236 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
herdsman’s boy, risking his life on the rocks and 
ice for two hundred dollarsa year. His face shows 
the effects of mountaineering, for his nose has 
sometime been broken by a falling stone. 
Our next guide, Victor Maquignaz, is older than 
John, and larger, — a big burly mountaineer, brave 
and trusty, who speaks French with variations, a 
surprising dialect born of the mountains, in a high, 
uncertain falsetto, like the voice of a wheelbarrow 
that needs oiling. Next came Francois Bic, —a tall, 
intelligent, positive fellow, a good mountaineer, but 
who would be better liked if his eye were less 
closely fixed on the Trinkgeld. Next came his 
brother, Daniel Bic, — a muscular man in full beard 
and spectacles, looking like a German Dokéor, who 
had never been up the Matterhorn before, and 
evidently wished never to go again. Finally, there 
was Elie Pession, whom we surnamed “the Invalid,” 
—a strong-looking fellow with a heavy black beard, 
whose heart sank into his boots when he stood in 
the presence of danger. 
All these guides were French, and all belonged 
to the valley of Tournanche,—the deep valley 
which extends to the southward from the Matter- 
horn on the Italian side, corresponding to the val- 
ley of Zermatt, which extends on the Swiss side 
toward the northward. 
As we started out that night, it seemed that we 
had never seen the world look so beautiful. The 
moon was full, and hung gracefully over the left 
shoulder of the Matterhorn, and the sky was without 
acloud. Through dark fir-forests we went, by the 
side of a foaming torrent, then over flower-carpeted 
