ZERMATT  , a

mountain village at the head of the Visp valley and at the foot of the Matterhorn, in the canton of the Valais, Switzerland . It is 22i M. by rail from Visp in the Rhone valley, and there is also a railway from Zermatt past the Riffelinns to the very top of the Gornergrat (10,289 ft.) . The village iS 5315 ft. above the sea, and in ',goo had 741 permanent in-habitants (all Romanists save 9, and all but 12 German-speaking), resident in 73 houses . Formerly Zermatt was called " Praborgne," and this name is mentioned in the Swiss census of 1888 . Its originally Romance population seems to have been Teutonised in the course of the 15th century, the name " Matt " (now written " Zermatt," i.e. the village on the meadows) first occurring at the very end of that century . Zermatt was long known to botanists and geologists only, and has an interesting though very local history . De Saussure in 1789 was one of the first tourists to visit it . But it was not till the arrival of M . Alexandre Seiler in 1854 that its fame as one of the chief tourist resorts in the Alps was laid, for tourists abound only where there are good inns . When M . Seiler died in 1891 he was proprietor of most of the great hotels in and around Zermatt . The Matterhorn, which frowns over the village from which it takes its name, was not conquered till 1865, Mr E .

Whymper and two guides then alone surviving the terrible accident in which their four comrades perished . The easy glacier pass of the St Theodule (10,899 ft.) leads S. in six hours from the village to the Val Tournanche, a tributary glen of the valley of Aosta .