“When the Italian guides made their splendid ascent, they traversed the _arête_ of the shoulder to the main peak, passed the cleft which has been mentioned (p. 90), clambered on to the tremendous north-western face of the mountain (described by Mr. Whymper at pp. 277 and 282), and then endeavoured to cross this face so as to get on to the Z’Mutt _arête_.(268) The passage of this slope proved a work of great difficulty and danger. I saw it from very near the place which they traversed, and was unable to conceive how any human creatures managed to crawl over rocks so steep and so treacherous. After they had got about half-way across, they found the difficulties of the route and the danger from falling stones so great, that they struck straight up the mountain, in the hope of finding some safer way. They were to a certain extent successful, for they came presently to a small ledge, caused by a sort of fault in the rock, running horizontally across the north-western face of the mountain a little distance below the summit. Traversing this ledge, the Italians found themselves close to the Z’Mutt _arête_, but still separated from it by a barrier, to outflank which it was necessary to descend a perpendicular gully. Carrel and Bich were lowered down this, the other two men remaining at the top to haul up their companions on their return, as otherwise they could not have got up again. Passing on to the Z’Mutt _arête_ without further difficulty, Carrel and Bich climbed by that ridge to the summit of the mountain. In returning, the Italians kept to the ledge for the whole distance across the north-western face, and descended to the place where the _arête_ of the shoulder abuts against the main peak by a sort of rough ridge of rocks between the north-western and southern faces. When I ascended in 1867, we followed this route in the ascent and in the descent. I thought the ledge difficult, in some places decidedly dangerous, and should not care to set foot on it again; but assuredly it neither is so difficult nor so continuously dangerous as those gaunt and pitiless rock-slopes which the Italians crossed in their upward route. [Illustration: THE HUT (CABANE) ON THE ZERMATT SIDE OF THE MATTERHORN. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY THE AUTHOR.] “The credit of making the _Italian_ ascent of the Matterhorn belongs undoubtedly to J.-A. Carrel and to the other mountaineers who accompanied him. Bennen led his party bravely and skilfully to a point some 750 feet below the top. From this point, however, good guide though he was, Bennen had to retire defeated; and it was reserved for the better mountain-craft of the Valtournanche guide to win the difficult way to the summit of the Matterhorn.”