Bennen did not appear to entertain this superstition; and before starting in the morning, I had stipulated for ten minutes' sleep on reaching the summit, as part compensation for the loss of the night's rest. My first act, after casting a glance over the glorious scene beneath us, was to take advantage of this agreement; so I lay down and had five minutes' sleep, from which I rose refreshed and brisk. The sun at first beat down upon us with intense force, and I exposed my thermometers; but thin veils of vapour soon drew themselves before the sun, and denser mists spread over the valley of the Rhone, thus destroying all possibility of concert between Ramsay and myself. I turned therefore to my boiling-water apparatus, filled it with snow, melted the first charge, put more in, and boiled it; ascertaining the boiling point to be 187 deg. Fahrenheit. On a sheltered ledge, about two or three yards south of the highest point, I placed a minimum-thermometer, in the hope that it would enable us in future years to record the lowest winter temperatures at the summit of the mountain.[A] [Sidenote: SCENE FROM THE SUMMIT. 1858.] It is difficult to convey any just impression of the scene from the summit of the Finsteraarhorn: one might, it is true, arrange the visible mountains in a list, stating their heights and distances, and leaving the imagination to furnish them with peaks and pinnacles, to build the precipices, polish the snow, rend the glaciers, and cap the highest summits with appropriate clouds. But if imagination did its best in this way, it would hardly exceed the reality, and would certainly omit many details which contribute to the grandeur of the scene itself. The various shapes of the mountains, some grand, some beautiful, bathed in yellow sunshine, or lying black and riven under the frown of impervious cumuli; the pure white peaks, cornices, bosses, and amphitheatres; the blue ice rifts, the stratified snow-precipices, the glaciers issuing from the hollows of the eternal hills, and stretching like frozen serpents through the sinuous valleys; the lower cloud field--itself an empire of vaporous hills--shining with dazzling whiteness, while here and there grim summits, brown by nature, and black by contrast, pierce through it like volcanic islands through a shining sea,--add to this the consciousness of one's position which clings to one _unconsciously_, that undercurrent of emotion which surrounds the question of one's personal safety, at a height of more than 14,000 feet above the sea, and which is increased by the weird strange sound of the wind surging with the full deep boom of the distant sea against the precipice behind, or rising to higher cadences as it forces itself through the crannies of the weatherworn rocks,--all conspire to render the scene from the Finsteraarhorn worthy of the monarch of the Bernese Alps. [Sidenote: "HAVE NO FEAR." 1858.] [Sidenote: DISCIPLINE. 1858.]