Hours of Exercise in the Alps
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Title: Hours of Exercise in the Alps
Author: John Tyndall
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOURS OF EXERCISE IN THE ALPS ***
HOURS OF EXERCISE.
[Illustration: THE JUNGFRAU FROM INTERLAKEN.]
HOURS OF EXERCISE
IN
THE ALPS.
BY
JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S.,
AUTHOR OF “FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE FOR UNSCIENTIFIC PEOPLE,” “HEAT
AS A MODE OF MOTION,” ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
72 FIFTH AVENUE.
1896.
_Authorized Edition._
PREFACE.
A short time ago I published a book of ‘Fragments,’ which might have
been called ‘Hours of Exercise in the Attic and the Laboratory’; while
this one bears the title of ‘Hours of Exercise in the Alps.’ The two
volumes supplement each other, and, taken together, illustrate the mode
in which a lover of natural knowledge and of natural scenery chooses to
spend his life.
Much as I enjoy the work, I do not think that I could have filled my
days and hours in the Alps with clambering alone. The climbing in
many cases was the peg on which a thousand other ‘exercises’ were
hung. The present volume, however, is for the most part a record of
bodily action, written partly to preserve to myself the memory of
strong and joyous hours, and partly for the pleasure of those who find
exhilaration in descriptions associated with mountain life.
The papers, written during the last ten years, are printed in the order
of the incidents to which they relate; and, to render the history more
complete, I have, with the permission of their authors, introduced
nearly the whole of two articles by Mr. Vaughan Hawkins and Mr. Philip
Gossett. The former describes the first assault ever made upon the
Matterhorn, the latter an expedition which ended in the death of a
renowned and beloved guide.
The ‘Glaciers of the Alps’ being out of print, I can no longer refer to
it. Towards the end of the volume, therefore, I have thrown together
a few ‘Notes and Comments’ which may be useful to those who desire to
possess some knowledge of the phenomena of the ice-world, and of the
properties of ice itself. To these are added one or two minor articles,
which relate more or less to our British hills and lakes: the volume is
closed by an account of a recent voyage to Oran.
I refrain from giving advice, further than to say that the perils of
wandering in the High Alps are terribly real, and are only to be met by
knowledge, caution, skill, and strength. ‘For rashness, ignorance, or
carelessness the mountains leave no margin; and to rashness, ignorance,
or carelessness three-fourths of the catastrophes which shock us are
to be traced.’ Those who wish to know something of the precautions to
be taken upon the peaks and glaciers cannot do better than consult the
excellent little volume lately published by Leslie Stephen, where,
under the head of ‘Dangers of Mountaineering,’ this question is
discussed.
I would willingly have published this volume without illustrations,
and should the reader like those here introduced--two of which were
published ten years ago, and the remainder recently executed under
the able superintendence of Mr. Whymper--he will have to ascribe his
gratification to the initiative of Mr. William Longman, not to me.
I have sometimes tried to trace the genesis of the interest which
I take in fine scenery. It cannot be wholly due to my own early
associations; for as a boy I loved nature, and hence, to account for
that love, I must fall back upon something earlier than my own birth.
The forgotten associations of a far-gone ancestry are probably the
most potent elements in the feeling. With characteristic penetration,
Mr. Herbert Spencer has written of the growth of our appreciation of
natural scenery with growing years. But to the associations of the
individual himself he adds ‘certain deeper, but now vague, combinations
of states, that were organised in the race during barbarous times,
when its pleasurable activities were among the mountains, woods, and
waters. Out of these excitations,’ he adds, ‘some of them actual, but
most of them nascent, is composed the emotion which a fine landscape
produces in us.’ I think this an exceedingly likely proximate
hypothesis, and hence infer that those ‘vague and deep combinations
organised in barbarous times,’ not to go further back, have come down
with considerable force to me. Adding to these inherited feelings the
pleasurable present exercise of Mr. Bain’s ‘muscular sense,’ I obtain a
somewhat intelligible, though, doubtless, still secondary theory of my
delight in the mountains.
The name of a friend whom I taught in his boyhood to handle a
theodolite and lay a chain, and who afterwards turned his knowledge to
account on the glaciers of the Alps, occurs frequently in the following
pages. Of the firmness of a friendship, uninterrupted for an hour, and
only strengthened by the weathering of six-and-twenty years, he needs
no assurance. Still, for the pleasure it gives myself, I connect this
volume with the name of THOMAS ARCHER HIRST.
J. TYNDALL.
_May 1871._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE LAUWINEN-THOR 1
II. DISASTER ON THE COL DU GÉANT 18
III. THE MATTERHORN--FIRST ASSAULT, WITH J. J. BENNEN AS GUIDE 27
IV. THERMOMETRIC STATIONS ON MONT BLANC 53
V. A LETTER FROM BÂLE 59
NOTE ON THE SOUND OF AGITATED WATER 65
VI. THE URBACHTHAL AND GAULI GLACIER 66
VII. THE GRIMSEL AND THE ÆGGISCHHORN 75
NOTE ON CLOUDS 82
VIII. THE BEL ALP 86
IX. THE WEISSHORN 91
X. INSPECTION OF THE MATTERHORN WITH BENNEN 114
XI. OVER THE MORO 125
XII. THE OLD WEISSTHOR 130
XIII. RESCUE FROM A CREVASSE 141
XIV. THE MATTERHORN--SECOND ASSAULT, IN COMPANY WITH BENNEN 153
XV. FROM STEIN TO THE GRIMSEL 166
XVI. THE OBERAARJOCH.--ADVENTURE AT THE ÆGGISCHHORN 174
XVII. ASCENT OF THE JUNGFRAU 180
XVIII. DEATH OF BENNEN ON THE HAUT DE CRY 192
XIX. ACCIDENT ON THE PIZ MORTERATSCH 206
XX. ALPINE SCULPTURE 219
XXI. SEARCH ON THE MATTERHORN: A PROJECT 252
XXII. THE TITLIS, FINSTERAARSCHLUCHT, PETERSGRAT, AND
ITALIAN LAKES 255
XXIII. ASCENT OF THE EIGER AND PASSAGE OF THE TRIFT 265
XXIV. THE MATTERHORN--THIRD AND LAST ASSAULT 271
XXV. ASCENT OF THE ALETSCHHORN 295
XXVI. A DAY AMONG THE SÉRACS OF THE GLACIER DU GÉANT
FOURTEEN YEARS AGO 318
_NOTES ON ICE AND GLACIERS, ETC._
I. OBSERVATIONS ON THE MER DE GLACE 339
II. STRUCTURE AND PROPERTIES OF ICE 360
III. STRUCTURE OF GLACIERS 367
IV. HELMHOLTZ ON ICE AND GLACIERS 377
V. CLOUDS 405
VI. KILLARNEY 413
VII. SNOWDON IN WINTER 421
VIII. VOYAGE TO ALGERIA TO OBSERVE THE ECLIPSE 429
ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE JUNGFRAU FROM INTERLAKEN _Frontispiece_
ASCENT OF THE LAUWINEN-THOR _to face page_ 11
THE WEISSHORN FROM THE RIFFEL „ 91
THE MATTERHORN (from a drawing by E. W. Cooke, R. A.) „ 117
RECOVERY OF OUR PORTER „ 149
JOHANN JOSEPH BENNEN „ 201
THE GORGE OF PFEFFERS (showing Erosive Action) „ 219
Nature, thou earliest gospel of the wise,
Thou never-silent hymner unto God;
Thou angel-ladder lost amidst the skies,
Though at the foot we dream upon the sod;
To thee the priesthood of the lyre belong--
They hear religion and reply in song.
If he hath held thy worship undefiled
Through all the sins and sorrows of his youth,
Let the man echo what he heard as child
From the far hill-tops of melodious Truth,
Leaving in troubled hearts some lingering tone
Sweet with the solace thou hast given his own.
LORD LYTTON’S _King Arthur_.
‘The brain,
That forages all climes to hue its cells,
Will not distil the juices it has sucked
To the sweet substance of pellucid thought,
Except for him who hath the secret learned
To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take
The winds into his pulses.’
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
HOURS OF EXERCISE IN THE ALPS.
I.
_THE LAUWINEN-THOR._
In June 1860 I completed ‘The Glaciers of the Alps,’ which constituted
but a fraction of the work executed during the previous autumn and
spring. These labours and other matters had wearied and weakened me
beyond measure, and to gain a little strength I went to Killarney. The
trip was beneficial, but not of permanent benefit. The air of those
most lovely lakes was too moist and warm for my temperament, and I
longed for that keener air which derives its tone from contact with
the Alpine snows. In 1859 I had bidden the Alps farewell, purposing in
future to steep my thoughts in the tranquillity of English valleys,
and confine my mountain work to occasional excursions in the Scotch
Highlands, or amid the Welsh and Cumbrian hills. But in my weariness
the mere thought of the snow-peaks and glaciers was an exhilaration;
and to the Alps, therefore, I resolved once more to go. I wrote to my
former guide, Christian Lauener, desiring him to meet me at Thun on
Saturday the 4th of August; and on my way thither I fortunately fell
in with Mr. Vaughan Hawkins. He told me of his plans and wishes, which
embraced an attack upon the Matterhorn. Infected by his ardour, I
gladly closed with the proposition that we should climb together for a
time.
Lauener was not to be found at Thun, but in driving from Neuhaus to
Interlaken a chaise met us, and swiftly passed; within it I could
discern the brown visage of my guide. We pulled up and shouted, the
other vehicle stopped, Lauener leaped from it, and came bounding
towards me with admirable energy, through the deep and splashing mud.
‘Gott! wie der Kerl springt!’ was the admiring exclamation of my
coachman. Lauener is more than six feet high, and mainly a mass of
bone; his legs are out of proportion, longer than his trunk; and he
wears a short-tail coat, which augments the apparent discrepancy. Those
massive levers were now plied with extraordinary vigour to project his
body through space; and it was gratifying to be thus assured that the
man was in first-rate condition, and fully up to the hardest work.
On Sunday the 5th of August, for the sake of a little training, I
ascended the Faulhorn alone. The morning was splendid, but as the day
advanced heavy cloud-wreaths swathed the heights. They attained a
maximum about two P.M., and afterwards the overladen air cleared itself
by intermittent jerks--revealing at times the blue of heaven and the
peaks of the mountains; then closing up again, and hiding in their
dismal folds the very posts which stood at a distance of ten paces
from the hotel door. The effects soon became exceedingly striking,
the mutations were so quick and so forcibly antithetical. I lay down
upon a seat, and watched the intermittent extinction and generation
of the clouds, and the alternate appearance and disappearance of the
mountains. More and more the sun swept off the sweltering haze, and
the blue sky bent over me in domes of ampler span. At four P.M. no
trace of cloud was visible, and a panorama of the Oberland, such I had
no idea that the Faulhorn could command, unfolded itself. There was
the grand barrier which separated us from the Valais; there were the
Jungfrau, Monk and Eiger, the Finsteraarhorn, the Schreckhorn, and the
Wetterhorn, lifting their snowy and cloudless crests to heaven, and all
so sharp and wildly precipitous that the bare thought of standing on
any one of them made me shudder. London was still in my brain, and the
vice of Primrose Hill in my muscles.
I disliked the ascent of the Faulhorn exceedingly, and the monotonous
pony track which led to the top of it. Once, indeed, I deviated from
the road out of pure disgust, and, taking a jumping torrent for my
guide and colloquist, was led astray. I now resolved to return to
Grindelwald by another route. My host at first threw cold water on the
notion, but he afterwards relaxed and admitted that the village might
be attained by a more direct way than the ordinary one. He pointed to
some rocks, eminences, and trees, which were to serve as landmarks;
and stretching his arm in the direction of Grindelwald, I took the
bearing of the place, and scampered over slopes of snow to the sunny
Alp beyond them. To my left was a mountain stream making soft music
by the explosion of its bubbles. I was once tempted aside to climb
a rounded eminence, where I lay for an hour watching the augmenting
glory of the mountains. The scene at hand was perfectly pastoral; green
pastures, dotted with chalets, and covered with cows, which filled the
air with the incessant tinkle of their bells. Beyond was the majestic
architecture of the Alps, with its capitals and western bastions
flushed with the warm light of the lowering sun.
I mightily enjoyed the hour. There was health in the air and hope
in the mountains, and with the consciousness of augmenting vigour I
quitted my station, and galloped down the Alp. I was soon amid the
pinewoods which overhang the valley of Grindelwald, with no guidance
save the slope of the mountain, which, at times, was quite precipitous;
but the roots of the pines grasping the rocks afforded hand and foot
such hold as to render the steepest places the pleasantest of all.
I often emerged from the gloom of the trees upon lovely bits of
pasture--bright emerald gems set in the bosom of the woods. It appeared
to me surprising that nobody had constructed a resting-place on this
fine slope. With a fraction of the time necessary to reach the top of
the Faulhorn, a position might be secured from which the prospect would
vie in point of grandeur with almost any in the Alps; while the ascent
from Grindelwald, amid the shade of the festooned trees, would itself
be delightful.
Hawkins, who had halted for a day at Thun, had arrived; our guide had
prepared a number of stakes, and on Monday morning we mounted our
theodolite and proceeded to the Lower Glacier. With some difficulty we
established the instrument upon a site whence the glacier could be seen
from edge to edge; and across it was fixed in a straight line a series
of twelve stakes. We afterwards ascended the glacier till we touched
the avalanche-débris of the Heisse Platte. We wandered amid the moulins
and crevasses until evening approached, and thus gradually prepared our
muscles for more arduous work. On Tuesday a sleety rain filled the
entire air, and the glacier was so laden with fog that there was no
possibility of our being able to see across it. On Wednesday, happily,
the weather brightened, and we executed our measurements; finding,
as in all other cases, that the glacier was retarded by its bounding
walls, its motion varying from a minimum of thirteen and a half inches
to a maximum of twenty-two inches a day. To Mr. Hawkins I am indebted
both for the fixing of the stakes and the reduction of the measurements
to their diurnal rate.
Previous to leaving England I had agreed to join a party of friends at
the Æggischhorn, on Thursday the 9th of August. My plan was, first to
measure the motion of the Grindelwald glacier, and afterwards to cross
the mountain-wall which separates the canton of Berne from that of
Valais, so as to pass from Lauterbrunnen to the Æggischhorn in a single
day. How this formidable barrier was to be crossed was a problem, but
I did not doubt being able to get over it somehow. On mentioning my
wish to Lauener, he agreed to try, and proposed attacking it through
the Roththal. In company with his brother Ulrich, he had already spent
some time in the Roththal, seeking to scale the Jungfrau from that
side. Hawkins had previously, I believe, entertained the thought of
assailing the same barrier at the very same place. Having completed
our measurements on the Wednesday, we descended to Grindelwald and
discharged our bill. We desired to obtain the services of Christian
Kaufmann, a guide well acquainted with both the Wetterhorn and the
Jungfrau; but on learning our intentions he expressed fears regarding
his lungs, and recommended to us his brother, a powerful young man, who
had also undergone the discipline of the Wetterhorn. Him we accordingly
engaged. We arranged with the landlord of the Bear to have the main
mass of our luggage sent to the Æggischhorn by a more easy route. I
was loth to part with the theodolite, but Lauener at first grumbled
hard against taking it. It was proposed, however, to confine his load
to the head of the instrument, while Kaufmann should carry the legs,
and I should bear my own knapsack. He yielded. Ulrich Lauener was
at Grindelwald when we started for Lauterbrunnen, and on bidding us
good-bye he remarked that we were going to attempt an impossibility. He
had examined the place which we proposed to assail, and emphatically
affirmed that it could not be surmounted. We were both a little
chagrined by this gratuitous announcement, and answered him somewhat
warmly; for we knew the moral, or rather immoral, effect of such an
opinion upon the spirits of our men.
The weather became more serene as we approached Lauterbrunnen. We
had a brief evening stroll, but retired to bed before day had quite
forsaken the mountains. At two A.M. the candle of Lauener gleamed
into our bedrooms, and he pronounced the weather fair. We got up at
once, dressed, despatched our hasty breakfast, strapped our things into
the smallest possible volume, and between three and four A.M. were on
our way. The hidden sun crimsoned faintly the eastern sky, but the
valleys were all in peaceful shadow. To our right the Staubbach dangled
its hazy veil, while other _Bachs_ of minor note also hung from the
beetling rocks, but fell to earth too lightly to produce the faintest
murmur. After an hour’s march we deviated to the left, and wound upward
through the woods which here cover the slope of the hill.
The dawn cheerfully unlocked the recesses of the mountains, and we
soon quitted the gloom of the woods for the bright green Alp. This we
breasted, regardless of the path, until we reached the chalets of the
Roththal. We did not yet see the particular staircase up which Lauener
proposed to lead us, but we inspected minutely the battlements to our
right, marking places for future attack in case our present attempt
should not be successful. The elastic grass disappeared, and we passed
over rough crag and shingle alternately. We reached the base of a
ridge of _débris_, and mounted it. At our right was the glacier of the
Roththal, along the lateral moraine of which our route lay.
Just as we touched the snow a spring bubbled from the rocks at our
left, spurting its water over stalagmites of ice. We turned towards
it, and had each a refreshing draught. Lauener pointed out to us the
remains of the hut erected by him and his brother when they attempted
the Jungfrau, and from which they were driven by adverse weather. We
entered an amphitheatre, grand and beautiful this splendid morning,
but doubtless in times of tempest a fit residence for the devils whom
popular belief has banished to its crags. The snow for a space was as
level as a prairie, but in front of us rose the mighty bulwarks which
separated us from the neighbouring canton. To our right were the crags
of the Breithorn, to our left the buttresses of the Jungfrau, while
between both was an indentation in the mountain-wall, on which all eyes
were fixed. From it downwards hung a thread of snow, which was to be
our leading-string to the top.
Though very steep, the aspect of the place was by no means terrible:
comparing with it my memory of other gulleys in the Chamouni mountains,
I imagined that three hours would place us at the top. We not only
expected an easy conquest of the barrier, but it was proposed that
on reaching the top we should turn to the left, and walk straight to
the summit of the Jungfrau. Lauener was hopeful, but not sanguine. We
were soon at the foot of the barrier, clambering over mounds of snow.
Huge consolidated lumps emerged from the general mass; the snow was
evidently that of avalanches which had been shot down the couloir,
kneading themselves into vast balls, and piling themselves in heaps
upon the plain. The gradient steepened, the snow was hard, and the axe
was invoked. Straight up the couloir seemed the most promising route,
and we pursued it for an hour, the impression gradually gaining ground
that the work would prove heavier than we had anticipated.
We then turned our eyes on the rocks to our right, which seemed
practicable, though very steep; we swerved towards them, and worked
laboriously upwards for three-quarters of an hour. Mr. Hawkins and the
two guides then turned to the left, and regained the snow, leaving
me among the crags. They had steps to cut, while I had none, and,
consequently, I got rapidly above them. The work becomes ever harder,
and rest is unattainable, for there is no resting-place. At every brow
I pause; legs and breast are laid against the rough rock, so as to
lessen by their friction the strain upon the arms, which are stretched
to grasp some protuberance above. Thus I rest, and thus I learn that
three days’ training is not sufficient to dislodge London from one’s
lungs. Meanwhile my companions are mounting monotonously along the
snow. Lauener looks up at me at intervals, and I can clearly mark
the expression of his countenance; it is quite spiritless, while that
of his companion bears the print of absolute dismay. Three hours
have passed and the summit is not sensibly nearer. The men halt and
converse together. Lauener at length calls out to me, ‘I think it is
impossible.’ The effect of Ulrich’s prediction appears to be cropping
out; we expostulate, however, and they move on. After some time they
halt again, and reiterate their opinion that the thing cannot be done.
They direct our attention to the top of the barrier; light clouds scud
swiftly over it, and snow-dust is scattered in the air. There is storm
on the heights, which our guides affirm has turned the day against us.
I cast about in my mind to meet the difficulty, and enquire whether
we might not send one of them back with the theodolite, and thus so
lighten our burdens as to be able to proceed. Kaufmann volunteers to
take back the theodolite; but this does not seem to please Lauener.
There is a pause and hesitation. I remonstrate, while Hawkins calls out
‘Forward!’ Lauener once more doggedly strikes his axe into the snow,
and resumes the ascent.
I continued among the rocks, though with less and less confidence
in the wisdom of my choice. My knapsack annoyed me excessively; the
straps frayed my shoulders, and tied up my muscles. Once or twice I
had to get round a protruding face of rock, and then found my bonds
very grievous. At length I came to a peculiar piece of cliff, near the
base of which was a sharp ridge of snow, and at a height of about five
feet above it the rock bulged out, so that a stone dropped from its
protuberance would fall beyond the ridge. I had to work along the snow
cautiously, squatting down so as to prevent the rock from pushing me
too far out. Had I a fair ledge underneath I should have felt perfectly
at ease, but on the stability of the snow-wedge I dared not calculate.
