passes which were known.[1] He had shown to me, upon Dufour's map, that a direct line, connecting the two places, passed exactly over the depression between the Zinal-Rothhorn and the Schallhorn. He was confident that a passage could be effected over this depression, and was sanguine that it would (in consequence of its directness) prove to be a quicker route than the circuitous ones over the Triftjoch and the Col Durand.
He was awaiting us, and we immediately proceeded up the valley, and across the foot of the Zinal glacier to the Arpitetta Alp, where a chalet was supposed to exist in which we might pass the night. We found it at length,[2] but it was not equal to our expectations. It was not one of those fine timbered chalets, with huge overhanging eaves, covered with pious sentences carved in unintelligible characters. It was a hovel, growing, as it were, out of the hill-side; roofed with rough slabs of slaty stone; without a door or window; surrounded by quagmires of ordure, and dirt of every description.
A foul native invited us to enter. The interior was dark; but, when our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, we saw that our palace was in plan about 15 by 20 feet; on one side it was scarcely five feet high, but on the other was nearly seven. On this side there was a raised platform, about six feet wide, littered with dirty straw and still dirtier sheepskins. This was the bedroom. The remainder of the width of the apartment was the parlour. The rest was the factory. Cheese was the article which was being fabricated, and the foul native was engaged in its manufacture. He was garnished behind with a regular cowherd's one-legged stool, which gave him a queer, uncanny look when it was elevated in the air as he bent over into his tub; for the making of his cheese required him to blow into a tub for ten minutes at a time. He
- ↑ The Col de Zinal or Triftjoch, between the Trifthorn and the Ober Gabelhorn; and the Col Durand between the last-mentioned mountain and the Dent Blanche.
For our route from Zinal to Zermatt, see the map of the valley of Zermatt.
- ↑ High above the Glacier de Morning at the foot of the Crête de Milton.
