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by the lower mountains covered with pine forests; the limit of the dark Pinus picea and the higher larch distincly marked. Above the crest, now covered with fresh snow, rose the summits of the beautiful Pizzobianco and Monte Rosa.

The building itself was of great interest; the pointed doorway with its mouldings, and the traceried windows, were of evident mediæval and foreign origin; the first traces of anything like Gothic architecture we had as yet seen in Piedmont. A noble linden-tree, its time-honoured trunk still, surmounted by vigorous leafy branches, at once suggested its connection with the traditions of the old German fatherland, and here unmistakeably was the key to the problem of the German colonies, presented in these simple monuments, with a clearness which the laborious pages of Schott, Engelhardt, or Von Welden had failed to convey.

Resolving to return to it at a future opportunity, I hastened to overtake the others, who were already commencing the ascent. A steep path led through pleasant open larch forests, and thence up the bare mountain side. We had no guide, and Delapierre had not crossed the pass for many years, so that we lost some little time in making out the best line of ascent for the mule. At length we hit the right track, and the fresh-fallen snow soon covered the whole mountain side. The sun had not yet reached it; the crisp hard footing it afforded was a most agreeable relief; and seeing what appeared to be a short and direct cut to the summit, I left E. and Mora with Delapierre to take the usual and more circuitous route. I had not, however, an idea of the real nature of the ground until I tried it. The ledges of outcropping strata, and mêlée of blocks covered with loose snow, often engulfed one bodily as the outer crust gave way-in an awkward crevice among sharp blocks, and I more than once repented the short cut.

The tracks both of chamois and Alpine hares were abun

dant on the fresh snow; and on clambering up a long slab, I came suddenly on a pair of chamois within pistol-shot. They started off at full speed, and rattled up the shivered rocks with a marvellous ease and grace, stopping at the summit to take one gaze at the intruder, and then disappeared behind the rugged crest.

The views were increasingly magnificent as I ascended; not even a speck of haze or mist rested on the bewildering scene, and the extraordinary effect of the immense mass of Monte Rosa in so close proximity was overwhelming. The Glacier of Macugnaga lay below, and, as I looked down on the surface of it from head to foot, appeared like a giant road paved with ice, resting on the sinuous and irregular embankments of its vast moraines.

The direction I had taken led me right enough, and after some toil I reached the hard snow and imperfect glacier leading to the summit. A long rounded cliff of smooth glacier formed the last crest, high above me, cut out with vivid distinctness against the inky black sky. The scene from this point was wild and unearthly, and the concentration of the light was more than usually remarkable for a snow mountain of this elevation. It was neither day nor night; one could look at the rayless sun in the deep violet ether, without winking, while the reflection from the snow was proportionately dazzling. We had had many bright days on the Alps, but none like this.

This darkness and almost gloom of the sky, and the small power of the sun's direct rays, compared with that of the burning and blinding reflection from the pure snow, strikes every one with astonishment on their first visit to great altitudes on the Alps; and frequently, though erroneously, is attributed to the contrast of the snow with the atmosphere. But this is not the case in lower regions, when the ground is entirely covered with snow and the sky cloudless; and these

phenomena are chiefly, if not entirely, owing to the great purity and less density of the atmosphere; causing, as Forbes* has shown by his observations, a much diminished diffusion of the solar light which is transmitted directly; while the pure snow greatly increases the diffusion and intensification of the light reflected from it. He found by Leslie's photometer, that, while in one instance when placed on the snow it marked 121°, only 39° of this was the direct effect of the sunlight; the remainder being the diffused sky light and snow radiation. It is thus easily understood how, at high elevations and on pure snow, the broadest brimmed hat does but little to prevent the effects of the sun on the face, unless the reflection of the snow is mitigated by a veil. I indeed found myself so little worse off in a Glengarry bonnet than in a hat, that I always preferred the former, as allowing so much freer vision; and though I many times lost the greatest part of the skin off my face, it became in time less sensitive.

At eleven I stood on the broad platform of smooth, snowcovered glacier which crowns the pass. Looking from the edge of the plateau towards Macugnaga, the face which I had just climbed sloped steeply from my feet; alternate glacier, snow, and whitened rock, stretching far down the pass, until it was lost in the deep valley. Nothing was to be seen of E. and Delapierre, not a footstep or sign of living being, except the wooden cross, on a rock about 200 yards to my right; the cross wreathed with long drifted flakes of snow, like arborescent crystals. The solitude, and the inconceivable grandeur of the whole, were alike solemnly impressive; and there are, I imagine, few more sublime spectacles in the Alps, than that of Monte Rosa, as seen from this point, with such a sun and sky, and after a fresh fall of snow. All the secondary peaks, and even the lower mountains, down to the limits of the larch, were whitened over, as with their winter covering. Among them were many familiar acquaint* Travels in the Alps, Appendix III.

ances: the huge Taglia Ferro; the Cima del Moud; Cima del Pisse, called the Hameau from the Val de Lys; the Turlo, with the russet-brown Val Quarazza, marked by a tiny thread winding down it from the pass. Beyond the Cima del Russe was our memorable pass, the Col d'Egua; below it the deep Val Anzasca; and beyond, over many a long ridge, the plains of Italy and distant snow Alps of the Grisons and Tyrol. To the north of the beautifully smooth plateau from which rose the Pizzo San Rocco, and beyond the Distelberg, were the distant Swiss mountains of the Valais and Oberland; and nearer, the Mischabel and Alphabel, more clearly seen from the rock above the cross; with the northern outworks of the Monte Rosa.

The sublime majesty of the Queen of the Alps herself, few who have seen it from here would, I imagine, venture to describe. Elevated as we now were, some 5272 feet above the Val Macugnaga, there was yet a height of another 5520 feet to the level of the Höchste Spitze, and between us and its highest point, not more than five miles in a direct line, a distance which dwindled to nothing on the enormous scale of all around. The immediate presence face to face of this stupendous mass, in the eclipse-like light which glimmered over it, the sun and the moon riding together in the dark indigo sky, formed a scene which appeared hardly of this world.

From the plateau, and several eminences on different parts of it, I enjoyed a variety of changes of view, until nearly an hour had elapsed, and, still seeing nothing of E., I became uneasy; but just as I returned to the steep edge above Macugnaga, I saw her and Delapierre below, like pigmies, both toiling on foot up the deep snow. Without quite considering the steepness of the slope at the summit, or the probability of crevasses on the glaciers, I put my feet together for a glissade, and, with a rapidity which startled me, I found myself shooting down it, utterly unable to stop myself