mine who knew no more of the island than I did. We landed at Bastia, where, by the way, Nelson also landed and was severely repulsed, and found the town one of the most barren and uninviting places in the world. It is hot, glaring, sandy, stony, sun-burnt, a most unpleasing introduction to one of the most beautiful and interesting islands in the Mediterranean, or, for that matter, in the world. For the island is fertile and is yet barren; it is mountainous and has great stretches of plain in it along the eastern shore. Though it is but fifty miles across and little more than a hundred long, there is a real range of rugged high mountains in it, two of them, Monte Cinto and Monte Rotondo, being nearly 9000 feet high, while three others, Pagliorba, Padre and d'Oro are over 7000 feet. The rocks of these ranges are primary and metamorphic, and the scenery is bold. Yet it is kindly and gracious for the forests are thick. On the peaks, and in the recesses of the loftier forests, a wild black sheep, the mufflon, can still be hunted. And the tumbling streams and rivers are full of trout. There are few better trout streams in Europe than the Golo, which runs into the sea on the east coast through a big salt-water lagoon called Biguglia. When I saw it the stream was in fine order, and I longed to get out of the train to throw a fly upon it. For the island is now so civilised that a railway runs from Bastia across the summit of the island by the towns of Corte and Vivario down to Ajaccio. But when I and my friend were there the train only ran to Corte. We had to drive from there across the summit to Vivario, whither the rail had reached, in the western slope of the hills. Corte sits queen-like on the summit of the island, and is quiet and ancient. Yet some day it will be, like Orezza with its strong iron waters, a health resort. The French go more and more to Corsica, and the intruding English have what is practically an English hotel at Ajaccio. There is another in the forests of Vizzavona.

It is a quick descent from the summit to Ajaccio, which lies smiling in its gulf, that is somewhat like one of the deep indentations of Puget Sound. We stayed there for a week and during that time took a diligence and went up to Vico. It was on this little forty-mile journey among the hills that I saw most of Corsica's character. And at first it was curiously melancholy to me. As we drove inland we met numbers of the peasants, men and women, and at first it seemed as if a great epidemic must have devastated the country. Almost every woman we saw was in black. But this comes from a habit that they have of wearing black for three years after any of their relatives die. Even in a healthy country (and the lowlands, or the plage of Corsica, is not healthy in summer) most families must lose a member in three years, and thus it happens that most of the women are in perpetual mourning. The solidarity of the family is great in Corsica. It must be or women would not renounce their natural and beautiful dress to adorn themselves with colours. It was curious to see at times some young girl not in mourning. I could not help thinking that she had an unfair advantage over her darkly-dressed fellows.

We came at last to Vico in the hills, and found it picturesque to the last degree, and quite equally unsanitary. It was at once beautifully picturesque and foully offensive. Nothing less than a tropical thunderstorm could have cleansed it. But none of its inhabitants minded. They loafed about the deadly streams of filth and were quite unconscious of anything disagreeable in the air. A Spanish village is purity itself to such a place as Vico. But then the proud and haughty Corsicans object to doing any work except upon their own fields. If an ordinance had been passed to cleanse Vico's streets and that dreadful main drain, its stream from the hills, it would have been necessary to import Italians to do it. For all hard labour outside mere tillage is done by them. I would willingly have employed a couple to clean up the little inn at which we stayed for the night. It would have been a public service.

In the morning my friend and I started on a little walk to a village higher in the hills called Renno. We went up a good open road, cut here and there through le maquis, the scrub or bush of Corsica. And as we went we got a good view of many little mountain villages, which hang for the most part on the slope of the hills, being neither in the valley nor on the summit. We were high enough to be among the chestnuts; vineyards there were none. And at last we came to Renno, and found the villagers taking a sad holiday. I spoke to them in bad Italian, and found that it seemed good Corsican to them, perhaps even classical Corsican, if there be such a thing, and learnt that there had been a funeral of a little child that morning. They proposed to do no more work that day. Most of the men were loafing along a wall by their little inn, and they were soon reinforced by many women. In a few minutes the village had almost forgotten the funeral in the excitement of seeing two strangers, foreigners, Englishmen. They told us that so far as they remember no foreigner, not even a Frenchman, had been there before. Their village was indeed lost to the world; they looked on Vico, evil-smelling Vico, as a great, fine town: Ajaccio was a distant and immense city. But no one from Renno had been there. It was indeed possible that most of the inhabitants had never seen the sea. There was something touching in this quaint and simple isolation, and the men were simple too. I invited the whole male population of the place to drink with me at the poor little cabaret. The drink they took (it was the only drink save some sour wine) was white brandy at ten centimes the glass. To make friends in this time-honoured way with the whole village cost me less than two francs. And I had to use my "Corsican" freely to satisfy in some small measure their curiosity about the world beyond le maquis, and beyond the sea. They asked me how it was that I, a stranger and an Englishman, spoke Corsican. To this I replied that it was spoken, though doubtless in a corrupt form, in the neighbouring mainland, Italy. And on hearing this they chattered volubly, being greatly excited on the difficult point as to how Italians had learnt it. It is a small world, and most of us are alike. Did not the lad from Pondicherry, the French settlement in Hindustan, to whom I spoke in French, ask me how it was I spoke "Pondicherry?"

Corsica certainly has a character of its own; it resembles no other island that I know. It is fertile, and might be more fertile yet if its native inhabitants chose to work. But the Corsican is haughty and indolent, he does not care to work in his forests or to do a hand's turn off his own family property. Even in that he grows no cereal crops to speak of; it is easier to sit and watch the olive ripen and the vineyards colour their fruit. They rear horses and cattle, asses and mules, and sometimes hunt in the hills for pigs or goats, or the wild black sheep. And even yet they hunt each other, for not even French law and French police can eradicate revenge from the Corsican heart. They are a curious subtle people, not at all like the French or the Italians. And, to speak the truth, they have some more unamiable characteristics than these, which lead them to hereditary blood feuds. It is said, I know not with what accuracy, that most of the mouchards, or spies, and the agents provocateurs of the French police, are Corsican by birth. But certainly Corsica has produced more than these, since it was the birthplace of Paoli and of Napoleon.



ON THE MATTERHORN

Owing to my having read very little Alpine literature, I have seen but few attempts to analyse the mental experiences of the novice who, for the first time, ascends any of the higher peaks. And having read nothing upon the subject I was naturally curious, while I was at Zermatt this last summer, as to what these experiences were. I may own frankly that the desire to find out had a great deal to do with my trying mountaineering. A writer, and especially a writer of fiction, has, I think, one plain duty always before him. He ought to know, and cannot refuse to learn, even at the cost of toil and trouble, all the ways of the human mind. And experience at second-hand can never be relied on. The average man is afraid of saying he was afraid. And the average climber is one who has long passed the interesting stage when he first faced the unknown. I was obviously a novice, and a green one, when I tried the Matterhorn. That I was such a novice is the only thing which makes me think my experience at all interesting from the psychological point of view. And to my mind that point of view is also the literary one.

On looking back I certainly believe I was very much afraid of the mountains in general and of the Matterhorn in particular. It is difficult, however, to say where fear begins and mere natural nervousness leaves off. Fear, after all, is often the note of warning sounded by a man's organism in the face of the unknown. It is hardly strange it should be felt upon the mountains. But if I was afraid of the mountains (and I thought that I was) I was certainly curious. During my first week at Zermatt I had done a good second-class peak, but had been told that the difference between the first and second class was prodigious. This naturally excited curiosity. And I began to feel that my curiosity could only be satisfied by climbing the Matterhorn. For one thing that mountain has a great name; for another it looks inaccessible. And it had only been done once that year. If I did it I should be the first Englishman on the summit for the season. And the guides were doubtful whether it would "go."

But, after all, was it not said by folks who climbed to the Schwartzsee that the mountain was really easy? Were not the slabs above the Shoulder roped? Did not processions go up it in the middle of the season? And yet it was now only the first of July and there was a good deal of new snow on the mountain. And why were the guides just a little doubtful? Perhaps they were doubtful of me; and yet Joseph Pollinger had taken me up three smaller peaks. I decided that I had hired him to do the thinking. But I could not make him do it all.

