rock. It is supported by other peaks almost as noble as itself. The Nesthorn is at hand; while sweeping round to the west we strike the glorious triad already referred to, the Weisshorn, the Matterhorn, and the Dom. Take one glance at the crevasses of the glacier immediately below us. It tumbles at its end down a steep incline, and is greatly riven. But the crevasses open before the steep part is reached, and you notice the coalescence of marginal and transverse crevasses, producing a system of curved fissures with the convexities of the curves pointing upwards. The mechanical reason of this is now known to you. The glacier-tables are also numerous and fine. I should like to linger with you here for a week, exploring the existing glaciers, and tracing out the evidences of others that have passed

away.

§ 52. The Riffelberg and Görner Glacier.

354. And though our measurements and observations on the Mer de Glace are more or less representative of all that can be made or solved elsewhere, I am unwilling to leave you unacquainted with the great system of glaciers which stream from the northern slopes of Monte Rosa and the adjacent mountains. From the Bel Alp we can descend to Brieg, and thence drive to Visp; but you and I prefer the breezy heights, so we sweep round the promontory of the Nessel, until we stand over the Rhone valley, in front of Visp. From

this village an hour's walking carries us to Stalden, where the valley divides into two branches: the one leading through Saas over the Monte Moro, and the other through St. Nicholas to Zermatt. The latter is our route.

355. We reach Zermatt, but do not halt there. On the mountain ridge, 4,000 feet above the valley, we discern the Riffelberg hotel. This we reach. Right in front of us is the pinnacle of the Matterhorn, upon the top of which it must appear incredible to you that a human foot could ever tread. Constancy and skill, however, accomplished this, but in the first instance at a terrible price. In the little churchyard of Zermatt we have seen the graves of two of the greatest mountaineers that Savoy and England have produced; and who, with two gallant young companions, fell from the Matterhorn in 1865.

356. At the Riffelberg we are within an hour's walk of the famous Görner Grat, which commands so grand a view of the glaciers of Monte Rosa. But yonder huge knob of perfectly bare rock, which is called the Riffelhorn, must be our station. What the Cleft Station is to the Mer de Glace, the Riffelhorn is to the Görner glacier and its tributaries. From its lower side the rock, easy as it may seem, is inaccessible. Here, indeed, in 1865, a fifth good man met his end, and he also lies beside his fellow countrymen in the churchyard of Zermatt. Passing a little tarn, or lake, called the Riffel See,

we assail the Riffelhorn on its upper side. It is capital rock-practice to reach the summit; and from it we command a most extraordinary scene.

357. The huge and many-peaked mass of Monte Rosa faces us, and we scan its snows from bottom to top. To the right is the mighty ridge of the Lyskamm, also laden with snow; and between both lies the Western Glacier of Monte Rosa. This glacier meets another from the vast snow-fields of the Cima di Jazzi; they join to form the Görner glacier, and from their place of junction stretches the customary medial moraine. On this side of the Lyskamm rise two beautiful snowy eminences, the Twins Castor and Pollux; then come the brown crags of the Breithorn, then the Little Matterhorn, and then the broad snow-field of the Théodule, out of which springs the Great Matterhorn, and which you and I will cross subsequently into Italy.

358. The valleys and depressions between these mou:tains are filled with glaciers. Down the flanks of the Twin Castor comes the Glacier des Jumeaux, from Pollux comes the Schwartze glacier, from the Breithorn the Trifti glacier, then come the Little Matterhorn glacier and the Théodule glacier, each, as it welds itself to the trunk, carrying with it its medial moraine. We can count nine such moraines from our present position. And to a still more surprising degree than on the Mer de Glace, we notice the power of the ice to yield to pressure; the broad névés being squeezed on the trunk

of the Görner into white stripes, which become ever narrower between their bounding moraines, and finally disappear under their own shingle.

359. On the two main tributaries we also notice moraines which seem in each case to rise from the body of the glacier, appearing in the middle of the

RIFFELHORN TO THE LEFT.

These

ice without any apparent origin higher up. at their sources, are sub-glacial moraines, which have been rubbed away from rocky promontories entirely covered with ice. They lie hidden for a time in the body of the glacier, and appear at the surface where the ice above them has been melted away by the sun.

360. This is the place to mention a notion long entertained by the inhabitants of the high Alps, that glaciers possess the power of thrusting out all impurities from them. On the Mer de Glace you and I have noticed large patches of clay and black mud which evidently came from the body of the glacier, and we can therefore understand how natural was this notion of extrusion to people unaccustomed to close observation. But the power of the glacier in this respect is in reality the power of the sun, which fuses the ice above concealed impurities, and, like the bodies of the guides on the Glacier des Bossons (143), brings them to the light of day.

361. On no other glacier will you find more objects of interest than on the Görner. Sand cones, glaciertables, deep ice gorges cut by streams and bridged fantastically by boulders, moulins, sometimes arched icecaverns of extraordinary size and beauty. On the lower part of the glacier we notice the partial disappearance of the medial moraine in the crevasses, and its reappearance at the foot of the incline. For many years this glacier was steadily advancing on the meadow in front of it, ploughing up the soil and overturning the châlets in its way. It now shares in the general retreat exhibited during the last fifteen years among the glaciers of the Alps. As usual, a river, the Visp, rushes from a vault at the extremity of the Görner glacier.