Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/357

Rh agreeable journey. They will now, all of them, go on foot with me. One of the mules goes along unencumbered, and the other carries our small amount of baggage.

The valley becomes narrower by degrees, and assumes a more gloomy character, but the grand object, at its further end, stands forth, vast and elevating to the soul. We are now within view of the glacier of Matterhorn, which comes down from the rock in a serpent-like sweep; and now of Matterhorn himself,—a colossal snow-giant, of indescribably defiant aspect, and which seems to lift up his proud neck towards heaven, as if he would defy both God and man.

The valley is shut in, at Zermatt, by the Riffelberg, a plateau of 7,000 feet above the level of the sea; and this plateau is the footstool, as it were, of the giant-forms of Matterhorn and Monte Rosa. Matterhorn (in French, Mont Cervin,) looks out over Switzerland; Monte Rosa towards Italy,—which beautiful land one seems to behold, as in a grand panorama, from its snowy summit.

We reach Zermatt in good time, in the day, and in the evening ramble on the foot of the Riffelberg, along green meadows, where the cattle are grazing on the edge of the glaciers. In the morning, we would ascend the mountain, but the sky is again becoming cloudy, and the spaces of blue growing ever less and less!

September 15th, at an altitude of 7,500 feet.—Whilst thick mist and cold surrounds us here, in the midst of the region of ice, and prevents our seeing any thing of its wondrous forms, I will, with