Page:1880. A Tramp Abroad.djvu/328

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314
A TIMELY SHELTER.

with the head of the Rhone schnawp: this has been carefully constructed, and leads with a tortuous course among and over les pierres down to the bank of the gloomy little swosh-swosh, which almost washes against the walls of the Grimsel Hospice. We arrived a little before 4 o'clock at the end of our day's journey, hot enough to justify the step, taken by most of the partie, of plunging into the crystal water of the snow-fed lake.

The next afternoon we started for a walk up the Unteraar glacier, with the intention of, at all events, getting as far as the Hütte which is used as a sleeping place by most of those who cross the Strahleck Pass to Grindelwald. We got over the tedious collection of stones and dèbris which covers the pied of the Gletcher, and had walked nearly three hours from the Grimsel, when, just as we were thinking of crossing over to the right, to climb the cliffs at the foot of the hut, the clouds, which had for some time assumed a threatening appearance, suddenly dropped, and a huge mass of them, driving towards us from the Finsteraarhorn, poured down a

A GLACIER TABLE.

deluge of haboolong and hail. Fortunately, we were not far from a very large glacier table; it was a huge rock balanced on a pedestal of ice high enough to admit of our all creeping