We have all read descriptions of Waterloo till
we are sick of the subject; but I imagine that our emotions on seeing
the shattered well of Hougomont are very inferior to those of one of the
Guard who should revisit the place where he held out for a long day
against the assaults of the French army.
Now to an old mountaineer the Oberland cliffs are full of memories; and,
more than this, he has learnt the language spoken by every crag and
every wave of glacier. It is strange if they do not affect him rather
more powerfully than the casual visitor who has never been initiated by
practical experience into their difficulties. To him, the huge buttress
which runs down from the Moench is something more than an irregular
pyramid, purple with white patches at the bottom and pure white at the
top. He fills up the bare outline supplied by the senses with a thousand
lively images. He sees tier above tier of rock, rising in a gradually
ascending scale of difficulty, covered at first by long lines of the
debris that have been splintered by frost from the higher wall, and
afterwards rising bare and black and threatening.
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