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LAND & .', W A T E K June 29, 191.6 
The Roof of Armageddon— II 
Bv Will Irwin 
[The writer in the preceding article told 0/ his visit 
iv the Italian Armv in the Alps. A chance offered 
for inspecting a military base on a very high moun- 
tain. Part of the journey had to be done bv tclcfcrica, 
which he described as a sort of gigantic cash carrier] 
THE advanced base, which was our first destina- 
tion, was a small plateau high up in the moun- 
tain ; from there, as luck served, we were going 
to try for the glacier. To achieve the base alone 
would have been a big feat of Alpine mountaineering in 
time of peace. For Alpinists distinguish between summer 
ascents and winter ascents ; and to them April and May 
count as winter months. Of old times this base plateau 
was Seldom climbed in winter. Then one must have guides ; 
he must edge his way perilously around corners of rocks ; 
he must cut paths \vith an ice-axe. At certain stages 
of the journey the party must travel linked together 
with ropes, that immemorial device of Alpine work. 
War changed all that. Everysvhere the army has 
chopped or blasted roads. Men by the thousand, and 
even mule trains, are going up to that base plateau e\ery 
day. It needs nothing but strong legs, wind, and en- 
durance of altitudes, together with a willingness to brave 
avalanches. Had we climbed, however — ^we untrained 
civilians from sea-level— we must have started at dawn, 
and we should have been lucky to reach the plateau by 
dark. This mountain work is a great tester of flaws in 
middle-aged men. As it was, we should mount by mule 
to the foot of the teleferica, and take the very hardest 
part of the rise in a few dazzling minutes. After we 
reached the advanced base, our expert Lieutenant 
assured us, there would be no real Alpine work unless 
luck and the weather enabled us to go forward to some 
of the front trenches on the glacier — only plain climbing. 
Dawn brought better courage for telefericas ; and as 
we bobbed along a precipitous road on sure-footed 
mountain mules, we found ourselves gay. The Com- 
mander, a little compact bullet-headed man, all deter- 
mination, leadership and nerve, grew communicative on 
this subject of war in the air. Man had never done 
anything like it before, he said. Hannibal and Napoleon 
crossing the Alps ? They crossed hundreds and hundreds 
of metres lower than the very artillery positions of his 
boys up there. Garibaldi's famous mountain campaign 
in 1866^^ — it was won on lower levels, and mostly without 
artillery. Here was the Italian army fighting, and 
winning too, on the very glaciers. And it was an artillery 
fight, mind that. So we brushed past long mule trains 
going down for fresh loads, past files of reservists plodding 
upward — and 
There was the teleferica. 
I had been dizzy with imagination the day before 
when I saw that little hand-telcferica. But my imagina- 
tion had never conceived anything like this one. I 
should say it was at least a half a mile long, and it sagged 
upward to a great cliff. A carriage had just started as I 
looked. It became a speck in the distance ; it lost itself 
against the grey cliff ; a weary time later I could see it 
reappear a speck again on the snow-crown at the crest 
of the precipice. 
We were in the motor-shed now ; what with the sur- 
roundings it resembled nothing so much as a shaft-house 
in the little mines of the Colorado Rockies. And now 
the carriage had come down, and an orderly was packing 
it comfortably with blankets for the first passage. This 
carriage is just a box, perhaps four feet long by two 
broad and a foot and a half deep. Two frames hang 
it from the wheels on that slender cable, and it has just 
room for two men, sitting face-to- face, and legs by legs, 
with their backs braced against the frames. It is like 
riding through the air in a bread-basket. The terrifying 
thing about it to prospective passengers is the low side- 
rails. They seem no more than a foot high. I had a 
feeling that the slightest jog would spill us. 
" Don't you think we'd better hive some hot soup ? " 
asked the Lieutenant suddenly. Beside the shaft-house, 
a cook was ladling soud into the grub cans of a newly- 
arrived mule train. We found spare cans and begged a 
ration. For the Lieutenant, as I understand now, was 
wise in the soldierly technique of holding men to their 
work. It is half of the art of being an officer. He had 
perceived, without my telling him, that I did not like sheer 
heights — a very common form of personal fear- — and he 
was about to carry me through. When we packed our- 
selves into the basket, when, with an " au revoir " from 
the Captain in command of the shaft-house, we made a 
slow, halting start, gathered speed and shot away, I was 
still taking scalding soup from a tin spoon. Just then 
our Lieutenant looked me straight in the eye and began 
to talk. 
" You call this broth, don't you ? " he asked. " In 
London I found, they make a distinction between the 
word ' broth ' and the word ' soup.' What is the exact 
distinction ? " 
In Mid Air 
I half perceived what he- was doing, and I clutched at 
this device for closing imagination. All through that 
flight we talked as hard as we could talk — upon Italian 
cooking, American cooking, British cooking, upon the 
lack of variety in the preparation of English nieats, and 
the \ arious ways of serving macaroni, upon Scotch scones, 
corn-on-the-cob and polenta. Once the regular speed 
of our carriage slackened : but before my imagination 
had time to rush to the surface and picture what might 
happen in case it stopped altogether, it had gathered 
speed and gone on. An object rushed past us in the air. 
It was the other basket passing on its downward flight. 
The trip was only half over then ; I thought we had gone 
further than that. And now the Lieutenant removed 
his eyes from mine and began to cast cool glances from 
right to left. I had a secondary terror at this moment, for 
fear he would ask me to view the scenery and I should not 
have the moral courage to refuse. But he put no such test 
to my nerve. He let his eyes jump back to mine, and 
continued to talk on food, drink and good cheer. 
I was facing forward ; and though I kept my gaze 
fixed on his, I could not help seeing what was back of him. 
That grey cliff seemed to be moving toward us. Should 
we ever arrive ? It crept and crept. Now, it seemed, I 
could have reached out and picked a bunch of sage-grey 
lichen which hung just behind the Lieutenant. And now 
there was a little jar as the wheels ran over a brace like 
a trolley-pole. We were travelling across the snow- 
cap at the top of the cliff. I became aware for the first 
time that my fingers were cramped from holding the edge 
of the basket. 
We had a little walk in an upland plateau after this. 
All in a burst we had come from the timber line to a 
place as devoid of life as the moon, from a temperate 
winter to an Arctic winter. We could not see the higher 
peaks from here, for round shoulders of mountains cut 
them off. There was not even the relief of snow-shedding 
crags. It was all a gigantic, rolling, tumbling field 
of white. 
We were approaching a shaft-house. Again, as the 
orderlies packed me into the basket, I must shut my 
imagination and control my breath. 
Any soldier can tell you that the second time under fire 
is more trying than the first. I found that the same rule 
holds of telefericas. Moreover, this was longer than the 
first flight, and, as I learned later —I did not look down to 
see — somewhat higher. It seemed, at the end, that 
the cliff would never crawl down to me. But the Lieuten- 
ant knew all this and — tactful man — he sprang the best 
device he, had, brought up his heaviest gun. 
He got me to talking about myself. 
He asked me what I had written ; and I wallowed 
in shameful egotism. Then, somewhere at about the 
height above ground of all but the tallest skyscrapers, he 
switched the conversation to English literature. 
There were more flights after this, but I was growing 
inured ; and I dared, occasionally, to look down. Once, 
wo passed fifty feet over a trail where the men of a mule 