The day I had spent upon the Wellenkuppe had been a time of imagination, and I had seen the beauty of things. But from the Matterhorn I can eliminate the element of beauty. I saw very little beauty in it or from it. I had other things to do than to think of the sublime. But I could think of the ridiculous, and at one o'clock in the morning, when we started from the hut with a lantern, I said the whole proceeding was folly. I was a fool to be there. And down below me, far below me, glimmered the crevassed slopes of the Furgg Glacier. I grew callous and absorbed, and I shrugged my shoulders as the dawn came up. I did not care to turn my eyes to look upon the red rose glory of the lighted Dom and Taschhorn. Let them glow!

At the upper ice-filled hut we rested. The vastness of the mountain began to affect me. I saw by now that the Wellenkuppe was a little thing. The three thousand extra feet made all the difference. This was obviously beyond me, and I could never get to the summit. It was ridiculous of the Pollingers to think I could. I told them so quite crossly as we went on. Probably they had made a mistake; they would, no doubt, find it out on the Shoulder. It seemed rather hard that I should have to get there when it was so easy to turn back at once. But I said nothing more and climbed. My heart did its work well, and my head did not ache. This was a surprise to me, as I had looked for some sort of malaise above twelve thousand feet. As it did not come I stared at the big world about me. I viewed it all with a kind of anger and alarmed surprise. Where was I being taken to? I began to see they were taking me out of the realm of the usual. I was rapidly ascending into the unknown, and I did not like it in the least. If we fell from the arete we might not stop going for four thousand feet. Down below, a thin, blue line was a bergschrund that was capable of swallowing an army corps. That patch of bluish patina was a tumbled mass of seracs. The sloping glacier looked flat.

Then the guides said we were going slowly. I knew they meant that for me, of course, and I felt very angry with them. They consoled me by saying that we should soon be at the Shoulder, and that it would not take long to reach the summit. I did not believe them and I said I should never do it. But when we got to the Shoulder I was glad. I knew many turned back at that point. We sat down to rest. The guides talked their own German, not one word of which I could understand, so turned from them and looked at the vast upper wedge of the Matterhorn. It glowed red in the morning sun; it was red hot, vast, ponderous, and yet the lower mountain held it up as lightly as an ashen shaft holds up a bronze spear-head. It was so wonderfully shaped that it did not look big. But it did look diabolic. There was some infernal wizardry of cloud-making going on about that spear-head. The wind blew to us across the Zmutt Valley. Nevertheless, the wind above the Roof, as they call it, was blowing in every direction, and the live wisps of newborn cloud went in and out like the shuttles of a loom. I came to the conclusion that this was a particularly devilish, uncanny sort of show, and stared at it open-eyed. But I was comforted by the thought that the Pollingers were rapidly coming to the belief that this was not the sort of day to go any higher. I was quite angry when they declared we could do it easily. For I knew better, or my disturbed mind thought I did. This was the absolutely unknown to me, and their experience was nothing to my alarmed instincts. I was sure that my ancestors had lived on plains, and now I was dragging them into dangers that they knew nothing of. Nevertheless, I told the guides to go on. I spoke with a kind of eager interest and desperation. For, indeed, it was most appallingly interesting. We came to the slabs where the ropes made the Matterhorn so easy, as I had been told. I wished that some of those who believed this were with me.

But with the fixed ropes to lay hold of I climbed fast. I relinquished such holds upon solidity with reluctance. That yonder was the top, said my men, but for fully half a minute I declined to go any further. For it was quite obvious to me that I should never get down again. But again I shrugged my shoulders and went on. I might just as well do the whole thing. And sensation followed sensation. My mind was like a slow plate taking one photograph on top of the other. It was like wax, something new stamped out the last minute's impression. I heard my guides telling me that we must get to the summit because the people in Zermatt would be looking through telescopes. I did not care how many people looked through telescopes. So far as I was concerned the moon-men might be doing the same. I was one of three balancing fools on a rope.

And then we came to the heavy snow on the little five-fold curving arete that is the summit. Within a stone's throw of the top I declared again that I was quite high enough to satisfy me, but with a little more persuasion I went across the last three-foot ridge of snow, reached the top and sat down.

The folks at Zermatt were staring, no doubt, but I had nothing to do with them. Let them look if they wished to. For it was impossible to get to the top, and I was there. It was far more impossible to get down, and we were going to try. That was interesting. I had never been so interested before. For though I hoped we should succeed I did not think it likely. So I took in what I could, while I could, and stared at the visible anatomy of the Mischabel and the patina-stained floor of the white world with intense, yet aloof, interest. After a mere five minutes' rest we started on our ridiculous errand. But though I was as sure in my mind that we should not get down as I had been that we should not get up, there was an instant reversal of feeling. My instincts had been trying to prevent my ascending; they were eagerly bent on descending. I did not mind going down each difficult place, for I was going back into the known. Every step took me nearer the usual. I was going home to humanity. These mountains were cold company; they were indifferent. I was close up against cold original causes, which did not come to me mitigated and warmed by human contact or the breath of a city. I had had enough of them.

There are gaps in my memory; strange lacunae. I remember the Roof, the slabs, the big snow patch above the Shoulder. Much that comes between I know nothing of. But the snow-patch is burnt into my mind, for though it was but a hundred metres across it took us half-an-hour's slow care to get down it. Without the stakes set in it and the reserve rope it would have been almost impossible. It only gradually dawned on me that this care was needed to prevent the whole snow-field from coming away with us. I breathed again on rock. But the little couloirs that we had crossed coming up were now dangerous. I threw a handful of snow into several, and the snow that lay there quietly whispered, moved, rustled, hissed like snakes, and went away. But I could hardly realise that there was danger here or there. There was, of course, danger to come, yonder, round the corner of some rock. But the guides were very careful and a little anxious. It dawned on me, as I watched them with a set mind, that this was rather a bad day for the Matterhorn.

The distances now seemed appalling. After hours of work I looked round and saw the wedge stand up just over me. It made me irritable. When, in the name of Heaven, were we coming to the upper hut? When we did at last get there I began to feel that by happy chance we might really reach Zermatt again after all.

Once more I had vowed a thousand times that I would never climb again. But I know I shall, though I hardly know why. It is not that the fatigue is so good for the body that can endure it. Nor is it the mere sight of the wonders of Nature. The very thing that is terrifying is the attraction, for the unknown calls us always.

But if there is a great pleasure, and a terrible pleasure, in coming into (and out of) the unknown, it is intensified by the fact that one is learning what is in one's self. It is a curious fact that writers seem to have done a great deal of climbing. Many of the first explorers among the higher Alps may not unjustly be classed among men of letters, and some of them, no doubt, went on a double errand. They learnt something of the unknown in two ways.



AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS

All Zurich turned out to see the procession that was a mile long and overlapped, and went past double, going opposite ways, and the skies were blue as amethyst, and the lake was like the heavens, while underfoot the white dust lay thick until the growing, hurrying crowd sent it flying. All trades, with banners and bands and emblems, were represented; there were iron workers, tin workers, gardeners, women and children. One beautiful young girl in a cap of liberty waved a red banner to Freedom among the applause of thousands. For there were eight thousand in the procession, and the spectators were the half of this busy Canton making Sunday holiday. At the end of the procession we rested in the Cantonal Schulplatz, and Grealig spoke, and then Volders, the violent, strong-voiced Belgian, who called for la lutte, and looked most capable of fighting. He is now dead.

And on the morrow, at the opening of the many-tongued Congress, the fighting and confusion began and lasted a long, long time. For after some usual business and congratulations the usual fight about the Anarchists commenced. It all turned on the invitation, which was worded in a broad way, so broad as to catch the English Trades Unions, who fear Socialism as they do the devil, and thus let in Anarchists claiming to represent trades become corporate by union.

The long hall, decorated by Saint Marx and many flags, quickly filled with an incongruous mass of four hundred delegates, and the gallery were soon yelling. Bebel, who kept in the background and pulled the strings, proposed a limiting amendment about "political action" which the Anarchists maintained includes revolutionary force. This was the signal for the fight. Landauer, a German, young, long, thin and enthusiastic, made a fine speech in defence of the Anarchists. Then Mowbray of the English backed him up. I was then in the gallery and saw the mass surge here and there. Adler of the Austrians strove for peace with outstretched arms among the crowd, dividing angry and bitter men. But he was overborne and blows were struck. The Anarchists were expelled. Only one man was seriously hurt, but those thrown out were bitter at their expulsion, and on the morrow the row began again.

