The smallness of the accommodation was made more conspicuous by the disproportion between it and the voices which issued from the shepherds as they moved about to help us in our arrangements. Within a few inches of our ears they bellowed every remark in a Homeric roar, which might without exaggeration have been heard half a mile off. Long habit in shouting to their flocks on a distant hillside, or carrying on conversations across a valley, had so taken hold of them that they seemed quite incapable of reducing their voices to the ordinary pitch of regions where population is less thinly scattered.
Our night did not promise to be luxurious. After a frugal supper on bread and chocolate, we made our bed as well as we could. The shelter being far above the forest, logs were not easily procurable, and the shepherds had consequently collected as fuel a heap of slender brushwood. Having piled away some of the pails and cheeses we spread the green branches out on the floor as a mattress. A macintosh served for a sheet, and our entertainers supplied a rug for our feet. The couch was at least not painfully uncomfortable; and though each of us felt sure in the morning that he had not slept, no one had found the night interminable except poor François, who insisted on sitting and smoking over the fire, and was consequently only half awake all the next day.
At daybreak we issued into the open air. We found ourselves in the wild hollow at the eastern base of the Carè Alto, separated from the great Borzago Glacier by a rocky spur. Mounting first towards and then along this ridge, we quickly approached the mountain. Had we remained on the rocks, and then boldly struck up the eastern face, we should, I believe, quickly have settled with our peak. But François did not favour this plan; moreover, our further intentions gave a motive for carrying our baggage to the side of the peak to which it would be most convenient to descend.
We consequently slid down several hundred feet on to the great glacier, and made a flank march towards the much higher northern base of the Carè Alto. This operation caused some delay. The snow, where it curled over from the highest plain, broke into huge chasms. There was, it was true, always an easy way round each of them; but the ways round seldom coincided, and for some time our ascent was conducted in a very crab-like fashion.