Chapter 34

CHAPTER XXXIV [The World's Highest Pig Farm]

We hired the only guide left, to lead us on our way. He was over
seventy, but he could have given me nine-tenths of his strength and
still had all his age entitled him to. He shouldered our satchels,
overcoats, and alpenstocks, and we set out up the steep path. It was hot
work. The old man soon begged us to hand over our coats and waistcoats
to him to carry, too, and we did it; one could not refuse so little a
thing to a poor old man like that; he should have had them if he had
been a hundred and fifty.

When we began that ascent, we could see a microscopic chalet perched
away up against heaven on what seemed to be the highest mountain near
us. It was on our right, across the narrow head of the valley. But when
we got up abreast it on its own level, mountains were towering high
above on every hand, and we saw that its altitude was just about that of
the little Gasternthal which we had visited the evening before. Still it
seemed a long way up in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness of
rocks. It had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it which seemed about
as big as a billiard-table, and this grass-plot slanted so sharply
downward, and was so brief, and ended so exceedingly soon at the verge
of the absolute precipice, that it was a shuddery thing to think of a
person's venturing to trust his foot on an incline so situated at all.
Suppose a man stepped on an orange peel in that yard; there would be
nothing for him to seize; nothing could keep him from rolling; five
revolutions would bring him to the edge, and over he would go. What a
frightful distance he would fall!--for there are very few birds that fly
as high as his starting-point. He would strike and bounce, two or three
times, on his way down, but this would be no advantage to him. I would
as soon taking an airing on the slant of a rainbow as in such a front
yard. I would rather, in fact, for the distance down would be about the
same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce. I could not see how
the peasants got up to that chalet--the region seemed too steep for
anything but a balloon.

As we strolled on, climbing up higher and higher, we were continually
bringing neighboring peaks into view and lofty prominence which had been
hidden behind lower peaks before; so by and by, while standing before a
group of these giants, we looked around for the chalet again; there it
was, away down below us, apparently on an inconspicuous ridge in the
valley! It was as far below us, now, as it had been above us when we
were beginning the ascent.

After a while the path led us along a railed precipice, and we looked
over--far beneath us was the snug parlor again, the little Gasternthal,
with its