i88i;] 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 a huge 

 had walked over the snowy desolation of the Mat- 'py^'^^^^ 

 terjoch or Col de Saint Theodule from Val Tour- 

 nanche 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 grand- 

 est 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 neigh- 

 bors, Monte Rosa, the Weisshorn, and the Micha- 

 belhorn 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 ava- 

 lanches of loosened rocks. 



We had wandered about Zermatt for a few days, cnherCs 

 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 some- 

 thing 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 



C 259 3 



