August 26 Monday – Sam and Joe took a train to Locchi-Suste (Visp). [I have not find a reference to Locchi-Suste] From Visp the two hiked “6 hours through mud & rain” the ten miles to St. Nicklaus, Switzerland.

Sam wrote from St. Nicklaus to Livy: “Livy darling, we came through a-whooping, to-day, 6 hours tramp up steep hills & down steep hills, in mud & water shoe-deep, & in a steady pouring rain which never moderated a moment. I was as chipper & fresh as a lark all the way & arrived without the slightest sense of fatigue”

Sam did not dump his dismal opinions about the area on Livy, but fully noted the “alleys run liquid dung,” the villages, “the shackliest & vilest we have seen anywhere,” and the roads and bridges that “must have made themselves”.

August 27 Tuesday – Sam wrote in his notebook that the hotel was a pleasant contrast to the villages and roads. But it was close to a village church which messed with their sleep:
St. Nicklaus Aug. 27—Awakened at 4:30 by the clang & jangle of a church bell wh rang 15 min. Went to sleep no more. At 7 it rang again 15.
It is an ugly little whitewashed church with a queer tin dome like a turnip growing with its root in the air. Damn all ch bells! At 7.25 they rang again!
Still that ringing goes on. I wish to God that church w d would burn down. At 8 the bell rang again. Let us hope there is a hell.

Left St. Nicholas at 9.15, 27 th .
Sam and Joe tramped twelve miles up the gorge to Zermatt. It was a nine hour hike with changing views of the Matterhorn and inspiring scenery pulling them on.

From Sam’s notebook:
“About half way to Zermat we saw on top of a near mountain a perpendicular wall of ice (pale green) & were forced to reflect that if Strasburg Cathedral, stood at its base, a man on top of the wall could reach out & hang his hat on top of the spire—& he could look down on St Pauls or St Peters or Capitol
of W[ashington]”.

They “reached Zermatt at 3 PM and did not feel like trying the 3 hours to Riffle” that night. They checked into a comfortable hotel at the base of the Matterhorn, uplifted by making their goal.

August 28 Wednesday – Sam and Joe walked six hours from Zermatt to Riffle and took rooms in a hotel there. Sam noted that “The guide-book calls it 7 miles...but we found by the Pedometer it was only 800 yards. So in everything but distances the G.B. [guidebook] is to be depended on. It took us 6 hours to go the 800 yds, though” .

August 29 Thursday – Sam’s notebook:
“...we climbed up on the end of Gorner glacier which is joined in its course by 10 glaciers. The Visp issues from it”.

Sam and Joe spent time observing the Matterhorn, the Riffleberg, the Gorner Grat and the adjacent mountains. They walked back to Zermatt either late this day or on the morning of the next day.

August 30 Friday – The two tramps “left Zermatt about 10 A.M in a wagon & a shower, for St. Nicholas”. After a time they reached St. Nicklaus, where they lunched, then continued on foot ten miles to Visp, where they spent the night.