AN ASCENT OF THE MATTERHORN. 235 
announced that breakfast was ready. We rose in a 
hurry, ate everything on the table, — our invariable 
custom in Switzerland, — and by half-past one our 
alpenstocks were rattling loudly on the stone pave- 
ments of the narrow streets of Zermatt. Our five 
guides were ready, each laden with ropes, ice-axe, 
and provisions, and we were on the road up the 
mountain. 
Let me say a word about the guides. Most of 
the able-bodied men in the Swiss valleys are in the 
summer guides or porters in the mountains. The 
average guide is a rather heavy, slow-spoken fellow, 
who buys a good deal of food for you and eats it 
himself, who drinks great quantities of villanous 
sour red wine at your expense, hauls you around 
like a bundle of meal, and finally, as he leaves 
you, waxes eloquent on the subject of Zrinkgeld. 
But there are guides and guides, and some of them 
are men of force and intelligence, who have, and 
who deserve to have, a wide reputation. Among 
those, known all over Europe for strength and 
courage, was Michel Croz of Chamouny, who fell 
from the Matterhorn in 1865. Among those des- 
tined to be thus known is the young man whom 
we fortunately selected as our chief guide, — Jean 
Baptiste Aymonod of Val Tournanche. 
‘John the Baptist,” as we called him, is a very 
robust and muscular young man of medium height, 
with a smooth face, light hair, gentle, blue eyes, and 
a firm, expressive mouth. He is soft-voiced and 
slow-spoken, — as are most of the Swiss guides, — 
and he is endowed with a graciousness of manner 
and purity of speech hardly to be looked for in a 
