In the summer of 1860, Edward Whymper, an athletic, twenty-year-old British artist, visited the Alps for the first time. He had been hired by a London publisher to make sketches and engravings of the scenic mountains along the border of Switzerland and Italy. He was soon interested in mountaineering and decided to attempt the yet unconquered Matterhorn. Whymper soon found that Jean-Antoine Carrel, an Italian guide from the Valtournanche, had attempted to be the first to reach the summit of the Matterhorn since 1857. In the years 1861-1865 both made several attempts by the south-west ridge together but became progressively rivals, according to Whymper because Carrel patriotically believed that a native Italian like himself and not an Englishman like Whymper should be the first to set foot on the summit.