Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/196

156 The desolate, outside pines of the Z'mutt forests, stripped of their bark, and blanched by the weather, are a fit foreground to a scene that can hardly be surpassed in solemn grandeur. It is a subject worthy of the pencil of a great painter, and one which would tax the powers of the very greatest.

Higher up the glacier the mountain is less savage in appearance, but it is not less impracticable; and, three hours later, when we arrived at the island of rock, called the Stockje (which marks the end of the Z'muttgletscher proper, and which separates its higher feeder, the Stockgletscher, from its lower but greater one, the Tiefenmatten), Carrel himself, one of the least demonstrative of men, could not refrain from expressing wonder at the steepness of its faces, and at the audacity that had prompted us to camp upon the south-west ridge; the profile of which is seen very well from the Stockje Carrel then saw the north and north-west sides of the mountain for the first time, and was more firmly persuaded than ever, that an ascent was possible only from the direction of Breil. Three years afterwards I was traversing the same spot with the guide Franz Biener, when all at once a puff of wind brought to us a very bad smell; and, on looking about, we discovered a dead chamois half-way up the southern cliffs of the Stockje. We clambered up, and found that it had been killed by a most uncommon and extraordinary accident. It had slipped on the upper rocks, had rolled over and over down a slope of débris, without being able to regain its feet, had fallen over a little patch of rocks that projected through the débris, and had caught the points of both