To retreat was dangerous, to advance useless; for right in front of me
was a sheer smooth precipice, which completely extinguished the thought
of further rock-work. I examined the place below me, and saw that a
slip would be attended with the very worst consequences. To loose
myself from the crag and attach myself to the snow was so perilous an
operation that I did not attempt it; and at length I ignobly called to
Lauener to lend me a hand. A gleam of satisfaction crossed his features
as he eyed me on my perch. He manifestly enjoyed being called to the
rescue, and exhorted me to keep quite still. He worked up towards me,
and in less than half an hour had hold of one of my legs. ‘The place is
not so bad after all,’ he remarked, evidently glad to take me down, in
more senses than one. I descended in his steps, and rejoined Hawkins
upon the snow. From that moment Lauener was a regenerate man; the
despair of his visage vanished, and I firmly believe that the triumph
he enjoyed, by augmenting his self-respect, was the proximate cause of
our subsequent success.
[Illustration: ASCENT OF THE LAUWINEN THOR.]
The couloir was a most singular one; it was excessively steep, and
along it were two great scars, resembling the deep-cut channels of a
mountain stream. They were, indeed, channels cut by the snow-torrents
from the heights. We scanned those heights. The view was bounded by
a massive cornice, from which the avalanches are periodically let
loose.[1] The cornice seemed firm; still we cast about for some piece
of rock which might shelter us from the destroyer should he leap
from his lair. Apart from the labour of the ascent, which is great,
the frequency of avalanches will always render this pass a dangerous
one. At 2 P.M. the air became intensely cold. My companion had wisely
pocketed a pair of socks, which he drew over his gloves, and found very
comforting. My leather gloves, being saturated with wet, were very much
the reverse.
[1] Hence the name ‘Lauwinen-Thor,’ which, with the consent of Mr.
Hawkins, if not at his suggestion, I have given to the pass. [The name
has since been adopted in all the maps. March 1871.]
The wind was high, and as it passed the crest of the Breithorn its
moisture was precipitated and afterwards carried away. The clouds
thus generated shone for a time with the lustre of pearls; but as they
approached the sun they became suddenly flooded with the most splendid
iridescences.[2] At our right now was a vertical wall of brown rock,
along the base of which we advanced. At times we were sheltered by it,
but not always; for the wind was as fitful as a maniac, and eddying
round the corners sometimes shook us forcibly, chilled us to the
marrow, and spit frozen dust in our faces. The snow, moreover, adjacent
to the rock had been melted and refrozen to a steep slope of compact
ice. The men were very weary, the hewing of the steps exhausting, and
the footing, particularly on some glazed rocks over which we had to
pass, exceedingly insecure. Once on trying to fix my alpenstock I found
that it was coated with an enamel of ice, and slipped through my wet
gloves. This startled me, for the staff is my sole trust under such
circumstances. The crossing of those rocks was a most awkward piece of
work; a slip was imminent, and the effects of the consequent glissade
not to be calculated. We cleared them, however, and now observed the
grey haze creeping down from the peak of the Breithorn to the point at
which we were aiming. This, however, was visibly nearer; and, for the
first time since we began to climb, Lauener declared that he had good
hopes--‘Jetzt habe ich gute Hoffnung.’ Another hour brought us to a
place where the gradient slackened suddenly. The real work was done,
and ten minutes further wading through the deep snow placed us fairly
on the summit of the col.
[2] See ‘Note on Clouds,’ p. 82.
Looked at from the top the pass will seem very formidable to the best
of climbers; to an ordinary eye it would appear simply terrific. We
reached the base of the barrier at nine A.M.; we had surmounted it at
four; seven hours consequently had been spent upon that tremendous
wall. Our view was limited above; clouds were on all the mountains, and
the Great Aletsch glacier was hidden by dense fog. With long swinging
strides we went down the slope. Several times during our descent the
snow coating was perforated, and hidden crevasses revealed. At length
we reached the glacier, and plodded along it through the dreary fog. We
cleared the ice just at nightfall, passed the Märjelin See, and soon
found ourselves in utter darkness on the spurs of the Æggischhorn. We
lost the track and wandered for a time bewildered. We sat down to rest,
and then learned that Lauener was extremely ill. To quell the pangs of
toothache he had chewed a cigar, which after his day’s exertion was too
much for him. He soon recovered, however, and we endeavoured to regain
the track. In vain. The guides shouted, and after many repetitions we
heard a shout in reply. A herdsman approached, and conducted us to some
neighbouring chalets, whence he undertook the office of guide. After a
time he also found himself in difficulty. We saw distant lights, and
Lauener once more pierced the air with his tremendous whoop. We were
heard. Lights were sent towards us, and an additional half-hour placed
us under the roof of Herr Wellig, the active and intelligent proprietor
of the Jungfrau hotel.
After this day’s journey, which was a very hard one, the tide of health
set steadily in. I have no remembrance of any further exhibition of
the symptoms which had driven me to Switzerland. Each day’s subsequent
exercise made both brain and muscles firmer. We remained at the
Æggischhorn for several days, occupying ourselves principally with
observations and measurements on the Aletsch glacier, and joining
together afterwards in that day’s excursion--unparalleled in my
experience--which has found in my companion a narrator worthy of its
glories. And as we stood upon the savage ledges of the Matterhorn,
with the utmost penalty which the laws of falling bodies could inflict
at hand, I felt that there were perils at home for intellectual men
greater even than those which then surrounded us--foes, moreover, which
inspire no manhood by their attacks, but shatter alike the architect
and his house by the same slow process of disintegration.[3] After
the discipline of the Matterhorn, the fatal slope of the Col du
Géant, which I visited a few days afterwards, looked less formidable
than it otherwise might have done. From Courmayeur I worked round to
Chamouni by Chapieu and the Col de Bonhomme. I attempted to get up
Mont Blanc to visit the thermometers which I had planted on the summit
a year previously; and succeeded during a brief interval of fair
weather in reaching the Grands Mulets. But the gleam which tempted me
thus far proved but a temporary truce to the war of elements, and,
after remaining twenty hours at the Mulets, I was obliged to beat an
inglorious retreat.--_Vacation Tourists, 1860._
[3] This, I believe, was in allusion to the death of Sir Charles
Barry.--J. T., 1871.
II.
_DISASTER ON THE COL DU GÉANT._
On the 18th of August, while Mr. Hawkins and I were staying at Breuil,
rumours reached us of a grievous disaster which had occurred on the Col
du Géant. At first, however, the accounts were so contradictory as to
inspire the hope that they might be grossly exaggerated or altogether
false. But more definite intelligence soon arrived, and before we
quitted Breuil it had been placed beyond a doubt that three Englishmen,
with a guide named Tairraz, had perished on the col. On the 21st I
saw the brother of Tairraz at Aosta, and learned from the saddened
man all that he knew. What I then heard only strengthened my desire
to visit the scene of the catastrophe, and obtain by actual contact
with the facts truer information than could possibly be conveyed to
me by description. On the afternoon of the 22nd I accordingly reached
Courmayeur, and being informed that M. Curie, the resident French
pastor, had visited the place and made an accurate sketch of it, I
immediately called upon him. With the most obliging promptness he
placed his sketches in my hands, gave me a written account of the
occurrence, and volunteered to accompany me. I gladly accepted this
offer, and early on the morning of Thursday the 21st of August we
walked up to the pavilion which it had been the aim of the travellers
to reach on the day of their death. Wishing to make myself acquainted
with the entire line of the fatal glissade, I walked directly from the
pavilion to the base of the rocky couloir along which the travellers
had been precipitated, and which had been described to me as so
dangerous that a chamois-hunter had declined ascending it some days
before. At Courmayeur, however, I secured the services of a most
intrepid man, who had once made the ascent, and who now expressed his
willingness to be my guide. We began our climb at the very bottom of
the couloir, while M. Curie, after making a circuit, joined us on the
spot where the body of the guide Tairraz had been arrested, and where
we found sad evidences of his fate. From this point onward M. Curie
shared the dangers of the ascent, until we reached the place where the
rocks ended and the fatal snow-slope began. Among the rocks we had
frequent and melancholy occasion to assure ourselves that we were on
the exact track. We found there a penknife, a small magnetic compass,
and many other remnants of the fall.
At the bottom of the snow-slope M. Curie quitted me, urging me not to
enter upon the slope, but to take to a stony ridge on the right. No
mere inspection, however, could have given me the desired information.
I asked my guide whether he feared the snow, and, his reply being
negative, we entered upon it together, and ascended it along the furrow
which still marked the line of fall. Under the snow, at some distance
up the slope, we found a fine new ice-axe, the property of one of the
guides. We held on to the track up to the very summit of the col,
and as I stood there and scanned the line of my ascent a feeling of
augmented sadness took possession of me. There seemed no sufficient
reason for this terrible catastrophe. With ordinary care the slip might
in the first instance have been avoided, and with a moderate amount of
skill and vigour the motion, I am persuaded, might have been arrested
soon after it had begun.
Bounding the snow-slope to the left was the ridge along which
travellers to Courmayeur usually descend. It is rough, but absolutely
without danger. The party were, however, tired when they reached
this place, and to avoid the roughness of the ridge they took to the
snow. The inclination of the slope above was moderate; it steepened
considerably lower down, but its steepest portion did not much
exceed forty-five degrees of inclination. At all events, a skilful
mountaineer might throw himself prostrate on the slope with perfect
reliance on his power to arrest his downward motion.
It is alleged that when the party entered the summit of the col on
the Chamouni side the guides proposed to return, but the Englishmen
persisted in going forward. One thing alone could justify the
proposition thus ascribed to the guides by their friends--a fog so
thick as to prevent them from striking the summit of the col at the
proper point, and to compel them to pursue their own traces backwards.
The only part of the col hitherto regarded as dangerous had been
passed, and, unless for the reason assumed, it would have been simply
absurd to recross this portion instead of proceeding to Courmayeur. It
is alleged that a fog existed; but the summit had been reached, and
the weather cleared afterwards. Whether, therefore, the Englishmen
refused to return or not on the Montanvert side, it ought in no way
to influence our judgment of what occurred on the Courmayeur side,
where the weather which prompted the proposal to go back ceased to be
blameable.
A statement is also current to the effect that the travellers were
carried down by an avalanche. In connection with this point M. Curie
writes to me thus: ‘Il paraît qu’à Chamounix on répand le bruit que
c’est une _avalanche_ qui a fait périr les voyageurs. C’est là
une fausseté que le premier vous saurez démentir sur les lieux.’
I subscribe without hesitation to this opinion of M. Curie. That
a considerable quantity of snow was brought down by the rush was
probable, but an avalanche properly so called there was not, and it
simply leads to misconception to introduce the term at all.
We are now prepared to discuss the accident. The travellers, it is
alleged, reached the summit of the col in a state of great exhaustion,
and it is certain that such a state would deprive them of the caution
and firmness of tread necessary in perilous places. But a knowledge
of this ought to have prevented the guides from entering upon the
snow-slope at all. We are, moreover, informed that even on the gentler
portion of the slope one of the travellers slipped repeatedly. On being
thus warned of danger, why did not the guides quit the snow and resort
to the ridge? They must have had full confidence in their power to
stop the glissade which seemed so imminent, or else they were reckless
of the lives they had in charge. At length the fatal slip occurred,
where the fallen man, before he could be arrested, gathered sufficient
momentum to jerk the man behind him off his feet, the other men were
carried away in succession, and in a moment the whole of them were
rushing downwards. What efforts were made to check this fearful rush,
at what point of the descent the two guides relinquished the rope,
which of them gave way first, the public do not know, though this ought
to be known. All that is known to the public is that the two men who
led and followed the party let go the rope and escaped, while the three
Englishmen and Tairraz went to destruction. Tairraz screamed, but, like
Englishmen, the others met their doom without a word of exclamation.
At the bottom of the slope a rocky ridge, forming the summit of a
precipice, rose slightly above the level of the snow, and over it they
were tilted. I do not think a single second’s suffering could have
been endured. During the wild rush downwards the bewilderment was too
great to permit even of fear, and at the base of the precipice life and
feeling ended suddenly together. A steep slope of rocks connected the
base of this precipice with the brow of a second one, at the bottom of
which the first body was found. Another slope ran from this point to
the summit of another ledge, where the second body was arrested, while
attached to it by a rope, and quite overhanging the ledge, was the body
of the third traveller. The body of the guide Tairraz was precipitated
much further, and was much more broken.
The question has been raised whether it was right under the
circumstances to tie the men together. I believe it was perfectly
right, if only properly done. But the actual arrangement was this:
The three Englishmen were connected by a rope tied firmly round
the waist of each of them; one end of the rope was held in the hand
of the guide who led the party; the other end was similarly held by
the hindmost guide, while Tairraz grasped the rope near its middle.
Against this mode of attachment I would enter an emphatic protest. It,
in all probability, caused the destruction of the unfortunate Russian
traveller on the Findelen Glacier last year, and to it I believe is to
be ascribed the disastrous issue of the slip on the Col du Géant. Let
me show cause for this protest. At a little depth below the surface
the snow upon the fatal slope was firm and consolidated, but upon it
rested a superficial layer, about ten inches or a foot in depth, partly
fresh, and partly disintegrated by the weather. By the proper action
of the feet upon such loose snow, its granules are made to unite so as
to afford a secure footing; but when a man’s body, presenting a large
surface, is thrown prostrate upon a slope covered with such snow, the
granules act like friction wheels, offering hardly any resistance to
the downward motion.
A homely illustration will render intelligible the course of action
necessary under such conditions. Suppose a boy placed upon an oilcloth
which covers a polished table, and the table tilted to an angle of
forty-five degrees. The oilcloth would evidently slide down, carrying
the boy along with it, as the loose snow slid over the firm snow on
the Col du Géant. But suppose the boy provided with a stick spiked with
iron, what ought he to do to check his motion? Evidently drive his
spike through the oilcloth and anchor it firmly in the wood underneath.
A precisely similar action ought to have been resorted to on the Col
du Géant. Each man as he fell ought to have turned promptly on his
face, pierced with his armed staff the superficial layer of soft snow,
and pressed with both hands the spike into the consolidated mass
underneath. He would thus have applied a break, sufficient not only
to bring himself to rest, but, if well done, sufficient, I believe,
to stop a second person. I do not lightly express this opinion: it is
founded on varied experience upon slopes at least as steep as that
under consideration.
Consider now the bearing of the mode of attachment above described upon
the question of rescue. When the rope is fastened round the guide’s
waist, both his arms are free, to drive, in case of necessity, his
spiked staff into the snow. But in the case before us, one arm of
each guide was virtually powerless; on it was thrown the strain of
the falling man in advance, by which it was effectually fettered. But
this was not all. When the attached arm receives the jerk, the guide
instinctively grasps the rope with the other hand; in doing so, he
relinquishes his staff, and thus loses the sheet-anchor of salvation.
Such was the case with the two guides who escaped on the day now in
question. The one lost his bâton, the other his axe, and they probably
had to make an expert use of their legs to save even themselves from
destruction. Tairraz was in the midst of the party. Whether it was in
his power to rescue himself or not, whether he was caught in the coil
of the rope or laid hold of by one of his companions, we can never
know. Let us believe that he clung to them loyally, and went with them
to death sooner than desert the post of duty.
III.
THE MATTERHORN--FIRST ASSAULT.
BY F. VAUGHAN HAWKINS, M.A.[4]
[4] Instead of attempting to write one myself, I requested the
permission of my friend Mr. Hawkins to republish his admirable account
of our first assault upon the Matterhorn. I have to thank both him and
Mr. Macmillan for the obliging promptness with which my request was
granted.
The summer and autumn of 1860 will long be remembered in Switzerland as
the most ungenial and disastrous season, perhaps, on record; certainly
without a parallel since 1834. The local papers were filled with
lamentations over ‘der ewige Südwind,’ which overspread the skies with
perpetual cloud, and from time to time brought up tremendous storms,
the fiercest of which, in the three first days of September, carried
away or blocked up for a time, I believe, every pass into Italy except
the Bernina. At Andermatt, on the St. Gothard, we were cut off for two
days from all communications whatever by water on every side. The whole
of the lower Rhone valley was under water. A few weeks later, I found
the Splügen, in the gorge above Chiavenna, altogether gone, remains
of the old road being just visible here and there, but no more. In the
Valteline, I found the Stelvio road in most imminent danger, gangs of
men being posted in the courses of the torrents to divert the boulders,
which every moment threatened to overwhelm the bridges on the route. A
more unlucky year for glacier expeditions, therefore, could hardly be
experienced; and the following pages present in consequence only the
narrative of an unfinished campaign, which it is the hope of Tyndall
and myself to be able to prosecute to a successful conclusion early
next August.
I had fallen in with Professor Tyndall on the Basle Railway, and a
joint plan of operations had been partly sketched out between us, to
combine to some extent the more especial objects of each--scientific
observations on his part; on mine, the exploration of new passes and
mountain topography; but the weather sadly interfered with these
designs. After some glacier measurements had been accomplished at
Grindelwald, a short spell of fair weather enabled us to effect a
passage I had long desired to try, from Lauterbrunnen direct to the
Æggischhorn by the Roththal, a small and unknown but most striking
glacier valley, known to Swiss mythology as the supposed resort of
condemned spirits. We scaled, by a seven hours’ perpendicular climb,
the vast amphitheatre of rock which bounds the Aletsch basin on this
side, and had the satisfaction of falsifying the predictions of Ulrich
Lauener, who bade us farewell at Grindelwald with the discouraging
assertion that he should see us back again, as it was quite impossible
to get over where we were going. As we descended the long reaches of
the Aletsch glacier, rain and mist again gathered over us, giving to
the scene the appearance of a vast Polar sea, over the surface of which
we were travelling, with no horizon visible anywhere except the distant
line of level ice. Arrived at the Æggischhorn, the weather became
worse than ever; a week elapsed before the measurement of the Aletsch
glacier could be completed; and we reluctantly determined to dismiss
Bennen, who was in waiting, considering the season too bad for high
ascents, and to push on with Christian Lauener to the glaciers about
Zinal. Bennen was in great distress. He and I had the previous summer
reconnoitred the Matterhorn from various quarters, and he had arrived
at the conclusion that we could in all probability (‘ich beinahe
behaupte’) reach the top. That year, being only just convalescent from
a fever, I had been unable to make the attempt, and thus an opportunity
had been lost which may not speedily recur, for the mountain was then
(September 1859) almost free from snow. Bennen had set his heart on our
making the attempt in 1860, and great was his disappointment at our
proposed departure for Zinal. At the last moment, however, a change of
plans occurred. Lauener was unwilling to proceed with us to Zinal: we
resolved to give Bennen his chance: the theodolite was packed up and
despatched to Geneva, and we set off for Breuil, to try the Matterhorn.
Accessible or not, however, the Mont Cervin is assuredly a different
sort of affair from Mont Blanc or Monte Rosa, or any other of the
thousand and one summits which nature has kindly opened to man, by
leaving one side of them a sloping plain of snow, easy of ascent, till
the brink of the precipice is reached which descends on the other side.
The square massive lines of terraced crags which fence the Matterhorn,
stand up on all sides nearly destitute of snow, and where the snow lies
thinly on the rocks it soon melts and is hardened again into smooth
glassy ice, which covers the granite slabs like a coat of varnish,
and bids defiance to the axe. Every step of the way lies between
two precipices, and under toppling crags, which may at any moment
bring down on the climber the most formidable of Alpine dangers--a
fire of falling stones. The mountain too has a sort of _prestige_ of
invincibility which is not without its influence on the mind, and
almost leads one to expect to encounter some new and unheard-of source
of peril upon it: hence I suppose it is that the dwellers at Zermatt
and in Val Tournanche have scarcely been willing to attempt to set foot
upon the mountain, and have left the honour of doing so to a native of
another district, who, as he has been the first mortal to plant foot on
the hitherto untrodden peak, so he will, I hope, have the honour, which
he deserves, of being the first to reach the top.