On the platform were the president and vice-president, and the interpreters and others. These interpreters are mostly violent partisans and don't conceal it. A speech they like they deliver with real energy, rasping in the points. They are not above private interpretations; they were as liberal as Sir Thomas Urquhart when he translated Rabelais not in the interests of decency. When they hated a speaker they mangled and compressed him. There was a great uproar when Gillies, a German, but one of the English deputation, insisted on translating his first speech into German. The interpreters and others vowed he would make another and different one, but he stuck to his point and raised the very devil among the Germans of the Parliamentary Socialist party who wanted to dispute the Anarchist delegates' credentials and have them definitely "chucked." They howled and roared and shook their fists, and the French president shrieked for order. But at times his bell was a faint tinkle, like a far sheep-bell on distant hills. He shouted unheard and looked in vain for a break. For the Germans were accused of meanness; it was simply a desire to keep out the younger, more open, most alive of the workers, those who admired not their methods and looked on them as they did on Eugene Richter.

Then at last the English delegation, who as a body were in favour of turning the Anarchists out, rose and yelled for the closure, vowing they would leave until real business was reached if some decision wasn't come to; and that had some effect. The yells of "Cloture, cloture!" dominated all else, and it was finally voted among frantic disorder, the French and Dutch standing uproarious against eighteen nationalities. For on important points they vote so. And in this there is great cunning, for the organisers hold pocket boroughs among the Swiss, and Bulgarians, and Servians and other European kidlings of the Balkans. So one delegate may equal a hundred; Servia and Bulgaria may outvote France; a solitary Russian hold ninety-two Germans in check.

Before this they turned out a Polish girl with unsigned credentials. She made a good speech and was gallantly supported, but in the end failed. And when all the putting out was done there was an appeal for unanimity. No one laughed, however, and then Bebel came from behind with a proposal that seeing so much time had been wasted the articles of the agenda should be submitted to the various committees first. So this morning is a morning off and there is peace at anyrate among the mass of the delegates.

In all this it is excessively easy to be unjust, to misjudge and to go wrong. The man who is ready with a priori opinions about all forms and means and ends of Socialism will smile if he be kindly and sneer if he be not. But most of these people are in earnest. If they represent nothing else, and however they disagree and quarrel, they do represent an enormous amount of real discontent. "I protest" is often in their mouths; as the president yells "Monsieur, vous n'avez pas la parole" they stand in the benches and protest again in acute screams. It is under extraordinary difficulties that the movement is being carried forward. Marx, when he started this internationalism, can hardly have recognised the supreme difficulties that the differing tongues alone offer to united action. In many a large assembly there is frequent misconception, but here are three main languages, and many of the delegates understand neither English, German nor French.

And under the broad top currents of jealousy are the secret unmeasured tendencies of enmity or rivalry of ancient jealousy. To explain one man's vote we must remember that So-and-so threw a glass of absinthe in his face ten years ago in a Paris restaurant; that another was kicked in Soho; that another got work over the head of a friend.

So the thing goes on, but whether their outlook be wide or narrow, personal or impersonal, they work in their way and something is really done.

But for deadly earnestness commend me to the party with the unfortunate name of Anarchists. The party headed by Landauer and Werner issued invitations in the Tonhalle to the delegates and others, to come to the Kasino Aussersehl, where they would protest against the non-reception of their mandates. I went there with an English delegate. We entered a long hall with a stage and scenery at the end. All the tables were full of a very quiet crowd drinking most harmless red wine. I sat near Landauer. He is a very nervous, keen, eager young fellow, with the thin, well-marked eyebrows in a curve which perhaps show the revolutionary or at the least the man in revolt. But his general aspect and that of his immediate friends and colleagues is extremely gentle and mild; this no one can help marking.

The proceedings began with a long speech by Werner and were continued by a Dutch journalist, who took the contrary side but was listened to with exemplary patience. He was controverted by Domela Niewenhuis, the leader of the Dutch, who looks a mediaeval saint but speaks with great vigour and some humour.

The most noticeable feature of this revolutionary meeting was its extreme peace and the great firmness with which every attempt at noise or interruption was put down. The only really violent speech made during the evening was by a fair Italian, who called the German Parliamentary Socialist "Borghesi" and recommended their immediate extinction by all means within the power of those who objected to their methods. Landauer, their revolutionary leader, spoke after him, and though greatly excited was not particularly violent. I talked with him the morning after and endeavoured to explain to him why the English workers were more conservative and more ready to trust to constitutional methods of enforcing their views. For it is the triple combination of long hours, low wages and militarism that makes the German violent and impatient of the slow order of change recommended by the Parliamentarians, who, so far, have done nothing.



AT LAS PALMAS

On a map the Canary Islands look like seven irregular fish scales, and of these Grand Canary is a cycloid scale. For it is round and has deep folds or barrancas in it, running from its highest point in the middle. Like all the other islands it is a volcanic ash pile, or fire and cinder heap, cut and scarped by its rain storms of winter till all valleys seem to run to the centre. With a shovel of ashes and a watering-pot one could easily make a copy in miniature of the island, and at the first blush it seems when one lands at Las Palmas that one has come to the cinder and sand dumping ground of all the world, an enlarged edition of Mr Boffin's dust heaps, a kind of gigantic and glorified Harmony Jail. There is no more disillusioning place in the world to land in by daytime. The port is under the shelter of the Isleta, a barren cindery satellite of Grand Canary joined to the main island by an isthmus of yellow sand-dunes. The roads are dust; dust flies in a ceaseless wind; unhappy palms by the roads are grey with dust; it would at first seem impossible to eat anything but an egg without getting one's teeth full of grit. And yet after all one sees that there are compensations in the sun. I said to a man who managed a big hotel, "This is a hideous place;" and he answered cheerfully, "Yes, isn't it?" And he added, "We have only got the climate." So might a man say, "I've not much ready money, but I've a million or two in Consols." I understood it by-and-by. And after all Las Palmas is not all the island, nor is its evil-mannered port. The country is a country of vines behind the sand and cinder ramparts of the city, and if one sees no running water, or sees it rarely, the hard-working Canarienses have built tanks to save the rain, and they bring streams in flumes from the inner hills that rise six thousand feet above the sea. They grow vines and sugar and cultivate the cochineal insect, which looks like a loathsome disease (as indeed it is) upon the swarth cactus or tunera which it feeds on. And the islands grow tobacco. Las Palmas is after all only the emporium of Grand Canary and a coaling station for steamers to South Africa and the West Coast and South America. It also takes invalids and turns out good work even among consumptives, for there is power in its sun and dry air.

Its people are Spanish, but Spanish with a difference. The ancient Guanches, now utterly extinct as a people, have left traces of their blood and influence and character. Even now the poor Canary folk naturally live in caves. They dig a hole in a rock, or enlarge a hollow, and hang a sack before the hole, and, behold, they possess a house. Not fifty yards from the big old fort at the back of the town the cliffs are all full of people as a sandstone quarry is sometimes full of sand martins. The caves with doors pay taxes, it is said, but those with no more than a sack escape anything in the shape of a direct tax. To escape taxes altogether in any country under Spain is impossible. The octroi or fielato sees to that.

For the most part Las Palmas to English people is no more than a sanatorium. They come to the Islands to get well and go away knowing as much of the people as they knew before. And indeed the climate is one that makes sitting in a big cane chair much easier than walking even a hundred yards. But the English for that matter do not trouble greatly about the customs or conditions of any foreigners. They are foreigners, Spaniards, strangers. It is easy to sit in the garden of a big hotel surrounded by one's own compatriots and ignore the fact that the Canary Islands do not belong to us. That they do not is perhaps a grievance of a sort. One is pleased to remember that Nelson made a bold attempt to take the city of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, even though he was wounded and failed. For no more surprising piece of audacity ever entered an English head. There was no more disgrace in his failing than there would be in failing to take the moon. And after all, some day, no doubt, the English will buy or steal a Canary Island. There is a lingering suspicion among us all that no island ought to belong to any other nation, unless indeed it is the United States. With an enterprising people these cinder heaps would be less heavily taxed and more prosperous. For the prosperity of Las Palmas itself is much a matter of coaling. And the islands have had commercial crisis after commercial crisis as wine rose in price and fell, as cochineal had its vain struggle with chemical dyes. Now its chief hold is the banana.

