in rotation; you cannot select the man who is to take your life into his hands, you must take the worst in the lot, if it is his turn.
A guide's fee ranges all the way up from a half dollar (for some trifling excursion of a few rods,) to twenty dollars, according to the distance traversed and the nature of the ground. A guide's fee for taking a person to the summit of Mont Blanc and back, is twenty dollars—and he earns it. The time employed is usually three days, and there is enough early rising in it to make a man far more "healthy and wealthy and wise" than any one man has any right to be. The porter's fee for the same trip is ten dollars. Several fools,—no, I mean several tourists,—usually go together, and divide up the expense, and thus make it light; for if only one ftourist, I mean—went, he would have to have several guides and porters, and that would made the matter costly.
 |
| THE PROUD GERMAN. |
We went into the Chief's office. There were maps of mountains on the walls; also one or two lithographs of celebrated guides and a portrait of the scientist De Saussure.
In glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots and batons, and other suggestive relics and remembrancers of casualities on Mont Blanc. In a book was a record of all the ascents which have ever been made, beginning with Nos. 1 and 2,—being those of Jacques Balmat and De Saussure, in 1787, and ending with No. 685, which wasn't cold yet. In fact No. 685 was standing by the official table waiting to receive the precious official diploma which should prove to his German household and to his descendants that he had once been indiscreet enough to climb to the top of Mont Blanc. He looked very happy when he got his document; in fact, he spoke up and said he was happy.
