We lived to find out that that guide had deserted us as soon as he had placed a half-mile between himself and us.  To avert suspicion, he had judged it best that the line should continue to move; so he caught that ram, and at the time that he was sitting on it making the rope fast to it, we were imagining that he was lying in a swoon, overcome by fatigue and distress.  When he allowed the ram to get up it fell to plunging around, trying to rid itself of the rope, and this was the signal which we had risen up with glad shouts to obey.  We had followed this ram round and round in a circle all day—­a thing which was proven by the discovery that we had watered the Expedition seven times at one and same spring in seven hours.  As expert a woodman as I am, I had somehow failed to notice this until my attention was called to it by a hog.  This hog was always wallowing there, and as he was the only hog we saw, his frequent repetition, together with his unvarying similarity to himself, finally caused me to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led me to the deduction that this must be the same spring, also—­which indeed it was.

I made a note of this curious thing, as showing in a striking manner the relative difference between glacial action and the action of the hog.  It is now a well-established fact that glaciers move; I consider that my observations go to show, with equal conclusiveness, that a hog in a spring does not move.  I shall be glad to receive the opinions of other observers upon this point.

To return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide, and then I shall be done with him.  After leaving the ram tied to the rope, he had wandered at large a while, and then happened to run across a cow.  Judging that a cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took her by the tail, and the result justified his judgment.  She nibbled her leisurely way downhill till it was near milking-time, then she struck for home and towed him into Zermatt.

CHAPTER XXXVIII [I Conquer the Gorner Grat]

We went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram had brought us.  The men were greatly fatigued.  Their conviction that we were lost was forgotten in the cheer of a good supper, and before the reaction had a chance to set in, I loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed.

Next morning I was considering in my mind our desperate situation and trying to think of a remedy, when Harris came to me with a Baedeker map which showed conclusively that the mountain we were on was still in Switzerland—­yes, every part of it was in Switzerland.  So we were not lost, after all.  This was an immense relief; it lifted the weight of two such mountains from my breast.  I immediately had the news disseminated and the map was exhibited.  The effect was wonderful.  As soon as the men saw with their own eyes that they knew where they were, and that it was only the summit that was lost and not themselves, they cheered up instantly and said with one accord, let the summit take care of itself.