The Cliff Climbers | Page 4

man, however, you may discover traces of him. Close to the
hot-spring, and forming a sort of "lean-to" against the cliff, you may
observe a rude hut built with blocks of stone, and plastered with mud
from the bed of the rivulet. Enter it. You will find it empty, cold,
untenanted by living thing. No furniture. Stone couches covered with
sedge and grass, upon which men may have slept or lain; and two or
three blocks of granite upon which they may have sat. That is all. Some

pieces of skin hanging around the walls, and the bones of animals
strewed over the ground outside, give a clue to the kind of food upon
which the inhabitants of the hut may have subsisted. Hunters they must
have been. That will be your natural conjecture.
But how did they get into this valley, and how got they out of it? Of
course, like yourself, they descended into it, and then ascended out
again, by means of a rope-ladder.
That would be the explanation at which you would arrive; and it would
be a satisfactory one, but for a circumstance that just now comes under
your observation.
Scanning the facade of the cliff, your eye is arrested by a singular
appearance. You perceive a serried line, or rather a series of serried
lines, running from the base in a vertical direction. On drawing nearer
to these curious objects, you discover them to be ladders--the lowest set
upon the earth, and reaching to a ledge, upon which the second is rested;
this one extending to a second ledge, on which the third ladder finds
support; and so on throughout a whole series of six.
At first sight, it would appear to you as if the ci-devant denizens of the
hut had made their exodus from the valley by means of these ladders;
and such would be the natural conviction, but for a circumstance that
forbids belief in this mode of exit: the ladders do not continue to the
top of the cliff! A long space, which would require two or three more
such ladders to span it, still intervenes between the top of the highest
and the brow of the precipice; and this could not have been scaled
without additional ladders. Where are they? It is scarcely probable they
had been drawn up; and had they fallen back into the valley, they
would still be there. There are none upon the ground.
But these conjectures do not require to be continued. A short
examination of the cliff suffices to convince you that the design of
scaling it by ladders could not have succeeded. The ledge against which
rests the top of the highest must have been found too narrow to support
another; or rather, the rocks above and projecting over would render it
impossible to place a ladder upon this ledge. It is evident that the

scheme had been tried and abandoned.
The very character of the attempt proves that they who had made it
must have been placed in a desperate situation--imprisoned within that
cliff-girt valley, with no means of escaping from it, except such as they
themselves might devise.
Moreover, after a complete exploration of the place, you can find no
evidence that they ever did escape from their strange prison; and your
thoughts can only shape themselves into conjectures, as to who they
were that had wandered into this out-of-the-way corner of the world;
how they got into, and how out of it; and, finally, whether they ever
succeeded in getting out at all. Your conjectures will come to an end,
when you have read the history of the Cliff-climbers.
CHAPTER THREE.
THE PLANT-HUNTER AND HIS COMPANIONS.
Karl Linden, a young German student, who had taken part in the
revolutionary struggles of 1848, had by the act of banishment sought an
asylum in London. Like most refugees, he was without means; but,
instead of giving himself up to idle habits, he had sought and obtained
employment in one of those magnificent "nurseries" which are to be
met with in the suburbs of the world's metropolis. His botanical
knowledge soon attracted the attention of his employer, the proprietor
of the nursery--one of those enterprising and spirited men who, instead
of contenting themselves with merely cultivating the trees and
flowering-plants already introduced into our gardens and greenhouses,
expend large sums of money in sending emissaries to all parts of the
earth, to discover and bring home other rare and beautiful kinds.
These emissaries--botanical collectors, or "plant-hunters," as they may
be called--in the pursuit of their calling, have explored, and are still
engaged in exploring, the wildest and most remote countries of the
globe--such as the deep, dark forests upon the Amazon, the Orinoco,
and the Oregon in America; the hot equatorial regions of Africa;