for I found, on ascending
the flank of the hills on the other side of the Valais, to a height of
about five thousand feet above Brieg, between the Aletsch glacier and
Bietschhorn; being thus high enough to get a view of the Matterhorn on
something like distant terms of equality, up the St. Nicholas valley, it
presented itself under the outline Fig. 34, which seems to be conclusive
for the supremacy of the point _e_, between _a_ and _b_ in Fig. 33. But
the impossibility of determining, at the foot of it, without a
trigonometrical observation, _which is the top_ of such an apparent peak
as the Matterhorn, may serve to show the reader how little the eye is to
be trusted for the verification of peaked outline.

[Illustration: FIG. 34.]

Sec. 13. In like manner, the aiguilles of Chamouni, which present
themselves to the traveller, as he looks up to them from the village,
under an outline approximating to that rudely indicated at C in the next
figure, are in reality buttresses projecting from an intermediate ridge.
Let A be supposed to be a castle wall, with slightly elevated masses of
square-built buttresses at intervals. Then, by a process of
dilapidation, these buttresses might easily be brought to assume in
their perspective of ruin the forms indicated at B, which, with certain
modifications, is the actual shape of the Chamouni aiguilles. The top of
the Aiguille Charmoz is not the point under _d_, but that under _e_.
The deception is much increased by the elevation of the whole castle
wall on the green bank before spoken of, which raises its foundation
several thousand feet above the eye, and thus, giving amazing steepness
to all the perspective lines, produces an impression of the utmost
possible isolation of peaks, where, in reality, there is a
well-supported, and more or less continuous, though sharply jagged, pile
of solid walls.

[Illustration: FIG. 35.]

Sec. 14. There is, however, this great difference between the castle wall
and aiguilles, that the dilapidation in the one would take place by the
fall of _horizontal_ bricks or stones; in the aiguilles it takes place
in quite an opposite manner by the flaking away of nearly _vertical_
ones.

This is the next point of great interest respecting them. Observe, the
object of their construction appears to be the attainment of the utmost
possible peakedness in aspect, with the least possible danger to the
inhabitants of the valleys. As, therefore, they are first thr