CLOUDS AND RIVERS ICE AND GLACIERS. 141 



tins village an hour's walking carries us to Stalden, 

 where the valley divides into two branches : the one 

 leading through Saas over the Monte Moro, and the 

 other through St. Nicholas to Zermatt. The latter is 

 our route. 



355. We reach Zermatt, but do not halt there. On 

 the mountain ridge, 4,000 feet above the valley, ^e 

 discern the Eiffelberg hotel. This we reach. Eight in 

 front of us is the pinnacle of the Matterhorn, upon 

 the top of which it must appear incredible to you 

 that a human foot could ever tread. Constancy and 

 skill, however, accomplished this, but in the first in- 

 stance at a terrible price. In the little churchyard 

 of Zermatt we have seen the graves of two of the 

 greatest mountaineers that Savoy and England have 

 produced; and who, with two gallant young com- 

 panions, fell from the Matterhorn in 1865. 



856. At the Eiffelberg we are within an hour's walk 

 of the famous Gorner Grat, which commands so grand 

 a view of the glaciers of Monte Eosa. But yonder huge 

 knob of perfectly bare rock, which is called the Eiffel- 

 horn, must be our station. What the Cleft Station is 

 to the Mer de Glace, the Eiffelhorn is to the Gorner 

 glacier and its tributaries. From its lower side the 

 rock, easy as it may seem, is inaccessible. Here, indeed, 

 in 1865, a fifth good man met his end, and he also lies 

 beside his fellow countrymen in the churchyard of Zer- 

 matt. Passing a little tarn, or lake, called the Eiffel Pee, 