My first walk at Las Palmas was through the port to the Isleta. I went with a Scotchman who talked Spanish like a native and astounded two small boys who volunteered to guide us where no guide was needed. The begging, as in all Spanish places, is a pest, a nuisance, a very desolation. "Give a penny, give a penny," varied by a tremendous rise to "Give a shilling," is the cry of all the children. Among Spaniards it is no disgrace to beg. While in the cathedral one day two of us were surrounded by a gang of acolytes in their church dress who begged ceaselessly, unreproved by any priest. These two boys on the Isleta having met someone who spoke Spanish left us to our own devices after having received a penny. And we went on until we were stayed by sentries. For the Isleta is now a powerful fort. It was made so at the time of the Spanish-American War, and no strangers are allowed to see it. So we turned aside and walked miles by a barbed wire fence, among fired rocks and cinders, where never a blade of grass grew. The Isleta is the latest volcano in Grand Canary, and except in certain states of the atmosphere it is utterly and barrenly hideous. Only when one sees it from afar, when the sun is setting and the white sea is aflame, does it become beautiful. Certainly Las Palmas is not lovely.

And yet there is one beauty at Las Palmas, a beauty that none of the natives can appreciate and few of the visitors ever see. It is a kind of beauty which demands a certain training in perceiving the beautiful. There are some folks in this world who cannot perceive the beauty of a sunset reflected in the mud of a tidal river at the ebb. They have so keen a sense of the ugliness of mud that they fail to see the reflections of gold and pink shining on the wet surface. It is so with sand, and Las Palmas has some of the greatest and most living sand-dunes in the world. And not only does it owe its one great beauty to the sand, it owes its prosperity to it as well. Yet folks curse its great folded dunes, which by blocking the channel between the main island and the Isleta have created the sheltered Puerto de la Luz, where all its shipping lies in security from the great seas breaking in Confital Bay. These dunes rise two hundred feet at least, and for ever creep and shift and move in the draught of keen air blowing north and north-west. In the sunlight (and it is on them the sunlight seems most to fall) they shine sleekly and appear to have a certain pleasant and silky texture from afar. But as we walk towards them the light gets stronger, almost intolerably strong, and when one is among them they deceive the eye so that distances seem doubled. And they lie and move in the wind. Day after day I watched them, and walked upon them, and on no two days were they alike; their contours changed perpetually, changed beneath one's eyes like yellow drifting snow. They advanced in walls, and the leeward scarp of these walls was of mathematical exactness. As the wind blew the sands moved, a million grains were set in motion, so that at times the surface was like a low cloud of sand driving south-east. In the lee of the greater dunes were carven hollows, and here the sand-clouds moved in faint shadows. A gust of wind made one look up into the clear sky for clouds where there were none. The motion of the sand was like shot silk. Now and again we came to a vast hollow, a smooth crater, a cup, and from its bottom nothing was visible but the skyline and the sky. Again we saw over the blazing yellow ridge sudden white roofs of the Puerto and the masts of ships, and then a streak of blue more intense than ever because of the red yellow of the sand. And all the time the dunes moved, lived and marched south-east, while the sands rose up out of the sea of the windy bay and marched overland. The sand itself was very dry, very fine, so fine indeed that when it trickled through the fingers it felt like fine warm silk. No particle adhered to another. As I raked it through my fingers the sand ran in strange, enticing curves, each pouring stream finely lined, as if it was woven of curious fibres, making a wonderful design of interlacing columns. And deep beneath the surface it held the heat of yesterday.

To sit upon, within, these dunes and see the wind dance and the sand pour had a strange fascination for me. I lost the sense of time and yet had it impressed upon me. The march of the sand was slow and yet fast; there was a strange sense of inevitability about it; each grain was alive, moving, bent on going south-east. There was silence and yet an infinite sense of motion; no life and yet a sense of living. The sand came up from the sea, marched solemnly and descended into the sea again. The two seas were two eternities; that narrow neck of sand was life. Distances grew great in the sun and the glare; it was a desert and a solitude, and yet close at hand were all the works of man. I often sat in the folds of the dunes and soaked in the sunshine as I was lost to the world.

And beyond it all was Confital Bay; there I forgot that Las Palmas was ugly, a bastard child of Spanish mis-rule and modern commerce, for the curve of the bay and its sands and boulder beach to the eastward were wonderful. For though Confital is but a few steps across the long sand spit to leeward of which the commercial port lies, it might be a thousand miles away as it faces the wind and has its own quiet and its own glory of colour. The sea tumbles in upon a beach of shingle and sand and is for ever in foam, and the colour of it is tropical. Away to the left the hills above Banyodero and Guia are for the most part shadowy with clouds. Often they are hidden, swathed in mist to the breakers at their feet. And yet the sun shines on Confital and both bays, and on the Isleta, which is red and yellow and a fine atmospheric blue away towards Point Confital, where the sea thunders for ever and breaks in high foam like a breaking geyser. On the beach at one's feet often lie Portuguese men-of-war, thrown up by the sea. They are wonderful purple and blue, and very poisonous to touch, as so many beautiful things of the sea are. One whole day was greatly spoiled to me by handling one of them carelessly. My hands smarted furiously, and when I sucked an aching finger, after washing it in the sea, the poison transferred itself to my tongue and I had hardly voice left to swear with at a wandering band of young beggars from the Puerto. But then neither swearing, nor entreaty, nor indifference will send Spanish beggars away. They are to be borne with like flies, or mosquitoes, or bad weather, and only patience may survive them. But for them and for cruelty to animals Spain and Spain's dependencies might make a better harvest out of travellers. One may indeed imagine after all that nothing but accident or a sense of desperation might land and keep one at Las Palmas. I would as soon stay there for a long time as I would deliberately get out of a Union Pacific overland train at Laramie Junction and put down my stakes in that dusty and bedevilled sand and alkali hell. And yet there is the climate at Las Palmas. And out of it are the sand-dunes and Confital Bay.



THE TERRACINA ROAD

Nowadays the traveller gets into the train at Rome and goes south by express. He sees a little of the wide and waste Campagna, sees a few of the broken arches of the mighty aqueducts which brought water to the Imperial city so long ago, but he is not steeped in the soil; he misses the best, because he is living wholly in the present. The beauty of Italy, its mere outward beauty, is one thing; the ancient spirit of the past brooding in desolate places is another. And the road which runs from Terracina south by sullen Fondi, by broken and romantic Itri and Formia of the Gaetan Gulf, is full at once of natural beauty and the strange influences of the past. It is To-day and Yester-day and Long Ago; the age of the ancient Romans and the Samnites with whom they warred is mingled with stories of Fra Diavolo and piratical Saracens. And To-day marches two and two in the stalwart figures of twin carabinieri upon dangerous roads, even yet not wholly without some danger from brigands. These carabinieri (there are never less than two together) represent law and order and authority in parts where the law is hated, where order is unsettled, where authority means those who tax salt and everything that the rich or poor consume. And down that ancient Appian Way, made by Appius Claudius three centuries before the Christian era, there are many poor, and poor of a sullen mind, differing much from the laughter-loving lazzaroni of Naples. I saw many of them: they belonged still to a conquered Samnium. Or so it seemed to me.

The train now runs from Rome to Velletri, and on to Terracina. The Sabine and Alban Mountains are upon the left soon after leaving the city. Further south are the Volscian Hills. Velletri is an old city of the Volscians subdued by Rome even before Samnium. The Appian Way and the rail soon run across the Pontine marshes, scourged by malaria at all seasons of the year but winter. Down past Piperno the Monte Circello is visible. This was the fabled seat and grove and palace of Circe the enchantress. One might imagine that her influence has not departed with her ruined shrine. Fear and desolation and degradation exist in scenes of exquisite and silent beauty. From Circello's height one sees Mount Vesuvius, the dome of St Peter's, the islands in the bay of Naples. Below, to the south-east, lies Terracina; on its high rock the arched ruins of the palace of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who conquered Odoacer and won Italy, ruling it with justice after he had slain Odoacer at Ravenna with his own hand.

