1881] Ascent of the Matterhorn relate in partial detail, necessarily borrowing for the purpose from an old-time talk which to some of my readers may be painfully familiar. Returning from Florence by way of Aosta, we 4 buge had walked over the snowy desolation of the Mat- pyramid terjoch or Col de Saint Théodule from Val Tournanche to Zermatt. And ever before us as we mounted the green valley, above us as we toiled up the pass, above us everywhere dark, majestic, inaccessible - rose the huge pyramid of the grandest of the Alps, its long hand clutching at the sky. The Matterhorn burns itself into the memory as nothing else in all Europe does. Three of its neighbors, Monte Rosa, the Weisshorn, and the Michabelhorn or Dom, as well as Mont Blanc, are indeed a little higher, but no other peak in the world makes such good use of its height. Most great mountains have white rounded heads, their harsher angles worn away by the long action of glaciers. The Matterhorn, however, is too steep for snow to cling to and no glacier has ever rounded its angles. It is therefore a creature of sun and frost, the wreck or relic of some ancient giant from which the strong gods of heat and cold have hurled down their avalanches of loosened rocks. dare We had wandered about Zermatt for a few days, Gilbert's and all the while the mountain hung above our heads and dared us to come. And so one evening as we watched the moon slip behind its towering obelisk, Gilbert said to Beach: "We must do something big before we leave this place. Let's go up the Matterhorn!" And Beach replied: "All right, I'll go if Jordan will." But Jordan held back, knowing that it would be John the Starting out a hard road for a heavy man to travel. Besides, the tragedy of the first climbers was fresh in his mind. Then Gilbert said: "You have talked and talked about mountains, but you have never done a single big thing among them, and now it's time you did!" I remembered, moreover, that several earnest scientists had attempted to make the ascent. Tyndall, for instance, had thought it worth while to try again and again, year after year; and so had my Italian namesake, the geologist Giordano. So at last I fell into line, and seeking out "John the Baptist" - Jean Baptiste Aymonod who had led us from Val Tournanche, engaged him as chief guide, and arranged to get off before morning. We then strolled pensively through the little graveyard to the tombs of Hadow, Hudson, and Michel Croz, the unfortunate associates of Edward Whymper on the first ascent in 1865. The party as finally made up consisted of Anderson, Gilbert, Spangler, William E. Beach (also a student from Indiana University), Walter O. Williams of Indianapolis, and myself. Our guides were five in number "John the Baptist," a young man of remarkable strength, skill, and loyalty, afterward well known and appreciated in the Pennine Alps, Victor Macquignaz, François Bic, Daniel Bic, and Élie Pession- all from Val Tournanche, a French colony within the confines of Italy. When we started out shortly after midnight, the moon was full and hung gracefully over the south shoulder of the mountain, and the sky was without a cloud. Up through dark fir forests we went, by the side of a foaming torrent, then over flowercarpeted pastures and steep grassy slopes dominated 1881] Ascent of the Matterhorn by the great pyramidal mass, the glistening snows of the Dent Blanche and the Breithorn flanking it on either side. At sunrise we reached the cabin, a fairly comfortable shed at the foot of the peak itself. Within, the walls bear inscriptions in many tongues. One reads as follows: After a brief rest we now set out on a long and The Bergmost trying climb, the many details of which I schrund need not here repeat. But far below us, even from the very start, yawned the deep abyss of the "Bergschrund," a chasm produced by the slipping away of the Furggen Glacier from the mountain. Tied together in three groups, about ten feet apart, we moved only one at a time in each group and not at all until the preceding man had secured a good foothold, the constant question of the guides being "Etes vous bien placé?" -"Are you well fixed?" For not to be so even for a moment was a menace to one's associates. The steepest pitch of the whole ascent is just below the tiny refuge hut near the shoulder, which I describe later on. Down the face of that seventy- Dangling foot precipice dangled a rope made fast to an iron ropes staple above, but swinging loosely below so that one could climb hand over hand by resting his toes on projecting irregularities of the mountain side. That ropes were placed in difficult stretches along the way we already knew; still we had hardly ex pected to be suspended over infinity! John as usual went up ahead as far as his tether permitted, then called to me to follow. The rope was white with frost and I thought that I could manage better with gloves. This was a mistake, for when I had to trust my full weight I felt myself slipping downward, at first slowly, then more swiftly. It was not a pleasant sensation, though I hoped to stop when I reached the knot at the end of the rope; otherwise we might all form the nucleus of a rock avalanche moving toward Zermatt. The knot held, however, and gloves off, I tried again, this time with better luck, after which the others followed successfully. After a few moments' rest in the hut we next passed up and along the sharp arête or angular edge of the mountain, thereby avoiding the risk of falling stones. This at one place became exceedingly narrow, and on the north side, as we inched along, we looked down a precipice of four thousand feet to the Tiefenmatten Glacier. From a cliff not far greatest above us at that point, Whymper's companions fell tragedy the whole distance to their death. I asked John about it, but he would not talk. "I was not there," he said. The Alpine Clouds now gathered suddenly, enveloping us in a gusty snowstorm and drenching the valley with rain. We lost sight of the earth altogether; everything below was a fathomless abyss. As we turned along the more level shoulder toward the east face, Aymonod called my attention to a heap of stones; "Voilà le châlet de Monsieur Vimpère," his version. of "Whymper." The cliffs which now confronted us were distressingly difficult even with the aid of |