John Joseph Bennen, of Laax, in the Upper Rhine Valley, is a man so
remarkable that I cannot resist the desire (especially as he cannot
read English) to say a few words about his character. Born within
the limits of the German tongue, and living amidst the mountains and
glaciers of the Oberland, he belongs by race and character to a class
of men of whom the Laueners, Melchior Anderegg, Bortis, Christian
Almer, Peter Bohren, are also examples--a type of mountain race,
having many of the simple heroic qualities which we associate, whether
justly or unjustly, with Teutonic blood, and essentially different
from--to my mind, infinitely superior to--the French-speaking,
versatile, wily Chamouniard. The names I have mentioned are all
those of first-rate men; but Bennen, as (I believe) he surpasses all
the rest in the qualities which fit a man for a leader in hazardous
expeditions, combining boldness and prudence with an ease and power
peculiar to himself, so he has a faculty of conceiving and planning
his achievements, a way of concentrating his mind upon an idea, and
working out his idea with clearness and decision, which I never
observed in any man of the kind, and which makes him, in his way,
a sort of Garibaldi. Tyndall, on the day of our expedition, said
to him, ‘Sie sind der Garibaldi der Führer, Bennen;’ to which he
answered in his simple way, ‘Nicht wahr?’ (‘Am I not?’), an amusing
touch of simple vanity, a dash of pardonable bounce, being one of his
not least amiable characteristics. Thoroughly sincere and ‘einfach’
in thought and speech, devoted to his friends, without a trace of
underhand self-seeking in his relations to his employers, there is
an independence about him, a superiority to most of his own class,
which makes him, I always fancy, rather an isolated man; though no
one can make more friends wherever he goes, or be more pleasant and
thoroughly cheerful under all circumstances. But he left his native
place, Steinen, he told me, the people there not suiting him; and in
Laax, where he now dwells, I guess him to be not perhaps altogether
at home. Unmarried, he works quietly most of the year at his trade of
a carpenter, unless when he is out alone, or with his friend Bortis
(a man seemingly of reserved and uncommunicative disposition, but a
splendid mountaineer), in the chase after chamois, of which he is
passionately fond, and will tell stories, in his simple and emphatic
way, with the greatest enthusiasm. Pious he is, and observant of
religious duties, but without a particle of the ‘mountain gloom,’
respecting the prevalence of which among the dwellers in the High Alps
Mr. Ruskin discourses poetically, but I am myself rather incredulous.
A perfect nature’s gentleman, he is to me the most delightful of
companions; and though no ‘theory’ defines our reciprocal obligations
as guide and employer, I am sure that no precipice will ever engulf
me so long as Bennen is within reach, unless he goes into it also--an
event which seems impossible--and I think I can say I would, according
to the measure of my capacity, do the same by him. But any one who has
watched Bennen skimming along through the mazes of a crevassed glacier,
or running like a chamois along the side of slippery ice-covered crags,
axe and foot keeping time together, will think that--as Lauener said
of his brother Johann, who perished on the Jungfrau, _he_ could never
fall--nothing could bring him to grief but an avalanche.[5]
[5] As Bennen and Tyndall were going up the Finsteraarhorn once upon a
time, the work being severe, Bennen turned round and said to Tyndall,
‘Ich fühle mich jetzt ganz wie der Tyroler einmal,’ and went on to
relate a story of the conversation between a priest and an honest
Tyrolese, who complained to his father confessor that religion and an
extreme passion for the fair sex struggled within him, and neither
could expel the other. ‘Mein Sohn,’ said the priest, ‘Frauen zu lieben
und im Himmel zu kommen, das geht nicht.’ ‘Herr Pfarrer,’ sagte der
Tyroler, ‘_es muss gehen_.’ ‘Und so sag’ ich jetzt,’ cried Bennen. ‘Es
muss gehen’ is always his motto.
Delayed in our walk from the Æggischhorn by the usual severity of the
weather, Tyndall, Bennen, and myself reached Breuil on Saturday, August
18, to make our attempt on the Monday. As we approached the mountain,
Bennen’s countenance fell visibly, and he became somewhat gloomy; the
mountain was almost white with fresh-fallen snow. ‘Nur der Schnee
furcht mich,’ he replied to our enquiries. The change was indeed great
from my recollection of the year before; the well-marked, terrace-like
lines along the south face, which are so well given in Mr. George
Barnard’s picture, were now almost covered up; through the telescope
could be seen distinctly huge icicles depending from the crags, the
lines of melting snow, and the dark patches which we hoped might spread
a great deal faster than they were likely to, during the space of
twenty-four hours. There was nothing for it, although our prospects of
success were materially diminished by the snow, but to do the best we
could. As far as I was concerned, I felt that I should be perfectly
satisfied with getting part of the way up on a first trial, which would
make one acquainted with the nature of the rocks, dispel the prestige
which seemed to hang over the untrodden mountain, and probably suggest
ways of shortening the route on another occasion.
We wanted some one to carry the knapsack containing our provisions;
and on the recommendation of the landlord at Breuil, we sent for
a man, named Carrel, who, we were told, was the best mountaineer
in Val Tournanche, and the nephew of M. le Chanoine Carrel, whose
acquaintance I once had the honour of making at Aosta. From the latter
description I rather expected a young, and perhaps aristocratic-looking
personage, and was amused at the entrance of a rough, good-humoured,
shaggy-breasted man, between forty and fifty, an ordinary specimen of
the peasant class. However, he did his work well, and with great good
temper, and seemed ready to go on as long as we chose; though he told
me he expected we should end by passing the night somewhere on the
mountain, and I don’t think his ideas of our success were ever very
sanguine.
We were to start before 3 A.M. on Monday morning, August 20; and the
short period for sleep thus left us was somewhat abridged in my own
case, not so much by thoughts of the coming expedition, as by the
news which had just reached us in a vague, but, unfortunately, only
too credible form, of the terrible accident on the Col du Géant a few
days before. The account thus reaching us was naturally magnified,
and we were as yet ignorant of the names. I could not at night shake
off the (totally groundless) idea that a certain dear friend of mine
was among them, and that I ought at that moment to be hurrying off to
Courmayeur, to mourn and to bury him. In the morning, however, these
things are forgotten; we are off, and Carrel pilots us with a lantern
across the little stream which runs by Breuil, and up the hills to the
left, where in the darkness we seem from the sound to be in the midst
of innumerable rills of water, the effects of the late rains. The
dark outline of the Matterhorn is just visible against the sky, and
measuring with the eye the distance subtended by the height we have
to climb, it seems as if success _must_ be possible: so hard is it to
imagine all the ups and downs which lie in that short sky-line.
Day soon dawns, and the morning rose-light touches the first peak
westward of us; the air is wonderfully calm and still, and for to-day,
at all events, we have good weather, without that bitter enemy the
north wind; but a certain opaque look in the sky, long streaks of
cloud radiating from the south-west horizon up towards the zenith,
and the too dark purple of the hills south of Aosta, are signs that
the good weather will not be lasting. By five we are crossing the
first snow-beds, and now Carrel falls back, and the leader of the day
comes to the front: all the day he will be cutting steps, but those
compact and powerful limbs of his will show no signs of extra exertion,
and to-day he is in particularly good spirits. Carpentering, by the
way--not fine turning and planing, but rough out-of-doors work, like
Bennen’s--must be no bad practice to keep hand and eye in training
during the dead season. We ascend a narrow edge of snow, a cliff some
way to the right: the snow is frozen and hard as rock, and arms and
legs are worked vigorously. Tyndall calls out to me, to know whether I
recollect the ‘conditions:’ _i.e._ if your feet slip from the steps,
turn in a moment on your face, and dig in hard with alpenstock in both
hands under your body; by this means you will stop yourself if it is
possible. Once on your back, it is all over, unless others can save
you: you have lost all chance of helping yourself. In a few minutes
we stop, and rope all together, in which state we continued the whole
day. The prudence of this some may possibly doubt, as there were
certainly places where the chances were greater that if one fell, he
would drag down the rest, than that they could assist him; but we were
only four, all tolerably sure-footed, and in point of fact I do not
recollect a slip or stumble of consequence made by any one of us. Soon
the slope lessens for a while, but in front a wall of snow stretches
steeply upwards to a gap, which we have to reach, in a kind of recess,
flanked by crags of formidable appearance. We turn to the rocks on
the left hand. As, to one walking along miry ways, the opposite side
of the path seems ever the most inviting, and he continually shifting
his course from side to side lengthens his journey with small profit,
so in ascending a mountain one is always tempted to diverge from snow
to rocks, or _vice versâ_. Bennen had intended to mount straight up
towards the gap, and it is best not to interfere with him; he yields,
however, to our suggestions, and we assail the rocks. These, however,
are ice-bound, steep, and slippery: hands and knees are at work,
and progress is slow. At length we stop upon a ledge where all can
stand together, and Carrel proposes to us (for Bennen and he can only
communicate by signs, the one knowing only French, the other German)
to go on and see whether an easier way can be found still further to
the left. Bennen gives an approving nod: he looks with indulgent pity
on Carrel, but snubs all remarks of his as to the route. ‘Er weiss gar
nichts,’ he says. Carrel takes his axe, and mounts warily, but with
good courage; presently he returns, shaking his head. The event is
fortunate, for had we gone further to the left, we should have reached
the top of the ridge from which, as we afterwards found, there is no
passage to the gap, and our day’s work would probably have ended then
and there. Bennen now leads to the right, and moves swiftly up from
ledge to ledge. Time is getting on, but at length we emerge over the
rocks just in face of the gap, and separated from it by a sort of large
snow-crater, overhung on the left by the end of the ridge, from which
stones fall which have scarred the sides of the crater. The sides are
steep, but we curve quickly and silently round them: no stones fall
upon us; and now we have reached the narrow neck of snow which forms
the actual gap; it is half-past eight, and the first part of our work
is done.
By no means the hardest part, however. We stand upon a broad red
granite slab, the lowest step of the actual peak of the Matterhorn: no
one has stood there before us. The slab forms one end of the edge of
snow, surmounted at the other end by some fifty feet of overhanging
rock, the end of the ridge. On one side of us is the snow-crater, round
which we had been winding; on the other side a scarped and seamed
face of snow drops sheer on the north, to what we know is the Zmutt
glacier. Some hopes I had entertained of making a pass by this gap,
from Breuil to Zermatt, vanish immediately. Above us rise the towers
and pinnacles of the Matterhorn, certainly a tremendous array. Actual
contact immensely increases one’s impressions of this, the hardest and
strongest of all the mountain masses of the Alps; its form is more
remarkable than that of other mountains, not by chance, but because
it is built of more massive and durable materials, and more solidly
put together: nowhere have I seen such astonishing masonry. The broad
gneiss blocks are generally smooth and compact, with little appearance
of splintering or weathering. Tons of rock, in the shape of boulders,
must fall almost daily down its sides, but the amount of these, even
in the course of centuries, is as nothing compared with the mass of
the mountain; the ordinary processes of disintegration can have little
or no effect on it. If one were to follow Mr. Ruskin, in speculating
on the manner in which the Alpine peaks can have assumed their present
shape, it seems as if such a mass as this can have been blocked out
only while rising from the sea, under the action of waves such as beat
against the granite headlands of the Land’s End. Once on dry land, it
must stand as it does now, apparently for ever.
Two lines of ascent offer, between which we have to choose: one along
the middle or dividing ridge, the back-bone of the mountain, at the
end of which we stand; the other by an edge some little way to the
right: a couloir lies between them. We choose the former, or back-bone
ridge; but the other proves to be less serrated, and we shall probably
try it on another occasion. As we step from our halting-place, Bennen
turns round and addresses us in a few words of exhortation, like the
generals in Thucydides. He knows us well enough to be sure that we
shall not feel afraid, but every footstep must be planted with the
utmost precaution: no fear, ‘wohl immer Achtung.’ Soon our difficulties
begin; but I despair of relating the incidents of this part of our
route, so numerous and bewildering were the obstacles along it; and the
details of each have somewhat faded from the memory. We are immersed
in a wilderness of blocks, roofed and festooned with huge plates and
stalactites of ice, so large that one is half disposed to seize hold
and clamber up them. Round, over, and under them we go: often progress
seems impossible; but Bennen, ever in advance, and perched like a bird
on some projecting crag, contrives to find a way. Now we crawl singly
along a narrow ledge of rock, with a wall on one side, and nothing on
the other: there is no hold for hands or alpenstock, and the ledge
slopes a little, so that if the nails in our boots hold not, down
we shall go: in the middle of it a piece of rock juts out, which we
ingeniously duck under, and emerge just under a shower of water, which
there is no room to escape from. Presently comes a more extraordinary
place: a perfect chimney of rock, cased all over with hard black ice,
about an inch thick. The bottom leads out into space, and the top is
somewhere in the upper regions: there is absolutely nothing to grasp
at, and to this day I cannot understand how a human being could get up
or down it unassisted. Bennen, however, rolls up it somehow, like a
cat; he is at the top, and beckons Tyndall to advance; my turn comes
next; I endeavour to mount by squeezing myself against the sides, but
near the top friction suddenly gives way, and down comes my weight
upon the rope:--a stout haul from above, and now one knee is upon the
edge, and I am safe: Carrel is pulled up after me. After a time, we
get off the rocks, and mount a slope of ice, which curves rapidly over
for about three yards to our left, and then (apparently) drops at once
to the Zmutt glacier. We reach the top of this, and proceed along it,
till at last a sort of pinnacle is reached, from which we can survey
the line of towers and crags before us up to a point just below the
actual top, and we halt to rest a while. Bennen goes on to see whether
it be possible to cross over to the other ridge, which seems an easier
one. Left to himself, he treads lightly and almost carelessly along.
‘Geb’ Acht, Bennen!’ (Take care of yourself) we shout after him, but
needlessly; he stops and moves alternately, peering wistfully about,
exactly like a chamois; but soon he returns, and says there is no
passage, and we must keep to the ridge we are on.
Three hours had not yet elapsed since we left the gap, and from
our present station we could survey the route as far as a point
which concealed from us the actual summit, and could see that the
difficulties before us were not greater than we had already passed
through, and such as time and perseverance would surely conquer.
Nevertheless, there is a tide in the affairs of such expeditions, and
the impression had been for some time gaining ground with me that
the tide on the present occasion had turned against us, and that the
time we could prudently allow was not sufficient for us to reach the
top that day. Before trial, I had thought it not improbable that the
ascent might turn out either impossible or comparatively easy; it was
now tolerably clear that it was neither the one nor the other, but
an exceedingly long and hard piece of work, which the unparalleled
amount of ice made longer and harder than usual. I asked Bennen if he
thought there was time enough to reach the top of all: he was evidently
unwilling, however, to give up hopes; and Tyndall said he would give no
opinion either way; so we again moved on.
At length we came to the base of a mighty knob, huger and uglier than
its fellows, to which a little _arête_ of snow served as a sort of
drawbridge. I began to fear lest in the ardour of pursuit we might be
carried on too long, and Bennen might forget the paramount object of
securing our safe retreat. I called out to him that I thought I should
stop somewhere here, that if he could go faster alone he might do so,
but he must turn in good time. Bennen, however, was already climbing
with desperate energy up the sides of the kerb; Tyndall would not be
behind him; so I loosed the rope and let them go on. Carrel moved back
across the little _arête_, and sat down, and began to smoke: I remained
for a while standing with my back against the knob, and gazed by myself
upon the scene around.
As my blood cooled, and the sounds of human footsteps and voices grew
fainter, I began to realise the height and the wonderful isolation of
our position. The air was preternaturally still; an occasional gust
came eddying round the corner of the mountain, but all else seemed
strangely rigid and motionless, and out of keeping with the beating
heart and moving limbs, the life and activity of man. Those stones
and ice have no mercy in them, no sympathy with human adventure; they
submit passively to what man can do; but let him go a step too far,
let heart or hand fail, mist gather or sun go down, and they will
exact the penalty to the uttermost. The feeling of ‘the sublime’ in
such cases depends very much, I think, on a certain balance between
the forces of nature and man’s ability to cope with them: if they are
too weak, the scene fails to impress; if they are too strong for him,
what was sublime becomes only terrible. Looking at the Dôme du Goûté
or the Zumstein Spitze full in the evening sun, when they glow with an
absolutely unearthly loveliness, like a city in the heavens, I have
sometimes thought that, place but the spectator alone just now upon
those shining heights, with escape before night all but impossible, and
he will see no glory in the scene--only the angry eye of the setting
sun fixed on dark rocks and dead-white snow.
We had risen seemingly to an immense height above the gap, and the
ridge which stretches from the Matterhorn to the Dent d’Érin lay
flat below; but the peak still towered behind me, and, measuring our
position by the eye along the side of our neighbour of equal height,
the Weisshorn, I saw that we must be yet a long way beneath the top.
The gap itself, and all traces of the way by which we had ascended,
were invisible; I could see only the stone where Carrel sat, and the
tops of one or two crags rising from below. The view was, of course,
magnificent, and on three sides wholly unimpeded: with one hand I could
drop a stone which would descend to Zmutt, with the other to Breuil.
In front lay, as in a map, the as yet unexplored peaks to south and
west of the Dent d’Érin, the range which separates Val Tournanche from
the Valpelline, and the glacier region beyond, called in Ziegler’s
map Zardezan, over which a pass, perchance, exists to Zermatt. An
illimitable range of blue hills spread far away into Italy.
I walked along the little _arête_, and sat down; it was only broad
enough for the foot, and in perfectly cold blood even this perhaps
might have appeared uncomfortable. Turning to look at Tyndall and
Bennen, I could not help laughing at the picture of our progress under
difficulties. They seemed to have advanced only a few yards. ‘Have
you got no further than that yet?’ I called out, for we were all the
time within hearing. Their efforts appeared prodigious: scrambling and
sprawling among the huge blocks, one fancied they must be moving along
some unseen bale of heavy goods instead of only the weight of their own
bodies. As I looked, an ominous visitant appeared: down came a fragment
of rock, the size of a man’s body, and dashed past me on the couloir,
sending the snow flying. For a moment I thought they might have
dislodged it; but looking again I saw it had passed over their heads,
and come from the crags above. Neither of them, I believe, observed
the monster; but Tyndall told me afterwards that a stone, possibly a
splinter from it, had hit him in the neck, and nearly choked him. I
looked anxiously again, but no more followed. A single shot, as it
were, had been fired across our bows; but the ship’s course was already
on the point of being put about.
Expecting fully that they would not persevere beyond a few minutes
longer, I called out to Tyndall to know how soon they meant to be
back. ‘In an hour and a half,’ he replied, whether in jest or earnest,
and they disappeared round a projecting corner. A sudden qualm seized
me, and for a few minutes I felt extremely uncomfortable: what if the
ascent should suddenly become easier, and they should go on, and reach
the top without me? I thought of summoning Carrel, and pursuing them;
but the worthy man sat quietly, and seemed to have had enough of it.
My suspense, however, was not long: after two or three minutes the
clatter, which had never entirely ceased, became louder, and their
forms again appeared: they were evidently descending. In fact, Bennen
had at length turned, and said to Tyndall, ‘Ich denke die Zeit ist zu
kurz.’ I was glad that he had gone on as long as he chose, and not been
turned back on my responsibility. They had found one part of this last
ascent the worst of any, but the way was open thenceforward to the
farthest visible point, which can be no long way below the actual top.
It was now just about mid-day, and ample time for the descent, in all
probability, was before us; but we resolved not to halt for any length
of time till we should reach the gap. Descending, unlike ascending,
is generally not so bad as it seems; but in some places here only one
can advance at a time, the other carefully holding the rope. ‘Tenez
fortement, Carrel, tenez,’ is constantly impressed on the man who
brings up the rear. ‘Splendid practice for us, this,’ exclaims Tyndall
exultingly, as each successive difficulty is overcome. At length we
reach a place whence no egress is possible; we look in vain for traces
of the way we had come: it is our friend the ice-coated chimney.
Bennen gets down first, in the same mysterious fashion as he got up,
and assists us down; presently a shout is heard behind; Carrel is
attempting to get down by himself, and has stuck fast; Bennen has to
extricate him. We are now getting rapidly lower; soon the difficulties
diminish; our gap appears in sight, and once more we reach the broad
granite slab beside the narrow col, and breathe more freely.
Two hours have brought us down thus far; but if we are to return by
the way we came, three or four hours of hard work are still needed
before we arrive at anything like ordinary snow-walking. We hold a
consultation. Bennen thinks the rocks, now that the ice is melting in
the afternoon sun, will be difficult, and ‘withal somewhat dangerous’
(etwa gefährlich auch). The reader will remark that Bennen uses
the word ‘dangerous’ in its legitimate sense. A place is dangerous
where a good climber cannot be secure of his footing; a place is
_not_ dangerous where a good climber is in no danger of slipping,
although to slip may be fatal. We determine to see if it be possible
to descend the sides of the snow-crater, on the brink of which we
now stand. The crater is portentously steep, deeply lined with fresh
snow, which glistens and melts in the powerful sun. The experiment
is slightly hazardous, but we resolve to try. The crater appears to
narrow gradually to a sort of funnel far down below, through which we
expect to issue into the glacier beneath. At the sides of the funnel
are rocks, which some one suggests might serve to break our fall,
should the snow go down with us, but their tender mercies seem to me
doubtful. Cautiously, with steady, balanced tread, we commit ourselves
to the slope, distributing the weight of the body over as large a space
of snow as possible, by fixing in the pole high up, and the feet far
apart, for a slip or stumble now will probably dissolve the adhesion of
the fresh, not yet compacted mass, and we shall go down to the bottom
in an avalanche. Six paces to the right, then again to the left; we
are at the mercy of those overhanging rocks just now, and the recent
tracks of stones look rather suspicious; but all is silent, and soon we
gain confidence, and congratulate ourselves on an expedient which has
saved us hours of time and toil. Just to our right the snow is sliding
by, first slowly, then faster; keep well out of the track of it, for
underneath is a hard polished surface, and if your foot chance to
light there, off you will probably shoot. The snow travels much faster
than we do, or have any desire to do; we are like a coach travelling
alongside of an express train; in popular phrase, we are going side
by side with a small avalanche, though a real avalanche is a very
different matter. Soon we come somewhat under the lee of the rocks,
and now all risk is over, we are through the funnel, and floundering
waist-deep, heedless of crevasses in the comparatively level slopes
beyond. We plunge securely down now in the deep snow, where care and
caution had been requisite in crossing the frozen surface in the
morning; at length we cast off the rope, and are on terra firma.
