AN EXALTED HORN.

"Und alle deine hohen Werke

Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag."

-Faust.

WELL; and what shall we do next?" So asked

my friend, Arthur Braybrooke, as we sat one evening, in the month of August 1869, on the bench in front of Seiler's Monte Rosa Hotel in Zermatt, after having been engaged for about a fortnight in Alpine work performed in the Zermatt region.

"What next?" I replied, dreamily letting the smoke escape in rings and pausing to think. Behind me was the white hotel, before me the green hills, dusky in the after sunset chiaro-scuro of a fine summer evening. Near our bench stood groups of peasants, Sesselträger, mules, guides, porters. One high object stood out loftily clear in the bright light which had left the valley-the object in question being the four peaks of the Mischabel or Saas Grat range.

"What next? Well, I really hardly know. Monte Rosa? Oh, I forgot, you have done that. You A. C. men have done everything. Really I don't know what ought to come next; let us ask Christian."

"Very well," answered my friend, who also was quietly smoking, "let us consult Christian; but stop, here's my Ball, and I can read him under the lamp. You call Christian, and I'll have a look at Ball."

G

While my friend was looking for the right page in Ball's "Guide to the Western Alps," I strolled lazily into the guides' room of Seiler's Hotel, and called for our guide, Christian Lauener, who was engaged by us as chief guide for a specified time.

My friend surely the best Alpine comrade that ever man had-was an A. C., and a much better climber than myself. He had, I fancy, secret yearnings after the Matterhorn, but suppressed them unselfishly, because he thought of danger to me, and because he knew that that fatal peak had to my imagination a fascination of great horror. Indeed, only a night or two before, we had been in a little room, dim in the bad light of one flaring candle, and had seen opened a certain wooden box, which contained a cut and knotted rope, a jagged sleeve, a stiff Alpine boot. We had further seen a small book of photographs of poor Michel Croz, of Whymper, of Hudson, of Hadow, and Lord Douglas. We had seen, too, the graves in Zermatt churchyard, and the box contained the few pathetic relics of the expedition which led to that. The boot had covered a foot now blanching in some undiscovered crevice upon the Matterhorn. The sleeve had clothed the strong arm of the brave guide. The rope had been cut from shattered corpses. Yes; there is a fascination, a horrible fascination, about the lonely and deadly peak. Seeing it every day for many days, hearing constantly some fresh detail of that fearful fatal fall, the Matterhorn gradually possesses the imagination as a demoniac mount, instinct with malignant cruelty and shocking with horrible death. It wholly oppressed and dominated my morbid fancies; and I was not sorry that Arthur did not propose, as he was

half inclined to do, that we should attempt to ascend to its demon crest.

came at my call Those who have

Christian was easily found, and with his usual hearty willingness. never seen this great Alpine guide may like to view him as he advances towards the bench in front of the hotel. Christian Lauener, perhaps some thirty-five to forty years old, is rather over six feet high, very strongly and actively built. He wears a uniform suit of a sad weather-stained green hue. His once black Tyrolese hat is crested with the feathers of the Waldhuhn, and the nails in his heavy boots clatter upon the round pebbles of the pavement in front of the hotel. His manly, cheery face expresses eloquently honesty, courage, fidelity, friendliness. He has done every big thing in the Alps, and has done many for the first time; some, as for instance the unique Dent Blanche, on one of the only two occasions on which that most difficult peak has been ascended. His Red Indian sagacity is equal to his cheerful trustworthiness. His step on the glacier is as sure as his heart is firm and true. To engage Christian is not merely to " employ" him. You secure the zealous dependable assistance of a friendly man, as worthy and pleasant as he is competent. I always fancied that my giant guide presented to the sense of poet or of painter an ideal of William Tell. His clear laughing eye is of a light bluish grey; his weather-beaten features are sunburnt past all praying for; his light moustache and beard frame a mouth as firm in danger as it is kindly in repose. He combines all the highest qualities (and they are very high ones) of the first-class Swiss guide.

This picturesque and gigantesque figure, then,

saunters slowly up to the bench on which my friend, who has found the place in Ball, is sitting under the lamp, and joins good-humouredly in our consultation.

"Look here!" cries Arthur, reading from his guidebook, "Ball says of the Mischabel range-how fine it looks there now!"-here Mr Arthur began to read, while I looked over his shoulder-"that 'the Dom is 14,938 feet high'-the highest thing in Switzerland you know, and very little done-that 'the Dom is the highest and steepest continuous ascent yet made in the Alps; that thorough training is requisite for the mountaineers who would undertake it.' I say, let's do the Mischabel; very few fellows have done it. Good work and fine view. Every one has done Monte Rosa. We can do that afterwards. I am all for the Mischabel. Christian, what do you say? What about the weather? Shall we try it to-morrow?"

Christian, screwing up one eye, as a sailor does, balanced on his feet, looked carefully all round the sky and hills, and then responded slowly, "Well, I've never, as it happens, been up the Mischabel myself; but I've heard all about it from Anderegg, who has, and I know the way and the porter at Randa who went up with your countryman Mr--how do you pronounce it ?-Davies! There's been a deal of snow lately o' nights, and I should say that the cone would be rather heavy; but still I don't see why we shouldn't try it. We can do Monte Rosa next. Weather 'll do, I think. Not often done, the Mischabel. You two can do it. Well, yes; we may as well try it."

This was confirmatory, and we determined to try the Mischabel. It appeared that we should have to start the next morning at about ten, and drive to Randa. From Randa, which is a village in the val

ley between Zermatt and Saint Nicholas, the ascent was to begin; and it further appeared that we should have to bivouac for a night in the open, on a shelf of rock on the side of the mountain, about 7000 feet above Randa. Christian undertook to provide the rugs, the trap, and the second guide — who turned out to be a first-rate fellow-and said he would find porters at Randa. M. and Madame Seiler, the most friendly and sympathising of hosts and hostesses, engaged to attend to the commissariat; and everything being thus arranged, we smoked our final pipe amid joyous anticipations of a fine new mountain excursion on the morrow.

One thing only troubled me a ruck in a stocking had rubbed a hole in one heel, and had made a large sore place. What of that? What of that? One can't stop long in the Alps; weather there is changeable, and perhaps the heel won't hurt on the Mischabel. Anyhow the die is cast, and to-morrow " up we go!"

The next morning duly came, ten o'clock arrived, and with it all our necessaries. At last we got under weigh from Zermatt. The provisions were packed, and the rugs were not forgotten. Arthur and myself sat on the front bench; behind us were the two swarthy sunburnt guides. They carried the ice-axes and the ropes. A peasant in a blue blouse and round grey hat drove the tall well-fed mule. The narrow road winds along by the banks of the roaring river, which rages downwards to the sea, boiling, foaming, and heaping itself up into passionate waves and whirlpools whenever rocks or bends endeavour to oppose its furious flow. We are of course in a valley. On either hand rise chains of mountains. We are so close to those on the right hand that we see only the