But it is the rock escarpment at the back of the corrie that fascinates their gaze. As the mists begin to clear one by one, they suggest climbs on its face, for there are 1250 feet of bare rock in front of them, broken up into three distinct buttresses with two splendid gullies dividing them. At last they choose the right-hand gully, and, having roped themselves, proceed to cut steps up the steep snow that has drifted into it and obliterated any perpendicular pitches there may be. I am sorry that there are no perpendicular pitches--it is most unfortunate; for I should like to see that party performing all these daring feats so well known to, and beloved by, the professional rock climber, 'How things began to look rather blue.' 'How for a minute or two one of the party remained spread-eagled on the face of a cliff almost despairing of getting up, the desired crack being a good two feet out of reach, till, with a supreme effort, he was propelled from below by a sudden and powerful jerk, his outstretched fingers seize the desired crack.' Nor can I describe how 'the heavy man of the party, his finger tips playing upon the face of the cliff with the delicacy of touch of a professional pianist, his every movement suggestive of the bounding lightness of the airy thistle-down,' followed. No, I am sorry I have no such wildly exciting adventures to relate, nor such poetical fancies wherewith to eke out a plain story. I see that party merely climbing up that gully, in a most uninteresting yet simple manner, by cutting steps. They come to where it ends against a perpendicular and overhanging cliff at least a couple of hundred feet high. Only 200 feet, but higher they cannot go, for none of the party are sufficiently muscular to propel the leader with a jerk upwards that paltry 200 feet. Therefore they climb out to their left, along a narrow and somewhat broken ledge, on to the middle buttress, where a place is found large enough for them all to sit down. They gaze upwards at the last 300 feet that separate them from the summit, but it is steep, very steep, 'A.P.'[Q] Also, it is late in the afternoon; so they comfort themselves by building a cairn, and eating all these delicious things that are so good on a mountain-side--meat sandwiches which have remained from lunch, and taste so full of mustard and so delightfully dry; old, old prunes encrusted with all kinds of additional nutriment from the bottom of some one's pocket; a much-worn stick of chocolate, or perhaps an acidulated drop--on such fare does the hardy mountaineer feed. I see them once more in the gully, but they descend more rapidly than they climbed up it, for the more daring of the party glissade down the lower part, and so home.