It was inexcusable to follow such a perilous path, but it is easy to understand why it was taken. To have retreated from the place where Croz suggested a change of plan, to have descended below the reach of danger, and to have mounted again by the route which Almer suggested, would have been equivalent to abandoning the excursion; for no one would have passed another night in the chalet on the Arpitetta Alp. “Many,” says Thucydides, “though seeing well the perils ahead, are forced along by fear of dishonour—as the world calls it—so that, vanquished by a mere word, they fall into irremediable calamities.” Such was nearly the case here. No one could say a word in justification of the course which was adopted; all were alive to the danger that was being encountered; yet a grave risk was deliberately—although unwillingly—incurred, in preference to admitting, by withdrawal from an untenable position, that an error of judgment had been committed. After a laborious trudge over many species of snow, and through many varieties of vapour—from the quality of a Scotch mist to that of a London fog—we at length stood on the depression between the Rothhorn and the Schallhorn.(150) A steep wall of snow was upon the Zinal side of the summit; but what the descent was like on the other side we could not tell, for a billow of snow tossed over its crest by the western winds, suspended o’er Zermatt with motion arrested, resembling an ocean-wave frozen in the act of breaking, cut off the view.(151) Croz—held hard in by the others, who kept down the Zinal side—opened his shoulders, flogged down the foam, and cut away the cornice to its junction with the summit; then boldly leaped down, and called on us to follow him. [Illustration: SUMMIT OF THE MOMING PASS IN 1864.] It was well for us now that we had such a man as leader. An inferior or less daring guide would have hesitated to enter upon the descent in a dense mist; and Croz himself would have done right to pause had he been less magnificent in _physique_. He acted, rather than said, “Where snow lies fast, there man can go; where ice exists, a way may be cut; it is a question of power; I have the power,—all you have to do is to follow me.” Truly, he did not spare himself, and could he have performed the feats upon the boards of a theatre that he did upon this occasion, he would have brought down the house with thunders of applause. Here is what Moore wrote in _his_ Journal.