I looked up at dawn, after finishing my breakfast, or rather the remains of the banquet which had continued at intervals all night--for there is nothing like eating and drinking to keep up one’s spirits and keep out the cold, and one strong cup of coffee under such conditions is worth a pint of whiskey, since it gives a renewal of vigor which doesn’t flash up and then out like alcohol. I looked on the contract before me. I had that three hundred feet of steep icy incline to climb. There was no getting round it by gradual or zigzag upward approaches. The way to the right and left broke off in ugly precipices. A little exploration to find an easier route satisfied me and sent me back frightened to my camp. For crossing on what I deemed snows with a firm foundation underneath, I was startled to find my pole running through this surface in an empty void beneath. Then the entire area for twenty feet square suddenly settled down an inch or two with an ominous scrunch! which sent my heart seemingly up in my mouth and my hair up on its various ends. I was walking on a frail crust of snow which had formed over the deep gorges ploughed by the rains and torrents of ages down the mountain side. Some of these were fifteen or twenty feet deep, with rocky sides almost perpendicular, and such pits, blocked up at either end with snow, were regular man-traps. I hauled myself up to the place from whence I had slipped the previous evening. The job occupied the entire morning. There were the two snowshoes, the pole and my pack to manage, besides my own earthly organization. In places the descent was so steep that I was obliged to drag myself and cargo upward a foot at a time, and then chock my feet with a knife to prevent slipping back. The moral of which is, it is easier to go down than to go up, and easier to fall than to rise in many ways. It does seem singular that these coincidences should be so coincident between the world of materiality and that of morality. It was a very laborious task, and when about noon I reached the top, I was sick from exhaustion, and lay down for some minutes on the ledge of snow hardly wide enough to hold me. Then, with shaky knees, I picked my way very slowly over another dangerous mile around the mountain-side, where every step was furnished with extra accommodation for slipping, and in many spots where, had I slipped, I should have gone farther and fared much worse than on the evening before. I wished I was a goose, for a goose could in four minutes have accomplished a distance which took me all day. We pride ourselves on our powers and the ways and means we have devised for transporting our clumsy carcases, but after all, in point of locomotion, we are individually miserably inferior to a goose, and all our ingenuity and mind has not been able only to lift us from the inferior position wherein nature has in this respect placed us, as compared with a goose.