Excerpt from The MatterhornOf conquest, now by one, now by another route, which in turn were abandoned and resumed, it tells of the long succession of the earliest unsuccessful attempts, Of hopes dashed to the ground and rising again, of patient preparations, of mortal anxiety, of the rivalry and the struggles of the different expedi tions, foiled by every kind of natural and fortuitous mishap, it tells the story of the two attempts, at last successful, made almost simultaneously from the Italian side and from the Swiss, in which the pride of a daring Englishman and the patriotic feeling of a great Italian met here and there in con¿ict, and the former's triumph was tragic, and the revenge of the vanquished was no less glorious than the first conquest.But all this, sufficient matter indeed for a book, forms but a part Of Rey's work. It is preceded by a most telling picture of the people who live under the great mountain's sway, as they were before their Matterhorn became the fortune and the glory Of the valley, poor and austere, almost shut Off from the world, simple and rude in their habits, believing in wondrous legends of giants and fairies, to whom the mighty pyramid towering over their hills was as a mysterious and terrible monster, to be for ever a mystery, and from among these people there stand out weird figures, now lost to us these fifty years and more, whose very mould had disappeared: innkeepers, shepherds, hunters, solitary and simple Old priests, who in our imaginations are almost confounded with the personages Of the fables told and believed in by their people while they lived. In the relation of the long struggle for the conquest Of the peak, the author shows us, with new details and the happy touch of an artist, all the pioneers, actors, and their helpers, present and afar Off, illustrious and Obscure, in the memorable enterprise among them there pass before us guides, scientists, artists, priests, Tyndall and Whymper, the abbé Gorret and the geologist Giordano, the hunchback of Breuil and Quintino Sella - a group Of figures that are indelibly impressed on our memories in a hundred different ways, in strenuous thought, in violent effort.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.