cn.vr. iv.
A SHATTERED lilDGE.
unless he supposes that the situations are perilous. They are notnecessarily perilous, but I think that it is impossible to avoid givingsuch an impression if the difficulties are particularly insisted upon.
About this part there was a change in the quality of the rock,and there was a change in the general appearance of the ridge.The rocks (talcose gneiss) below this spot were singularly firm; itwas rarely necessary to test one’s hold ; the way led over the livingrock, and not up rent-off fragments. 13ut here, all was decay andruin. The crest of the ridge was shattered and cleft, and the feetsank in the chips which had drifted down ; while above, hugeblocks, hacked and carved by the hand of time, nodded to the sky,looking like the grave-stones of giants. Out of curiosity I wan-dered to a notch in the ridge, between two tottering piles of im-mense masses, which seemed to need hut a few pounds on one orthe other side to make them fall; so nicely poised that they wouldliterally have rocked in the wind, for they were put in motion bya touch; and based on support so frail that I wondered they didnot colla 2 )sc before my eyes. In the whole range of my Alpineexperience I have seen nothing more striking than this desolate,ruined, and shattered ridge at the hack of the Great Tower. Ihave seen stranger shapes,—rocks which mimic the human form,with monstrous leering faces—and isolated pinnacles, sharper andgreater than any here ; hut I have never seen exhibited so im-pressively the tremendous effects which may ho produced by frost,and by the long-continued action of forces whose individual effectsare barely perceptible.
It is needless to say that it is impossible to climb by the crestof the ridge at this part; still one is compelled to keep near to it,for there is no other way. Generally speaking, the angles on theMatterhorn are too steep to allow the formation of considerablebeds of snow, hut here there is a corner which permits it to accu-mulate, and it is turned to gratefully, for, by its assistance, onecan ascend four times as rapidly as upon the rocks.
The Tower was now almost out of sight, and I looked over