i88i;] Ascent of the Matter horn 



the dangling ropes, almost impassable without them. 

 Yet some one carried up those ropes and the iron 

 staples which hold them. That man was John 

 the Baptist. They constitute a part of 'Techelle Uecheiie 

 Jordan' — the Jordan Ladder — so named for 7orc/a« 

 Leighton Jordan, an English mountaineer on whose 

 generous initiative they were bought and placed. 



The ''ladder" once ascended, the few hundred 

 feet remaining presented an easy slope on which 

 our sole difficulty was the violent wind. At noon On the 

 we had reached the summit, a narrow crest about '^^"^ 

 twenty feet long and from one to three feet wide 

 rising to a point at the southern end. Only four of 

 us could safely squat on it at once. It was as cold 

 as midwinter. Snow fell thick and fast. The wind, 

 moreover, whipped us in savage whirling gusts so 

 that we dared not rise to our feet lest we be literally 

 blown away and make a strange figure sailing over 

 Italy tied together with a rope. Most of the time 

 we could see nothing; but occasionally a break in 

 the storm would give us a green glimpse of the 

 Tournanche village of La Breuil two miles below; 

 and once the Dent Blanche disclosed her snow- 

 crowned head. Writing our names on a card we 

 placed it in an anchored bottle, the Matterhorn's 

 register of guests. Victor then broke from the tip 

 of the mountain a fragment of the hard, dark green, 

 brittle hornblende of which it is made, a souvenir 

 which I still possess, and we started back. 



Halfway down to the hut Gilbert was suddenly a fright- 

 struck by a rock weighing a hundred pounds or so, {"^^^^^^ 

 which had slipped from under the feet of the last 

 man and gone howling down the mountain side. 

 He thus received a savage gash across the forehead 



: 263 3 