We shall be at Breuil in unexpectedly good time, before five o’clock;
but it is well we are off the mountain early, for clouds and mist are
already gathering round the peak, and the weather is about to break.
Tyndall rushes rapidly down the slopes, and is lost to view; Bennen
and I walk slowly, discussing the results of the day. I am glad to see
that he is in high spirits, and confident of our future success. He
agrees with me to reach the top will be an exceedingly long day’s work,
and that we must allow ten hours at least for the actual peak, six
to ascend, four to descend; we must start next time, he says, ‘ganz,
ganz früh,’ and manage to reach the gap by seven o’clock. Presently we
deviate a little from our downward course; the same thought occupies
our minds; we perceive a long low line of roof on the mountain-side,
and are not mistaken in supposing that our favourite food will at this
hour be found there in abundance. The shepherds on the Italian hills
are more hospitable and courteous, I think, than their Swiss brethren:
twenty cows are moving their tails contentedly in line under the
shed, for Breuil is a rich pasture valley, and in an autumn evening I
have counted six herds of from ninety to a hundred each, in separate
clusters, like ants, along the stream in the distance. The friendly
man, in hoarse but hearty tones, urges us on as we drink; Bennen puts
into his hand forty centimes for us both (for we have disposed of no
small quantity): but he is with difficulty persuaded to accept so
large a sum, and calls after us, ‘C’est trop, c’est trop, messieurs.’
Long may civilisation and half-francs fail of reaching his simple
abode; for, alas! the great tourist-world is corrupting the primitive
chalet-life of the Alps, and the Alpine man returning to his old
haunts, finds a rise in the price even of ‘niedl’ and ‘mascarpa.’
The day after our expedition Bennen and myself recrossed the Théodule
in a heavy snow-storm. Tyndall started for Chamouni, for the weather
was too bad to justify an indefinite delay at Breuil in the hope of
making another attempt that year, and by waiting till another season
we were sure of obtaining less unfavourable conditions of snow and ice
upon the mountain.--We had enjoyed an exciting and adventurous day,
and I myself was not sorry to have something still left to do, while
we had the satisfaction of being the first to set foot on this, the
most imposing and mightiest giant of the Alps--the ‘inaccessible’ Mont
Cervin.--_Vacation Tourists, 1860._
IV.
_THERMOMETRIC STATION ON MONT BLANC._
The thermometers referred to at p. 17 were placed on Mont Blanc in
1859. I had proposed to the Royal Society some time previously to
establish a series of stations between the top and bottom of the
mountain, and the council of the society was kind enough to give me
its countenance and aid in the undertaking. At Chamouni I had a number
of wooden piles shod with iron. The one intended for the summit was
twelve feet long and three inches square; the others, each ten feet
long, were intended for five stations between the top of the mountain
and the bottom of the Glacier de Bossons. Each post was furnished with
a small cross-piece, to which a horizontal minimum thermometer might
be attached. Six-and-twenty porters were found necessary to carry
all the apparatus to the Grands Mulets, whence fourteen of them were
immediately sent back. The other twelve, with one exception, reached
the summit, whence six of them were sent back. Six therefore remained.
In addition to these we had three guides, Auguste Balmat being the
principal one; these, with Dr. Frankland and myself, made up eleven
persons in all. Though the main object of the expedition was to plant
the posts and fix the thermometers, I was very anxious to make some
observations on the transparency of the lower strata of the atmosphere
to the solar heat-rays. I therefore arranged a series of observations
with the Abbé Veuillet, of Chamouni; he was to operate in the valley,
while I observed at the top. Our instruments were of the same kind;
in this way I hoped to determine the influence of the stratum of air
interposed between the top and bottom of the mountain upon the solar
radiation.
Wishing to commence the observations at daybreak, I had a tent carried
to the summit, where I proposed to spend the night. The tent was ten
feet in diameter, and into it the whole eleven of us were packed. The
north wind blew rather fiercely over the summit, but we dropped down
a few yards to leeward, and thus found shelter. Throughout the night
we did not suffer at all from cold, though we had no fire, and the
adjacent snow was 15° Cent., or 27° Fahr., below the freezing point of
water. We were all however indisposed. I was indeed very unwell when I
quitted Chamouni; but had I faltered my party would have melted away. I
had frequently cast off illness on previous occasions, and hoped to do
so now. But in this I was unsuccessful; my illness was more deep-rooted
than ordinary, and it augmented during the entire period of the ascent.
Towards morning, however, I became stronger, while with some of my
companions the reverse was the case. At daybreak the wind increased in
force, and as the fine snow was perfectly dry, it was driven over us
in clouds. Had no other obstacle existed, this alone would have been
sufficient to render the observations on solar radiation impossible.
We were therefore obliged to limit ourselves to the principal object
of the expedition--the erection of the post for the thermometers.
It was sunk six feet in the snow, while the remaining six feet were
exposed to the air. A minimum thermometer was screwed firmly on to the
cross-piece of the post; a maximum thermometer was screwed on beneath
this, and under this again a wet and dry bulb thermometer. Two minimum
thermometers were also placed in the snow--one at a depth of six,
and the other at a depth of four feet below the surface--these being
intended to give some information as to the depth to which the winter
cold penetrates. At each of the other stations we placed a minimum
thermometer in the ice or snow, and a maximum and a minimum in the air.
The stations were as follows:--The summit, the Corridor, the Grand
Plateau, the glacier near the Grands Mulets, and two additional ones
between the Grands Mulets and the end of the Glacier de Bossons. We
took up some rockets, to see whether the ascensional power, or the
combustion, was affected by the rarity of the air. During the night,
however, we were enveloped in a dense mist, which defeated our purpose.
One rocket was sent up which (though we did not know it) penetrated the
mist, and was seen at Chamouni. Lecomte’s experiments on the alleged
influence of light and rarefaction in retarding combustion caused me to
resolve on making a series of experiments on Mont Blanc. Dr. Frankland
was kind enough to undertake their execution. Six candles were chosen
at Chamouni, and carefully weighed. All of them were permitted to
burn for one hour at the top, and were again weighed when we returned
to Chamouni. They were afterwards permitted to burn an hour below.
Rejecting one candle, which gave a somewhat anomalous result, we found
that the quantity consumed above was, within the limits of error, the
same as that consumed at the bottom. This result surprised us all
the more, inasmuch as the _light_ of the candles appeared to be much
feebler at the top than at the bottom of the mountain.
The explosion of a pistol was sensibly weaker at the top than at a
low level. The _shortness_ of the sound was remarkable; but it bore no
resemblance to the sound of a cracker, to which in acoustic treatises
it is usually compared. It resembled more the sound produced by the
expulsion of a cork from a champagne-bottle, but it was much louder.
The sunrise from the summit was singularly magnificent. The snow on the
shaded flanks of the mountain was of a pure blue, being illuminated
solely by the _reflected_ light of the sky; the summit of the mountain,
on the contrary, was crimson, being illuminated by _transmitted_ light.
The contrast of both was finer than I can describe.
About twenty hours were spent upon the top of Mont Blanc on this
occasion. Had I been better satisfied with the conduct of the guides,
it would have given me pleasure at the time to dwell upon this
out-of-the-way episode in mountain life. But a temper, new to me, and
which I thought looked very like mutiny, showed itself on the part
of some of my men. Its manifestation was slight, I must say, in most
cases, and conspicuous only in one. Regrets and apologies followed,
and due allowance ought to be made for the perfectly novel position in
which the men found themselves. The awe of entire strangeness is very
powerful in some minds; and to my companions the notion of spending
a night at the top of Mont Blanc was passing strange. The thing had
never been attempted previously, nor has the experiment been repeated
since.
As stated at p. 17, I made an attempt during the execrable weather
of 1860 to reach the top, but was driven down after a delay of
twenty hours at the Grands Mulets. The same weather destroyed the
lower stations. In 1861, though the cross still remained at the top,
the thermometers exhibited broken columns and were worthless for
observation.
I may add, in conclusion, that the lowest temperature at the summit of
the Jardin during the winter of 1858 was 21° Cent. below zero. In 1859
I vainly endeavoured to find a thermometer which had been placed in the
snow upon the summit of Mont Blanc a year previously.
V.
From a little book called ‘Mountaineering in 1861,’ published nine
years ago, but long since out of print, I will now make a few
selections. The mountain work of that year embraced the ascent of the
Weisshorn, and the passage of the barrier between the Cima di Jazzi and
Monte Rosa by an untried and dangerous route. Both these expeditions
are described. But, besides these narratives of outward action, I
notice in the book a subjective element, consisting of the musings
and reflections to which I often abandon myself when sauntering over
easy ground, and without which even Switzerland would sometimes be
monotonous to me. It is only from the reader accustomed to similar
reflective moods that I expect acceptance, or even tolerance, of these
musings: the man of action will pass them impatiently by. I begin with
_A LETTER FROM BÂLE._
‘I reached Bâle last night, and now sit on the balcony of the “Three
Kings” with the Rhine flashing below me. It is silent here, but higher
up, in passing the props of a bridge, it breaks into foam; its
compressed air-bubbles burst like elastic springs, and shake the air
into sonorous vibrations.[6] Thus the rude mechanical motion of the
river is converted into music. The hammer of the boat-builder rings
on his plank, the leaves of the poplars rustle in the breeze, the
watchdog’s honest bark is heard in the distance; while from the windows
of the houses along the banks gleam a series of reflected suns, each
surrounded by a coloured glory.
[6] See note at the end of this chapter.
‘Yesterday I travelled from Paris, and the day previous from London,
when the trail of a spent storm swept across the sea and kept its
anger awake. The stern of our boat went up and down, the distant craft
were equally pendulous, and the usual results followed. Men’s faces
waxed green, roses faded from ladies’ cheeks; while puzzled children
yelled intermittently in the grasp of the demon which had newly taken
possession of them. One rare pale maiden sat right in the line of the
spray, and bore the violence of the ocean with the resignation of an
angel. A white arm could be seen shining through translucent muslin,
but even against it the brine beat as if it were a mere seaweed. I sat
at rest, hovering fearfully on the verge of that doleful region, whose
bourne most of those on board had already passed, thinking how directly
materialistic is the tendency of sea-sickness, through its remorseless
demonstration of the helplessness of the human soul and will.
‘The morning of the 1st of August found me on my way from Paris
to Bâle. The sun was strong, and, in addition to this source of
temperature, eight human beings, each burning the slow fire which
we call life, were cooped within the limits of our compartment. We
slept, first singly, then by groups, and finally as a whole. Vainly
we endeavoured to ward off the coming lethargy. Thought gradually
slips away from its object, or the object glides out of the nerveless
grasp of thought, and we are conquered by the heat. But what _is_
heat, that it should work such changes in moral and intellectual
nature? Why are we unable to read “Mill’s Logic” or study the “Kritik
der reinen Vernunft” with any profit in a Turkish bath? Heat,
defined without reference to our sensations, is a kind of motion,
as strictly mechanical as the waves of the sea, or as the aërial
vibrations which produce sound. The communication of this motion to
the molecules of the brain produces the moral and intellectual effects
just referred to. Human action is only possible within a narrow zone
of temperature. Transgress the limit on one side, and we are torpid
by excess; transgress it on the other, and we are torpid by defect.
The intellect is in some sense a function of temperature. Thus at
noon we were drained of intellectual energy; eight hours later the
mind was awake and active, and through her operations was shed that
feeling of earnestness and awe which the mystery of the starry heavens
ever inspires. Physically considered, however, the intellect of noon
differed from that of 8 P.M. simply in the amount of motion possessed
by the molecules of the brain.
‘It is not levity which prompts me to write thus. Matter, in relation
to vital phenomena, has yet to be studied, and the command of Canute to
the waves would be wisdom itself compared with any attempt to stop such
enquiries. Let the tide rise, and let knowledge advance; the limits
of the one are not more rigidly fixed than those of the other; and no
worse infidelity could seize upon the mind than the belief that a man’s
earnest search after truth should culminate in his perdition.’
The sun was high in heaven as we rolled away from Bâle on the morning
of the 2nd. Sooner or later every intellectual canker disappears before
earnest work, the influence of which, moreover, fills a wide margin
beyond the time of its actual performance. Thus, to-day, I sang as I
rolled along--not with boisterous glee, but with serene and deep-lying
gladness of heart. This happiness, however, had its roots in the past,
and had I not been a worker previous to my release from London, I
could not now have been so glad an idler. In any other country than
Switzerland the valley through which we sped would have called forth
admiration and delight. Noble fells, proudly grouped, flanked us right
and left. Cloud-like woods of pines overspread them in broad patches,
with between them spaces of the tenderest green, while among the
meadows at their feet gleamed the rushing Rhine.
The zenith was blue, but the thick stratum of horizontal air invested
the snowy peaks with a veil of translucent haze, through which their
vast and spectral outlines were clearly seen. As we rolled on towards
Thun the haze thickened, while dense and rounded clouds burst upwards,
as if let loose from a prison behind the mountains. Soon afterwards the
black haze and blacker clouds resolved themselves into a thunderstorm.
The air was cut repeatedly by zigzag bars of solid light. Then came the
cannonade, and then the heavy rain-pellets rattling with fury against
the carriages. It afterwards cleared, but not wholly. Stormy cumuli
swept round the mountains, between which, however, the illuminated
ridges seemed to swim in the opalescent air.
At Thun I found my faithful and favourite guide, Johann Bennen, of
Laax, in the valley of the Rhone, the strongest limb and stoutest heart
of my acquaintance in the Alps. We took the steamer to Interlaken,
and while we were on the lake the heavens again darkened, and the deck
was flooded by the gushing rain. The dusky cloud-curtain was rent at
intervals, and through the apertures thus formed parallel bars of
extraordinary radiance escaped across the lake. On reaching Interlaken
I drove to the steamer on the lake of Brientz. We started at 6 P.M.,
with a purified atmosphere, and passed through scenes of serene beauty
in the tranquil evening light. The bridge of Brientz had been carried
away by the floods, the mail was intercepted, and I joined a young
Oxford man in a vehicle to Meyringen. The west wind again filled the
atmosphere with gloom, and after supper I spent an hour watching the
lightning thrilling behind the clouds. The darkness was intense, and
the intermittent glare correspondingly impressive. Sometimes the
lightning seemed to burst, like a fireball, midway between the horizon
and the zenith, spreading a vast glory behind the clouds and revealing
all their outlines. In front of me was a craggy summit, which indulged
in intermittent shots of thunder; sharp, dry, and sudden, with scarcely
an echo to soften them off.
NOTE ON THE SOUND OF AGITATED WATER.
A liquid vein descending through a round hole in the bottom of a tin
vessel exhibits two distinct portions, the one steady and limpid, the
other unsteady and apparently turbid. The flash of an electric spark in
a dark room instantly resolves the turbid portion into isolated drops.
Experiments made in 1849 with such a jet directed my attention to the
origin of the sound of agitated water. When the smoke is projected
from the lips of a tobacco-smoker, a little explosion usually occurs,
which is chiefly due to the sudden bursting of the film of saliva
connecting both lips. An inflated bladder bursts with an explosion as
loud as a pistol-shot. Sound to some extent always accompanies the
sudden liberation of compressed air, and this fact is also exhibited in
the deportment of a water-jet. If the surface of water into which the
jet falls intersect its limpid portion, the jet enters _silently_, and
no bubbles are produced. If the surface cut the turbid portion of the
jet, bubbles make their appearance with an accompaniment of sound. The
very nature of the sound pronounces its origin to be the bursting of
the bubbles; and to the same cause the murmur of streams and the sound
of breakers appear to be almost exclusively due. The impact of water
against water is a comparatively subordinate cause of the sound, and
could never of itself occasion the ‘babble’ of a brook or the musical
roar of the ocean.--_Philosophical Magazine_, February 1857.
VI.
_THE URBACHTHAL AND GAULI GLACIER._
Our bivouac at Meyringen was _le Sauvage_, who discharged his duty as a
host with credit to himself and with satisfaction to us. Forster (the
statesman) arrived, and in the afternoon of the 3rd we walked up the
valley, with the view of spending the night at Hof. Between Meyringen
and Hof, the vale of Hasli is crossed by a transverse ridge called the
Kirchet, and the barrier is at one place split through, forming a deep
chasm with vertical sides through which plunges the river Aar. The
chasm is called the Finsteraarschlucht, and by the ready hypothesis of
an earthquake its formation has been explained. Man longs for causes,
and the weaker minds, unable to restrain their longing, often barter,
for the most sorry theoretic pottage, the truth which patient enquiry
would make their own. This proneness of the human mind to jump to
conclusions, and thus shirk the labour of real investigation, is a most
mischievous tendency. We complain of the contempt with which practical
men regard theory, and, to confound them, triumphantly exhibit the
speculative achievements of master minds. But the practical man, though
puzzled, remains unconvinced; and why? Simply because nine out of ten
of the theories with which he is acquainted are deserving of nothing
better than contempt. Our master minds built their theoretic edifices
upon the rock of fact, the quantity of fact necessary to enable them to
divine the _law_ being a measure of individual genius, and not a test
of philosophic system.[7]
[7] This was written soon after Mr. Buckle’s Royal Institution lecture,
which I thought a piece of astonishing rhetoric, but of very unsound
science.
The level plain of Hof lies above the mound of the Kirchet; how was
this flat formed? Is it not composed of the sediment of a lake? Did
not the Kirchet form the dam of this lake, a stream issuing from the
latter and falling over the dam? And as the sea-waves find a weak point
in the cliffs against which they dash, and gradually eat their way so
as to form caverns with high vertical sides, as at the Land’s End, a
joint or fault or some other accidental weakness determining their line
of action; so also a mountain torrent rushing for ages over the same
dam would be sure to cut itself a channel. The lake after its drainage
left the basis of green meadows as sediment behind; and through these
meadows now flows the stream of the Aar. Imagination is essential to
the natural philosopher, but its matter must be facts; and its function
the discernment of their connection.
We were called at 4 A.M., an hour later than we intended, and the sight
of the cloudless mountains was an inspiration to us all. At 5.30 A.M.
we were off, crossing the valley of Hof, which was hugged round its
margin by a light and silky mist. We ascended a spur which separated
us from the Urbachthal, through which our route lay. The Aar for a
time babbled in the distance, until, on turning a corner, its voice
was suddenly quenched by the louder music of the Urbach, rendered
mellow and voluminous by the resonance of the chasm into which the
torrent leaped. The sun was already strong. His yellow light glimmered
from the fresh green leaves; it smote with glory the boles and the
plumes of the pines; soft shadows fell from shrub and rock upon the
pastures; snow-peaks were in sight, cliffy summits also, without snow
or verdure, but in many cases buttressed by slopes of soil which bore
a shaggy growth of trees. To the right of us rose the bare cliffs of
the Engelhörner, broken at the top into claw-shaped masses which were
turned, as if in spite, against the serene heaven. Bennen walked on
in front, a mass of organised force, silent, but emitting at times a
whistle which sounded like the piping of a lost chamois. In a hollow
of the Engelhörner a mass of snow had found a lodgment; melted by the
warm rock, its foundation was sapped, and down it came in a thundering
cascade. The thick pinewoods to our right were furrowed by the tracks
of these destroyers, the very wind of which, it is affirmed, tears up
distant trees by the roots.
For a time our route lay through a spacious valley, which at length
turned to the left, and narrowed to a gorge. Along its bottom the
hissing river rushed; this we crossed, climbed the wall of a _cul de
sac_, and from its rim enjoyed a glorious view. The Urbachthal has been
the scene of vast glacier action. Looking at these charactered cliffs,
one’s thoughts involuntarily revert to the ancient days, and we restore
in idea a state of things which had disappeared from the world before
the development of man. Whence this wondrous power of reconstruction?
Was it locked like latent heat in ancient inorganic nature, and
developed as the ages rolled? Are other and grander powers still
latent in nature, destined to blossom in another age? Let us question
fearlessly, but, having done so, let us avow frankly that at bottom we
know nothing; that we are imbedded in a mystery, towards the solution
of which no whisper has been yet conceded to the listening intellect of
man.
