“We have found this to be quite the case in travelling, for it is quite necessary when we travel to think of all the party, and strive to please every one. But I must not moralise, but tell you something of our journey. We have not had many adventures; but we have climbed up some terrible hills, and I can assure you it has been hard work. Up, up, up; puff, puff, puff; grunt, grunt, grunt; and still the farther you go, the mountains grow higher and higher. You think sometimes you are near the top, and, when you get there, you find another top higher still, and then another, till you get quite tired of tops. And coming down is hard work too. The mountains are covered with great loose stones, so that by the time you are at the bottom you are glad enough of a resting-place. We go to bed very early, the boys about eight, and I about nine. But then we make up for it at the other end, and by five o’clock, when you are all fast asleep, we are all moving, and sometimes almost off. The middle of the day is so hot, as our hands and faces will prove to you, that we can scarcely travel in the middle of the day, unless we be high up in the mountains, where the air is so beautifully fresh that we can do almost anything. We meet with a great many travellers, many of whom are wandering over the glaciers. They are a queer-looking set, with immense boots with large nails in them, with wideawakes and green veils tied over them, with a long pole in their hand with a spike at one end and an axe at the other. Then you see their guide marching behind with a similar axe, and a long rope on his back, which is used to strap the whole party together if they cross any dangerous place, so that, if one falls, the others may hold him up. And tremendous slips they sometimes have. A few days ago four men slipped and slid four hundred feet, more than twice the length of our garden, down a steep piece of ice with a huge precipice at the bottom, so that they would have been dashed to pieces if they had not stopped. But happily two of them struck their axes into the ice just in time, and so they hung on, close by the edge of the precipice, and were saved. I suppose some time or other I shall hear of you two being Alpine travellers. Gurney and Ted seem quite ready to begin;—but my time is past, and I must content myself with going only to those places where I can climb with poor wind and old legs. However, at Zermatt we met with Mr. and Mrs. —, who had been wandering over the highest glaciers, she being strapped by a rope to the guides. I suppose she liked it; but I am not sure it was quite the right place for a lady.