Chapter I: Preface (1)

The following pages were mostly written with pencil in the railway train when the writer was returning from Alpine holidays. The letters were published in the _Cambridge Chronicle_ as a record of the mountaineering season, and extend over the past five years.

A few serious remarks on the climbing foot, and on accidents, are added separately, and little attempt has been made to retouch these yearly letters. Being “touched for the evil” has been known, according to the court wags, to kill a feeble son of Tom Esmond’s. There being little but evil in the lad’s composition, the royal touch which expelled the evil from the patient was a fatal performance. Fearing it might prove so for my poor tracts, they remain much as they were originally printed. Only of this I feel assured, that similar notes, put into my hands when I began climbing, would have been read by me with avidity.

If one of these papers be found now and then somewhat technical, and to savour of another craft, more useful even than mountaineering, that possible usefulness must be my excuse for these digressions.

The series of pictures to illustrate the chapter on the climbing foot I hope will prove of interest. Mr. Stearn, the photographer, of Bridge Street, Cambridge, has caught the expression in the infant’s foot, which I kept in position with my finger, and the remarkable adaptation of the tiny infant’s foot for climbing and all-four progression is very well shown; also those by Captain Abney of the Swiss guides have come out exceedingly well.

These notes may be found acceptable to any novitiate, who, after making his first climb, can feel what Meredith’s hero in _The Amazing Marriage_ so well expresses to his comrade:

“I shall never forget the walk we’ve had. I have to thank you for the noblest of pleasures. You’ve taught me—well, a thousand things; the things money can’t buy. What mornings they were! and the dead-tired nights! Under the rock, and up to see the snowy peak pink in a gap of thick mist. You were right: it made a crimsoning colour shine like a new idea. Up in those mountains one walks with the divinities, you said. It’s perfectly true. I shall remember I did. I have a treasure for life! Now I understand where you get your ideas. The life we lead down there is hoggish. You have chosen the right.”

A small matter will suggest pleasant memories of mountaineering to those (harmless degenerates, according to Max Nordau) who see the Mer de Glace in every frozen puddle, as a child sees pictures in the fire.

Many a man helping a dish of Devonshire junket on his table, thinking of Forbes’s viscous theory, watches for the place opposite the first gap made by the spoon, where in the junket there forms a chasm parallel with the side, still leaving a fringe or shelf attached to the edge of the dish—for him at the moment that crack is a _bergschrund_—there he finds at one point a bridge convenient for crossing, at another an impossible yawning crevasse.

Such a man will not find these notes dull, for he can enjoy the plainest junket, and though he finds recorded few new things, yet pleasant thoughts will be suggested of the past, and infinite possibilities for the future.

CAMBRIDGE, May 1, 1896.

CONTENTS

PAGE

AN ALPINE LETTER, 1895, 1

MOUNTAINEERING IN DAUPHINÉ, 1894, 19

SWITZERLAND AND SAVOY IN 1893, 42

AN ALPINE LETTER, 1892, 67

A MONTH UPON THE MOUNTAINS, 1891, 93

ON THE CLIMBING FOOT, 119

ON ACCIDENTS, 145

INDEX, 168

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

GROUP OF CLIMBERS, _Frontispiece_

“THE NEW ROUTE,” _Vignette_

A REGIMENT OF LARCHES ADVANCING ON VETERAN PINES, 6

MELCHIOR ANDEREGG, 1895, 16

SKETCH MAP OF THE HIGHEST POINT OF THE DAUPHINÉ, 20

LES ECRINS FROM THE GLACIER BLANC, 26

GROUP OF CLIMBERS, 32

LA MEIJE FROM THE VAL DES ETANÇONS, 36

ICEBERGS STRANDED ON THE BED OF THE MÄRJELEN SEE, 80

OLD STONE BRIDGE AT SAAS FÉE, 108

FOOT OF AN INFANT FIVE WEEKS OLD, SHOWING THE INSTEP TOUCHING
THE SHIN ON SLIGHT PRESSURE OF THE FINGER, 122

FOOT OF AN INFANT FIVE WEEKS OLD, TOUCHED WITH THE FINGER TO
SHOW THE ANGLE OF THE FOOT WITH THE LEG AND THE PREHENSILE
TOES, 124