The world of life and beauty is now retreating, and the world of death
and beauty is at hand. We were soon at the end of the Gauli glacier,
from which the impetuous Urbach rushes, and turned into a chalet for
a draught of milk. The Senner within proved an extortioner--‘_Ein
unverschämter Hund_;’ but let him pass. We worked along the flank of
the glacier to a point which commands a view of the cliffy barrier
which it is the main object of our journey to pass. From a range of
snow-peaks linked together by ridges of black rock, the Gauli glacier
falls, at first steeply as snow, then more gently as ice. We scan the
mountain barrier to ascertain where it ought to be attacked. No one
of us has ever been here before, and the scanty scraps of information
which we have received tell us that at one place only is the barrier
passable. We may reach the summit at several points from this side,
but all save one, we are informed, lead to the brink of intractable
precipices, which fall sheer to the Lauteraar glacier. We observe,
discuss, and finally decide. We enter upon the glacier; black chasms
yawn here and there through the superincumbent snow, but there is no
real difficulty. We cross the glacier and reach the opposite slopes;
our way first lies up a moraine, and afterwards through the snow; a
laborious ascent brings us close to the ridge, and here we pause once
more in consultation. There is a gentle indentation to our left, and a
cleft in the rocks to our right; our information points to the cleft,
but we decide in favour of the saddle.
The winter snows were here thickly laid against the precipitous crags;
the lower part of the buttress thus formed had broken away from the
upper, which still clung to the rocks, the whole ridge being thus
defended by a profound chasm, called in Switzerland a Bergschrund.
At some places portions of snow had fallen away from the upper slope
and partially choked the schrund, closing, however, its mouth only,
and on this snow we were now to seek a footing. Bennen and myself
were loose coming up; Forster and his guide were tied together; but
now my friend declares that we must all be attached. We accordingly
rope ourselves, and advance along the edge of the fissure to a place
where it is partially stopped. A vertical wall of snow faces us. Our
leader carefully treads down the covering of the chasm; and having
thus rendered it sufficiently rigid to stand upon, he cuts a deep gap
with his ice-axe in the opposing wall. Into the gap he tries to force
himself, but the mass yields, and he falls back, sinking deeply in the
snow of the schrund. He stands right over the fissure, which is merely
bridged by the snow. I call out, ‘Take care!’ he responds, ‘All right!’
and returns to the charge. He hews a deeper and more ample gap; strikes
his axe into the slope above him, and leaves it there; buries his
hands in the yielding mass, and raises his body on his two arms, as on
a pair of pillars. He thus clears the schrund and anchors his limbs in
the snow above. I am speedily at his side, and we both tighten the rope
as our friend Forster advances. With perfect courage and a faultless
head, he has but one disadvantage, and that is an excess of weight of
at least two stone. In his first attempt the snow-ledge breaks, and
he falls back; but two men are now at the rope, the tension of which,
aided by his own activity, prevents him from sinking far. By a second
effort he clears the difficulty, is followed by his guide, and all four
of us reach the slope above the chasm. Its steepness was greater than
that of a cathedral roof, while below us, and within a few yards of us,
was a chasm into which it would be certain death to fall. Education
enables us to regard a position of this kind almost with indifference;
still the work was by no means unexciting. In this early stage of our
summer performances, it required perfect trust in our leader to keep
our minds at ease. We reached the saddle, and a cheer at the summit
announced that our escape was secured.
The indentation formed the top of a kind of chimney or funnel in the
rocks, which led right down to the Lauteraar glacier. Elated with our
success, I released myself from the rope and sprang down the chimney,
preventing the descent from quickening to an absolute fall by seizing
at intervals the projecting rocks. Once an effort of this kind shook
the alpenstock from my hand: it slid along the rubbish, reached a
snow-slope, shot down it, and was caught on some shingle at the bottom
of the slope. Quickly skirting the snow, which, without a staff,
cannot be trusted, I reached a ridge, from which a jump landed me on
the _débris_: it yielded and carried me down; passing the alpenstock
I seized it, and in an instant was master of all my motions. Another
snow-slope was reached, down which I shot to the rocks at the bottom,
and there awaited the arrival of my guide.
We diverged from the deep cut of the chimney, Bennen adhering to the
rough rocks, while I, hoping to make an easier descent through the
funnel itself, resorted to it. It was partially filled with indurated
snow, but underneath was a stream, and my ignorance of the thickness
of the roof rendered caution necessary. At one place the snow was
broken quite across, and a dark tunnel, through which the stream
rushed, opened immediately below me. My descent being thus cut off,
I crossed the couloir to the opposite rocks, climbed them, and found
myself upon the summit of a ledged precipice, below which Bennen stood,
watching me as I descended. On one of the ledges my foot slipped; a
most melancholy whine issued from my guide, as he suddenly moved
towards me; but the slip in no way compromised me; I reached the next
ledge, and in a moment was clear of the difficulty. We dropped down
the mountain together, quitted the rocks, and reached the glacier,
where we were soon joined by Forster and his companion. Turning round,
we espied a herd of seven chamois on one of the distant slopes of
snow. The telescope reduced them to five full-grown animals and two
pretty little kids. The day was fading and the deeper glacier pools
were shaded by their icy banks. Through the shadowed water needles of
ice were darting: all day long the molecules had been kept asunder
by the antagonistic heat; their enemy is now withdrawn, and they
lock themselves together in a crystalline embrace. Through a reach
of merciless shingle, which covers the lower part of the glacier, we
worked our way; then over green pastures and rounded rocks, to the
Grimsel Hotel, which, uncomfortable as it is, was reached with pleasure
by us all.
VII.
_THE GRIMSEL AND THE ÆGGISCHHORN._
This Grimsel is a weird region--a monument carved with hieroglyphics
more ancient and more grand than those of Nineveh or the Nile. It is a
world disinterred by the sun from a sepulchre of ice. All around are
evidences of the existence and the might of the glaciers which once
held possession of the place. All around the rocks are carved, and
fluted, and polished, and scored. Here and there angular pieces of
quartz, held fast by the ice, inserted their edges into the rocks and
scratched them like diamonds, the scratches varying in depth and width
according to the magnitude of the cutting stone. Larger masses, held
similarly captive, scooped longitudinal depressions in the rocks over
which they passed, while in many cases the polishing must have been
effected by the ice itself. A raindrop will wear a stone away; much
more would an ice surface, squeezed into perfect contact by enormous
pressure, rub away the asperities of the rocks over which for ages it
was forced to slide. The rocks thus polished by the ice itself are so
exceedingly smooth and slippery that it is impossible to stand on them
where their inclination is at all considerable. But what a world it
must have been when the valleys were thus filled! We can restore the
state of things in thought, and in doing so we submerge many a mass
which now lifts its pinnacle skyward. Switzerland in those days could
not be so grand as it is now. Pour ice into those valleys till they are
filled, and you eliminate those contrasts of height and depth on which
the grandeur of Alpine scenery depends. Instead of skiey pinnacles and
deep-cut gorges we should have an icy sea dotted with dreary islands
formed by the highest mountain-tops.
In the afternoon I strolled up to the Siedelhorn. As I stood upon the
broken summit of the mountain the air was without a cloud; and the
sunbeams fell directly against the crown and slopes of the Galenstock
at the base of which lay the glacier of the Rhone. The level sea of
_névé_ above the great ice-cascade, the fall itself, and the terminal
glacier below the fall were all apparently at hand. At the base of the
fall the ice undergoes an extraordinary transformation; it reaches this
place more or less amorphous, it quits it most beautifully laminated,
the change being due to the pressure endured at the bottom of the fall.
The wrinkling of the glacier here was quite visible, the dwindling
of the wrinkles into bands, and the subdivision of these bands into
lines which mark the edges of the laminæ of which the glacier at this
place is made up. Beyond, amid the mountains at the opposite side of
the Rhone valley, lay the Gries glacier, half its snow in shadow,
and half illuminated by the sinking sun. Round farther to the right
were the Monte Leone and other grand masses, the grandest here being
the Mischabel with its crowd of snowy cones. Jumping a gap in the
mountains, we hit the stupendous cone of the Weisshorn, which slopes to
meet the inclines of the Mischabel, and in the wedge of space carved
out between the two the Matterhorn lifts its terrible head.
Wheeling farther in the same direction, we at length strike the mighty
spurs of the Finsteraarhorn, between two of which lies the Oberaar
glacier. Here is no turmoil of crevasses, no fantastic ice-pinnacles,
nothing to indicate the operation of those tremendous forces by which
a glacier sometimes rends its own breast. The grimmest giant of the
Oberland closes the view at the head of the Lauteraar glacier--the
Schreckhorn, whose cliffs on this side no mountaineer will ever scale.
Between the Schreckhorn and Finsteraarhorn a curious group of peaks
encircle a flat snow-field, from which the sunbeams are flung in
blazing lines. Immediately below is the Unteraar glacier, with a long
black streak upon its back, bent hither and thither, like a serpent
wriggling down the valley. Beyond it and flanking it is a ridge of
mountains with a crest of vertical rock, hacked into indentations which
suggest a resemblance to a cock’s comb. To the very root of the comb
the mountains have been planed by the ancient ice.
A scene of unspeakable desolation it must have been when not
Switzerland alone, but all Europe, was thus encased in frozen
armour--when a glacier from Ben Nevis dammed the mouth of Glenroy,
and Llanberis and Borrodale were ploughed by frozen shares sent down
by Snowdon and Scawfell--when from the Reeks of Magillicuddy came the
navigators which dug out space for the Killarney lakes, and carved
through the mountains the Gap of Dunloe.[8] Evening came, and I moved
downwards, over heaped boulders and tufted alp; down with headlong
speed over the rounded rocks of the Grimsel, making long springs at
intervals, over the polished inclines, and reaching the hospice as the
bell rings its inmates to their evening meal.
[8] See chapter on ‘Killarney,’ p. 413.
On Saturday I ascended from Viesch to the Hotel Jungfrau on the slope
of the Æggischhorn, and in the evening walked up to the summit of the
mountain alone. As usual, I wandered unconsciously from the beaten
track, getting into a chaos of crags which had been shaken from the
heights. My ascent was quick, and I soon found myself upon the crest
of broken rocks which caps the mountain. The peak and those adjacent,
which are similarly shattered, exhibit a striking picture of the ruin
which nature inflicts upon her own creations. She buildeth up and
taketh down. She lifts the mountains by her subterranean energies, and
then blasts them by her lightnings and her frost. Thus grandly she
rushes along the ‘grooves of change’ to her unattainable repose. Is it
unattainable? The incessant tendency of material forces is toward final
equilibrium; and if the quantity of this tendency be finite, a time
of repose must come at last. If one portion of the universe be hotter
than another, a flux instantly sets in to equalise the temperatures;
while winds blow and rivers roll in search of a stable equilibrium.
Matter longs for rest; when is this longing to be fully satisfied? If
satisfied, what then? Rest is not perfection; it is death. Life is only
compatible with mutation; when equilibrium sets in life ceases, and the
world thenceforward is locked in everlasting sleep.
A wooden cross bleached by many storms surmounts the pinnacle of the
Æggischhorn, and at the base of it I now take my place and scan the
surrounding scene. Down from its birthplace in the mountains comes
that noblest of ice-streams the Great Aletsch glacier. Its arms are
thrown round the shoulders of the Jungfrau, while from the Monk and
the Trugberg, the Gletscherhorn, the Breithorn, the Aletschhorn, and
many another noble pile, the tributary snows descend and thicken into
ice. The mountains are well protected by their wintry coats, and hence
the quantity of _débris_ upon the glacier is comparatively small;
still, along it can be noticed dark longitudinal streaks, which are
incipient moraines. Right and left from these longitudinal bands sweep
finer curves, twisted here and there into complex windings, which mark
the lamination of the subjacent ice. The glacier lies in a curved
valley, the side towards which its convex curvature is turned is thrown
into a state of strain, the ice breaks across the line of tension,
a curious system of oblique glacier ravines being thus produced.
From the snow-line which crosses the glacier above the Faulberg a
pure snow-field stretches upward to the Col de la Jungfrau, which
unites the Maiden to the Monk. Skies and summits are to-day without a
cloud, and no mist or turbidity interferes with the sharpness of the
outlines. Jungfrau, Monk, Eiger, Trugberg, cliffy Strahlgrat, stately,
lady-like Aletschhorn, all grandly pierce the empyrean. Like a Saul of
mountains, the Finsteraarhorn overtops all his neighbours; then we have
the Oberaarhorn, with the river glacier of Viesch rolling from his
shoulders. Below is the Märjelin See, with its crystal precipices and
its floating icebergs, snowy white, sailing on a blue-green sea. Beyond
is the range which divides the Valais from Italy. Sweeping round,
the vision meets an aggregate of peaks which look, as fledglings to
their mother, towards the mighty Dom. Then come the repellent crags of
Mont Cervin, the idea of moral savagery, of wild untameable ferocity,
mingling involuntarily with our contemplation of the gloomy pile.
Next comes an object scarcely less grand, conveying it may be even a
deeper impression of majesty and might than the Matterhorn itself--the
Weisshorn, perhaps the most splendid object in the Alps. But beauty is
associated with its force, and we think of it, not as cruel, but as
grand and strong. Further to the right is the Great Combin; other peaks
crowd around him, while at the extremity of the curve along which the
gaze has swept rises the sovran crown of Mont Blanc. And now, as the
day sinks, scrolls of pearly clouds form around the mountain-crests,
and are wafted from them into the distant air. They are without
colour of any kind; but their grace of form and lustre are not to be
described.
NOTE ON CLOUDS.
It is well known that when a receiver filled with ordinary undried air
is exhausted, a cloudiness, due to the precipitation of the aqueous
vapour diffused in the air, is produced by the first few strokes of the
pump. It is, as might be expected, possible to produce clouds in this
way with the vapours of other liquids than water.
In the course of some experiments on the chemical action of light
on vapours which have been communicated to the Royal Society, I had
frequent occasion to observe the precipitation of such clouds; indeed,
several days at a time have been devoted solely to the generation and
examination of clouds formed by the sudden dilatation of mixed air and
vapours in the experimental tubes.
The clouds were generated in two ways: one mode consisted in opening
the passage between the filled experimental tube and the air-pump, and
then simply dilating the air by working the pump. In the other, the
experimental tube was connected with a vessel of suitable size, the
passage between which and the experimental tube could be closed by a
stopcock. This vessel was first exhausted; on turning the cock the air
rushed from the experimental tube into the vessel, the precipitation of
a cloud within the tube being a consequence of the transfer. Instead
of a special vessel, the cylinders of the air-pump itself were usually
employed for this purpose.
It was found possible, by shutting off the residue of air and vapour
after each act of precipitation, and again exhausting the cylinders of
the pump, to obtain with some substances, and without refilling the
experimental tube, fifteen or twenty clouds in succession.
The clouds thus precipitated differed from each other in luminous
energy, some shedding forth a mild white light, others flashing out
with sudden and surprising brilliancy. This difference of action is,
of course, to be referred to the different reflective energies of the
particles of the clouds, which were produced by substances of very
different refractive indices.
Different clouds, moreover, possess very different degrees of
stability: some melt away rapidly, while others linger for minutes
in the experimental tube, resting, as they slowly dissolve, upon its
bottom like a heap of snow. The particles of other clouds are trailed
through the experimental tube as if they were moving through a viscous
medium.
Nothing can exceed the splendour of the diffraction phenomena exhibited
by some of these clouds; the colours are best seen by looking along
the experimental tube from a point above it, the face being turned
towards the source of illumination. The differential motions introduced
by friction against the interior surface of the tube often cause the
colours to arrange themselves in distinct layers.
The difference in texture exhibited by different clouds caused me
to look a little more closely than I had previously done into the
mechanism of cloud-formation. A certain expansion is necessary to
bring down the cloud; the moment just before precipitation the cooling
air and vapour may be regarded as divided into a number of polyhedra,
the particles along the bounding surfaces of which move in opposite
directions when precipitation actually sets in. Every cloud-particle
has consumed a polyhedron of vapour in its formation; and it is
manifest that the size of the particle must depend, not only on the
size of the vapour polyhedron, but also on the relation of the density
of the vapour to that of its liquid. If the vapour were light, and the
liquid heavy, other things being equal, the cloud-particle would be
smaller than if the vapour were heavy and the liquid light. There would
evidently be more shrinkage in the one case than in the other; these
considerations were found valid throughout the experiments; the case of
toluol may be taken as representative of a great number of others. The
specific gravity of this liquid is 0.85, that of water being unity; the
specific gravity of its vapour is 3.26, that of aqueous vapour being
0.6. Now, as the size of the cloud-particle is directly proportional
to the specific gravity of the vapour, and inversely proportional to
the specific gravity of the liquid, an easy calculation proves that,
assuming the size of the vapour polyhedra in both cases to be the
same, the size of the particle of toluol cloud must be more than six
times that of the particle of aqueous cloud. It is probably impossible
to test this question with numerical accuracy; but the comparative
coarseness of the toluol cloud is strikingly manifest to the naked eye.
The case is, as I have said, representative.
In fact, aqueous vapour is without a parallel in these particulars; it
is not only the lightest of all vapours, in the common acceptation of
that term, but the lightest of all gases except hydrogen and ammonia.
To this circumstance the soft and tender beauty of the clouds of our
atmosphere is mainly to be ascribed.
The _sphericity_ of the cloud-particles may be immediately inferred
from their deportment under the luminous beams. The light which
they shed when spherical is _continuous_: but clouds may also be
precipitated in solid flakes; and then the incessant sparkling of the
cloud shows that its particles are _plates_, and not spheres. Some
portions of the same cloud may be composed of spherical particles,
others of flakes, the difference being at once manifested through the
_calmness_ of the one portion of the cloud, and the _uneasiness_ of the
other. The sparkling of such flakes reminded me of the plates of mica
in the River Rhone at its entrance into the Lake of Geneva when shone
upon by a strong sun.--_Proceedings of the Royal Society_, vol. xvii.
p. 317.
* * * * *
Clouds are so often referred to in these pages that I thought it might
be of interest to note the latest remarks on their formation.
VIII.
_THE BEL ALP._
On Tuesday the 13th I accompanied a party of friends to the Märjelin
See, skirted the lake, struck in upon the glacier, and having heard
much of the position and the comfort of a new hotel upon the Bel Alp, I
resolved to descend the glacier and pay the place a visit. The Valais
range had been covered before we quitted the Æggischhorn; and, though
the sun rode unimpeded in the higher heavens, vast masses of cloud
continued to thrust themselves forth like tree-branches into the upper
air.
The clouds extended, becoming ever blacker, until finally they were
unlocked by thunder, and shook themselves down upon us in furious rain.
The glacier is here cut up into oblique valleys of ice, subdivided by
sharp-edged crevasses. We advanced swiftly along the ridges, but these
finally abutted against the mountain, and we were compelled to cross
from ridge to ridge. Hirst followed Bennen, and I trusted to my own
devices. Joyously we struck our axes into the crumbling crests, and
made our way rapidly between the chasms. The sunshine gushed down upon
us, and partially dried our drenched clothes. At some distance to our
left we observed upon the ice a group of persons, consisting of two
men, a boy, and an old woman, engaged beside a crevasse; a thrill of
horror shot through me, at the thought of a man being possibly between
its jaws. We quickly joined them, and found an unfortunate cow firmly
jammed between the frozen sides of the fissure, and groaning piteously.
The men seemed very helpless; their means were inadequate, and their
efforts ill-directed. ‘Give the brute space, cut away the ice which
presses the ribs, and _you_ step upon that block which stops the chasm,
and apply your shoulders to the creature’s buttocks.’ The ice splinters
fly aloft, under the vigorous strokes of Bennen. Hirst suggests that
a rope should be passed round the horns, so as to enable all hands to
join in the pull. This is done. Another rope is passed between the hind
legs. Bennen has loosened the ice which held the ribs in bondage, and
now, like mariners heaving an anchor, we all join in a tug, timing our
efforts by an appropriate exclamation. The weight moves, but extremely
little; again the cry, and again the heave--it moves a little more.
This is repeated several times till the fore-legs are extricated and
thrown forward on the ice. We now lift the hinder parts, and succeed in
placing the animal upon the glacier, panting and trembling all over.
Folding our rope, we went onward. The day again darkened. Again the
thunder rang, being now preceded by lightning, which was thrown into
my eyes from the polished surface of my axe. Flash followed flash and
peal succeeded peal with terrific grandeur, and the loaded clouds sent
down from all their fringes dusky streamers of rain. They looked like
waterspouts, so dense was their texture. Furious as was the descending
shower, hard as we were hit by the mixed pellets of ice and water,
I enjoyed the scene. Grandly the cloud-besom swept the mountains,
their colossal outlines looming at intervals like overpowered Titans
struggling against their doom.
The glacier becoming impracticable through crevasses, we retreated to
its eastern shore, and got along the lateral moraine. It was rough
work. The slope to our left was partially clothed with spectral pines.
Storms had stripped the trunks of their branches, and the branches of
their leaves, leaving the tree-wrecks behind, as if spirit-stricken and
accursed. Our home is now in sight, perched upon the summit of a bluff
opposite. We passed swiftly over the ridges towards our destination.
