OLD ALPINE JOTTINGS. 433 



fitly compared to one of those uneheerful tenements 

 often seen in the neighbourhood of London, where an 

 adventurous contractor has laid the foundations, run up 

 the walls, fixed the rafters, but stopped short, through 

 bankruptcy, without completing the roof. As long as 

 the Matterhorn remained unsealed, my Alpine life could 

 hardly be said to be covered in, and the admonitions of 

 my friends were premature. But now that the work is 

 done, they will have more reason to blame me if I fail 

 to profit by their prudent advice. 



Another defeat of a different character was also 

 inflicted on me in 1862. Wishing to give my friend 

 Mr. (now Sir John) Lubbock a taste of mountain life, I 

 went with him up the Galenstock. This pleased him so 

 much that Bennen and I, desiring to make his cup of 

 pleasure full, decided on taking him up the Jungfrau. 

 We sent two porters, laden with coverlets and provisions, 

 from the ^Eggischhorn to the Faulberg, but on our 

 arrival there found one of the porters in the body of the 

 Aletsch glacier. He had recklessly sought to cross a 

 snow-bridge which spanned a broad and profound 

 chasm. The bridge broke under him, he fell in, and was 

 deeply covered by the frozen debris which followed him. 

 He had been there for an hour when we arrived, and it 

 required nearly another hour to dig him out. We 

 carried him more dead than alive to the Faulberg cave, 

 and by great care restored him. As I lay there wet, 

 through the long hours of that dismal night, I almost 

 registered a vow never to tread upon a glacier again. 

 But, like the forces in the physical world, human 

 emotions vary with the distance from their origin, and 

 a year afterwards I was again upon the ice. Towards 

 the close of 1862 Bennen and myself made "the tour of 

 Monte Rosa," halting for a day or two at the excellent 

 hostelry of Delapierre, in the magnificent Yal du Lys. 