I got to Terracina late at night one January, and though I own that things past touch me with no such sense of sympathy as things yet to be, my heart beat a little faster as I drove in the darkness through this ancient Anxur, once a stronghold of the Volscians. Here too I left the railway and the southern road was before me. Terracina was touched with literary memories; Washington Irving had written about that very same old inn at Terracina to which I was going, that inn which poor deceived Baedeker called Grand Hotel Royal in small capitals. I was among the Volscians, in the Appian Way, in the country of brigands, with the spirit of Irving. And suddenly I drove across rough paving stones in the heavy shadows of vast corridors, and was greeted by a feeble and broken-down old landlord, who wished the noblest signor of them all, my undistinguished self, all good things. Poor Francia was the very spirit of a deserted landlord. I imagined that he might have remembered prosperous days before the railway through Monte Cassino and Sparanise robbed Terracina of her robber's dues from south-bound travellers. His vast hotel, entered meanly by a little hall, was dimly lighted by candles. With another feeble creature, once a man, he preceded me, and speaking poor French said he had had my letter and had prepared me the best apartment in his house. We climbed stone staircases as one might climb the Pyramids, wandered on through resounding and ghostly corridors, and finally came to a room as vast as a quarry and almost as chilly as a catacomb. When he placed the candle on a cold slab of a table and withdrew with many bows I could have imagined myself a lost spirit. There was just sufficient light to see the darkness. The room was a kind of tragedy in itself; the floor was stone; a little bed in one far distant corner was only to be discovered by travel. It was a long walk to the window. Outside I saw white foam breaking in the harbour now silted up and wholly useless.

I dined that night in another hall which could have accommodated a hundred. I was lost in shadows. But then I was a shadow among shades. This was the past indeed, an ancient world. And after dinner, at last, I got a bath. It took me two hours to get it, and when it came it was nothing more than a great kettle for boiling fish in. I knew it was that by the smell. I rejected it for a basin which was almost as large as an English saucer for a breakfast cup. And then I slept. I felt that I was in a tomb, sleeping with my fathers. It was a kind of unexpected resurrection to wake and find daylight about me.

I had meant to stay for a little while at Terracina, but somehow I took a kind of "scunner" at this poor old hotel of magnificent distances and the lingering, doddering, unwashed old men who acted as chambermaids. Perhaps, too, the fish kettle as a bath was a discouragement. No bath at all can be put up with in course of time, but a fish kettle invited me to be clean and yet did not allow me to smell so. I went down to my prehistoric landlord and requested him to get me a carriage to go in to Formia, where I should be once more in touch with the rail. I instructed him to get it for me at a reasonable price, and that price I knew to be about twenty lire or francs. For the first time in my Italian experiences I had come across a hotel-keeper who was not in league with the owners of carriages. I was soon made aware of this by overhearing an awful uproar in the big outside corridor. I lighted a cigarette and went out to find the landlord and the man of carriages, a very black and hairy brigand, enjoying themselves as only southerners can when they are making a bargain or combinazione. The old landlord brisked up wonderfully at the prospect of such a struggle. It doubtless reminded him of days long past. It made his sluggish blood flow. I believe that he would not have missed the excitement even to pocket a large commission from his opponent. I was so rare a bird and he had not seen a traveller since heaven knows when. My Italian is poor but I understood some of the uproar. The man of carriages presumed that I was a noble gentleman who desired the best and would be ready to pay for it. The landlord retorted that even if I was a prince and a millionaire, both of which seemed likely, it was no reason I should be robbed. He suggested fifteen lire, and the outraged brigand shrieked and demanded forty. For an hour they wrangled and haggled and swore. First one made believe to go, and then the other. They came up and came down franc by franc. More than once any northerner would have anticipated bloodshed. They struggled and beat the palms of their hands with outstretched fingers. It took them half an hour to quarrel over the last two francs. And finally it was settled that the noble prince and millionaire, then leaning against the wall smoking cigarettes, was to pay twenty-two lire and to give a pourboire. They shook hands over it and beamed. My old landlord wiped his brow and communicated the result to me with tears of pride. I thanked him for his care of my interests and paid him his modest bill at once. He entreated me to speak well of his hotel, the Albergo Reale, and really I have done my best.

The brigand furnished me with a decent pair of horses—decent at anyrate for Italy—and I left for Formia before noon. Now I was no longer on the railway, but on the real road, the Appian Way, and I felt in a strange dream, such as might well come to one on a spot where ancient Rome, the age of the Goth, and mediaeval Italy and modern times mingled. By the road were fragments of Roman tombs; at Torre dell' Epitafia was the ancient southern boundary of the Papal States; in reedy marshes by the road, and near the sea, were herds of huge black buffalo. And the sun shone very brightly for all that it was winter; the distances were fine blue; the sea sparkled, and the earth even then showed its fertility.

Eleven miles from Terracina we drove into Fondi, and the sky clouded over, as indeed it should have done, for Fondi is a gloomy and unhappy, a sullen and unfortunate-looking town. Once it was a noted haunt of brigands, and even yet, as the sullen peasants stand about its one great street, which is still the Appian Way, they look as if they regretted not to be able to seize me and take me to the hills to hold me to ransom. But Fondi, gloomiest of towns, has other stories than those of the brethren of Fra Diavolo. There is a castle in the town, once the property of the Colonnas, and in the sixteenth century this palace was attacked by a pirate, Barbarossa, a Turk and a daring one. His object was to capture Countess Giulia Gonzaga for the hareem of the Sultan. He failed but played havoc among its inhabitants and burnt part of the town. It was rebuilt and burnt again by the Turks in 1594.

We rushed through the latter part of the gloomy town at a gallop. I was glad to see the last of it and get into the clear air. Then my horses climbed the long slope of the Monte St Andrea, where the steep road is cut through hills, while I walked. And then as evening came on we swept down into Itri. This too was gloomy, but not, like Fondi, built upon a flat. This shadowy wreck of ancient times lies on hills and among them. It has an air of mountain savagery. It looks like a ruined mediaeval fortress. Broken archways, once part of the Appian Way, are made into substructures for ragged, ruinous modern houses. The place is peaked and pined, desolate, hungry and savage. In it was born Fra Diavolo, who was brigand, soldier and political servant to Cardinal Ruffo when the French Republic, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, invaded the Kingdom of Naples. Once he was lord of the country from the Garigliano to Postella; he even interrupted all communications between Naples and Rome. He was sentenced to death and a price set on his head. Finally he was shot at Baronissi. In such a country one might well believe in the wildest legends of his career.

And now the night fell and my driver drove fast. He even engaged in a wild race with another vehicle, entirely careless of my safety or his own. The pace we drove at put my Italian out of my head, for foreign languages require a certain calmness of spirit in me. I could remember nothing but fine Italian oaths, and these he doubtless took to mean that I wished him to win. And win we did by a neck as we came to the dazio consume, the octroi post outside Formia. And below me I saw Formia's lights, at the foot of the hill, and the Bay of Gaeta stretched out before me.

That night I slept in a little Italian inn by the verge of the quiet sea. There also, as at Terracina, ancient and doddering men acted as chambermaids. They wandered in with mattresses and sheets, until I wondered where the women were and what they did. And outside was a fountain where Formia drew water, as it seemed, all the night, chattering of heaven knows what. For Formia is a busy and beautiful little town. On the north side it is sheltered by a high range of hills; on the lower slopes are grown oranges and lemons and pomegranates; there also are olive-groves and vineyards. I stayed a day among the Formian folk, and then Naples, which one can almost see from the terraces above the town, drew me south. At the Villa Caposele one can see Gaeta itself to the south and Ischia in the blue sea, Casamicciola facing one. I remember how the Italian nature came out when I arranged to go to the station to take the train for Sparanise. I had but little baggage and it was put in a truck for me by the landlord of the Hotel dei Fiori. I walked into the station and the boy who pulled the truck followed. As he came up the little slope to the station I saw that eight or ten others were pretending to help him, and I knew that they would inevitably want some pence for assisting. In a few moments I was surrounded by the eager crowd. "Signor, I pushed behind!" "And, signor, so did I!" "And oh, but it was hard work, signor!" And everyone who could have had a finger on the little truck wanted his finger paid. They were insistent, clamorous, and at the same time curious to see how the stray foreigner would take it. I perceived gleams of humour in them, and to their disappointment, yet to their immense delight, for the Italian admires a degree of shrewdness, I stared them all over and burst into laughter. They saw at once that the game was up, and they shrieked with laughter at their own discomfiture. I gave the boy with the truck his lira, dropped an extra ten centesimi into his palm, and said suddenly, "Scappate via!" They gave one shout more of laughter and ran down the hill. And as for me, I got into the train and went to old quarters of mine in Naples. But I was glad to have been off the beaten track for once.



