An Ascent of the Matterhorn. 



83 



Burgener's voice from above a jutting shelf some forty 

 feet above our heads. "Jetzt," would come the answer. 

 Then one of the middle men would swing out over the 

 abyss while the rest of us hugged and gripped the rocks 

 to save him and ourselves if he slipped. The rock on the 

 north face, or roof, of the Matterhorn is rotten and 

 crumbling. Loose fragments, half-imbedded in ice and 

 snow, offered tempting but treacherous handholds. The 

 rope had to be watched constantly, that it might not catch 

 in a crevice and jerk the climber backward at the very 

 moment when he was scaling a difficult place. It was 

 from this sharp slope, not far from the summit, that 

 Michel Croz, Messrs. Hadow and Hudson, and Lord F. 

 Douglas* fell to their death down a mile of awful preci- 

 pices. These last few hundred feet of the Matterhorn 

 try the endurance even more than the skill of the climber, 

 because the supreme test of nerve and muscle comes at 

 the end of a most trying and continued climb. 



At about 10:30 A.M. we stood upon the summit, — a 

 long narrow knife-edge, covered with snow through 

 which rocks protrude here and there. It was so narrow 

 in places that persons passing each other acted like boat- 

 men trying to change places in a canoe on treacherous 

 water. On the Italian side an immense snow cornice 

 projected into space, ready to plunge downward with any 

 one rash or insane enough to set foot on it. On the north 

 side a gentle slope led to the edge of the awful precipice 

 before mentioned. This slope must have been a rod or 

 more in length in some places. But because it seemed to 

 dip into bottomlessness not far from where we stood, no 

 one manifested the slightest inclination to perambulate 

 on it. The summit must look very different now from 

 what it did when Edward Whymper first saw it in 1865. 

 Frost and sunshine, rain and storm, are continually chisel- 

 ing it into new forms. This, of course, means that the 

 summit is constantly being lowered. At first I regretted 



* July 14, 1865. First ascent. Edward Whymper and the two Taug- 

 walders alone survived. The body of Lord Douglas was never found. 



