Ask not the dead, who slumber now
In the village grave hard by
How they rolled from the mountain brow
And toppled down from the sky.”
The Matterhorn from the outskirts of Zermatt
Isn’t the “crash of a human heap” an altogether delightful expression? And will you please imagine anyone’s so violating meter and manners as to make that foolish inquiry of “the dead in the village grave”? As for us, we rejoiced over these gems and others like them all the way up from Visp (when we weren’t looking out of the windows), and “toppling down from the sky” became part of our daily vocabulary.
The swarms of tourists in Zermatt oppressed us, and we looked with dread at the caravansaries which housed them. As usual, there seemed to be just one long street, and we followed it to the other end, hoping for a sequestered spot where we could be at peace with the mountains. At the very outskirts of the village we came upon a quiet, clean little house called the Pension des Gorges du Trift, and here we straightway resolved to hang up our hats and knapsacks.
This was the end of our first week’s tramping, and we all voted it a grand success as we sat on a damp bench after dinner watching the red lights on the cascades of the Trift, which was the special property of our small hostelry. I don’t care much, as a rule, for artificially lighted waterfalls, but this seemed to be so entirely our own private personal illumination of an otherwise untouched wilderness, and the porter was so beautifully proud of it that we couldn’t have found it in our hearts to object.