A SNOW-GRIND

Perhaps it is not wholly an advantage that most Alpine literature has been done by experts in climbing, by men who have climbed till climbing is second nature and they see Nature through their snow-goggles as something to be circumvented. That this is the attitude of most mountaineers is tolerably obvious. And though much that is good has been written about the Alps, and some that is, from some points of view, even surpassingly so, most of it is a proof that climbing is a deal easier than writing. Who in reading books of mountain adventure and exploration has not come across machine-made bits of description which are as inspiring as any lumber yard? For my own part, I seldom read my Alpine author when he goes out of his gymnastic way to express admiration for the scenery. It is usually a pumped-up admiration. I am inclined to say that it is unnatural. I am almost ready to go so far as to say that it is wholly out of place. In my own humble opinion, very little above the snow-line is truly beautiful. It is often desolate, sometimes intolerably grand and savage, but lovely it is very rarely. It is perhaps against human nature to be there at all. There is nothing to be got there but health, which flies from us in the city. If life were wholly natural, and men lived in the open air, I think that few would take to climbing. And yet now it has become a passion with many. There are few who will not tell you they do it on account of the beauty of the upper world. Frankly, I do not believe them, and think they are deceived. I would as willingly credit a fox-hunter if he told me he hunted on account of the beauty of midland landscapes in thaw-time.

And yet one climbs. I do it myself whenever I can afford it. I believe I do it because Nature says "You sha'n't." She puts up obstacles. It is not in man to endure such. He will do everything that can be done by endurance. For out of endurance comes a massive sense of satisfaction that nothing can equal. If any healthy man who cannot afford to climb and knows not Switzerland wishes to experience something of the feeling that comes to a climber at the end of his day, let him reckon up how far he can walk and then do twice as much. Upon the Alps man is always doing twice as much as he appears able to do. He not only scouts Nature's obstacles, but discovers that the obstacles of habit in himself are as nothing. For man is the most enduring animal on the earth. He only begins to draw upon his reserves when a thing becomes what he might call impossible.

But this is but talk, a kind of preliminary, equivalent in its way to preparing for an Alpine walk. As for myself, I profess to be little more than a greenhorn above the snow-line. I have done but little and may do but little more. Yet there are so many that have done nothing that the plain account of a plain and long Alpine pass may interest them. I will take one of the easiest, the Schwartzberg-Weissthor, and walk it with them and with a friend of mine and two well-known guides.

The Schwartzberg-Weissthor, a pass from Zermatt to Mattmark in the Saas Valley, is indeed easy. It is nothing more than a long "snow-grind," as mountaineers say. It is supposed to take ten hours, and it can certainly be done in the time by guides. But then guides can always go twice as fast as any but the first flight of amateurs. My companion, though an excellent and well-known mountaineer, took cognisance of the fact that I was not in first-class training. And I must say for him that he is not one of those who think of the Alps as no more than a cinder track to try one's endurance. He was never in a hurry, and was always willing to stay and instruct me in what I ought to admire. It is perhaps not strange that a long walk in high altitudes does not always leave one in a condition to know that without a finger-post. Sometimes he and I sat and wrangled on the edge of a crevasse while I denied that there was anything to admire at all. Indeed, he and I have often quarrelled on the edge of a precipice about matters of mountain aesthetics.

We left Zermatt in the afternoon and walked up to the Riffelhaus, which is usually the starting-point for any of the passes to Macugnaga, or for Monte Rosa or the Lyskamm. It was warm work walking through the close pine woods. In Switzerland, where all is climbing, one does what would be considered a great climb in England in the most casual way. For after all the Riffelhaus is more than 3000 feet above Zermatt, as high, let us say, as Helvellyn above Ullswater. But then 3000 feet in the Alps is a mere preface. We dined at the little hotel, and I went to bed early. For early rising is the one necessary thing when going upon snow. It is the most disagreeable part about climbing, and perhaps the one thing which does most good. In England, in London and in towns, men get into deadly grooves of habit. To break these habits and shake one's self clear of them is the great thing for health. The disagreeables of climbing are many, but the reward afterwards is great. To lie in bed the next morning after having walked for twenty hours is a real luxury. But, nevertheless, to rise at half-past one and wash in cold water before one stumbles downstairs into a black dining-room, lighted by a single candle, is not all that it might be at the moment. Every time I do it I swear sulkily that I will never, never do it again. It is obvious to me that no one but an utter fool would ever climb anything higher than Primrose Hill, and only a sullen determination not to be bested by my own self makes me get out of bed and downstairs at all. I am only a human being by the time the sleepy waiter has given me my coffee. After drinking it and taking a roll and some butter I went into the passage and found O—— sitting on the stairs putting his boots on. He too was silent save for a little muttered swearing. It is always hard to get off camp before dawn. When O—— had finished his breakfast we found the guides waiting for us with a lantern, and we started on our walk by two o'clock or a little later. The guides at anyrate were cheerful enough but quiet. I myself became more and more like a human being, and when we got to the Rothe Boden, from which in daylight there is a wonderful view of the Alps from the Lyskamm to the Weisshorn, I was quite alive and equal to most things, even to cutting a joke without bitterness. For the most part in these early hours I spend the time considering my own folly. It is perhaps a good mental exercise.

It was even now utterly dark. The huge bulwark of the Breithorn rose opposite to us like a great shadow. Monte Rosa was very faintly lighted by the approach of dawn. The mighty pyramid of the solitary Matterhorn had yet no touch of red fire upon it. And presently one of the guides said "Look!" and looking at the Matterhorn we presently perceived that two parties were climbing it from the Zermatt side; we saw their lanterns moving with almost intolerable slowness. And far across the great ice river of the Gorner Glacier we saw other and nearer and brighter lanterns going from the Betemps Hut on the Untere Plattje. One party was going for Monte Rosa, another for the Lyskamm Joch. We knew that they could see us too. But these little lantern lights upon the vast expanse of snow looked very strange and lonely and very human. We seemed small ourselves, we were like glow-worms, like wounded fire-flies crawling on a plain. And still we saw these little climbing lights upon the Matterhorn. One party was close to the lower hut, another was beginning to near the old hut, twelve thousand feet high. Then and all of a sudden the lights went out. There was a strange red glow upon the Matterhorn, a glow which most people, as victims of tradition, call beautiful. As a matter of fact the colour of dawn upon the rock of the Cervin is not truly a beautiful colour. It is a hard and brick-dusty red, very different from the snow fire seen on true snow peaks. Yet the scene was fine and majestic, and cold and dreadful, solitary and non-human. This fine inhumanity of the mountains is their chief quality to me. The sea is always more human; it moves, it breathes, it seems alive. I have been alone at sea in the Channel and yet never felt quite alone. The human water lapped at the planks of my boat. I knew the sea was the pathway of the world. But on the mountains nothing moves at night. There even stones do not fall; there are no thunders of avalanches; no sudden and awful crash of an ice-fall. Even when the sun is hot and the mountains waken a little these motions seem accidents. And the perpetual motion of a glacier has something about it which is cruelly inevitable, bestial, diabolic. No, upon the mountains one is swung clear of one's fellow-creatures; one is adrift; it is another world; it gives fresh views of the warm world of man.

Now we plunged downwards towards the Gadmen, whence the Monte Rosa track branches off. We went along rock, now in daylight, till we came on ice, and went forward to the Stocknubel, a little resting-place at the base of the Stockhorn. Here the guides made us rest and eat. Swiss guides are, when they are good, the best of men, and ours were of the best. The two young Pollingers of St Niklaus, Joseph and Alois, are known now by all climbers. I am pleased to think they are my friends. I wish I was as strong as either and had as healthy an appetite. As we sat on rock and ate cold meats and other horrible and indigestible matters, washed down by wine and water, we saw another party come after us, an old and ragged guide with two strange little figures of adventurous Frenchmen, clad in knickerbockers and carrying tourist's alpenstocks, bound for the Cima di Jazzi. It must be confessed that our own party looked more workman-like. For we had our faithful ice-axes, and our lower limbs were swathed with putties, now almost universally worn by guides and climbers alike. I fancied our guides looked on the other guide with some contempt He was not one of those who do big ascents. And though we were on an easy task, the Cima di Jazzi is very easy indeed, so easy that most real climbers have never climbed its simple mound of easily rising snow.