Wet and thirsty, we reached the opposite side, and, striking into a
beaten track, finally reached the pleasant auberge at which our journey
ends.
From the hotel on the slope of Æggischhorn an hour’s ascent is
required to place you in presence of the magnificent view from the
summit. But the very windows of the hotel upon the Bel Alp command
noble views, and you may sit upon the bilberry slopes adjacent before
the grandest of mountain scenes. On the 14th I went down to the savage
gorge in which the Aletsch glacier ends. A pine tree stood sheer over
it; bending its trunk at a right angle near its root, and grasping a
rock with its root, it supported itself above the chasm. Standing upon
the horizontal part of the tree, I hugged its upright stem, and looked
down into the gorge. It required several minutes to chase away my
timidity, and as the wind blew more forcibly against me, I clung with
greater fixity to the tree. In this wild spot, and alone, I watched the
dying fires of the day, until the latest glow had vanished from the
mountains.
Above the Bel Alp, and two hours distant, is the grey pinnacle of the
Sparrenhorn. I went up there on the 15th. To the observer from the
hotel it appears as an isolated peak; but it forms the lofty end of a
narrow ridge, which is torn into ruins by the weather. At a distance in
front of me was a rocky promontory like the Abschwung, right and left
of which descended two streams of ice, which welded themselves to a
common trunk glacier. The scene was perfectly unexpected and strikingly
beautiful. Nowhere have I seen more perfect repose, nowhere more
tender curves or finer structural lines. The stripes of the moraine
bending along the glacier contribute to its beauty, and its deep
seclusion gives it a peculiar charm. It seems a river so protected by
its bounding mountains that no storm can ever reach it, and no billow
disturb the perfect serenity of its rest. The sweep of the Aletsch
glacier is also mighty as viewed from this point, and from no other
could the Valais range seem more majestic. It is needless to say a word
about the grandeur of the Dom, the Cervin, and the Weisshorn, all of
which, and a great deal more, are commanded from the Sparrenhorn.
IX.
_THE WEISSHORN._
On Friday the 16th of August I rose at 4.30; the eastern heaven was hot
with the glow of the rising sun, and against it were drawn the mountain
outlines. At 5.30 I bade good-bye to the excellent little auberge of
the Bel Alp,[9] and went straight down the mountain to Briegg, took the
diligence to Visp, and engaged a porter immediately to Randa. I had
sent Bennen thither to inspect the Weisshorn. On my arrival I learned
that he had made the necessary reconnaissance, and entertained hopes of
our being able to gain the top.
[9] Now a substantial hotel which merits encouragement.
[Illustration: THE WEISSHORN FROM THE RIFFEL.]
This noble mountain, which is fourteen thousand eight hundred feet
high, had been tried on various occasions and from different sides
by brave and competent climbers, but all efforts had been hitherto
unavailing.
Previous to quitting Randa to assail this formidable peak I had two
pairs of rugs sewed together so as to form two sacks. These and other
coverlets, together with our wine and provisions, were sent on in
advance of us. At 1 P.M. on the 18th of August Bennen, Wenger, and
myself quitted the hotel, and were soon zigzagging among the pines of
the opposite mountain. Wenger had been the guide of my friend Forster,
and had shown himself so active and handy on the Strahleck that I
commissioned Bennen to engage him. During the previous night I had been
very unwell, and as I climbed the slope I suffered from intense thirst.
Water seemed powerless to quench the desire for drink. We reached a
chalet, and at our request a smart young Senner caught up a pail, and
soon returned with it full of delicious milk. The effect of the milk
was astonishing. It seemed to lubricate every atom of my body, and to
exhilarate with its fragrance my brain.
Two hours’ additional climbing brought us to our bivouac, a ledge of
rock which jutted from the mountain-side, and formed an overhanging
roof. On removing the stones from beneath the ledge, a space of
comparatively dry clay was laid bare. This was to be my bed, and to
soften it Wenger considerately stirred it up with his axe. The position
was excellent, for lying upon my left side I commanded the whole range
of Monte Rosa, from the Mischabel to the Breithorn. We were on the edge
of an amphitheatre. Beyond the Schallenbach was the stately Mettelhorn.
A row of eminences swept round to the right linked by lofty ridges of
cliffs, which embraced the Schallenberg glacier. They formed, however,
only a spur of the vaster Weisshorn, the cone of which was not visible
from our dormitory. In company with Bennen I afterwards skirted the
mountain until the whole colossal pyramid stood facing us. When I first
looked at it my hopes sank, but both of us gathered confidence from a
more lengthened gaze. The mountain is a pyramid with three faces, the
intersections of which form three sharp edges or _arêtes_. The end
of the eastern ridge was nearest to us, and on it our attention was
principally fixed. We finally decided on the route to be pursued next
morning, and with a chastened hope in both our breasts we returned to
our shelter.
Water was our first necessity: it seemed everywhere, but there was none
to drink. It was locked to solidity in the ice and snow. The sound of
it came booming up from the Vispbach, as it broke into foam or rolled
its boulders over its waterworn bed; and the swish of many a minor
streamlet mingled with the muffled roar of the large one. Bennen set
out in search of the precious liquid, and after a long absence returned
with a jug and pan full. At our meal, Wenger, who is a man rich in
small expedients, turned the section of a cheese towards the flame of
our pine fire; it fizzed and blistered and turned viscous, and, the
toasted surface being removed, was consumed with relish by us all.
The sunset had been unspeakably grand, steeping the zenith in violet,
and flooding the base of the heavens with crimson light. Immediately
opposite to us rose the Mischabel, with its two great peaks, the
Grubenhorn and the Täschhorn, each barely under 15,000 feet in height.
Next came the Alphubel, with its flattened crown of snow; then the
Allaleinhorn and Rympfischhorn; then the Cima di Jazzi; next the mass
of Monte Rosa, flooded with light from bottom to top. The face of the
Lyskamm turned towards us was for the most part shaded, but here and
there its projecting portions jutted forth red hot as the light fell
upon them. The ‘Twins’ were most singularly illuminated; across the
waist of each of them was drawn a black bar, produced by the shadow of
a corner of the Breithorn, while their bases and crowns were exposed
to the crimson light. Over the rugged face of the Breithorn itself the
light fell as if in splashes, igniting its glaciers and swathing its
black crags in a layer of transparent red. The Mettelhorn was cold, so
was the entire range governed by the Weisshorn, while the glaciers they
embraced lay grey and ghastly in the twilight shade.
The sunlight lingered, while up the arch of the opposite heavens the
moon, within one day of being full, seemed hastening to our aid. She
finally appeared exactly behind the peak of the Rympfischhorn, the
cone of the mountain being projected for a short time as a triangle on
the lunar disc. Only for a short time, however; the silver sphere soon
cleared the mountain, and bore away through the tinted sky. The motion
was quite visible, and resembled that of a vast balloon. As the day
approached its end the scene assumed the most sublime aspect. All the
lower portions of the mountains were deeply shaded, while the loftiest
peaks, ranged upon a semicircle, were fully exposed to the sinking sun.
They seemed pyramids of solid fire, while here and there long stretches
of crimson light drawn over the higher snow-fields linked the summits
together. An intensely illuminated geranium flower seems to swim in its
own colour, which apparently surrounds the petals like a layer, and
defeats by its lustre any attempt of the eye to seize upon the sharp
outline of the leaves. A similar effect was here observed upon the
mountains; the glory did not seem to come from them alone, but seemed
also effluent from the air around them. As the evening advanced, the
eastern heavens low down assumed a deep purple hue, above which, and
blending with it by infinitesimal gradations, was a belt of red, and
over this again zones of orange and violet. I walked round the corner
of the mountain at sunset, and found the western sky glowing with a
more transparent crimson than that which overspread the east. The crown
of the Weisshorn was imbedded in this magnificent light. After sunset
the purple of the east changed to a deep neutral tint, and against the
faded red which spread above it the sun-forsaken mountains laid their
cold and ghastly heads. The ruddy colour vanished more and more; the
stars strengthened in lustre, until finally the moon and they held
undisputed possession of the sky.
My face was turned towards the moon until it became so chilled that
I was forced to protect it by a light handkerchief. The power of
blinding the eyes is ascribed to the moonbeams, but the real mischief
is that produced by radiation from the eyes into clear space, and the
inflammation consequent upon the chill. As the cold increased I was
fain to squeeze myself more and more underneath the ledge, so as to
lessen the space of sky against which my body could radiate. Nothing
could be more solemn than the night. Up from the valley came the low
thunder of the Vispbach. Over the Dom flashed in succession the stars
of Orion, until finally the entire constellation hung aloft. Higher up
in heaven was the moon, and her beams as they fell upon the snow-fields
and pyramids were sent back in silvery lustre by some, while others
remained a dead white. These, as the earth twirled round, came duly
in for their share of the glory. The Twins caught it at length and
retained it long, shining with a pure spiritual radiance, while the
moon continued above the hills.
At twelve o’clock I looked at my watch, and a second time at 2 A.M.
The moon was then just touching the crest of the Schallenberg, and we
were threatened with the withdrawal of her light. This soon occurred.
We rose at 2-1/4 A.M., consumed our coffee, and had to wait idly for
the dawn. A faint illumination at length overspread the sky, and with
this promise of the coming day we quitted our bivouac at 3-1/2 A.M. No
cloud was to be seen; as far as the weather was concerned we were sure
to have fair play. We rounded the shingly shoulder of the mountain to
the edge of a snow-field, but before entering upon it I disburthened
myself of my strong shooting jacket, leaving it on the mountain-side.
The sunbeams and my own exertion would, I knew, keep me only too warm
during the day. We crossed the snow, cut our way through a piece of
entangled glacier, reached the Bergschrund, and passed it without a
rope. We ascended the frozen snow of the couloir by steps, but soon
diverged from it to the rocks at our right, and mounted them to the end
of the eastern _arête_ of the mountain.
A snow saddle separated us from the higher rocks. With our staff-pikes
at one side of the saddle, we pass by steps cut upon the other. We
find the rocks hewn into fantastic turrets and obelisks, while the
loose chips of this sculpture are strewn confusedly upon the ridge.
Amid these we cautiously pick our way, winding round the towers or
scaling them amain. The work was heavy from the first, the bending,
twisting, reaching, and drawing up calling upon all the muscles of
the frame. After two hours of this work we halted, and, looking back,
saw two moving objects on the glacier below us. At first we took them
to be chamois, but they were men. The leader carried an axe, and his
companion a knapsack and an alpenstock. They followed our traces,
losing them apparently now and then, and waiting to recover them. Our
expedition had put Randa in a state of excitement, and some of its best
climbers had urged Bennen to take them with him. This he did not deem
necessary, and now here were two of them determined to try the thing
on their own account, and perhaps to dispute with us the honour of the
enterprise. On this point, however, our uneasiness was small.
Resuming our gymnastics, the rocky staircase led us to the flat summit
of a tower, where we found ourselves cut off from a similar tower by
a deep gap bitten into the mountain. The rope was here our refuge.
Bennen coiled it round his waist; we let him down along the surface
of the rock, until he fixed himself on a ledge, where he could lend
me a helping hand. I followed him, and Wenger followed me. By a kind
of screw motion we twisted ourselves round the opposite tower, and
reached the ridge behind it. Work of this kind, however, is not to
be performed by the day, and, with a view of sparing our strength, we
quitted the ridge and endeavoured to get along the southern slope of
the pyramid. The mountain was scarred by long couloirs, filled with
clear hard ice. The cutting of steps across these couloirs proved to
be so tedious and fatiguing that I urged Bennen to abandon them and
try the ridge once more. We regained it and worked along it as before.
Here and there upon the northern side the snow was folded over, and we
worked slowly upward along the cornice snow. The ridge became gradually
narrower, and the precipices on each side more sheer. We reached the
end of one of its subdivisions, and found ourselves separated from
the next rocks by a gap about twenty yards across. The ridge has here
narrowed to a mere wall, which, however, as rock, would present no
serious difficulty. But upon the wall of rock was placed a second wall
of snow, which dwindled to a pure knife-edge at the top. It was white,
of very fine grain, and a little moist. How to pass this snow catenary
I knew not, for I did not think a human foot could trust itself upon so
frail a support. Bennen’s practical sagacity, however, came into play.
He tried the snow by squeezing it with his foot, and to my astonishment
began to cross it. Even after the pressure of his feet the space he
had to stand on did not exceed a hand-breadth. I followed him, exactly
as a boy walking along a horizontal pole, with toes turned outwards.
Right and left the precipices were appalling. We reached the opposite
rock, and an earnest smile rippled over Bennen’s countenance as he
turned towards me. He knew that he had done a daring thing, though not
a presumptuous one. ’Had the snow,’ he said, ‘been less perfect, I
should not have thought of attempting it; but I knew after I had set my
foot upon the ridge that we might pass without fear.’
It is quite surprising what a number of things the simple observation
made by Faraday in 1846 enables us to explain. Bennen’s instinctive act
is justified by theory. The snow was fine in grain, pure, and moist.
When pressed, the attachments of its granules were innumerable, and
their perfect cleanness enabled them to freeze together with a maximum
energy. It was this freezing which gave the mass its sustaining power.
Two fragments of ordinary table ice brought carefully together freeze
and cement themselves at their place of junction; or if two pieces
floating in water be brought together, they instantly freeze, and by
laying hold of either of them gently you can drag the other after it
through the water. Imagine such points of attachment distributed in
great numbers through a mass of snow. The substance becomes thereby a
semi-solid instead of a mass of powder. My guide, however, unaided by
any theory, did a thing from which I should have shrunk, though backed
by all the theories in the world.
After this we found the rocks on the ridge so shaken that it required
the greatest caution to avoid bringing them down upon us. With all
our care, moreover, we sometimes dislodged vast masses, which leaped
upon the slope adjacent, loosened others by their shock, these again
others, until finally a whole flight of them would escape, setting the
mountain in a roar as they whizzed and thundered along its side to
the snow-fields 4,000 feet below us. The day was hot, the work hard,
and our bodies were drained of their liquids as by a Turkish bath. To
make good our loss we halted at intervals where the melted snow formed
liquid veins, and quenched our thirst. A bottle of champagne, poured
sparingly into our goblets over a little snow, furnished Wenger and
myself with many a refreshing draught. Bennen feared his eyes, and
would not touch champagne. We, however, did not find halting good; for
at every pause the muscles became set, and some minutes were necessary
to render them again elastic. But for both mind and body the discipline
was grand. There is scarcely a position possible to a human being
which, at one time or another during the day, I was not forced to
assume. The fingers, wrist, and forearm were my main reliance, and as
a mechanical instrument the human hand appeared to me this day to be a
miracle of constructive art.
For the most part the summit was hidden from us, but on reaching
the successive eminences it came frequently into view. After three
hours spent on the _arête_--about five hours, that is, subsequent to
starting--we saw the summit over another minor summit, which gave it
an illusive proximity. ‘You have now good hopes,’ I remarked, turning
to Bennen. ‘I do not allow myself to entertain the idea of failure,’
he replied. Well, six hours passed on the ridge, each of which put in
its inexorable claim to the due amount of mechanical work; and at the
end of this time we found ourselves apparently no nearer to the summit
than when Bennen’s hopes cropped out in confidence. I looked anxiously
at my guide as he fixed his weary eyes upon the distant peak. There was
no confidence in his expression; still I do not believe that either of
us entertained for a moment the thought of giving in. Wenger complained
of his lungs, and Bennen counselled him several times to remain behind;
but this the Oberland man refused to do. At the commencement of a day’s
work one often feels anxious, if not timid; but when the work is
very hard we become callous and sometimes stupefied by the incessant
knocking about. This was my case at present, and I kept watch lest my
indifference should become carelessness. I repeatedly supposed a case
where a sudden effort might be required of me, and felt all through
that I had a fair residue of strength to fall back upon should such a
call be made. This conclusion was sometimes tested by a spurt; flinging
myself suddenly from rock to rock, I proved my condition by experiment
instead of relying on surmise. An eminence in the ridge which cut off
the view of the summit was now the object of our exertions. We reached
it; but how hopelessly distant did the summit appear! Bennen laid his
face upon his axe for a moment; a kind of sickly despair was in his eye
as he turned to me, remarking, ‘Lieber Herr, die Spitze ist noch sehr
weit oben.’
Lest the desire to gratify me should urge him beyond the bounds of
prudence, I told my guide that he must not persist on my account; that
I should cheerfully return with him the moment he thought it no longer
safe to proceed. He replied that, though weary, he felt quite sure of
himself, and asked for some food. He had it, and a gulp of wine, which
mightily refreshed him. Looking at the mountain with a firmer eye, he
exclaimed, ‘Herr! wir müssen ihn haben,’ and his voice, as he spoke,
rung like steel within my heart. I thought of Englishmen in battle, of
the qualities which had made them famous: it was mainly the quality of
not knowing when to yield--of fighting for duty even after they had
ceased to be animated by hope. Such thoughts helped to lift me over
the rocks. Another eminence now fronted us, behind which, how far we
knew not, the summit lay. We scaled this height, and above us, but
clearly within reach, a silvery pyramid projected itself against the
blue sky. I was assured ten times over by my companions that it was the
highest point before I ventured to stake my faith upon the assertion.
I feared that it also might take rank with the illusions which had so
often beset our ascent, and I shrunk from the consequent moral shock.
A huge prism of granite, or granitic gneiss, terminated the _arête_,
and from it a knife-edge of pure white snow ran up to a little point.
We passed along the edge, reached that point, and instantly swept with
our eyes the whole range of the horizon. We stood upon the crown of the
redoubtable Weisshorn.
The long-pent feelings of my two companions found vent in a wild and
reiterated cheer. Bennen shook his arms in the air and shouted as a
Valaisian, while Wenger raised the shriller yell of the Oberland. We
looked downwards along the ridge, and far below, perched on one of
its crags, could discern the two Randa men. Again and again the roar
of triumph was sent down to them. They had accomplished but a small
portion of the ridge, and soon after our success they wended their way
homewards. They came, willing enough, no doubt, to publish our failure
had we failed; but we found out afterwards that they had been equally
strenuous in announcing our success; they had seen us, they affirmed,
like three flies upon the summit of the mountain. Both men had to
endure a little persecution for the truth’s sake, for nobody in Randa
would believe that the Weisshorn could be scaled, and least of all by
a man who for two days previously had been the object of Philomène the
waitress’s constant pity, on account of the incompetence of his stomach
to accept all that she offered for its acceptance. The energy of
conviction with which the men gave their evidence had, however, proved
conclusive to the most sceptical before we arrived.
Bennen wished to leave some outward and visible sign of our success on
the summit. He deplored having no suitable flag; but as a substitute
for such it was proposed that he should use the handle of one of our
axes as a flagstaff, and surmount it by a red pocket-handkerchief. This
was done, and for some time subsequently the extempore banner was seen
flapping in the wind. To his extreme delight, it was shown to Bennen
himself three days afterwards by my friend Mr. Francis Galton, from
the Riffelberg hotel.
Every Swiss climber is acquainted with the Weisshorn. I have long
regarded it as the noblest of all the Alps, and most other travellers
share this opinion. The impression it produces is in some measure due
to the comparative isolation with which it juts into the heavens. It
is not masked by other mountains, and all around the Alps its final
pyramid is in view. Conversely, the Weisshorn commands a vast range of
prospect. Neither Bennen nor myself had ever seen anything at all equal
to it. The day, moreover, was perfect; not a cloud was to be seen; and
the gauzy haze of the distant air, though sufficient to soften the
outlines and enhance the colouring of the mountains, was far too thin
to obscure them. Over the peaks and through the valleys the sunbeams
poured, unimpeded save by the mountains themselves, which sent their
shadows in bars of darkness through the illuminated air. I had never
before witnessed a scene which affected me like this one. I opened
my note-book to make a few observations, but soon relinquished the
attempt. There was something incongruous, if not profane, in allowing
the scientific faculty to interfere where silent worship seemed the
‘reasonable service.’
We had been ten hours climbing from our bivouac to the summit, and it
was now necessary that we should clear the mountain before the close of
day. Our muscles were loose and numbed, and, unless extremely urged,
declined all energetic tension: the thought of our success, however,
ran like a kind of wine through our fibres and helped us down. We once
fancied the descent would be rapid, but it was far from it. As in
ascending, Bennen took the lead; he slowly cleared each crag, paused
till I joined him, I pausing till Wenger joined me, and thus one or
other of us was always in motion. Our leader showed a preference for
the snow, while I held on to the rocks, where my hands could assist
my feet. Our muscles were sorely tried by the twisting round the
splintered turrets of the _arête_, but a long, long stretch of the
ridge must be passed before we can venture to swerve from it. We were
roused from our stupefaction at times by the roar of the stones which
we loosed from the ridge and sent leaping down the mountain. Soon after
recrossing the snow catenary already mentioned we quitted the ridge
to get obliquely along the slope of the pyramid. The face of it was
scarred by couloirs, of which the deeper and narrower ones were filled
with ice, while the others acted as highways for the rocks quarried
by the weathering above. Steps must be cut in the ice, but the swing
of the axe is very different now from what it was in the morning.
