I have been recently favoured with a letter from Mr. Gossett, from which the following is an extract:

Berne: March 17, 1871.

'Bennen's body was found with great difficulty the third day after Boissonnet was found. The cordend had been covered up with snow. The curé d'Ardon informed me that poor Bennen was found eight feet under the snow, in a horizontal position, the head facing the valley of the Lyzerne. His watch had been wrenched from the chain, probably when the cord broke; the chain, however, remained attached to his waistcoat. Three years ago I met one of my Ardon guides; he told me that Bennen's watch had been found by a shepherd seven months after the accident. This shepherd had been one of the party who went up to look for Bennen; during the following summer he had watched the melting of the avalanche. When mounted, the watch obeyed. This reminds me of your fall on the Morteratsch glacier.1

'I know you were very much attached to Bennen; the same was the case with him in regard to you. An hour before his death the Matterhorn showed its black head over one of the arêtes of the Haut de Cry. I asked Bennen whether he thought it would ever be ascended. His answer was a decided "Yes"; 1 See Chapter XIX,

but he added, alluding to your last attack on the mountain, "Wir waren fünf; der Professor und ich stimmten für Vorwärts; die drei andern stimmten dagegen."

"There is one circumstance in reference to my fall with the avalanche of the Haut de Cry that I am utterly unable to understand: I mean what physical phenomena took place when the avalanche stopped and froze. It stopped because in its progress downwards the broad couloir down which it was going got narrower, and the mass of snow could not pass. It froze because the successive portions of the body of the avalanche became compressed against the head, which latter had come to a stop. When the layer in which I was stopped, the pressure on my body was enormous-so great, in fact, that I expected I should be crushed flat. This pressure ceased suddenly: I know it, for the atrocious pains it was causing ceased suddenly too. What happened during that interval ? '

[Bennen was well acquainted with winter snow, but no man of his temper, and in his position, would place himself in direct opposition to local guides, whose knowledge of the mountain must have been superior to his own.]

10

XIX

ACCIDENT ON THE PIZ MORTERATSCH.

WHILE staying at Pontresina in 1864 I joined Mr. Hutchinson, and Mr. Lee-Warner, of Rugby, in a memorable expedition up the Piz Morteratsch. This is a very noble mountain, and, as we thought, safe and easy to ascend. The resolute Jenni, by far the boldest man in Pontresina, was my guide; while Walter, the official guide chef, was taken by my companions. With a dubious sky overhead, we started on the morning of July 30, a little after four A.M. There is rarely much talk at the beginning of a mountain excursion: you are either sleepy or solemn so early in the day. Silently we passed through the pine woods of the beautiful Rosegg valley, watching anxiously at intervals the play of the clouds around the adjacent heights. At one place a spring gushed from the valley-bottom, as clear and almost as copious as that which pours out the full-formed river Albula. The traces of ancient

glaciers were present everywhere, the valley being thickly covered with the rubbish which the ice had left behind. An ancient moraine, so large that in England it might take rank as a mountain, forms a barrier across the upper valley. Once probably it was the dam of a lake, but it is now cut through by the river which rushes from the Rosegg glacier. These works of the ancient ice are to the mind what a distant horizon is to the eye. They give to the imagination both pleasure and repose.

The morning, as I have said, looked threatening, but the wind was good; by degrees the cloud-scowl relaxed, and broader patches of blue became visible above us. We called at the Rosegg chalets, and had some milk. We afterwards wound round a shoulder of the hill, at times upon the moraine of the glacier, and at times upon the adjacent grass slope; then over shingly inclines, covered with the shot rubbish of the heights. Two ways were now open to us, the one easy but circuitous, the other stiff but short. Walter was for the former, and Jenni for the latter, their respective choices being characteristic of the two men. To my satisfaction Jenni prevailed, and we scaled the steep and slippery rocks. At the top of them we found ourselves upon the rim of an extended snow-field. Our rope was here exhibited, and we were bound by it to a common destiny. In those higher regions the snow-fields

show a beauty and a purity of which persons who linger low down have no notion. We crossed crevasses and bergschrunds, mounted vast snowbasses, and doubled round walls of ice with long stalactites pendent from their eaves. One by one the eminences were surmounted. The crowning rock was attained at half-past twelve. On it we uncorked a bottle of champagne; mixed with the pure snow of the mountain, it formed a beverage, and was enjoyed with a gusto, which the sybarite of the city could neither imitate nor share.

We spent about an hour upon the warm gneissblocks on the top. Veils of cloud screened us at intervals from the sun, and then we felt the keenness of the air; but in general we were cheered and comforted by the solar light and warmth. The shiftings of the atmosphere were wonderful. The white peaks were draped with opalescent clouds which never lingered for two consecutive minutes in the same position. Clouds differ widely from each other in point of beauty, but I had hardly seen them more beautiful than they appeared to-day, while the succession of surprises experienced through their changes were such as rarely fall to the lot even of an experienced mountaineer.

These clouds are for the most part produced by the chilling of the air through its own expansion. When thus chilled, the aqueous vapour diffused