FOOT OF AN INFANT FIVE WEEKS OLD. THE INSTEP IS MADE TO TOUCH
THE SHIN BY SLIGHT PRESSURE OF THE FINGER, 126

FOOT OF AN INFANT NEARLY A YEAR OLD—
FIRST POSITION, 128
SECOND POSITION, 130

GUIDE’S FOOT IN CLIMBING POSITION AGAINST THE SHOEHORN ROCK
AT ZERMATT (ALOIS KALBERMATTEN), 134

DO. (PETER PERREN), 136

GUIDE’S FOOT, TO SHOW THE ANGLE MADE BY THE FOOT WITH THE LEG
WITHOUT PRESSURE, 138

DO., ANOTHER POSITION, 140

FOOT OF EXPERIENCED AMATEUR, 143

ACT OF SITTING DOWN, USING ONLY ONE LIMB—
FIRST POSITION, 142
SECOND POSITION, 144

ALPINE NOTES

An Alpine Letter

1895

Training at Kandersteg—Climbing the south face of the
Birrenhorn—The viper’s cast—The larches replacing the pines—The
ascent of the Doldenhorn—The Petersgrat—The ascent of the
Bietschhorn—An interesting anniversary ascent—Ascent of Monte
Rosa by the Lys Pass—Cold feet on the glacier—The Furggen
Joch—Accident to a guide—Traverse of the Matterhorn—Naked feet
of guides photographed in climbing position—The Traverse of the
Charmoz—Farewell to Melchior—Lines to my lantern.

Every one should try to be in good training once a year, and experience has confirmed my opinion that Kandersteg, in the Bernese Oberland, is a good place to train for a climbing holiday. There the expeditions are interesting enough without being too serious. The enervating effect of what is ironically called carriage exercise, which only exercises the carriage, and does nothing for the man inside, must be gradually counteracted by hard work in fine air. Also it must be remembered that as one grows older, training is more difficult, and too often hurried in the process.

With a friend of former years, our first little climb up the Tschingellochtighorn resulted in a ducking, and for myself it must be confessed that the bodily fatigue of the first tug up steep slopes hardly permits of the usual interests and enjoyments of the way. Now it is rather sad to reflect upon those two black sluggish lizards that I was too lazy to collect, and that a fine crop of yellow Gentians were merely noticed without pleasure. Climbing the Tschingellochtigrat—a yellow Gentian it was that: and very little more.

Every struggle makes the next more easy—at first it is a purgatory for the pie-crust of the past year, then the later labour is all delight.

Mr. M., that veteran climber, hailed me on my arrival at Kandersteg with a shout: with him was his son, already at sixteen well experienced in mountain craft, and the well-beloved Melchior Anderegg. Mr. M. says “a man is always at his best on the Alps,” and surely this is true; his body is most freed from disorder, and his mind from cant, as he climbs away from all the worries of life.

We had an expedition together, a pretty climb up the steep south face of the Birrenhorn; on our way up to the rock we killed an adder. Near this spot last year I found a perfect viper’s cast (eye-covers and lips also quite entire). It is now in the Cambridge Museum, and proves that Gilbert White is correct in his statement that the snake’s cast is turned completely inside out. Here too are a great number of large white snails like escargots—“O helix infelix tui quam miseresco sine sheetis aut blankets dormientis al fresco.”

As my friend had made with me this same ascent last year, we were allowed to lead the way up, and had a nice scramble, notes of which are to be found in the _Alpine Journal_, and seen on a later page. This excursion gives a good view of the forests of the two valleys seen from many points above the Kander stream and Oeschinen See. No one can fail to note, when once attention is aroused to it, how the larch is gaining ground in the struggle for existence, and the pine is rapidly diminishing. Rarely does one see a young Arolla pine, and the old trees are picturesque ruins. In the Arolla valley the same observation may be made, and there are decaying stumps of trees, 200 or 300 years old, remaining high up, near the glaciers, where once a forest stood. A great advantage the larch has in being a deciduous tree, shedding its thin and spiky leaves every winter, and riding out the storm with bare poles, when the pine holds on its evergreen branches a great weight of snow, and presents a large surface for the tempest to burst upon.

