You want to ascend these mountains? Come to Zermatt. With a wand ten
miles long you can touch twenty snow-peaks. Europe has but one higher.
Twenty glaciers cling to the mountain sides and send their torrents
into the little green valley. Try yourself on Monte Rosa, more
difficult to ascend than Mont Blanc; try the Matterhorn, vastly more
difficult than either or both. A plumbline dropped from the summit of
Monte Rosa through the mountain would be seven miles from Zermatt. You
first have your feet shod with a preparation of nearly one hundred
double-pointed hobnails driven into the heels and soles. In the
afternoon you go up three thousand one hundred and sixteen feet to the
Riffelhouse. It is equal to going up three hundred flights of stairs
of ten feet each; that is, you go up three hundred stories of your
house--only there are no stairs, and the path is on the outside of the
house. This takes three hours--an hour to each hundred stories; after
the custom of the hotels of this country, you find that you have
reached the first floor. The next day you go up and down the Goerner
Grat, equal to one hundred and seventy more stories, for practice and a
view unequaled in Europe. Ordering the guide to be ready and the
porter to call you at one o'clock, you lie down to dream of the
glorious revelations of the morrow.
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