ed.

THE MATTERHORN

The Matterhorn is peculiar. I do not know of another mountain like it
on the earth. There are such splintered and precipitous spires on the
moon. How it came to be such I treated of fully in _Sights and
Insights_. It is approximately a three-sided mountain, fourteen
thousand seven hundred and eighteen feet high, whose sides are so steep
as to be unassailable. Approach can be made only along the angle at
the junction of the planes.

[Illustration: The Matterhorn.]

It was long supposed to be inaccessible. Assault after assault was
made on it by the best and most ambitious Alp climbers, but it kept its
virgin height untrodden. However, in 1864, seven men, almost
unexpectedly, achieved the victory; but in descending four of them were
precipitated, down an almost perpendicular declivity, four thousand
feet. They had achieved the summit after hundreds of others had
failed. They had reveled in the upper glories, deposited proof of
their visit, and started to return. According to law, they were roped
together. According to custom, in a difficult place all remain still,
holding the rope, except one who carefully moves on. Croz, the first
guide, was reaching up to take the feet of Mr. Haddow and help him down
to where he stood. Suddenly Haddow's strength failed, or he slipped
and struck Croz on the shoulders, knocking him off his narrow footing.
They two immediately jerked off Rev. Mr. Hudson. The three falling
jerked off Lord Francis Douglas. Four were loose and falling; only
three left on the rocks. Just then the rope somehow parted, and all
four dropped that great fraction of a mile. The mountain climber makes
a sad pilgrimage to the graves of three of them in Zermatt; the fourth
probably fell in a crevasse of the glacier at the foot, and may be
brought to the sight of friends in perhaps two score years, when the
river of ice shall have moved down into the valleys where the sun has
power to melt away the ice. This accident gave the mountain a
reputation for danger to which an occasional death on it since has
added.

Each of these later unfortunate occurrences is attributable to personal
perversity or deficiency. Peril depends more on the man than on
circumstances. One is in danger on a wall twenty feet high, another
safe on a precipice of a thousand feet. No man has a right to peril
his life in mere mountain climbing; that great sacrifice must be
reserved for saving other