Then we went on and soon after roped, as there might be some crevasses not well bridged, and presently I perceived that we had indeed a long snow-grind before us, and I got very gloomy at the prospect and swore and grumbled to myself. For there is no pleasure to me in being on the mountains unless there is some element of risk, apparent or real matters not. For, after all, with good guides and good weather there is little real danger. The main thing is to get a sensation out of it; the feeling of absorption in the moment which prevents one thinking of anything but the next step. A snow-grind is like a book which has to be read and which has no interest. I can imagine many reviewers must have their literary snow-grinds. And so we crawled along the surface of the snow with never a big crevasse to enliven one, and the sun rose up and peered across the vast curves of white and almost blinded us. On our left was the great chain of the Mischabel, of which I had once seen the real bones and anatomy from the Matterhorn, and then came the Rimpfischorn and Strahlhorn. I once asked a guide what had given its name to the Rimpfischorn, and he answered that it was supposed to be like a "rimf." When I asked what that was he said it was something which was like the Rimpfischorn. And to our right were the peaks of Monte Rosa, Nordend and Dufourspitze, black rock out of white snow, and the ridge of the Lyskamm, and the twin white snow peaks, Castor and Pollux. And some might say the view was very beautiful, and no doubt it was beautiful, though not so to me. For I hate the long snow-fields, the vast plains of neve with their glare and their infinite infernal monotony. Sometimes when I took off my snow-goggles the shining white world seemed a glaring and bleached moon-land, a land wholly unfit for human beings, as indeed it is. And though things seem near they are very far off. An hour's walk hardly moves one in the landscape. A man is little more than a lost moth; such a moth as we found dead and frozen as we crawled over the great snow towards the Strahlhorn. We sat down to rest, and I fought with my friend O—— about the beauty of the mountains, and horrified him by denying that there is any real loveliness above the snow-line. He took it quite seriously, forgetting that I was rebelling against so many miles of dead snow with never a thing to do but plod and plod, and plod again.

And then we came to the top of the pass where rocks jutted out of the snow, and a few minutes' climb let us look over into Italy, and down the steep south side of Monte Rosa, under whose white clouds lay Macugnaga. We sat upon the summit for an hour and ate once more, and argued as to the beauty of things, and the wonder and foolishness of climbing, and I own that I was very hard to satisfy. The snow-grind had entered into my soul as it always does. It is duller than a walk through any flat agricultural country before the corn begins to grow.

And yet below us was the other side of our pass, which certainly looked more interesting. Right under our feet was a little snow arete with slopes like a high pitched roof. It was quite possible to be killed there if one was foolish or reckless, and the prospect cheered me up. It is at anyrate not dull to be on an arete with a snow slope leading to nothing beneath me. And I cannot help insisting on the fact that much mountaineering is essentially dull. Often enough a long day may be without more than one dramatic moment. There is really only five minutes of interest on the Schwartzberg-Weissthor. We came to that in the arete, for after following it for a few minutes we turned off it to the left and came to the bergschrund, the big crevasse which separates the highest snows or ice from the glacier. By now I was quite anxious that the guides should find the schrund difficult. I had been bored to death and yearned for some little excitement. I even declared sulkily (it is odd, but true, that one does often become reckless and sulky under such circumstances) that I was ready to jump "any beastly bergschrund." My offer was no doubt made with the comfortable consciousness that the guides were not likely to let me do anything quite idiotic. But there was no necessity for any such gymnastics. The schrund's lower lip was only six feet lower than the upper lip, and the whole crevasse was barely three feet across, though doubtless deep enough to swallow a thousand parties like ours. Somewhat to my disappointment we got over quite easily, and struck down across the glacier, passing one or two rather dangerous crevasses by crawling on our stomachs. The only satisfaction I had was that both the guides and O—— declared that the way I wished to descend was impossible, whereas it finally turned out to have been easy and direct. I said I had told them so, of course, and then we got on the lower glacier and on an accursed moraine. It was now about noon. We had been going since two in the morning. We came at last into a grassy valley, and presently stood on the steep debris slope above Mattmark. It was a steep run down the zigzag path to the flat, which is partly occupied by the Mattmark Lake, and at last we got to the inn. There we changed our things and had lunch, and I and O—— once more fought over the glacier of the upper snows, and the question as to whether we should climb on aesthetic or gymnastic grounds. And though we did not reach the hotel at Saas-Fee till the evening, that argument lasted all the way. But when he and I get together, as we usually do when climbing comes on, we always quarrel in the most friendly way upon that subject. But for my own part I declare that I will never again do another pure snow-grind such as the Schwartzberg-Weissthor for any other purpose than to fetch a doctor, or to do something equally useful in a case of emergency. If climbing does not try one's faculties as well as one's physique it is a waste of labour.



ACROSS THE BIDASSOA

I came out of London's mirk and mist and the clouds of the Channel and the rollers of the Bay to find sunshine in the Gironde, though the east wind was cool in Bordeaux's big river. And then even in Bordeaux I discovered that fog was over-common; brief sunshine yielded to thick mist, and the city of wine was little less depressing than English Manchester. But though I spent a night there I was bound south and hoped for better things close by the border of Spain. And truly I found them, though the way there through the Landes is as melancholy as any great city of sad inhabitants.

The desolation of the Landes is an ordered, a commercial desolation. Once the whole surface of the district bore nothing but a scanty herbage. The soil is sand and an iron cement, or "hard-pan," below the sand. Here uncounted millions of slender sea-pines cover the plain; they stand in serried rows, as regular as a hop-garden, gloomy and without the sweet wildness of nature. And every pine is bitterly scarred, so that it may bleed its gum for traders. When the plantations are near their full growth they are cut down, stacked to season slowly, and the trees finish their existence as mine timbers deep under the earth.

After seventy miles of a southward run there are signs that the Landes are not so everlasting and spacious as they seem. To the south-east, at Buglose, where St Vincent de Paul was born, the Pyrenees show far and faint and blue on the horizon. And then suddenly the River Adour appears, and a country which was English. Dax was ours for centuries, and so was Bayonne, whose modern citadel has had a rare fate for any place of strength. It has never been taken; not even Wellington and his Peninsular veterans set foot within its bastions.

This is the country of the Basques, that strange, persistent race of which nothing is known. Their history is more covered by ancient clouds than that of the Celts; their tongue has no cousin in the world, though in structure it is like that of the North-American Indians. I met some of them later, but so far know no more than two words of their language.

The wind was cool at St Jean de Luz, but the sun was bright and the sea thundered on the beach and the battered breakwaters. To the east and south are the Pyrenees—lower summits, it is true, but bold and fine in outline. The dominant peak, being the first of the chain, is Larhune (a Basque word, not French), where English blood was spilt when Clauzel held it for Napoleon against the English. Further to the south, and across the Bidassoa, in Spain, rises the sharp ridge of the Jaisquivel, beneath which lies Fuentarabia. Yonder by Irun is the abrupt cliff of Las Tres Coronas, three crowns of rock. Here one is in the south-east of the Bay, where France and Spain run together, and the sea, under the dominion of the prevailing south-westers, is rarely at peace with the land. To the northward, but out of sight, lies windy Biarritz; to the south is blood-stained, battered and renewed San Sebastian, a name that recalls many deeds of heroism and many of shame. The horrors of its siege and taking might make one cold even in sunlight. But between us and its new city lies the Bidassoa. Here, at St Jean de Luz, is the Nivelle flowing past Ciboure. The river was once familiar to us in despatches. The whole country even yet smells of ancient war. For here lies the great western road to Spain. And more than once it has been the road to Paris. It is a path of rising and falling empire.

During my few days at St Jean de Luz I had foregathered with some exiled friends, walked to quiet Ascain, and regretted I lacked the time even to attain the summit of so small a mountain as Larhune, and then, desiring for once to set foot in Spain, took train to Hendaye. This is the last town in France. Across the Bidassoa rose the quaint roofs and towers of old Fuentarabia, the Fontarabie of the French. I hired an eager Basque to row me across the river, then running seaward at the last of the ebb.

The day was splendid and mild. There was no cloud in the sky, not a wreath of mist upon the mountains. The river was a blue that verged on green; its broad sand glowed golden in the sun; to seaward the amethystine waters of the Atlantic heaved and glittered. On the far cliffs they burst in lifting spray. The hills wore the fine faint blue of atmosphere; the wind was very quiet. This seemed at last like peace. I let my hands feel the cool waters of the river and soaked my soul in the waters of peace.