When these pine trees stand together collecting snow, more opportunities for avalanches occur, and ruin is scattered on the forest beneath. The lovely green tints of the sprouting larches in Spring will bring us some compensation if the pines are to be lost.

According to Mr. Sowerby, in his _Forest Cantons_, the larches always choose the crystalline rocks, while the pines prefer the limestone.

Starting from the Hotel at half-past one in the morning, we had a roasting hot day on that beautiful snow-peak, the Doldenhorn. With Hari as guide, we followed a large swinging oil-lamp, instead of the usual lantern, and toiled up through jungle, to find the snow all fresh and soft; lovely to look upon, but wearisome to travel up; a long ice-slope at the top gave rest to all except our leader, who had to cut steps to the final corniced ridge; there we held him with the rope in leaning over to judge whether we might safely sit down upon the summit.

On our departure from Kandersteg, a lady and her husband joined us in a delightful walk over the Petersgrat. We rested a night at the Selden châlets in the hay, giving the lady the only bed of the place, and, starting the next morning early, had an easy day over that beautiful glacier pass, arriving at Ried in the Lötschen Thal in a broiling sun. Nothing more was then known of those two poor fellows who went for their last climb a few weeks before, left the little inn and never returned.

My companion had come with me to ascend the Bietschhorn, and we found it a first-rate climb, requiring continual care because of the rotten state of the rock arête. Every stone has to be tested before the weight is allowed to rest upon it, and the movements over the ridge must be lovingly and embracingly made without jerk or hurry. In Alpine slang the mountain is badly in need of repair. We were on the summit during an earthquake, of which we felt nothing, though at Zermatt there was considerable alarm, and a climber on the Rothhorn is reported to have had to sit tight as though on a bucking horse!

Next day we walked down to the Rhone valley, and came to Zermatt with our guides, Alois Kalbermatten and Peter Perren. Here again Mr. M. was actively at work with Melchior, and as he came down from Monte Rosa, he told me how pleased he was to have made an anniversary ascent of a mountain he had climbed forty years ago!

We made for the highest point of Monte Rosa by starting from the hut by lantern-light, and going up the glacier as if to cross the Lys Joch, then taking a rock arête to the summit, we descended by the usual snowy route to the Gorner glacier, and so back to Zermatt. My feet had been very cold on the glacier; the mass of nails carried, unless the soles of the boots be very thick, chills the feet as the iron gets cold upon the ice, and in this respect there is more to say for Mummery spikes, which carry the feet slightly off the ice. F. Andenmatten, of Zermatt, made such a successful improvement in clumping my boots, that he obtained an order for another pair on the spot, and I believe him to be an artist of the first rank for climbing boots.

On our next climb, in crossing the Furggen Joch to reach the Italian hut above the Col du Lion, on the Italian side of the Matterhorn, we had an awkward adventure. Perren was helping a porter, who carried up wood for us, over the bergschrund, and was leaning forwards to reach him with his axe, when down came a stone from above—“a bolt from the blue” and struck poor Perren on the head. The blood ran over his face and gave him a ghastly look. The blow did not result in ordinary shock, it only excited him so that he would not sit down to have his hurt dressed, but shouted out a noisy account of the accident. Fortunately I had an antiseptic dressing and bandage in my rücksack, and though he had a nasty torn wound of the scalp, I decided to proceed at least as far as the hut, though it was five hours’ hard climb, and I felt doubtful as to whether he would be fit to traverse the Matterhorn in the morning.

The main object of our expedition was to climb over the top of the mountain from Italy and down the Swiss side to Zermatt. However, when day broke he wished to proceed, and assured me that he could manage the climbing. Rather than risk the success of the expedition, I offered to come down with him, and pay him the same price, but he would not hear of it, and the other guide being quite confident, with some misgiving I went over the mountain with the wounded man. My fear was of brandy combined with a hot sun, and images arose before me of a strong man delirious on the awful precipices of this south side of the Matterhorn. It was very soon apparent that my guide’s powers were fully equal to his work, for our party went strongly and at a fair pace. We had breakfast and rested half an hour on the classic rocks of the Tyndallgrat, and reached the summit in less than five hours from the start, the second time we have stood together on that snowy ridge which crowns the majestic mountain. “Long Biner,” a Zermatt guide, who came up with a party from the other side, here told us of the death of Emile Rey, and we were filled with wonder that the famous climber should have ended his career by a fatal slip when all his serious work was done on the Aiguille du Géant—a mountain which he knew so well.

