FALLS OF THE RHINE, SCHAFFHAUSEN.
THE FIEND OF THE ALPS.
MOONLIGHT ON THE MATTERHORN.
As the successful party, consisting of four Englishmen and three guides, elated by their victory, were just beginning their descent, one of them slipped, knocking a guide completely off his feet and dragging his companions after him, since all were bound together by a rope. Four of them hung an instant there, head downward, between earth and heaven. The other three clung desperately to the icy crags, and would have rescued them, had not the rope between them broken. There was a fearful cry—a rush of falling bodies. Then Whymper and two guides found themselves clinging to the rocks, and looking into each other's haggard faces, pale as death. The others had fallen over the precipice—nearly four thousand feet—to the ice below!