We finished up the 3d of August with a walk over the Findelen glacier, and returned to Zermatt at a later hour than we intended, both very sleepy. This is noteworthy only on account of that which followed. We had to cross the Col de Valpelline on the next day, and an early start was desirable. Monsieur Seiler, excellent man, knowing this, called us himself, and when he came to my door, I answered, “All right, Seiler, I will get up,” and immediately turned over to the other side, saying to myself, “First of all, ten minutes more sleep.” But Seiler waited and listened, and, suspecting the case, knocked again. “Herr Whymper, have you got a light?” Without thinking what the consequences might be, I answered, “No,” and then the worthy man actually forced the lock off his own door to give me one. By similar and equally friendly and disinterested acts, Monsieur Seiler has acquired his enviable reputation. At 4 A.M. we left his Monte Rosa Hotel, and were soon pushing our way through the thickets of grey alder that skirt the path up the right bank of the exquisite little valley which leads to the Z’Muttgletscher. Nothing can well seem more inaccessible than the Matterhorn upon this side; and even in cold blood one holds the breath when looking at its stupendous cliffs. There are but few equal to them in size in the Alps, and there are none which can more truly be termed _precipices_. Greatest of them all is the immense north cliff,—that which bends over towards the Z’Muttgletscher. Stones which drop from the top of that amazing wall fall for about 1500 feet before they touch anything; and those which roll down from above, and bound over it, fall to a much greater depth, and leap well-nigh 1000 feet beyond its base. This side of the mountain has always seemed sombre—sad—terrible; it is painfully suggestive of decay, ruin, and death; and it is now, alas! more than terrible by its associations. “There is no aspect of destruction about the Matterhorn cliffs,” says Professor Ruskin. Granted;—when they are seen from afar. But approach, and sit down by the side of the Z’Muttgletscher, and you will hear that their piecemeal destruction is proceeding ceaselessly—incessantly. You will _hear_, but, probably, you will not _see_; for even when the descending masses thunder as loudly as heavy guns, and the echoes roll back from the Ebihorn opposite, they will still be as pin-points against this grand old face, so vast is its scale! If you would see the “aspects of destruction,” you must come still closer, and climb its cliffs and ridges, or mount to the plateau of the Matterhorngletscher, which is cut up and ploughed up by these missiles, and strewn on its surface with their smaller fragments; the larger masses, falling with tremendous velocity, plunge into the snow and are lost to sight.