jacent) air will naturally be attracted towards the mountain, where they will speedily condense the moisture of the warm air in contact with it. I cannot explain the downrushes of cold air which occur on it, when all the rest of the neighbourhood appears to be tranquil, in any other way. The clouds are produced by the contact of two strata of air (of widely different temperatures) charged with invisible moisture, as surely as certain colourless fluids produce a white, turbid liquid, when mixed together. The order has been—wind of a low temperature—mist—rain—snow or hail.[1]
This opinion is borne out to some extent by the behaviour of the neighbouring mountains. The Dom (14,935 feet) and the Dent Blanche (14,318) have both of them large cliffs of bare rock upon their southern sides, and against those cliffs clouds commonly form (during fine, still weather) at the same time as the cloud on the Matterhorn; whilst the Weisshorn (14,804) and the Lyskamm (14,889), (mountains of about the same altitude, and which are in corresponding situations to the former pair) usually remain perfectly clear.
I arrived at Chatillon at midnight on the 11th, defeated and disconsolate; but, like a gambler who loses each throw, only the more eager to have another try, to see if the luck would change: and returned to London ready to devise fresh combinations, and to form new plans.
- ↑ The mists are extremely deceptive to those who are on the mountain itself. Sometimes they seem to be created at a considerable distance, as if the whole of the atmosphere of the neighbourhood was undergoing a change, when in reality they are being formed in immediate proximity to the mountain.
 CROSSING THE CHANNEL. |
