waterfall, and across which the variously colored
beds, thrown by perspective into corresponding curvatures, run exactly
like the seams of canvas in a Venetian felucca's sail.

Seen from this spot, it seems impossible that the mountain should long
support itself in such a form, but the impression is only caused by the
concealment of the vast proportions of the mass behind, whose poise is
quite unaffected by this hollowing at one point. Thenceforward, as we
ascend the glacier, the Matterhorn every moment expands in apparent
width; and having reached the foot of the Stockhi (about a four hours'
walk from Zermatt), and getting the Cervin summit to bear S. 111/2 deg. E., I
made the drawing of it engraved opposite, which gives a true idea of the
relations between it and the masses of its foundation. The bearing
stated is that of the apparent summit only, as from this point the true
summit is not visible; the rocks which seem to form the greatest part of
the mountain being in reality nothing but its foundations, while the
little white jagged peak, relieved against the dark hollow just below
the seeming summit, is the rock marked _g_ in Fig. 33. But the structure
of the mass, and the long ranges of horizontal, or nearly horizontal,
beds which form its crest, showing in black points like arrow-heads
through the snow, where their ridges are left projecting by the
avalanche channels, are better seen than at any other point I reached,
together with the sweeping and thin zones of sandy gneiss below, bending
apparently like a coach-spring; and the notable point about the whole
is, that this under-bed, of seemingly the most delicate substance, is
that prepared by Nature to build her boldest precipice with, it being
this bed which emerges at the two bastions or shoulders before noticed,
and which by that projection causes the strange oblique distortion of
the whole mountain mass, as it is seen from Zermatt.

[Illustration: J. Ruskin. J. C. Armytage.
39. The Cervin, from the North-West.]

Sec. 16. And our surprise will still be increased as we farther examine the
materials of which the whole mountain is composed. In many places its
crystalline slates, where their horizontal surfaces are exposed along
the projecting beds of their foundations, break into ruin so total that
the foot dashes through their loose red flakes as through heaps of
autumn leaves; and yet, just where their structure seems most delicate,
j