Few mountains look more absolutely inaccessible than the mighty Matterhorn, standing up at the head of the Zermatt Valley like a prodigious obelisk, some fifteen thousand feet in height. The first impression one gets on viewing the mountain is that one could no more climb it than he could scale Cleopatra's Needle. Naturally, therefore, it is the peak that attracts the attention of the more daring climbers, and watchers using the telescopes that are trained upon this mountain are frequently afforded wonderful glimpses of what it means to ascend its steep sides and cut one's way step by step up its ice-covered slopes. Some nasty accidents, too, have been witnessed through the glasses which command this famous mountain--hapless climbers have been seen to miss their footing and hurtle downwards for hundreds of feet until lost to view in some abyss. It is then that search-parties are at once organized, and for hours their movements in turn are eagerly watched through the telescopes. Then comes the pitiable sight of the return of the rescuers, dragging the dead bodies over the ice behind them. Fortunately, such incidents as these are rare, and to the ordinary visitor the mountain telescopes of Switzerland are appreciated for the wonderful scenery they reveal and the opportunities they afford of doing one's mountaineering by deputy. [Illustration] [Illustration: Our Adventures at "Simplicity Hall." +By Mrs. Fred Maturin.+] An amusing narrative, setting forth the trials and tribulations of a party of Rand residents who essayed to found a "Simple Life" colony out on the South African veldt. From the first everything seemed to go wrong, and life became in consequence rather more complicated than usual. "I have suppressed the actual names of the persons concerned," writes the authoress, "but the facts are quite correct." III. February 18th.--A week has passed away fairly peacefully, and now the last fresh trouble is that we have got to fumigate this house with a very dangerous mixture of vitriol and prussic acid to kill various non-paying guests, such as mice, mosquitoes, etc.--the etceteras being the worst of them all. Six-and-eightpence had to sleep in the cottage two nights because he had such a very bad cold, and in the morning, when we asked him was it nice sleeping in a room again, he replied, with his usual courtesy, "I should have slept excellently but for the moss--quitoes." Six-and-eightpence is very prim and precise. He never says "mosquitoes" like other people, but always "moss--quitoes," the "quitoes" coming some time after the "moss." Every morning after that he appeared at breakfast with some polite remark about the "moss--quitoes." "Would a net be any use?" I asked; "for you can have mine." But Six-and-eightpence says that nets would be _no_ use for the special kind of wingless "moss--quito" that apparently infests this cottage at night.