BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 103 



ample preparation for Mont Blanc. The West 

 Cork fox is a gentleman, and has a consideration 

 for his followers that was undreamed of by Griffith 

 Roberts. Heather tussock, slippery grass, loose 

 stones, shelving rock, came in steep succession 

 as unending as the rungs of Jacob's ladder, all 

 of them achievements in their turn, each one 

 rather more so than the last. In fact, Jacob's 

 ladder, or any other frankly precipitous thing, 

 where one could have been helped by one's hands, 

 would have been preferable to the short cut by 

 means of which Griffith Roberts abbreviated, and 

 at the same time imparted, the bitterness of death 

 to the ascent. 



The air became perceptibly sharp as we went 

 up, and scraps of cloud floated near us across the 

 delusive stretches of desolation. Everything was 

 harmoniously huge : the Eiffel Tower, perched on 

 one of the crags, might have restored to the eye 

 some sense of the human scale of measurement ; 

 but to think of feet — even of the guide's, of which 

 it might truly be said that "a deal of his leg had 