Returning to the Monte Rosa Hotel for a rest, I was fortunate in falling in with Captain Abney, who kindly photographed for me the naked feet of my guides in the act of climbing a rock. It has often been noticed that a guide can go face forward, and whole-footed up a slope, while the amateur following, and coming to the steep part, has to go on his toes or turn sideways. It seems possible that the angle made by the foot with the leg may be more acute in the guide who has climbed from infancy, and though it is probably very much a matter of balance, I wished to compare photographs of amateurs’ feet when put into similar action. The guides wear thick leather boots loosely laced at the top, so that it is difficult to see the play of the ankle.

There is a most interesting discussion by Darwin, in his voyage of the _Beagle_, on muscular action and balance in riding, but of course in the case of the guides’ feet there may be some structural difference, hereditary and acquired, actually permitting more freedom of movement at the ankle joint, which neither muscular action nor power of balance could give to the amateur. These points are separately considered in another chapter on the “Climbing Foot.”

On a memorable morning at the end of August, the morning of Miss Sampson’s fatal accident upon the Triftjoch, while we were packing up to travel over that same pass, my friend had a telegram to report the death of his mother at Chamounix. It was his first great grief, and seemed the one unbearable thing in life. With him I travelled to join his afflicted family. The sorrow of others thus threw a strong shadow over me, and my friend having gone to England, I had now little heart for further climbing.

Nevertheless, taking my guides to Montanvers I traversed the Charmoz, a very fine rock climb, in which five points of varying size are scrambled over. There is a good deal of standing on one another’s shoulders in acrobatic fashion in the ascents, and the use is frequent of a second rope looped over a point of rock in the descents. The highest peak is the last climbed, and its couloir is descended to the base of the rock to join the route below the couloir of the first ascent. The glacier which it is necessary to cross is, this year, in a dangerous state; falls of ice are seriously frequent. When on the highest point of the Charmoz, the most awful avalanche of stones came thundering down from near the top of the adjacent Grépon. The noise was deafening, and a strong sulphurous smell, which lasted some time afterwards, suggested, as Whymper says, that the Devil was at the bottom of the business.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MR. MYLES MATHEWS.]

Wandering into Couttets’ Hotel at Chamounix quite without intention, I witnessed a touching farewell between Mr. M. and Melchior. To see an undemonstrative Englishman kiss his grey-bearded old guide on both cheeks, when these two have climbed together for forty years, gives one suddenly a glimpse of the pathos of life impossible to recall without emotion.

Beautiful for weather, dreadful for disasters, this season will be remembered as the year in which Emile Rey was killed on the Alps, and Mummery lost in the Himalayas. All who knew the strong and genial Benjamin Eyre have felt his loss, and he was a man with many friends. Then alas! there were others to whom we say farewell for ever.

For this season I have said good-bye to my faithful guides, one of whom is a friend of many other climbs, giving them a modest addition to their moderate fees and the old rope, which I leave behind. My folding lantern shall come away with me for future use; it shuts up into a leather case no larger than the little sketch-book in which I write the following somewhat heathenish, but very hopeful hymn:

Guide, who breaks my midnight sleep,
Leads me up the glacier steep,
Where the lantern’s feeble beams
Shine on snow and icy streams;
We fear no darkness in the night
While your strong hand controls the light.

Dawn will for the climber rise,
Daylight point him to the skies—
What if all be mist and cloud
When we reach that summit proud?
Who, conquering, can victory cry,
More gladly lives, dreads less to die!

Mighty Guide! who woke and led me here,
Lend Thy light to make my pathway clear.
Though dim at first on Life’s all doubtful way,
The struggle ends in dawn and perfect day;
Obscuring daylight hides my lantern and Thy star,
But purple glows with gold on glorious peaks afar.

