CHAPTER III 

 GLETSGH 



VARIED and uncertain as the weather was in Switzer- 

 land during July of the year 1910, it showed a more 

 decided character when I returned there at the end of 

 August. For three weeks there was no flood of sunshine, no 

 blazing of a cloudless blue sky, which is the one condition 

 necessary to the perfection of the beauty of Swiss moun- 

 tains, valleys and lakes. The Oberland was grey and 

 shapeless, the Lauterbriinnen valley chilly and threatening; 

 even the divine Jungfrau herself, when not altogether 

 obliterated by the monotonous, impenetrable cloud, loomed 

 in steely coldness " a sterile promontory." Crossing 

 the mountains from the Lake of Thun, we came to 

 Montreux, only to find the pearl-like surface of the great 

 Lake Leman transformed into lead. Not once in eight 

 days did the celestial fortress called Les Dents du Midi 

 reveal its existence, although we knew it was there, 

 immensely high and remote, far away above the great 

 buttresses of the Rhone valley. So completely was it 

 blotted out by the conversion of that most excellent 

 canopy, the air, into a foul and pestilent congregation of 

 vapours, that it was difficult to imagine that it was still 

 existing, and perhaps even glowing in sunshine above 

 the pall of cloud. Italy, surely, we thought, would be free 

 from this dreadful gloom. 



The southern slopes of the Alps are often cloudless 



