themselves pitiably down the slopes, and the smiling country with the fat meadow-land seemed to take a savage delight in gazing on this sad pilgrimage.  At the foot of the glacier, which stood out sheer and steep before me, I felt so depressed, and my nerves were so overwrought, that I said I wished to turn back.  I was thereupon met by the coarse sarcasm of my guide, who seemed to scoff at my weakness.  My consequent anger braced up my nerves, and I prepared myself at once to climb the steep walls of ice as quickly as possible, so that this time it was he who found difficulty in keeping up with me.  We accomplished the walk over the back of the glacier, which lasted nearly two hours, under difficulties which caused even this native of Grimsel anxiety, at least on his own account.  Fresh snow had fallen, which partially concealed the crevasses, and prevented one from recognising the dangerous spots.  The guide, of course, had to precede me here, to examine the path.  We arrived at last at the opening of the upper valley which gives on to the Formazza valley, to which a steep cutting, covered with snow and ice, led.  Here my guide again began his dangerous game of conducting me straight over the steepest slopes instead of going in a safe zig-zag; in this way we reached a precipitous moraine, where I saw such unavoidable danger ahead, that I insisted upon my guide going back with me some distance, until we struck a path that I had noticed which was not so steep.  He was obliged to give in, much against the grain.  I was deeply impressed by the first signs of cultivation that we saw in our descent from the desolate wilds.  The first scanty meadow-land accessible to cattle was called the Bettel-Matt, and the first person we met was a marmot hunter.  The wild scenery was soon enlivened by the marvellous swirl and headlong rush of a mountain river called the Tosa, which at one spot breaks into a superb waterfall with three distinct branches.  After the moss and reeds had, in the course of our continuous descent, given place to grass and meadows, and the shrubs had been replaced by pine trees, we at last arrived at the goal of our day’s journey, the village of Pommath, called Formazza by the Italian population, which is situated in a charming valley.  Here, for the first time in my life, I had to eat roast marmot.  After having paid my guide, and sent him on his homeward journey, I started alone on the following morning on my further descent of the valley, although I had only partially recovered from my fatigue, owing to lack of sleep.  It was not until the November of this year, when the whole of Switzerland was thrown into a state of consternation by the news that the Grimsel inn had been set fire to by the host himself, who hoped by this means to obtain the renewal of the lease from the authorities, that I learned my life had been in danger under the guidance of this man.  As soon as his crime was discovered, the host drowned himself in the little lake, on the borders of which