I visited the baths of Leuk, and saw the queer assemblage of men, women and children, attired in bathing-gowns, chatting, drinking and playing at chess in the water. The company did not seem to be perfectly sure whether it was decorous in such a situation and in such attire for elderly men to chase young females from one corner to another, but it was unanimous in howling at the advent of a stranger who remained covered, and literally yelled when I departed without exhibiting my sketch. I trudged up the Rhone valley, and turned aside at Visp to go up the Visp Thal, where one would expect to see greater traces of glacial action, if a glacier formerly filled it, as one is said to have done. I was bound for the valley of Saas, and my work took me high up the Alps on either side, far beyond the limit of trees and the tracks of tourists. The view from the slopes of the Wiessmies, on the eastern side of the valley, five or six thousand feet above the village of Saas, is perhaps the finest of its kind in the Alps. The full height of the three-peaked Mischabel (the highest mountain in Switzerland) is seen at one glance—eleven thousand feet of dense forests, green alps, pinnacles of rock and glittering glaciers. The peaks seemed to me then to be hopelessly inaccessible from this direction. [Illustration] I descended the valley to the village of Stalden, and then went up the Visp Thal to Zermatt, and stopped there several days. Numerous traces of the formidable earthquake-shocks of five years before still remained, particularly at St. Nicholas, where the inhabitants had been terrified beyond measure at the destruction of their churches and houses. At this place, as well as at Visp, a large part of the population was obliged to live under canvas for several months. It is remarkable that there was hardly a life lost on this occasion, although there were about fifty shocks, some of which were very severe.