shuddered as some
dislodged fragment of rock showed the course which, in case of accident,
fragments of my own body would follow. A precipice is always, for
obvious reasons, far more terrible from above than from below. The
creeping, tingling sensation which passes through one's limbs--even when
one knows oneself to be in perfect safety--testifies to the thrilling
influence of the sight. But I have never so realised the terrors of a
terrific cliff as when I could not see it. The awful gulf which
intervened between me and the green meadows struck the imagination by
its invisibility. It was like the view which may be seen from the ridge
of a cathedral roof, where the eaves have for their immediate
background the pavement of the streets below; only this cathedral was
9,000 feet high. Now, any one standing at the foot of the Wetterhorn may
admire their stupendous massiveness and steepness; but, to feel their
influence enter in the very marrow of one's bones, it is necessary to
stand at the summit, and to fancy the one little slide down the short
ice-slope, to be followed apparently by a bound into clear air and a
fall down to the houses, from heights where only the eagle ventures to
soar.

This is one of the Alpine beauties, which, of course, is: beyond the
power of art to imitate, and which people are therefore apt to ignore.
But it is not the only one to be seen on the high summits. It is often
said that these views are not "beautiful"--apparently because they won't
go into a picture, or, to put it more fairly, because no picture: can in
the faintest degree imitate them. But without quarrelling about words, I
think that, even if "beautiful" be not the most correct epithet, they
have a marvellously stimulating effect upon the imagination. Let us look
round from this wonderful pinnacle in mid air, and note one or two of
the most striking elements of the scenery.

You are, in the first place, perched on a cliff, whose presence is the
more felt because it is unseen. Then you are in a region over which
eternal silence is brooding. Not a sound ever comes there, except the
occasional fall of a splintered fragment of rock, or a layer of snow; no
stream is heard trickling, and the sounds of animal life are left
thousands of feet below. The most that you can hear is some mysterious
noise made by the wind eddying round the gigantic rocks; sometimes a
strange flapping sound, as if an unearthly flag were shaking its
invisible folds