Mountaineering in Dauphiné

1894

Wet weather at Kandersteg—Fly-fishing there—The fisherman’s
fear of a precipice—Birrenhorn ascent—Ascent of the
Blümlis-Alphorn—Chateau at Vizille—La Bérarde in the
Dauphiné—Accident to a guide’s tongue—Traverse of the
Pointe des Ecrins—Guide’s hand benumbed—Wild and impressive
scenery—Ascent of the Grande Aiguille—A frost-bitten porter—My
ascent of the Meije with a broken rib—The heel spikes of the
district.

The Alps of Dauphiné, which may be said to lie in France between the Mont Blanc range and the Mediterranean Sea, would be best approached by Paris, Lyons, and Grenoble, but as my climbing friend, A. B., was at Kandersteg, I went there to meet him and a guide, and to stretch my legs on the Swiss mountains. On the first day after my arrival we inspected, with a view to attack the steep south face of the Birrenhorn, and surmounted the only difficulty of the climb, a steep chimney where a rope is useful to avoid risk. We planned to complete the ascent on the first fine day. On this little mountain I found the most perfect snake’s cast I ever saw, which I gave to Professor Newton. Its head end was in the hole where its owner got rid of it. The films over the eyes were present, and by blowing into the mouth I could inflate the cast to a lively resemblance of the creature it had covered.

_Walker & Bontall sc._]

The weather in the Bernese Oberland was very bad, every day it rained in the valleys and snowed on the peaks; on any expedition one was sure to get wet, and mountains of any magnitude were impossible. With a Surgeon-Major on leave from India I took a turn at fly-fishing, not in the glacier water of the Kander, but in a pretty stream with pools, where the trout, though small, would rise to a fly. His Himalayan experience made the Surgeon-Major anxious to stock the glacier torrents of Switzerland with Mahsir, a fish more powerful than the salmon, whose first wild rush on tasting the hook gives such a fierce joy to the sportsman.

My companion, who was a strong walker, described to me his horrible sensations at the sight of a precipice. He told me that his father, though he had shot game in the Himalayas, could never overcome this fear. If the idea of space was absent my friend could climb well, but I gathered that horizontal as well as vertical distance was concerned, because he could not comfortably eat his lunch on a flat platform of an acre of grassland when there were miles of country far distant below and beyond. Mountain climbing for him was out of the question, his condition was almost that of one suffering from agoraphobia or _la peur des espaces_.

We engaged Joseph Truffer as guide, and as soon as he joined us we completed the Birrenhorn expedition. It was a satisfaction to me to find that he did not climb the couloir easily or at the first attempt, but we had a good scramble on an interesting arête rather like the Portjengrat, in which there is a rock hole or window to crawl through. We went home by a long route up by way of the Ober-Oeschinen Alp, and got thoroughly wet as usual.

To climb the Blümlis-Alphorn, the highest point of the range, we slept out at a hut, which was unluckily occupied by workmen, who were building another hut close by. Our night in dirty straw was not so pleasant in dirty company, and the early morning was dark and threatening; we started however at 4.30, led by Joseph Hari, a local man. After crossing the glacier he took us over some smooth slabs of rock arranged like a slated roof and coated with ice to make us careful. These safely crossed, Truffer took the lead, and up the final steep everything was ice wherein steps had to be laboriously cut to the summit. We stood on the top at 10 o’clock, but saw little of our surrounding glories, except occasionally a brief glance round through the mists while standing perched in an ice step. The weather ended up in snow, which shut us in on the glacier below, and made us thankful to be well off the ice, and safely quit of a mountain which, though usually an easy climb, could assert itself seriously in a storm.

Taking Truffer with us, A. B. and I travelled to Dauphiné; we spent a few hours at Grenoble to see the old church and the Bayard statue. While at lunch at the Hotel Monnet I admired the oak wine jugs, which are called there “Brocs.” There is a charming old chateau at Vizille, with a lovely trout stream in the grounds full of big fish. The tennis court no longer stands in which in 1788 a memorable meeting took place to protest against the tax. The late President Carnot unveiled a statue in 1888 in memory of this Revolutionary event and slept at the chateau as the guest of Madame Casimir-Périer. The old soldier who took us round showed an oubliette in the old part of the building—beneath its horrible shaft he had seen armour-coated skeletons dug up.

