We put up at the Monte Moro, where a party of friends greeted me with a vociferous welcome. This was my first visit to Macugnaga, and, save as a caldron for the generation of fogs, I knew scarcely anything about it. But there were no fogs there at the time to which I refer, and the place wore quite a charmed aspect. I walked out alone in the evening, up through the meadows towards the base of Monte Rosa, and on no other occasion have I seen peace, beauty, and grandeur so harmoniously blended. Earth and air were exquisite, and I returned to the hotel brimful of content.

Monte Rosa with her peaks and spurs builds here a noble amphitheatre. From the heart of the mountain creeps the Macugnaga glacier. To the right a precipitous barrier extends to the Cima di Jazzi, and between the latter and Monte Rosa this barrier is scarred by two couloirs, one of which, or the cliff beside it, has the reputation of forming the old pass of the Weissthor. It had long been uncertain whether this so-called 'Alter Pass' had ever been used as such, and many superior mountaineers deemed it from inspection to be impracticable. All doubt on this point was removed this year; for Mr. Tuckett, led by Bennen, had crossed the barrier by the couloir most distant from Monte Rosa, and consequently nearest to the Cima di Jazzi. As I stood in front of the hotel in the

afternoon, I said to Bennen that I should like to try the pass on the following day; in ten minutes afterwards the plan of our expedition was arranged. We were to start before the dawn, and, to leave Bennen's hands free, a muscular young fellow named Andermatten was engaged to carry our provisions. It was also proposed to vary the proceedings by assailing the ridge by the couloir nearest to Monte Rosa.

XII.

THE OLD WEISSTHOR.

I was called by my host at a quarter before three. The firmament of Monte Rosa was almost as black as the rocks beneath it, while above in the darkness trembled the stars. At 4 A.M. we quitted the hotel. We wound along the meadows, by the slumbering houses, and the unslumbering river. The eastern heaven soon brightened, and we could look direct through the gloom of the valley at the opening of the dawn. We threaded our way amid the boulders which the torrent had scattered over the plain, and among which groups of stately pines now find anchorage. Some of the trees had exerted all their force in a vertical direction, and rose straight, tall, and mastlike, without lateral branches. We reached a great moraine, grey with years, and clothed with magnificent pines; our way lay up it, and from the top we dropped into a little dell of magical beauty. Deep hidden by the glacier-built ridges, guarded by noble trees, soft and green at the bottom, and tufted round with bilberry bushes, through which peeped here and there the lichen-covered crags, I have

rarely seen a spot in which I should so like to dream away a day. Before I entered it, Monte Rosa was still in shadow, but on my emergence I noticed that her precipices were all aglow. The purple colouring of the mountains observed on looking down the valley was indescribable; out of Italy I have never seen anything like it. Oxygen and nitrogen could not produce the effect; some effluence from the earth, some foreign constituent of the atmosphere, developed in those deep valleys by the southern sun, must sift the solar beams, weaken the rays of medium refrangibility, and blend the red and violet of the spectrum to that incomparable hue. The air indeed is filled with floating matters which vary from day to day, and it is mainly to such extraneous substances that the chromatic splendours of our atmosphere are to be ascribed. The air south of the Alps is in this respect. different from that on the north, but a modicum even of arsenic might be respired with satisfaction, if warmed by the bloom which suffused the air of Italy this glorious dawn.

The ancient moraines of the Macugnaga glacier rank among the finest that I have seen; long, high ridges tapering from base to edge, hoary with age, but beautified by the shrubs and blossoms of today. We crossed the ice and them. At the foot of the old Weissthor lay couched a small glacier, which

had landed a multitude of boulders on the slope below it; and amid these we were soon threading our way. We crossed the little glacier, which at one place strove to be disagreeable, and here I learned from the deportment of his axe the kind of work to which our porter had been previously accustomed. Half a dozen strokes shook the head of the implement from its handle. We reached the rocks to the right of the couloir and climbed them for some distance. At the base the ice was cut by profound fissures, which extended quite across, and rendered a direct advance up the gulley impossible; but higher up we dropped down upon the snow.

Close to the rocks it was scarred by a furrow six or eight feet deep, and about twelve in width, evidently the track of avalanches, or of rocks let loose from the heights. Into this we descended. The bottom was firm, and roughened by stones. which found a lodgment there. It seemed that we had here a very suitable roadway to the top. But a sudden crash was heard aloft. I looked upward, and right over the snow-brow which closed the view perceived a large brown boulder in the air, while a roar of unseen stones showed that the visible projectile was merely the first shot of a general cannonade. They appeared-pouring straight down upon us the sides of the furrow preventing them from squandering their force in any other direction.