Shortly after this Professor Tyndall gave, in his little tract _Mountaineering in 1861_, an account of the reason why he had left Breil, in August 1861, without doing anything.(49) It seems that he sent his guide Bennen to reconnoitre, and that the latter made the following report to his employer:—“Herr, I have examined the mountain carefully, and find it more difficult and dangerous than I had imagined. There is no place upon it where we could well pass the night. We might do so on yonder Col upon the snow, but there we should be almost frozen to death, and totally unfit for the work of the next day. On the rocks there is no ledge or cranny which could give us proper harbourage; and starting from Breuil it is certainly impossible to reach the summit in a single day.” “I was entirely taken aback,” says Tyndall, “by this report. I felt like a man whose grip had given way, and who was dropping through the air.... Bennen was evidently dead against any attempt upon the mountain. ‘We can, at all events, reach the lower of the two summits,’ I remarked. ‘Even that is difficult,’ he replied; ‘but when you have reached it, what then? The peak has neither name nor fame.’”(50) I was more surprised than discouraged by this report by Bennen. One half of his assertions I knew to be wrong. The Col to which he referred was the Col du Lion, upon which we had passed a night less than a week after he had spoken so authoritatively; and I had seen a place not far below the “Chimney,”—a place about 500 feet above the Col—where it seemed possible to construct a sleeping-place. Bennen’s opinions seem to have undergone a complete change. In 1860 he is described as having been enthusiastic to make an attempt, and in 1861 he was dead against one. Nothing dismayed by this, my friend Mr. Reginald Macdonald, our companion on the Pelvoux—to whom so much of our success had been due, agreed to join me in a renewed assault from the south; and, although we failed to secure Melchior Anderegg and some other notable guides, we obtained two men of repute, namely, Johann zum Taugwald and Johann Kronig, of Zermatt. We met at that place early in July, but stormy weather prevented us even from passing to the other side of the chain for some time. We crossed the Col Théodule on the 5th, in thoroughly unsettled weather—rain was falling in the valleys, and snow upon the mountains. Shortly before we gained the summit we were made extremely uncomfortable by hearing mysterious, rushing sounds, which sometimes seemed as if a sudden gust of wind was sweeping along the snow, and, at others, almost like the swishing of a long whip: yet the snow exhibited no signs of motion, and the air was perfectly calm. The dense, black storm-clouds made us momentarily expect that our bodies might be used as lightning-conductors, and we were well satisfied to get under shelter of the inn at Breil, without having submitted to any such experience.(51)