We found our way safely to the entrance of our chimney and started up. Almost immediately we passed the branch gully on the left. It looks very formidable, and indeed its first pitch is undoubtedly hard. It consists of a two-storied cave, the first floor composed of three jammed stones, which are passed by backing up the crack and traversing outwards. The second pitch is of a simpler character, consisting of a cave that can be passed on either side. We had no designs on this variation, and were contented to throw a casual glance towards the lower obstacle as we proceeded up the rocky bed of our central chimney. Our field of view soon became very limited, for the clean-cut parallel walls on either side were scarcely five feet apart, and the average slope of the gully exceeded forty-five degrees. During the first hundred feet the work was distinctly safe and easy, but a glance backward at the point whence we had started, seemingly the first stop in the event of our falling, made us both inclined to imagine dangers in our way. The side walls in intense gloom formed a fitting frame to the narrow picture of the distant sunlit fells. The general aspect of the situation closely resembled that of the upper half of Collier’s climb on Scawfell, and of the Oblique Chimney on Gable Crag, though in each of those cases the chimney is at a considerable angle to the vertical, whereas here the fissure in the rocks is almost perpendicular. We were a little perplexed by some ice that had frozen in large rounded knobs to a thickness of eight or ten inches over a steep six feet of the gully. An axe would have summarily disposed of any icicles of doubtful security, but we had not expected any such evidences of cold and were unprovided. The ice was not absolutely continuous; here and there we could kick out levels for our feet, and to our relief the trouble was passed in a few minutes. Then came the worst bit of the ascent--the scene of my discomfiture eighteen months before. First came a vertical wall stretching across the gully, and rising twenty feet above our somewhat insecure standing. Beyond that the gully sloped evenly to the dark recesses of a cave, the jammed boulder of which almost appeared vertically above our heads. We mounted an upright block at the foot of the wall, and prospected for holds. None were visible. I peered at the sides in search of scratches, which would show whether the earlier party or parties had backed up the chimney. No! they had not availed themselves of that process. Then, with the conviction that an indirect way must exist, we examined the walls a few feet below the pitch, and at last hit upon a way of mounting higher. I was belayed by a rope passing round the upright block already referred to, and proceeded to walk along the horizontal edge of a thin crack on the right wall, leaning across to the other side of the gully for general support on the hands. I had implicit