On August 8 he writes from Zermatt: "I have your three letters, with pleasant accounts of critiques, etc., and painful accounts of your anxieties.

I certainly never thought of putting in a letter at Sion, as I arrived there about three hours after Fister left me, it being only two stages from Martigny; and besides, I had enough to do that morning in thinking what I should want at Zermatt, and was engaged at Sion, while we changed horses, in buying wax candles and rice.

It was unlucky that I lost post at Visp," etc.
A few days later he says: "On Friday I had such a day as I have only once or twice had the like of among the Alps.

I got up to a promontory projecting from the foot of the Matterhorn, and lay on the rocks and drew it at my ease.

I was about three hours at work as quietly as if in my study at Denmark Hill, though on a peak of barren crag above a glacier, and at least 9,000 feet above sea.