three in the afternoon
One marches continually between walls that are piled into the skies , with their upper heights broken into a confusion of sublime shapes that gleam white and cold against the background of blue ; and here and there one sees a big glacier displaying its grandeurs on the top of a precipice , or a graceful cascade leaping and flashing down the green declivities . There is nothing tame , or cheap , or trivial -- it is all magnificent . That short valley is a picture-gallery of a notable kind , for it contains no mediocrities ; from end to end the Creator has hung it with His masterpieces . We made Zermatt at three in the afternoon , nine hours out from St. Nicholas . Distance , by guide-book , twelve miles ; by pedometer seventy-two . We were in the heart and home of the mountain-climbers , now , as all visible things testified . The snow-peaks did not hold themselves aloof , in aristocratic reserve ; they nestled close around , in a friendly , sociable way ; guides , with the ropes and axes and other implements of their fearful calling slung about their persons , roosted in a long line upon a stone wall in front of the hotel , and waited for customers ; sun-burnt climbers , in mountaineering costume , and followed by their guides and porters , arrived from time to time , from breakneck expeditions among the peaks and glaciers of the High Alps ; male and female tourists , on mules , filed by , in a continuous procession , hotelward-bound from wild adventures which would grow in grandeur every time they were described at the English or American fireside , and at last outgrow the possible itself .