Bennen’s blows descended with the deliberateness of a man whose fire is
half-quenched; still they fell with sufficient power, and the needful
cavities were formed. We retraced our morning steps over some of the
ice-slopes. No word of warning was uttered here as we ascended, but
now Bennen’s admonitions were frequent and emphatic--‘Take care not to
slip.’ I imagined, however, that even if a man slipped he would be able
to arrest his descent; but Bennen’s response when I stated this opinion
was very prompt--‘No! it would be utterly impossible. If it were snow
you might do it, but it is pure ice, and if you fall you will lose
your senses before you can use your axe.’ I suppose he was right. At
length we turned directly downwards, and worked along one of the ridges
which lie in the line of steepest fall. We first dropped cautiously
from ledge to ledge. At one place Bennen clung for a considerable time
to a face of rock, casting out feelers of leg and arm, and desiring
me to stand still. I did not understand the difficulty, for the rock,
though steep, was by no means vertical. I fastened myself on to it,
Bennen being on a ledge below, waiting to receive me. The spot on which
he stood was a little rounded protuberance sufficient to afford him
footing, but over which the slightest momentum would have carried him.
He knew this, and hence his caution. Soon after this we quitted our
ridge and dropped into a couloir to the left of it. It was dark, and
damp with trickling water. Here we disencumbered ourselves of the rope,
and found our speed greatly augmented. In some places the rocks were
worn to a powder, along which we shot by glissades. We swerved again
to the left, crossed a ridge, and got into another and dryer couloir.
The last one was dangerous, as the water exerted a constant sapping
action upon the rocks. From our new position we could hear the clatter
of stones descending the gulley we had just forsaken. Wenger, who had
brought up the rear during the day, is now sent to the front; he has
not Bennen’s power, but his legs are long and his descent rapid. He
scents out the way, which becomes more and more difficult. He pauses,
observes, dodges, but finally comes to a dead stop on the summit of a
precipice, which sweeps like a rampart round the mountain. We moved to
the left, and after a long _détour_ succeeded in rounding the precipice.
Another half-hour brings us to the brow of a second precipice, which
is scooped out along its centre so as to cause the brow to overhang.
Chagrin was in Bennen’s face: he turned his eyes upwards, and I feared
mortally that he was about to propose a reascent to the _arête_. It
was very questionable whether our muscles could have responded to
such a demand. While we stood pondering here, a deep and confused
roar attracted our attention. From a point near the summit of the
Weisshorn, a rock had been discharged down a dry couloir, raising a
cloud of dust at each bump against the mountain. A hundred similar
ones were immediately in motion, while the spaces between the larger
masses were filled by an innumerable flight of smaller stones. Each of
them shook its quantum of dust in the air, until finally the avalanche
was enveloped in a cloud. The clatter was stunning, for the collisions
were incessant. Black masses of rock emerged here and there from the
cloud, and sped through the air like flying fiends. Their motion was
not one of translation merely, but they whizzed and vibrated in their
flight as if urged by wings. The echoes resounded from side to side,
from the Schallenberg to the Weisshorn and back, until finally, after
many a deep-sounding thud in the snow, the whole troop came to rest at
the bottom of the mountain. This stone avalanche was one of the most
extraordinary things I had ever witnessed, and in connection with it
I would draw the attention of future climbers of the Weisshorn to the
danger which would infallibly beset any attempt to ascend it from this
side, except by one of its _arêtes_. At any moment the mountain-side
may be raked by a fire as deadly as that of cannon.
After due deliberation we moved along the precipice westward, I fearing
that each step forward but plunged us into deeper difficulty. At one
place, however, the precipice bevelled off to a steep incline of smooth
rock, along which ran a crack, wide enough to admit the fingers, and
sloping obliquely down to the lower glacier. Each in succession gripped
the rock and shifted his body sideways along the crack until he came
near enough to the glacier to reach it by a rough glissade. We passed
swiftly along the glacier, sometimes running, and, on steeper slopes,
sliding, until we were pulled up for the third time by a precipice
which seemed even worse than either of the others. It was quite sheer,
and as far as I could see right or left altogether hopeless. To my
surprise, both the men turned without hesitation to the right. I felt
desperately blank, but I could notice no expression of dismay in the
countenance of either of my companions. They inspected the moraine
matter over which we walked, and at length one of them exclaimed, ‘Da
sind die Spuren,’ lengthening his strides at the same moment. We looked
over the brink at intervals, and at length discovered what appeared
to be a mere streak of clay on the face of the precipice. On this
streak we found footing. It was by no means easy, but to hard-pushed
men it was a deliverance. The streak vanished, and we must get down
the rock. This fortunately was rough, so that by pressing the hands
against its rounded protuberances, and sticking the boot-nails against
its projecting crystals, we let ourselves gradually down. A deep cleft
separated the glacier from the precipice; this was crossed, and we were
free, being clearly placed beyond the last bastion of the mountain.
In this admirable fashion did my guides behave on this occasion. The
day previous to my arrival at Randa they had been up the mountain, and
they then observed a solitary chamois moving along the base of this
very precipice, and making ineffectual attempts to get up it. At one
place the creature succeeded; this spot they fixed in their memories,
and when they reached the top of the precipice they sought for the
traces of the chamois, found them, and were guided by them to the only
place where escape in any reasonable time was possible. Our way was
now clear; over the glacier we cheerfully marched, escaping from the
ice just as the moon and the eastern sky contributed about equally to
the illumination. The moonlight was afterwards intercepted by clouds.
In the gloom we were often at a loss, and wandered half-bewildered
over the grassy slopes. At length the welcome tinkle of cow-bells
was heard in the distance, and guided by them we reached the chalet
a little after 9 P.M. The cows had been milked and the milk disposed
of, but the men managed to get us a moderate draught. Thus refreshed
we continued the descent. I was half famished, for my solid nutriment
during the day consisted solely of part of a box of meat lozenges
given to me by Mr. Hawkins. Bennen and myself descended the mountain
deliberately, and after many windings emerged upon the valley, and
reached the hotel a little before 11 P.M. I had a basin of broth, _not_
made according to Liebig, and a piece of mutton boiled probably for the
fifth time. Fortified by these, and comforted by a warm footbath, I
went to bed, where six hours’ sound sleep chased away all consciousness
of fatigue. I was astonished on the morrow to find the loose atoms of
my body knitted so firmly by so brief a rest. Up to my attempt upon the
Weisshorn I had felt more or less dilapidated, but here all weakness
ended, and during my subsequent stay in Switzerland I was unacquainted
with infirmity.
X.
_INSPECTION OF THE MATTERHORN._
On the afternoon of the 20th we quitted Randa, with a threatening
sky overhead. The considerate Philomène compelled us to take an
umbrella, which we soon found useful. The flood-gates of heaven were
unlocked, while, defended by our cotton canopy, Bennen and myself
walked arm-in-arm to Zermatt. I instantly found myself in the midst
of a circle of pleasant friends, some of whom had just returned from
a successful attempt upon the Lyskamm. On the 22nd quite a crowd of
travellers crossed the Theodule Pass; and, knowing that every corner
of the hotel at Breuil would be taken up, I halted a day, so as to
allow the people to disperse. Breuil commands a view of the southern
side of the Matterhorn; and it was now an object with me to discover,
if possible, upon the true peak of this formidable mountain, some
ledge or cranny where three men might spend a night. The mountain
may be accessible or inaccessible, but one thing seems certain, that
starting from Breuil, or even from the chalets above Breuil, the
work of reaching the summit is too much for a single day. But could a
shelter be found amid the wild battlements of the peak itself, which
would enable one to attack the obelisk at day-dawn, the possibility of
conquest was so far an open question as to tempt a trial. I therefore
sent Bennen on to reconnoitre, purposing myself to cross the Theodule
alone on the following day.
On the afternoon of the 22nd I sauntered slowly up to the Riffel,
leaning at times on the head of my axe, or sitting down upon the grassy
knolls, as my mood prompted. The air which filled the valleys of the
Oberland, and swathed in mitigated density the highest peaks, was
slightly opalescent, though still transparent, the floating particles
forming so many _points d’appui_, from which the light was scattered
through surrounding space. The whole medium glowed as if shone upon by
a distant furnace, and through it the outline of the mountains loomed.
The glow augmented as the sun sank, reached its maximum, paused, and
then ran speedily down to a cold and colourless twilight.
Next morning at nine o’clock, with some scraps of information from
the guides to help me on my way, I quitted the Riffel to cross the
Theodule. I was soon followed by the domestic of the hotel. Bennen had
requested him to see me to the edge of the glacier, and he now joined
me with this intention. He knew my designs upon the Matterhorn, and
strongly deprecated them. ‘Only think, Herr,’ he urged, ‘what will
avail your ascent of the Weisshorn if you are smashed upon the Mont
Cervin? Mein Herr!’ he added with condensed emphasis, ‘thun Sie es
nicht.’ The whole conversation was in fact a homily, the strong point
of which was the utter uselessness of success on the one mountain if
it were to be followed by annihilation on the other. We reached the
ridge above the glacier, where, handing him a trinkgeld, which I had to
force on his acceptance, I bade him good-bye, assuring him that I would
submit in all things to Bennen’s opinion. He had the highest idea of
Bennen’s wisdom, and hence the assurance sent him home comforted.
[Illustration: THE MATTERHORN.]
I was soon upon the ice, once more alone, as I delight to be at times.
As a habit going alone is to be deprecated, but sparingly indulged in
it is a great luxury. There are no doubt moods when the mother is glad
to get rid of her offspring, the wife of her husband, the lover of his
mistress, and when it is not well to keep them together. And so, at
rare intervals, it is good for the soul to feel the full influence of
that ‘society where none intrudes.’ When the work is clearly within
your power, when long practice has enabled you to trust your own eye
and judgment in unravelling crevasses, and your own axe and arm
in subduing their more serious difficulties, it is an entirely new
experience to be alone amid those sublime scenes. The peaks wear a more
solemn aspect, the sun shines with a more effectual fire, the blue
of heaven is more deep and awful, and the hard heart of man is often
made as tender as a child’s. You contract a closer friendship for the
universe in virtue of your more intimate contact with its parts. The
glacier to-day filled the air with low murmurs, while the sound of the
distant moulins rose to a kind of roar. The _débris_ rustled on the
moraines, the smaller rivulets babbled in their channels, as they ran
to join their trunk, and the surface of the glacier creaked audibly as
it yielded to the sun. It seemed to breathe and whisper like a living
thing. To my left was Monte Rosa and her royal court, to my right the
mystic pinnacle of the Matterhorn, which from a certain point here upon
the glacier attains its maximum sharpness. It drew my eyes towards
it with irresistible fascination as it shimmered in the blue, too
preoccupied with heaven to think even with contempt on the designs of a
son of earth to reach its inviolate crest.
I crossed the Görner glacier quite as speedily as if I had been
professionally led. Then up the undulating slope of the Theodule
glacier, with a rocky ridge to the right, over which I was informed a
rude track led to the pass of St. Theodule. I am not great at finding
tracks, and I missed this one, ascending until it became evident that I
had gone too far. Near its higher extremity the crest of the ridge is
cut across by three curious chasms, and one of these I thought would
be a likely gateway through the ridge. I climbed the steep buttress of
the spur and was soon in the fissure. Huge masses of rock were jammed
into it, the presence of which gave variety to the exertion, calling
forth strength, but not exciting fear. From the summit the rocks sloped
gently down to the snow, and in a few minutes the presence of broken
bottles on the moraine showed me that I had hit upon the track. Upwards
of twenty unhappy bees staggered against me on the way: tempted by
the sun, or wafted by the wind, they had quitted the flowery Alps to
meet torpor and death in the ice-world above. From the summit I went
swiftly down to Breuil, where I was welcomed by the host, welcomed by
the waiter; loud were the expressions of content at my arrival; and I
was informed that Bennen had started early in the morning to ‘promenade
himself’ around the Matterhorn.
I lay long upon the Alp, scanning crag and snow in search of my guide.
From the admirable account of the first attempt on the Matterhorn,
drawn up by Mr. Hawkins,[10] it may be inferred that the ascent is
not likely to be a matter of mere amusement. The account narrates that
after climbing for several hours in the face of novel difficulties, my
companion thought it wise to halt so as to secure our retreat. I will
here state in a few words what occurred after our separation from him.
Bennen and I had first a hard scramble up some very steep rocks, our
motions giving to those below us the impression that we were urging up
bales of goods instead of the simple weight of our own bodies. Turning
the corner of the ridge, we had to cross an unpleasant slope of smooth
rock, covered by about eighteen inches of snow. In ascending, this
place was passed in silence, but in coming down the fear arose that the
superficial layer might slip away with us. Bennen seldom warns me, but
he did so here emphatically, declaring his own powerlessness to render
any help should the footing give way. Having crossed this slope in our
ascent, we were fronted by a cliff, against which we rose mainly by aid
of the felspar crystals protuberant from its face. Midway up the cliff
Bennen asked me to hold on, as he did not feel sure that it was the
best route. I accordingly ceased moving, and lay against the rock with
legs and arms outstretched. Bennen climbed to the top of the cliff, but
returned immediately with a flush of confidence in his eye. ‘I will
lead you to the top,’ he said excitedly. Had I been free I should have
cried ‘Bravo!’ but in my position I did not care to risk the muscular
motion which a hearty bravo would demand.
[10] Chapter III. of this volume.
Aided by the rope, I was at his side in a minute, and we soon learned
that his confidence was premature. Difficulties thickened round us; on
no other mountain are they so thick, and each of them is attended by
possibilities of the most blood-chilling kind. Our mode of motion was
this: Bennen advanced while I held on to a rock, prepared for the jerk
if he should slip. When he had secured himself, he called out, ‘Ich bin
fest, kommen Sie.’ I then worked forward, sometimes halting where he
had halted, sometimes passing him until a firm anchorage was gained,
when it again became his turn to advance. Thus each of us waited until
the other could seize upon something capable of bearing the shock of
a falling man. At some places Bennen deemed a little extra assurance
necessary; and here he emphasised his statement that he was ‘fest’ by
a suitable hyperbole. ‘Ich bin fest wie ein Mauer,--fest wie ein Berg,
ich halte Sie gewiss,’ or some such expression.
Looking from Breuil, a series of moderate-sized prominences are seen
along the _arête_ of the Matterhorn; but when you are near them, these
black eminences rise like tremendous castles in the air, so wild and
high as almost to quell all hope of scaling or getting round them. At
the base of one of these edifices Bennen paused and looked closely at
the grand mass; he wiped his forehead, and turning to me said, ‘Was
denken Sie, Herr?’--‘Shall we go on, or shall we return? I will do what
you wish.’ ‘I am without a wish, Bennen,’ I replied: ‘where you go I
follow, be it up or down.’ He disliked the idea of giving in, and would
willingly have thrown the onus of stopping upon me. We attacked the
castle, and by a hard effort reached one of its mid ledges, whence we
had plenty of room to examine the remainder. We might certainly have
continued the ascent beyond this place, but Bennen paused here. To a
minute of talk succeeded a minute of silence, during which my guide
earnestly scanned the heights. He then turned towards me, and the words
seemed to fall from his lips through a resisting medium, as he said,
‘Ich denke die Zeit ist zu kurz’ (I think the time is too short).
By this time each of the neighbouring peaks had unfolded a cloud
banner, remaining clear to windward, but having a streamer hooked on to
its summit and drawn far out into space by the moist south wind. It was
a grand and affecting sight, grand intrinsically, but doubly impressive
to feelings already loosened by the awe inseparable from our position.
Looked at from Breuil, the mountain shows two summits separated from
each other by a possibly impassable cleft. Only the lower one of these
could be seen from where we stood. I asked Bennen how high he supposed
it to be above the point where we then stood; he estimated its height
at 400 feet, I at 500 feet. Probably both of us were under the mark;
however, I state the fact as it occurred. The object of my present
visit to Breuil was to finish the piece of work thus abruptly broken
off, and so I awaited Bennen’s return with anxious interest.
At dusk I saw him striding down the Alp, and went out to meet him. I
sought to gather his opinion from his eye before he spoke, but could
make nothing out. It was perfectly firm, but might mean either pro
or con. ‘Herr,’ he said at length, in a tone of unusual emphasis, ‘I
have examined the mountain carefully, and find it more difficult and
dangerous than I had imagined. There is no place upon it where we
could well pass the night. We might do so on yonder col upon the snow,
but there we should be almost frozen to death, and totally unfit for
the work of the next day. On the rocks there is no ledge or cranny
which could give us proper harbourage; and starting from Breuil it
is certainly impossible to reach the summit in a single day.’ I was
entirely taken back by this report. Bennen was evidently dead against
any attempt upon the mountain. ‘We can, at all events, reach the lower
of the two summits,’ I remarked. ‘Even that is difficult,’ he replied;
‘but when you have reached it, what then? The peak has neither name nor
fame.’ I was silent; slightly irascible, perhaps; but it was against my
habit to utter a word of remonstrance or persuasion. Bennen made his
report with his eyes open. He knew me well, and I think mutual trust
has rarely been more strongly developed between guide and traveller
than between him and me. I knew that I had but to give the word and
he would face the mountain with me next day, but it would have been
inexcusable in me to deal thus with him. So I stroked my beard, and,
like Lelia in the ‘Princess,’ when
Upon the sward
She tapt her tiny silken-sandal’d foot,
I crushed the grass with my hobnails, seeking thus a safety-valve for
my disappointment.
My sleep was unsatisfying that night, and on the following morning I
felt a void within. The hope of finishing my work creditably had been
suddenly dislodged, and, for a time, vacuity took its place. It was
like the removal of a pleasant drug or the breaking down of a religious
faith. I hardly knew what to do with myself. One thing was certain--the
Italian valleys had no tonic strong enough to set me right; the
mountains alone could restore what I had lost. Over the Joch then
once more! We packed up and bade farewell to the host and waiter. Both
men seemed smitten with a sudden languor, and could hardly respond
to my adieus. They had expected us to be their guests for some time,
and were evidently disgusted at our want of pluck. ‘Mais, monsieur,
il faut faire la pénitence pour une nuit.’ Veils of the silkiest
cloud began to draw themselves round the mountain, and to stretch in
long gauzy filaments through the air, where they finally curdled up
to common cloud, and lost the grace and beauty of their infancy. Had
they condensed to thunder I should have been better satisfied; but it
was some consolation to see them thicken so as to hide the mountain,
and quench the longing with which I should have viewed its unclouded
head. The thought of spending some days chamois-hunting occurred to me.
Bennen seized the idea with delight, promising me an excellent gun.
We crossed the summit, descended to Zermatt, paused there to refresh
ourselves, and went forward to St. Nicholas, where we spent the night.
XI.
_OVER THE MORO._
I had only seen one half of Monte Rosa; and from the Italian side the
aspect of the mountain was unknown to me. I had been upon the Monte
Moro three years ago, but looked from it merely into an infinite sea
of haze. To complete my knowledge of the mountain it was necessary to
go to Macugnaga, and over the Moro I accordingly resolved to go. But
resolution had as yet taken no deep root, and on reaching Saas I was
beset by the desire to cross the Alphubel. Bennen called me at three;
but over the pass grey clouds were hanging, and, determined not to mar
this fine excursion by choosing an imperfect day, I then gave it up. At
seven o’clock, however, all trace of cloud had disappeared; it had been
merely a local gathering of no importance, which the first sunbeams
resolved into transparency. It was now, however, too late to think
of the Alphubel, so I reverted to my original design, and at 9 A.M.
started up the valley towards Mattmark. A party of friends in advance
contributed strongly to draw me on in this direction.
Onward then we went through the soft green meadows, with the river
sounding to our right. The sun showered gold upon the pines, and
brought richly out the colouring of the rocks. The blue wood-smoke
ascended from the hamlets, and the companionable grasshopper sang
and chirruped right and left. High up the sides of the mountains the
rocks were planed down to tablets by the ancient glaciers. The valley
narrowed, and we skirted a pile of moraine-like matter, which was roped
compactly together by the roots of the pines. Huge blocks here choke
the channel of the river, and raise its murmurs to a roar. We emerge
from shade into sunshine, and observe the smoke of a distant cataract
jetting from the side of the mountain. Crags and boulders are here
heaped in confusion upon the hill-side, and among them the hardy trees
find a lodgment, asking no nutriment from the stones--asking only a
pedestal on which they may plant their trunks and lift their branches
into the nourishing air. Then comes the cataract itself, plunging in
rhythmic gushes down the shining rocks.
The valley again opens, and finds room for a little hamlet--dingy
hovels, with a white little church in the midst of them; patches of
green meadow and yellow rye, with the gleam of the river here and
there. The moon hangs over the Mischabelhörner, turning a face which
ever waxes paler towards the sun. The valley in the distance seems shut
in by the Allalein glacier, which is approached amid the waterworn
boulders strewn by the river in its hours of turbulence. The rounded
rocks are now beautified with lichens, and scattered trees glimmer
among the heaps. Nature heals herself. She feeds the glacier and planes
the mountains down. She fuses the glacier and exposes the dead rocks.
