The president of the London Alpine Club said no man was ever
lost on the Alps who had properly prepared himself and knew how
to ascend them, and when I quoted to him the list of guides who
had fallen into crevices and been killed, he quoted back to me
a certain passage of Scripture wherein the fate of blind guides
and those they lead is set forth in unmistakable terms. “Choose
for your guides,” said he, “the hardy men who have learned their
business thoroughly; who have been chamois-hunters from their
youth; who have lived on these mountains from their birth,
and to whom these snows and these rocks and the clouds speak
a language which they can understand, and then accidents are
impossible.” (Text.)--JAMES T. FIELDS.
(997)
=Experience versus Theory=--See CRITICISM.