206 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



road for a heavy man to toil up. Besides, the 

 story of the first climbers was fresh in his mind. 

 But the boys were persistent, and they said, " You 

 have talked and talked about mountains, and you 

 have never done a single big thing among them ; 

 and it is time you did ! " And so they kept it up. 

 And I remembered that Tyndall had thought it 

 worth his while to try again and again to go up 

 this mountain, and so had my Italian namesake, 

 the geologist Giordano. Then why not I ? 



At last we three shook hands upon it, and went 

 back to the hotel to make arrangements. After- 

 wards three others joined us, making six in all.^ 

 And we sought out '' John the Baptist," and made 

 him our chief guide, and directed him to provide 

 food and ropes for eleven, and we were " in for " 

 the Matterhorn. 



Meanwhile the boys wrote letters home, — letters 

 full of descriptions of the Matterhorn, which kept 

 their mothers and sisters awake o' nights for a 

 week. And the sketches of the mountain with 

 which they embellished them were wonderful to 

 behold. In the evening some of them strolled out 

 to the little graveyard at Zermatt, — to the tombs 

 of Hadow, Hudson, and Michel Croz, the first vic- 

 tims of the Matterhorn, — " for inspiration," they 

 said ; and some of them composed epitaphs, which 

 they have not yet needed. 



At one o'clock the next morning the porter of 

 the Hotel Monte Rosa knocked at our doors, and 



1 Professor Charles H. Gilbert, Professor Melville B. Anderson, 

 Mr. William W. Spangler, Mr. William E. Beach, Mr. Walter O. 

 Williams, and the writer. 



