But lonely, conspicuous, and superb, rose that wonderful upright wedge, the Matterhorn.  Its precipitous sides were powdered over with snow, and the upper half hidden in thick clouds which now and then dissolved to cobweb films and gave brief glimpses of the imposing tower as through a veil. [2] A little later the Matterhorn took to himself the semblance of a volcano; he was stripped naked to his apex —­around this circled vast wreaths of white cloud which strung slowly out and streamed away slantwise toward the sun, a twenty-mile stretch of rolling and tumbling vapor, and looking just as if it were pouring out of a crater.  Later again, one of the mountain’s sides was clean and clear, and another side densely clothed from base to summit in thick smokelike cloud which feathered off and flew around the shaft’s sharp edge like the smoke around the corners of a burning building.  The Matterhorn is always experimenting, and always gets up fine effects, too.  In the sunset, when all the lower world is palled in gloom, it points toward heaven out of the pervading blackness like a finger of fire.  In the sunrise—­well, they say it is very fine in the sunrise.

2.  Note.—­I had the very unusual luck to catch one little
    momentary glimpse of the Matterhorn wholly unencumbered
    by clouds.  I leveled my photographic apparatus at it
    without the loss of an instant, and should have got
    an elegant picture if my donkey had not interfered. 
    It was my purpose to draw this photograph all by myself
    for my book, but was obliged to put the mountain part
    of it into the hands of the professional artist because
    I found I could not do landscape well.

Authorities agree that there is no such tremendous “layout” of snowy Alpine magnitude, grandeur, and sublimity to be seen from any other accessible point as the tourist may see from the summit of the Riffelberg.  Therefore, let the tourist rope himself up and go there; for I have shown that with nerve, caution, and judgment, the thing can be done.

I wish to add one remark, here—­in parentheses, so to speak —­suggested by the word “snowy,” which I have just used.  We have all seen hills and mountains and levels with snow on them, and so we think we know all the aspects and effects produced by snow.  But indeed we do not until we have seen the Alps.  Possibly mass and distance add something—­at any rate, something is added.  Among other noticeable things, there is a dazzling, intense whiteness about the distant Alpine snow, when the sun is on it, which one recognizes as peculiar, and not familiar to the eye.  The snow which one is accustomed to has a tint to it—­painters usually give it a bluish cast—­but there is no perceptible tint to the distant Alpine snow when it is trying to look its whitest.  As to the unimaginable splendor of it when the sun is blazing down on it—­well, it simply is unimaginable.