After a brief pause, Lauener again strapped on his knapsack, and tempered both will and muscles by the remark, that our worst piece of work was now before us. From the place where we sat, the mountain fell precipitously for several hundred feet; and down the weathered crags, and over the loose shingle which encumbered their ledges, our route now lay. Lauener was in front, cool and collected, lending at times a hand to Ramsay, and a word of encouragement to both of us, while I brought up the rear. I found my full haversack so inconvenient that I once or twice thought of sending it down the crags in advance of me, but Lauener assured me that it would be utterly destroyed before reaching the bottom. My complaint against it was, that at critical places it sometimes came between me and the face of the cliff, pushing me away from the latter so as to throw my centre of gravity almost beyond the base intended to support it. We came at length upon a snow-slope, which had for a time an inclination of 50 deg.; then once more to the rocks; again to the snow, which was both steep and deep. Our batons were at least six feet long: we drove them into the snow to secure an anchorage, but they sank to their very ends, and we merely retained a length of them sufficient for a grasp. This slope was intersected by a so-called Bergschrund, the lower portion of the slope being torn away from its upper portion so as to form a crevasse that extended quite round the head of the valley. We reached its upper edge; the chasm was partially filled with snow, which brought its edges so near that we cleared it by a jump. The rest of the slope was descended by a _glissade_. Each sat down upon the snow, and the motion, once commenced, swiftly augmented to the rate of an avalanche, and brought us pleasantly to the bottom. [Sidenote: THROUGH GLOOM TO THE GRIMSEL. 1858.] As we looked from the heights, we could see that the valley through which our route lay was filled with gray fog: into this we soon plunged, and through it we made our way towards the Abschwung. The inclination of the glacier was our only guide, for we could see nothing. Reaching the confluence of the Finsteraar and Lauteraar branches, we went downwards with long swinging strides, close alongside the medial moraine of the trunk glacier. The glory of the morning had its check in the dull gloom of the evening. Across streams, amid dirt-cones and glacier-tables, and over the long reach of shingle which covers the end of the glacier, we plodded doggedly, and reached the Grimsel at 7 P.M., the journey having cost a little more than 14 hours. (15.) [Sidenote: ANCIENT GLACIER ACTION. 1858.]