A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

downward on their backs, and spreading out their hands,

endeavoring to save themselves. They passed from our

sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from the

precipice to precipice onto the Matterhorn glacier below,

a distance of nearly four thousand feet in height.

From the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them.

So perished our comrades!

For more than two hours afterward I thought almost every

moment that the next would be my last; for the Taugwalders,

utterly unnerved, were not only incapable of giving assistance,

but were in such a state that a slip might have been

expected from them at any moment. After a time we were able

to do that which should have been done at first, and fixed

rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together.

These ropes were cut from time to time, and were left behind.

Even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed,

and several times old Peter turned, with ashy face

and faltering limbs, and said, with terrible emphasis,

“I CANNOT!”

About 6 P.M., we arrived at the snow upon the ridge

descending toward Zermatt, and all peril was over.

We frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our

unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried

to them, but no sound returned. Convinced at last that

they were neither within sight nor hearing, we ceased

from our useless efforts; and, too cast down for speech,

silently gathered up our things, and the little effects

of those who were lost, and then completed the descent.

———-

Such is Mr. Whymper’s graphic and thrilling narrative.

Zermatt gossip darkly hints that the elder Taugwalder

cut the rope, when the accident occurred, in order

to preserve himself from being dragged into the abyss;

but Mr. Whymper says that the ends of the rope showed

no evidence of cutting, but only of breaking. He adds

that if Taugwalder had had the disposition to cut the rope,

he would not have had time to do it, the accident was so

sudden and unexpected.

Lord Douglas’ body has never been found. It probably

lodged upon some inaccessible shelf in the face of the

mighty precipice. Lord Douglas was a youth of nineteen.

The three other victims fell nearly four thousand feet,

and their bodies lay together upon the glacier when found

by Mr. Whymper and the other searchers the next morning.

Their graves are beside the little church in Zermatt.

CHAPTER XLII

[Chillon has a Nice, Roomy Dungeon]

Switzerland is simply a large, humpy, solid rock,

with a thin skin of grass stretched over it. Consequently,

they do not dig graves, they blast them out with power

and fuse. They cannot afford to have large graveyards,

the grass skin is too circumscribed and too valuable.

It is all required for the support of the living.

The graveyard in Zermatt occupies only about one-eighth

of an acre. The graves are sunk in the living rock, and are

very permanent; but occupation of them is only temporary;

the occupant can only stay till his grave is needed

by a later subject, he is removed, then, for they do not

bury one body on top of another. As I understand it,

a family owns a grave, just as it owns a house. A man dies

and leaves his house to his son–and at the same time,

this dead father succeeds to his own father’s grave.

He moves out of the house and into the grave, and his

predecessor moves out of the grave and into the cellar

of the chapel. I saw a black box lying in the churchyard,

with skull and cross-bones painted on it, and was told that

this was used in transferring remains to the cellar.

In that cellar the bones and skulls of several hundred of

former citizens were compactly corded up. They made a pile

eighteen feet long, seven feet high, and eight feet wide.

I was told that in some of the receptacles of this kind

in the Swiss villages, the skulls were all marked,

and if a man wished to find the skulls of his ancestors

for several generations back, he could do it by these marks,