The telescopes, too, have often been the means of saving life. When Alpinists are in serious difficulty, the guides at once make signals, and a relief party is promptly sent to their aid. The signal is the repetition of a sound, the wave of a flag, or the flash of a lantern at regular intervals, at the rate of six signals a minute, followed by a pause of a minute, with a continuation every alternate minute. Observers using the telescopes have often detected these signals before anyone else and given the alarm, when aid has at once been dispatched to those in distress. Sometimes, too, telescope-watchers have discovered climbers in difficulty, and have sent someone to their help. Were it not for the instruments, in fact, many men and women who have ventured far without guides would have perished. Only the other week a lady tourist, who had gone up the mountain alone, had a narrow escape from death, and probably owes her life to the fact that a guide happened to be idly watching her through one of the telescopes. In endeavouring to take a short cut down to the hotel she missed her footing, and in an instant found herself shooting down towards the edge of a sheer drop of a hundred and fifty feet. By the merest chance she was thrown into the branches of a pine tree some twenty feet over the edge, and there she hung, unable to move. The horrified observer at once left the telescope and informed the hotel proprietor, and in just under the hour four guides with ropes had reached the spot and rescued her. She was comparatively uninjured, but almost dead with fright. One might be inclined to think that with the numerous mountain railways that have penetrated into the very heart of the Alps during the last few years, the big observation telescope was really a superfluous luxury. As a matter of fact, however, the railways have rendered the telescope more necessary than ever. Indeed, the railway authorities do not consider their equipment complete unless at the very summit of their line they erect one of these giant instruments. These wonderful railways--monuments of engineering skill though they be--only land one several thousand feet below the actual summit. The view here, of course, is grand, but the snow-covered peak, the almost untrodden summit--the very thing the ordinary individual most wishes to see--is almost undiscernible to the naked eye. But with the telescope it is different. The summit comes right into the field of vision in an instant, grand and majestic, standing out boldly and clearly, appearing to be only a few yards away. Then the glass can be turned upon the whole surface of the mountain, and in this way one learns more about the formation of the rocks and glaciers and steep ridges than he would do by weeks of arduous climbing among them.