69 



"Americans?" cries the hitherto unfriendly 

 foreigner. " Americans ? " echoes his wife, who 

 up to this time had not been supposed to understand 

 a word of English. The mystery is solved. This 

 gentleman and his wife are Hollanders and have 

 taken us for English. It is at the time when the 

 English-Boer war is at its height, and the Hollander 

 has no dealings with the Englishman if he can help 

 it. The gentleman is an Amsterdam physician, 

 and a man of culture and wide reading. His evi- 

 dent effort to be friendly reaches a climax when 

 he tells us of his hotel at Brieg, where we are to 

 spend the night, and assures us that there we will 

 be certain to have trout for dinner. 



Now for the last half of the trip! We have 

 only just left the hotel when the diligence is stopped 

 and the passengers are asked to get out and walk 

 for a mile across the debris of an avalanche which 

 came thundering down from the terminal moraines 

 of the Ross Boden glacier the previous spring. The 

 diligence sways and lurches and thumps along, 

 while we pick our way over stones and ice and 

 around giant rocks. Halfway across we meet a 

 young man who has spent nearly all of his waking 

 hours for months past in search for the body of 

 his sister who met her death under the sudden 

 sweep of the avalanche. 



Here, in this little monastery so they tell us 

 is where Napoleon made his headquarters for a 

 time when he led his troops over the mighty moun- 