We walked up to La Bérarde, a mule carrying our baggage. Immediately on my arrival I was told of an awkward accident which had just happened. Two parties were ascending a slope of ice when the last man of the first caravan slipped out of his step and sent his iron-shod heel into the jaw of the leader of the second caravan, who was too near. Poor Maximin Gaspard got a bad torn wound of his tongue, cut by his teeth, which I had to stitch up with silk and horse-hair. As he was in fine health the wound healed well, and in a few days, in fact, as soon as ever he could feed, he was climbing again. Maximin’s father, Pierre Gaspard, is the fine old fellow who has made so many first ascents in these districts, and still makes the great climbs.

The highest mountain in the Dauphiné, is the Pointe des Ecrins, 13,462 feet, its summit is a ridge of several beautiful points of snow and rock. With Hippolyte Rodier to assist Truffer we started to traverse this peak. We met on the way to the Challeret hut, a native with a dead sheep on his shoulders; it had been killed by a stone falling from the height above, and no doubt was to be made into “precipice mutton.” After sleeping a few hours at the hut we got off at 1.30 in the morning, over the glacier to the Col des Avalanches. Rodier led us to the couloir on the south face, and we began to crawl up; this was a rock couloir, which at a steep part was iced and caused some delay. Our leader, however, got up to a firm position and I followed, but no one else came, and looking down I saw Truffer wringing his hands and in distress. He explained that his right hand was frost-bitten and he could not proceed; nevertheless, he was pulled up by the help of the rope, and finding from the appearance of the hand and from the pain, which is really a good sign of reaction, that recovery was sufficient, we decided to proceed, with some misgiving on my part. We gained the highest part of the Ecrins about 10 o’clock. There was a great deal of fresh snow on the arête, and in coming down to the glacier Blanc on the north side we worked hard for five hours without a halt to reach the Col des Ecrins. Here we rested and then descended a couloir of 1,000 feet to the glacier de la Bonne Pierre, with its long and dreary moraine. There is a measurement station on this moraine to register the movements of the glacier, and here we found a marmot recently killed, its flesh almost entirely eaten, the entrails strewn around. An eagle’s feather on the body suggested the mode of death. The sight of the sheep killed by a stone, and still more the beautiful furry marmot killed by an eagle, added in a strange way to the savagery of the scene. In this wild region stern Nature seems to cry, “I care for nothing, all shall go.” We had a long walk home, the last half-hour by lantern light, having been eighteen hours over our expedition.

We wished next to traverse the Meije from La Bérarde to La Grave, which neither of our guides had ever done, so it seemed best to let Truffer go back to Switzerland, lest on a serious expedition his hand should fail him again and its recovery be delayed. His helpless condition in the iced couloir was explained by the fact that months before he had been ill with a bad hand, and its vitality had been impaired by what was probably a previous attack of frost-bite. Before his departure we had a lovely day on the Grande Aiguille; on the top we basked and slept in the sun after a lunch of tinned fruits and bread and butter. There is a little ice and snow requiring care on this beautiful peak, but we climbed it up and down without a rope, and here we passed over the slope where the tongue accident occurred.

One evening I was aware of a pain in my chest, especially when I laughed, and I was reminded that at Easter I had broken a rib—in climbing to the top of a cromlech on Dartmoor called “The Spinster’s Rock,” but the bone seemed to have mended in spite of some neglect, and was forgotten until my compass box in the breast pocket jammed against the hurt in some scramble and found out the weak point. I was warned by pains in certain movements of the arms against any attempt to traverse the Meije, and very sadly I had to see my friend take off our guides for a successful expedition; for though with a suitable bandage on my chest I was quite active, yet could not pull myself up by my arms in climbing.

