waters of the lake is very lovely.

From the Schwarzsee, trips are made to the Hoernli (another stage on the
way to the Matterhorn), to the Gandegg Hut, across moraine and glacier
and to the Staffel Alp, over the green meadows. The Hoernli (9,490 feet
high) is the ridge running out from the Matterhorn. It is reached by a
stiff climb over rocks and a huge heap of fallen stones and debris. From
it the view is similar to that from the Schwarzsee, but much finer, the
Theodule Glacier being seen to great advantage. Above the Hoernli towers
the Matterhorn, huge, fierce, frowning, threatening. Every few moments
comes a heavy, muffled sound, as new showers of falling stones come
down. This is one of the main dangers in climbing the peak itself, for
from base to summit, the Matterhorn is really a decaying mountain, the
stones rolling away through the action of the storms, the frosts, and
the sun.

PONTRESINA AND ST. MORITZ[40]

BY VICTOR TISSOT

The night was falling fine as dust, as a black sifted snow-shower, a
snow made of shadow; and the melancholy of the landscape, the grand
nocturnal solitude of these lofty, unknown regions, had a charm profound
and disquieting. I do not know why I fancied myself no longer in
Switzerland, but in some country near the pole, in Sweden or Norway. At
the foot of these bare mountains I looked for wild fjords, lit up by the
moon.

Nothing can express the profound somberness of these landscapes at
nightfall; the long desert road, gray from the reflections of the starry
sky, unrolls in an interminable ribbon along the depth of the valley;
the treeless mountains, hollowed out like ancient craters, lift their
overhanging precipices; lakes sleeping in the midst of the pastures,
behind curtains of pines and larches, glitter like drops of quicksilver;
and on the horizon the immense glaciers crowd together and overflow like
sheets of foam on a frozen sea.

The road ascends. From the distance comes a dull noise, the roaring of a
torrent. We cross a little cluster of trees, and on issuing from it the
superb amphitheater of glaciers shows itself anew, overlooked by one
white point glittering like an opal. On the hill a thousand little
lights show me that I am at last at Pontresina. I thought I should
never have arrived there; nowhere does night deceive more than in the
mountains; in proportion as you advance toward a point, it seems to
retreat from you.

Soon the black fantastic lines of the ho