But instantly her energies are exerted to neutralise the desolation,
clothing the crags with beauty, and sending the wandering wind in
melody through the branches of the pines.
At the Mattmark hotel, which stands at the foot of the Monte Moro,
I was joined by a gentleman who had just liberated himself from an
unpleasant guide. Bennen halted on the way to adjust his knapsack,
while my companion and myself went on. We lost sight of my guide, lost
the track also, and clambered over crag and snow to the summit, where
we waited till Bennen arrived. The mass of Monte Rosa here grandly
revealed itself from top to bottom. Dark cliffs and white snows were
finely contrasted, and the longer I looked at it, the more noble and
impressive did the mountain appear. We were very soon clear of the
snow, and went straight down the declivity towards Macugnaga.
We put up at the Monte Moro, where a party of friends greeted me with
a vociferous welcome. This was my first visit to Macugnaga, and, save
as a caldron for the generation of fogs, I knew scarcely anything about
it. But there were no fogs there at the time to which I refer, and the
place wore quite a charmed aspect. I walked out alone in the evening,
up through the meadow towards the base of Monte Rosa, and on no other
occasion have I seen peace, beauty, and grandeur so harmoniously
blended. Earth and air were exquisite, and I returned to the hotel
brimful of content.
Monte Rosa with her peaks and spurs builds here a noble amphitheatre.
From the heart of the mountain creeps the Macugnaga glacier. To the
right a precipitous barrier extends to the Cima di Jazzi, and between
the latter and Monte Rosa this barrier is scarred by two couloirs, one
of which, or the cliff beside it, has the reputation of forming the
old pass of the Weissthor. It had long been uncertain whether this
so-called ‘Alter Pass’ had ever been used as such, and many superior
mountaineers deemed it from inspection to be impracticable. All doubt
on this point was removed this year; for Mr. Tuckett, led by Bennen,
had crossed the barrier by the couloir most distant from Monte Rosa,
and consequently nearest to the Cima di Jazzi. As I stood in front of
the hotel in the afternoon, I said to Bennen that I should like to try
the pass on the following day; in ten minutes afterwards the plan of
our expedition was arranged. We were to start before the dawn, and, to
leave Bennen’s hands free, a muscular young fellow named Andermatten
was engaged to carry our provisions. It was also proposed to vary the
proceedings by assailing the ridge by the couloir nearest to Monte
Rosa.
XII.
_THE OLD WEISSTHOR._
I was called by my host at a quarter before three. The firmament of
Monte Rosa was almost as black as the rocks beneath it, while above in
the darkness trembled the stars. At 4 A.M. we quitted the hotel. We
wound along the meadows, by the slumbering houses, and the unslumbering
river. The eastern heaven soon brightened, and we could look direct
through the gloom of the valley at the opening of the dawn. We threaded
our way amid the boulders which the torrent had scattered over the
plain, and among which groups of stately pines now find anchorage. Some
of the trees had exerted all their force in a vertical direction, and
rose straight, tall, and mastlike, without lateral branches. We reached
a great moraine, grey with years, and clothed with magnificent pines;
our way lay up it, and from the top we dropped into a little dell
of magical beauty. Deep hidden by the glacier-built ridges, guarded
by noble trees, soft and green at the bottom, and tufted round with
bilberry bushes, through which peeped here and there the lichen-covered
crags, I have rarely seen a spot in which I should so like to dream
away a day. Before I entered it, Monte Rosa was still in shadow, but on
my emergence I noticed that her precipices were all aglow. The purple
colouring of the mountains observed on looking down the valley was
indescribable; out of Italy I have never seen anything like it. Oxygen
and nitrogen could not produce the effect; some effluence from the
earth, some foreign constituent of the atmosphere, developed in those
deep valleys by the southern sun, must sift the solar beams, weaken
the rays of medium refrangibility, and blend the red and violet of
the spectrum to that incomparable hue. The air indeed is filled with
floating matters which vary from day to day, and it is mainly to such
extraneous substances that the chromatic splendours of our atmosphere
are to be ascribed. The air south of the Alps is in this respect
different from that on the north, but a modicum even of arsenic might
be respired with satisfaction, if warmed by the bloom which suffused
the air of Italy this glorious dawn.
The ancient moraines of the Macugnaga glacier rank among the finest
that I have seen; long, high ridges tapering from base to edge, hoary
with age, but beautified by the shrubs and blossoms of to-day. We
crossed the ice and them. At the foot of the old Weissthor lay couched
a small glacier, which had landed a multitude of boulders on the slope
below it; and amid these we were soon threading our way. We crossed
the little glacier, which at one place strove to be disagreeable, and
here I learned from the deportment of his axe the kind of work to which
our porter had been previously accustomed. Half a dozen strokes shook
the head of the implement from its handle. We reached the rocks to the
right of the couloir and climbed them for some distance. At the base
the ice was cut by profound fissures, which extended quite across, and
rendered a direct advance up the gulley impossible; but higher up we
dropped down upon the snow.
Close to the rocks it was scarred by a furrow six or eight feet deep,
and about twelve in width, evidently the track of avalanches, or of
rocks let loose from the heights. Into this we descended. The bottom
was firm, and roughened by stones which found a lodgment there. It
seemed that we had here a very suitable roadway to the top. But a
sudden crash was heard aloft. I looked upward, and right over the
snow-brow which closed the view perceived a large brown boulder
in the air, while a roar of unseen stones showed that the visible
projectile was merely the first shot of a general cannonade. They
appeared--pouring straight down upon us--the sides of the furrow
preventing them from squandering their force in any other direction.
‘Schnell!’ shouted the man behind me, and there is a ring in the word,
when sharply uttered in the Alps, that almost lifts a man off his feet.
I sprang forward, but, urged by a sterner impulse, the man behind
sprung right on to me. We cleared the furrow exactly as the first stone
flew by, and once in safety we could calmly admire the energy with
which the rattling boulders sped along.
Our way now lay up the couloir; the snow was steep, but knobbly,
and hence but few steps were required to give the boots a hold. We
crossed and recrossed obliquely, like a horse drawing a laden cart
up hill. At times we paused and examined the heights. The view ended
in the snow-fields above, but near the summit suddenly rose a high
ice-wall. If we persisted in the couloir, this barrier would have to be
surmounted, and the possibility of scaling it was very questionable.
Our attention therefore was turned to the rocks at our right, and the
thought of assailing them was several times mooted and discussed. They
at length seduced us, and we resolved to abandon the snow. To reach
the rocks, however, we had to recross the avalanche channel, which
was here very deep. Bennen hewed a gap at the top of its flanking
wall, and, stooping over, scooped steps out of its vertical face. He
then made a deep hole, in which he anchored his left arm, let himself
thus partly down, and with his right pushed the steps to the bottom.
While this was going on small stones were continually flying down the
gulley. Bennen reached the floor, and I followed. Our companion was
still clinging to the snow-wall, when a horrible clatter was heard
overhead. It was another stone avalanche, which there was hardly a
hope of escaping. Happily a rock was here firmly stuck in the bed of
the gulley, and I chanced to be beside it when the first huge missile
appeared. This was the delinquent which had set the others loose. I was
directly in the line of fire, but, ducking behind the boulder, I let
the projectile shoot over my head. Behind it came a shoal of smaller
fry, each of them, however, quite competent to crack a human life.
‘Schnell!’ with its metallic clang, rung from the throat of Bennen; and
never before had I seen his axe so promptly and vigorously applied.
While this infernal cannonade was directed upon us we hung upon a slope
of snow which had been pressed and polished to ice by the descending
stones, and so steep that a single slip would have converted us into
an avalanche also. Without steps of some kind we dared not set foot on
the slope, and these had to be cut while the stone shower was falling
on us. Mere scratches in the ice, however, were all the axe could
accomplish, and on these we steadied ourselves with the energy of
desperate men. Bennen was first, and I followed him, while the stones
flew thick beside and between us. My excellent guide thought of me
more than of himself, and once caught upon the handle of his axe, as a
cricketer catches a ball upon his bat, a lump which might have finished
my climbing. The labour of his axe was here for a time divided between
the projectiles and the ice, while at every pause in the volley ‘he
cut a step and sprang forward.’ Had the peril been less, it would have
been amusing to see our duckings and contortions as we fenced with
our swarming foes. A final jump landed us on an embankment out of the
direct line of fire, and we thus escaped a danger extremely exciting to
us all.
We had next to descend an ice-slope to a place at which the rocks could
be invaded. Here Andermatten slipped, shot down the slope, knocked
Bennen off his legs, but before the rope had jerked me off mine the
guide had stopped his flight. The porter’s hat, however, followed the
rushing stones. It was shaken off his head and lost. If discipline for
eye, limb, head, and heart be of any value, we had it, and were still
likely to have it, here. Our first experience of the rocks was by no
means comforting: they were uniformly steep, and, as far as we could
judge from a long look upwards, they were likely to continue so. A
stiffer bit than ordinary intervened now and then, making us feel how
possible it was to be entirely cut off.
We at length reached real difficulty number one. All three of us were
huddled together on a narrow ledge, with a smooth and vertical cliff
above us. Bennen tried it in various ways, but he was several times
forced back to the ledge. At length he managed to hook the fingers of
one hand over the top of the cliff, while to aid his grip he tried to
fasten his shoes against its face. But the nails scraped freely over
the granular surface, and he had for a time to lift himself almost by a
single arm. As he did so he had as ugly a place beneath him as a human
body could well be suspended over. We were tied to him of course; but
the jerk, had his grip failed, would have been terrible. He raised
at length his breast to a level with the top, and leaning over it he
relieved the strain. Seizing upon something further on, he lifted
himself quite to the top; then tightened the rope, while I slowly
worked myself over the face of the cliff after him. We were soon side
by side, and immediately afterwards Andermatten, with his long unkempt
hair, and face white with excitement, hung midway between heaven and
earth supported by the rope alone. We hauled him up bodily, and as he
stood upon the ledge his limbs quivered beneath him.
We now strained slowly upwards amid the maze of crags, and scaled
a second cliff, resembling, though in a modified form, that just
described. There was no peace, no rest, no delivery from the anxiety
‘which weighed upon the heart.’ Bennen looked extremely blank, and
often cast an eye downward to the couloir we had quitted, muttering
aloud, ‘Had we only held on to the snow!’ He had soon reason to
emphasise his ejaculation.
After climbing for some time, we reached a smooth vertical face of
rock from which, right or left, there was no escape, and over which
we must go. Bennen first tried it unaided, but was obliged to recoil.
Without a lift of five or six feet the thing was impossible. When a boy
I have often climbed a wall by placing a comrade in a stooping posture
with his hands and head against the wall, getting on his back, and
permitting him gradually to straighten himself till he became erect.
This plan I now proposed to Bennen, offering to take him on my back.
‘Nein, Herr!’ he replied; ‘nicht Sie, ich will es mit Andermatten
versuchen.’ I could not persuade him, so Andermatten got upon the
ledge, and fixed his knee for Bennen to stand on. In this position my
guide obtained a precarious grip, just sufficient to enable him to pass
with safety from the knee to the shoulder. He paused here, and pulled
away such splinters as might prove treacherous if he laid hold of them.
He at length found a firm one, and had next to urge himself, not
fairly upward, for right above us the top was entirely out of reach,
but obliquely along the face of the cliff. He succeeded, anchored
himself, and called upon me to advance.
The rope was tight, it is true, but it was not vertical, so that a
slip would cause me to swing like a pendulum over the cliff’s face.
With considerable effort I managed to hand Bennen his axe, and while
doing so my own staff escaped me and was irrecoverably lost. I
ascended Andermatten’s shoulders as Bennen did, but my body was not
long enough to bridge the way to the guide’s arm; so I had to risk the
possibility of becoming a pendulum. A little protrusion gave my left
foot some support. I suddenly raised myself a yard, and here was met
by the iron grip of my guide. In a second I was safely stowed away in
a neighbouring fissure. Andermatten now remained. He first detached
himself from the rope, tied it round his coat and knapsack, which were
drawn up. The rope was again let down, and the porter tied it firmly
round his waist. It was not made in England, and was perhaps lighter
than it ought to be; so to help it hands and feet were scraped with
spasmodic energy over the rock. He struggled too much, and Bennen cried
sharply, ‘Langsam! langsam! Keine Furcht!’ The poor fellow looked very
pale and bewildered as his bare head emerged above the ledge. His body
soon followed. Bennen always used the imperfect for the present tense,
‘Er war ganz bleich,’ he remarked to me, by the ‘war’ meaning _ist_.
The young man seemed to regard Bennen with a kind of awe. ‘Sir,’ he
exclaimed, ‘you would not find another guide in Switzerland to lead
you up here.’ Nor, indeed, in Bennen’s behalf be it spoken, would he
have done so if he could have avoided it; but we had fairly got into
a net, the meshes of which must be resolutely cut. I had previously
entertained the undoubting belief that where a chamois could climb
a man could follow; but when I saw the marks of the animal on these
all but inaccessible ledges, my belief, though not eradicated, became
weaker than it had previously been.
Onward again, slowly winding through the craggy mazes, and closely
scanning the cliffs as we ascended. Our easiest work was stiff, but the
‘stiff’ was an agreeable relaxation from the perilous. By a lateral
deviation we reached a point whence we could look into the couloir by
which Mr. Tuckett had ascended: here Bennen relieved himself by a sigh
and ejaculation: ‘Would that we had chosen it! we might pass up yonder
rocks blindfold!’ But repining was useless; our work was marked out
for us and had to be accomplished. After another difficult tug Bennen
reached a point whence he could see a large extent of the rocks above
us. There was no serious difficulty within view, and the announcement
of this cheered us mightily. Every vertical yard, however, was to be
won only by strenuous effort. For a long time the snow cornice hung
high above us; we now approached its level; the last cliff formed a
sloping stair with geologic strata for steps. We sprang up it, and the
magnificent snow-field of the Görner glacier immediately opened to our
view. The anxiety of the last four hours disappeared like an unpleasant
dream, and with that perfect happiness which perfect health can alone
impart, we consumed our cold mutton and champagne on the summit of the
old Weissthor.
XIII.
_RESCUE FROM A CREVASSE._
Mr. Huxley and myself had been staying for some days at Grindelwald,
hoping for steady weather, and looking at times into the wild and noble
region which the Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn, the Viescherhörner, and
the Eiger feed with eternal snows. We had scanned the buttresses of
the Jungfrau with a view to forcing a passage between the Jungfrau
and the Monk from the Wengern Alp to the Aletsch glacier. The weather
for a time kept hopes and fears alternately afloat, but finally it
declared against us; so we moved with the unelastic tread of beaten
soldiers over the Great Sheideck, and up the Vale of Hasli to the
Grimsel. We crossed the pass whose planed and polished rocks had long
ago attracted the attention of Sir John Leslie, though the solution
which he then offered ignored the ancient glacier which we now know
to have been the planing tool employed. On rounding an angle of the
Mayenwand, two travellers suddenly appeared in front of us; they were
Mr. (now Sir John) Lubbock and his guide. He had been waiting at the
new hotel erected by M. Seiler at the foot of the Mayenwand, expecting
our arrival; and finally, despairing of this, he had resolved to
abandon the mountains, and was now bound for Brientz. In fact, the
lakes of Switzerland, and the ancient men who once bivouacked along
their borders, were to him the principal objects of interest; and we
caught him in the act of declaring a preference for the lowlands which
we could not by any means share.
We reversed his course, carried him with us down the mountain, and
soon made ourselves at home in M. Seiler’s hotel. Here we had three
days’ training on the glacier and the adjacent heights, and on one of
the days Lubbock and myself made an attempt upon the Galenstock. By
the flank of the mountain, with the Rhone glacier on our right, we
reached the heights over the ice cascade and crossed the glacier above
the fall. The sky was clear and the air pleasant as we ascended; but
in the earth’s atmosphere the sun works his swiftest necromancy, the
lightness of air rendering it in a peculiar degree capable of change.
Clouds suddenly generated came drifting up the valley of the Rhone,
covering the glacier and swathing the mountain-tops, but leaving clear
for a time the upper _névé_ of the Rhone. Grandeur is conceded while
beauty is sometimes denied to the Alps. But the higher snow-fields of
the great glaciers are altogether beautiful--not throned in repellent
grandeur, but endowed with a grace so tender as to suggest the
loveliness of woman.
The day was one long succession of surprises wrought by the
cloud-filled and wind-rent air. We reached the top, and found there
a gloom which might be felt. It was almost thick enough to cut each
of us away from the vision of his fellows. But suddenly, in the air
above us, the darkness would melt away, and the deep blue heaven would
reveal itself spanning the dazzling snows. Beyond the glacier rose the
black and craggy summit of the Finsteraarhorn, and other summits and
other crags emerged in succession as the battle-clouds rolled away. But
the smoke would again whirl in upon us, and we looked once more into
infinite haze from the cornice which lists the mountain-ridge. Again
the clouds are torn asunder, and again they close. And thus, in upper
air, did the sun play a wild accompaniment to the mystic music of the
world below.
From the Rhone glacier we proceeded down the Rhone valley to Viesch,
whence, in the cool twilight, all three of us ascended to the Hotel
Jungfrau, on the Æggischhorn. This we made our head-quarters for
some days, and here Lubbock and I decided to ascend the Jungfrau.
The proprietor of the hotel keeps guides for this excursion, but his
charges are so high as to be almost prohibitory. I, however, needed
no guide in addition to my faithful Bennen; but simply a porter of
sufficient strength and skill to follow where he led. In the village of
Laax Bennen found such a porter--a young man named Bielander, who had
the reputation of being both courageous and strong. He was the only son
of his mother, and she was a widow.
This young man and a second porter we sent on with our provisions to
the Grotto of the Faulberg, where we were to spend the night. Between
the Æggischhorn and this cave the glacier presents no difficulty which
the most ordinary caution cannot overcome, and the thought of danger
in connection with it never occurred to us. An hour and a half after
the departure of our porters we slowly wended our way to the lake of
Märjelin, which we skirted, and were soon upon the ice. The middle of
the glacier was almost as smooth as a carriage-road, cut here and there
by musical brooks produced by the superficial ablation. To Lubbock the
scene opened out with the freshness of a new revelation, as, previously
to this year, he had never been among the glaciers of the Alps. To me,
though not new, the region had lost no trace of the interest with which
I first viewed it. We moved briskly along the frozen incline, until,
after a couple of hours’ march, we saw a solitary human being standing
on the lateral moraine of the glacier, near the point where we were to
quit it for the cave of the Faulberg.
At first this man excited no attention. He stood and watched us, but
did not come towards us, until finally our curiosity was aroused by
observing that he was one of our own two men. The glacier here is
always cut by crevasses, which, while they present no real difficulty,
require care. We approached our porter, but he never moved; and when we
came up to him he looked stupid, and did not speak until he was spoken
to. Bennen addressed him in the patois of the place, and he answered in
the same patois. His answer must have been more than usually obscure,
for Bennen misunderstood the most important part of it. ‘My God!’ he
exclaimed, turning to us, ‘Walters is killed!’ Walters was the guide
at the Æggischhorn, with whom, in the present instance, we had nothing
to do. ‘No, not Walters,’ responded the man; ‘it is my comrade that
is killed.’ Bennen looked at him with a wild bewildered stare. ‘How
killed?’ he exclaimed. ‘Lost in a crevasse,’ was the reply. We were all
so stunned that for some moments we did not quite seize the import of
the terrible statement. Bennen at length tossed his arms in the air,
exclaiming, ‘Jesu Maria! what am I to do?’ With the swiftness that some
ascribe to dreams, I surrounded the fact with imaginary adjuncts, one
of which was that the man had been drawn dead from the crevasse, and
was now a corpse in the cave of the Faulberg, for I took it for granted
that, had he been still entombed, his comrade would have run or called
for our aid. Several times in succession the porter affirmed that the
missing man was certainly dead. ‘How does he know that he is dead?’
Lubbock demanded. ‘A man is sometimes rendered insensible by a fall
without being killed.’ This question was repeated in German, but met
with the same dogmatic response. ‘Where is the man?’ I asked. ‘There,’
replied the porter, stretching his arm towards the glacier. ‘In the
crevasse?’ A stolid ‘Ja!’ was the answer. It was with difficulty that I
quelled an imprecation. ‘Lead the way to the place, you blockhead,’ and
he led the way.
We were soon beside a wide and jagged cleft which resembled a kind
of cave more than an ordinary crevasse. This cleft had been spanned
by a snow bridge, now broken, and to the edge of which footsteps
could be traced. The glacier at the place was considerably torn, but
simple patience was the only thing needed to unravel its complexity.
This quality our porter lacked, and, hoping to make shorter wo
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