And yet my bold Basque chattered as he stood at the bows and poled me with a blunted oar across the river shallows. He told me proudly that he had the three languages, that he was all at home with French and Spanish and Basque. He was intelligent within due limits; he at anyrate knew how to extract francs from an Englishman. That generosity which consists in buying interested civility as well as help or transport with an extra fifty centimes is indeed but a wise and calculated waste. It occurred to me that he might solve a question that puzzled me. Were the Basques united as a race, or were their sympathies French or Spanish? After considering how I should put it, I said,—

"Mon ami, est-ce que vous etes plus Basque que Francais, ou plus Francais que Basque?"

He taught me a lesson in simple psychology, for he stopped poling and stared at me for a long minute. Then he scratched his head and a light came into his eyes.

"Mais, monsieur, je suis un Basque Francais!"

My fine distinction was beyond him, and it took me not a little indirect questioning to discover that he was certainly more French than Basque. He presently denounced the Spanish Basques in good round terms, and incidentally showed me that there must be a very considerable difference in their respective dialects. For he complained that the Spanish Basques spoke so fast that it was hard to understand them.

He put me ashore at last on a mud flat and accompanied me to the Fonda Miramar, where a bright and pretty waitress hurried, after the fashion of Spaniards, to such an extent that she got me a simple lunch in no more than half an hour. My Spanish is far worse even than my French, but in spite of that we carried on an animated conversation in French and English, Basque and Spanish. At lunch my talk grew more fluent and Mariquita went more deeply into matters. She desired to know what I thought of the Basques, of whom she was one, and a sudden flicker of the deceitful imagination set me inventing. I told her that I was a Basque myself, though I was also an Englishman. She exclaimed at this. She had never heard of English Basques. How was it I did not speak it? This was a sore point with me. I assured her of the shameful fact that the English Basques had lost their own tongue; they were degenerate. I had some thoughts of learning it in order to re-introduce it into England. As soon as Mariquita had mastered this astounding story she hurried to the kitchen, and as I heard her relating something with great excitement, I have little doubt that a legend of English Basques is now well on its way past historic doubt. Leaving her to consider the news I had brought, I went out with my boatman to view the old town. I found it quaint and individual and lovely.

A man who has seen much of the world must hold some places strangely and essentially beautiful. My own favourite spots are Auckland, N. Z.; the upper end of the Lake of Geneva; Funchal in Madeira; the valley of the Columbia at Golden City and the valley of the Eden seen from Barras in England. To these I can now add Fuentarabia, the Pyrenees and the Bidassoa. I stood upon the roof of the old ruined palace of Charles Le Quint, and on every point of the compass the view had most peculiar and wonderful qualities. Beneath me was the increasing flood of the frontier river: at my very feet lay the narrow and picturesque street canyons of the ancient town; to the south was Irun in the shelter and shadow of the mountains; east-south-east rose the pyramidal summit of Larhune; the west was the sharp ridge of the brown Jaisquivel which hid San Sebastian; to the north was the rolling Bay; and right to the south the triple crown of Las Tres Coronas cut the sky sharply. Right opposite me Hendaye burnt redly in the glow of the southern sun. In no place that I can remember have I seen two countries, three towns, a range of mountains, a big river and the sea at one time. And there was not a spot in view that had not been stained with the blood of Englishmen.

But now there were no echoes of war in Fuentarabia. Peace lay over its dark homes and within its ancient walls.



ON A VOLCANIC PEAK

I had seen Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli, but had never yet climbed any volcano until I stood upon the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, Pico de Teyde, home of the gods and devils as well as of the aboriginal Guanches of the Canary Islands.

The wind was bitterly cold, more bitter, indeed, than I have ever felt, and yet, as I stood and shivered upon the little crater's brink, fumes of sulphurous acid and smoke swept round me and made me choke. The edge of the crater was of white fired rock; inside the cup the hollow was sulphur yellow. Puffs of smoke came from cracks. I dropped out of the wind and warmed myself at the fire. I picked up warm stones and danced them from one hand to another. And overhead a wind of ice howled. For the Peak is twelve thousand feet and more above the sea. An hour before I had been cutting steps in the last slopes of the last ash cone of the volcano which still lives and may burst into activity at any fatal moment.

To stand upon the Peak and look down upon the world and the sea gives one a great notion of the making of things. Once the world was a crucible. The islands are all volcanic, all ash and cinders, lava and pumice. But I perceived that the Peak itself, the final peak, the last five thousand feet of it, was but the last result of a dying fire—a mere gas spurt to what had been. The whole anatomy of the island is laid bare; the history and the growth of the peak are written in letters of lava, in wastes of pumice and fire-scarred walls. The plain of the Canyadas lies beneath me, and is ten miles across. This was the ancient crater; it is as big as the crater of Kilauea, in the Hawaiian Islands. But Kilauea is yet truly alive, a sea of lava with many cones spouting lava. Such was the crater of Teneriffe before the last peak rose within its basin. Now retama, a hardy bitter shrub, grows in these plains of pumice; the flats of it are pumice and rapilli, white and brown. But the ancient crater walls stand unbroken for miles, though here and there they have been swept away, some say by floods of water belched from the pit.

From the last ash-peak of fire, as I stood on the crater walls in smoke and a cold wind, I saw no sign of Teneriffe's fertility. The works of man upon the lower slopes below the pinyon forests were invisible. The slopes by Orotava lay under cloud, the sea was hidden almost to its horizon by a vast plain of heaving mist. All I could see plainly was the old crater itself, barren, vast, tremendous, with its fire-scarred walls and its fumaroles. To the west some smoked still, smoked furiously. But though I stood upon the highest peak, another one almost as high lay behind me. Chahorra gaped and gasped, as it seemed, like a leaping, suffocating fish in drying mud. Its crater opened like a mouth and around it lesser holes gaped. On the plain of the old crater there rise two separate volcanoes—one, the true peak, rising 5000 feet from the Canyada floor (itself 7000 feet above the sea), and Chahorra, nearly 4000. But so vast is the ancient crater that these two peaks, one yet alive and the other dead, seem but blisters or boils upon its barren plain. To the north, miles from the edge of my peak, I could see the crater cliff rise red. To the west and east the wall has broken down, but the Fortaleza, as the Canary men call it, stands yet, scarred into chimneys, shining, half glassy, half like fired clay. And further to the east, beyond the gap called the Portillo, the cliffs rise again as one follows the trail over that high desert to Vilaflor. White pumice lies under these cliffs, looking like a beach. Once perhaps the crater was level with the sea. It may even be that the crater walls were broken down by outer waters, not by any volcanic flood.

None knows at what time the peak of Chahorra and the great peak were truly active. But obviously the final peak itself was the result of a last great eruption. Perhaps the old crater had been quiescent for thousands of years, and then it worked a little and threw up El Teyde. At some other time Chahorra rose. At another period, in historic times, the volcano above Garachico, even now smoking bravely, sent its lava into Garachico's harbour and destroyed it. But the last peak as it stands is the work of two periods of activity at least. The first great slope ends at another flat called the Rambleta. Here was once an ancient crater. Then the fires quietened, and there was a time of lesser activity. It woke again, and threw up the last weary ash-cone of a thousand feet or near it.

All things die, but who shall say when a volcano has done its worst? A quiet Vesuvius slew its thousands: Etna its tens of thousands. Some day perhaps Teneriffe will wake again, either in earthquakes or lava-flow, and cause a Casamicciola or a Catania. The cones over against Garachico seemed much alive to me, and had I not warmed frozen hands at the very earth fires themselves? I broke out hot sulphur with the pick of my ice-axe. Icod of the Vines, or Orotava itself, port and villa, might some day wake to such a day as that which has smitten St Pierre in fiery Martinique.

Once all the quiet seas were unbroken by their seven islands—Hierro, Palma, Gomera, Teneriffe, Grand Canary, Fuerteventura, and Lanzarote lay beneath the waters of the smiling ocean. Even now they smell of fire and the furnace; in the most fruitful vineyards of Grand Canary the soil is half cinders. In all the islands vast cinder heaps rise black and forbidding. Lava streams, in which the poisonous euphorbia alone can grow, thrust themselves like great dykes among fertile lands. The very sands of the sea are powdered pumice and black volcanic dust. One of the greatest craters of the world holds within itself great parts of wooded Palma. On dead volcanoes are the petty batteries of Spain over against Las Palmas. There is something strange and almost pathetic in the thought of guns raised where Nature once thundered dreadfully in the barren sunlit Isleta.