W. HERR VON RATH. A. B. HERR GRISAR.]

We had parted from Truffer with mutual regrets, for he was a very good fellow, and taken on Joseph Turc, a more experienced man than Rodier, and they worked well together. This Turc had just come over from La Grave with a porter named Etienne. The latter, a poor wizened sun-baked little man, had all his finger tips on each hand blackened with frost-bite; his thumbs had escaped. It appears that a Frenchman who could not climb well was taken by Turc to traverse the Meije from La Bérarde. They got no further than the Pic Central, there they had to spend the night—next day getting into La Grave. The poor porter was allowed to sleep with his fingers in this bad state, and come back over a pass to La Bérarde where in the afternoon I saw him. He had had some pain in the morning of this day, and this encouraged me to attempt treatment; so during two or three hours I rubbed him and watched him, and was assisted by my friend; it was satisfactory to find a considerable improvement, especially in his right hand, which next morning was even more apparently improved when the limits of the black dead portions were more defined—his nails will probably come off, and there will be ulcerated surfaces on his finger ends, which will be months in healing. The aspect of this man presented a pitiable combination of apathy and patience, reminding me of the wolf-bitten Russian peasants I saw in Pasteur’s laboratory in the Rue D’Ulm years ago. The guide with the frost-bitten feet, of whom I wrote in my letter last year, is only now hobbling about with sticks, the wounds of his amputated toes still unhealed, so much is the process of repair hindered in tissues damaged by frost-bite.

What I call determination, but my friends describe as obstinacy, now induced me, after three days’ rest, to climb the Meije, 13,081 feet. It is a serious rock climb, decidedly stiffer than the Matterhorn, and I did not attempt the traverse, but it was an error of judgment to have climbed it in my crippled condition. Doubtless the fine air, which makes a man laugh so easily, and makes the careworn light-hearted, steals away the reason like champagne—making the old man seem young—so the poet writes—

“The plague of guide and chum, and wife and daughter
Is Senex who will climb and didn’t oughter.”

My friend having returned to rest from his expeditions I took off the guides for the ascent of the Meije. We walked up the valley and halted at the hut. Joseph Turc wanted to put his skin of wine, containing over five bottles, into my rücksack, and we had a difference, as I objected to his claret leaking into my shirts, so he had to carry it separately; it was quite an easy matter, as I had a porter to carry my sleeping bag to a rock gîte where the night was to be passed, a climb of several hours. On reaching the glacier, Joseph and I being in front of the others, who carried the rope, he asked me if I was afraid to go over the glacier. Probably he meant without the rope. I said it was what I had come for; but when we began to get to steep ice I found he did not cut steps, and as he had three large spikes in each of his heels he could go where I could not follow without using my axe vigorously. He then said he could not cut the steps because of his wine skin, and thus I was left either to cut on up all the slopes or carry his skin. After a little hesitation I offered to carry the wine for fear of hurting my rib, and I carried it up to the sleeping place, though I did not find the steps cut much better after his burden was removed.

We went to sleep under the stars on a lovely night, but the day broke dark and gloomy, so that it was half-past four before we could start. We roped at once, leaving the porter to take the things back, and Turc led, but instead of placing me second I was left to the last. With my own rope of 80 feet long it happened frequently that the men passed out of sight, and I had no sort of communication with them unless I chose to pull and shout. But this is well enough when going straight up. It is a difficult corner or traverse where the position is a bad one; the experts who have been on their own mountain before, leave the traveller alone to get round his corner as best he can. “In medio tutissimus ibis,” is a good motto.

I gained the summit at nine o’clock, but just at the final struggle, where it is necessary to straddle on a sharp red rock ridge, called the “cheval rouge,” with fine precipices below, my rib gave way, and went completely broken through. In spite of firm bandaging, the coming down was a painful experience, for I could feel and even hear the ends of the broken bone grating together; but I kept at it, going down steadily and slowly with groans and grunts. The guides sang and shouted and drowned my feeble exclamations. They had had a good feed with tinned peaches and plenty of wine on the top when we rested, and it seemed to make them very happy. They carried seven bottles of wine on this expedition, besides each man a flask of brandy, and as I do most of my climbing on cold tea, they had a good allowance.

Joseph Turc is a real genius at rock climbing, a truly brilliant performer; but on ice, as he can’t cut steps, another time I should get spikes or crampons. The guides here use three spikes in each heel, driven in, fixed by gomphosis, not like the Mummery spikes with a screw.

