om. He had only two pupils in attendance, and I
did not get a very favorable impression of this high school. Its
master quite overcame us with thanks when we gave him a few centimes on
leaving. It still rained, and we arrived in St. Nicolaus quite damp.

There is a decent road from St. Nicolaus to Zermatt, over which go
wagons without springs. The scenery is constantly grander as we
ascend. The day is not wholly clear; but high on our right are the vast
snow-fields of the Weishorn, and out of the very clouds near it seems
to pour the Bies Glacier. In front are the splendid Briethorn, with its
white, round summit; the black Riffelhorn; the sharp peak of the little
Matterhorn; and at last the giant Matterhorn itself rising before us,
the most finished and impressive single mountain in Switzerland. Not
so high as Mont Blanc by a thousand feet, it appears immense in its
isolated position and its slender aspiration. It is a huge pillar of
rock, with sharply cut edges, rising to a defined point, dusted with
snow, so that the rock is only here and there revealed. To ascend it
seems as impossible as to go up the Column of Luxor; and one can believe
that the gentlemen who first attempted it in 1864, and lost their lives,
did fall four thousand feet before their bodies rested on the glacier
below.

We did not stay at Zermatt, but pushed on for the hotel on the top of
the Riffelberg,--a very stiff and tiresome climb of about three hours,
an unending pull up a stony footpath. Within an hour of the top, and
when the white hotel is in sight above the zigzag on the breast of the
precipice, we reach a green and widespread Alp where hundreds of cows
are feeding, watched by two forlorn women,--the "milkmaids all forlorn"
of poetry. At the rude chalets we stop, and get draughts of rich, sweet
cream. As we wind up the slope, the tinkling of multitudinous bells from
the herd comes to us, which is also in the domain of poetry. All the way
up we have found wild flowers in the greatest profusion; and the higher
we ascend, the more exquisite is their color and the more perfect their
form. There are pansies; gentians of a deeper blue than flower ever was
before; forget-me-nots, a pink variety among them; violets, the Alpine
rose and the Alpine violet; delicate pink flowers of moss; harebells;
and quantities for which we know no names, more exquisite in shape and
color than the choicest products of the greenhouse. Large slopes are
covered with t