AN ASCENT OF THE MATTERHORN. 233 
Europe does. Shut your eyes for a moment, you 
who have been at Zermatt, and straight before you 
and above you, its long hand clutching at the sky, 
you will see the Matterhorn! It is not the highest 
mountain of the Alps. Its gigantic neighbors — 
Monte Rosa, the Mischabelhorn, the Weisshorn, as 
well as Mont Blanc — are all higher,—a little; but 
no other mountain in the world makes such use of 
its height as the Matterhorn. Other high moun- 
tains have great rounded heads, white with the 
snows of eternity. Their harsher angles are worn 
away by the long action of the glaciers. But the 
Matterhorn is a creature of the sun and frost. 
No glacier has worn its angles into curves. Its 
slopes are too steep for snow to cling to, and all 
the snow which winter or summer falls upon it 
rolls down its sides and lies in three great ice- 
heaps at the bottom. These are the Furggen 
glacier, the Matterhorn glacier, and the glacier of 
Tiefenmatten. 
We had wandered about Zermatt for a day or 
two, seeing the sights in the usual way, and all the 
while the Matterhorn hung above our heads and 
dared us to come. At last we could stand it no 
longer; and one evening when the “ stalwarts” 
were gathered together on the stone-wall in front 
of the Hétel Monte Rosa, Gilbert said unto Beach, 
““We must do something big before we leave this 
place. Let us go up the Matterhorn!” And 
Beach said, ‘“‘ We must indeed. I will go if Jordan 
will.” 
But Jordan felt doubtful. He knew that a moun- 
tain which eclipsed the full moon would be a hard 