I got to the Inn in time to change for the table d’hôte, not in the least fatigued, only blaming myself for the painful ordeal I had passed through. While changing my garments in the small bedroom we occupied together, my companion could plainly hear across the room the grating of my fractured rib. So soon as exertion ceased I was entirely well, and had a good dinner and night’s rest.

No traveller who goes for mountain expeditions to the Dauphiné district will leave without feeling a debt of gratitude (mixed with envy) to his own countrymen who have climbed and walked all over this wonderful country. The maps and climber’s guide by Mr. Coolidge are marvels of convenience and accuracy, and must be carried by everyone who wishes to learn his way about these very difficult regions. Mr. Whymper ought to be as proud of the conquest of the Pointe des Ecrins as of the Matterhorn.

My friend had a good climb on the Pic Bourcet, but of course I did not attempt this, returning to England by easy stages, halting at Aix-les-Bains and at Paris. In London I found laughing at “Charley’s Aunt” a serious matter for my damaged rib, though I thoroughly enjoyed this absurd farce, as I enjoyed every day of my vacation, and there was no day I would not willingly live over again.

Switzerland and Savoy

1893

Begin at Kandersteg—Benighted on the Zinal glacier—Glacier
tables and baths—Wild beasts in the hut—The Col Durand—Guide
in a crevasse—Ascent of the Dent Blanche—A climber
exhausted—Ascent of the Weisshorn—A thunderstorm—Death of Mr.
Lucas and Mr. Seiler. The Furggen Joch—Italy and the Italian
side of Mont Blanc—The hut on the Aiguille Grise—The traverse
of Mont Blanc—Anxiety as to weather—The observatory on the
summit—Ascent of Aiguille du Dru. Ascent of the Aiguille
Verte—Frost-bitten guide—Peculiar dangers of a fine season.

When Albert Smith made the ascent of Mont Blanc in 1851, he did not seem to enjoy himself much; he was thoroughly exhausted and done up, as well he might be, with sixteen guides, and £20 worth of provisions. If he did not have a good time our fathers did, in hearing his lecture, or in reading his dear little book. They listened with the greatest interest to his serio-comic groans. A hundred bottles of wine, sixty-seven fowls, joints of meat in proportion, and ten cheeses carried up the mountain ought to have led to trouble somewhere. On the other hand I enjoyed myself so much in the ascent of Mont Blanc that I fear I have nothing left to entertain others. My climbing friend was with me and two guides, also friends of former years; we had no certificate and no cannon. Nor was there any pretty Julie down below to give me a cornelian heart and talk about “une alliance.”

But I will begin at the beginning, and travel first from Cambridge to Kandersteg, from the land of fen and bog to the land of fine air and bright mountains—the Bernese Oberland. At Kandersteg my friend was staying in Egger’s most comfortable inn, and there we made a plan of campaign. We were fortunate in crossing the Gemmi to obtain a fine view of the mountains we were about to attack. We slept at Sierre in the Rhone Valley, and in the morning went up the Val D’Anniviers, one of the finest valleys in the Alps, a beautiful journey to Zinal, where we met our trusty guides—Alois Kalbermatten and Xaver Imseng. We must needs try and reach the hut high up the glacier that same night, and consequently got benighted, and arrived very late at the Mountet Cabane, rather cross and tired. While the daylight lasted I saw on the glacier hundreds of glacier-tables, like a crop of gigantic mushrooms. The hot weather this year may have made these more apparent, for on all the glaciers I walked over they seemed more conspicuous than usual. A stone, as big as a teacup or a cottage, when it lies upon the glacier, protects the ice beneath from the sun, so that in time the ice melting all round leaves the stone perched on a pedestal of ice. The icy pyramid gradually yields on the sunny side, and allows the stone to tilt and fall always in the same direction. On the Gorner Glacier I saw a stone supported by two separate pyramids, but this is unusual. If the stone which lies upon the glacier be thin enough, it may be so warmed through by the sun that it makes a hole for itself in the ice, and is buried in a pit full of water. So may dirt make a bath in the glacier, or if it be in large quantity, may leave a cone of solid ice all dirt covered, looking like a large ant heap.

The deep pits full of water are started in the manner indicated, but the sun-warmed surface water is continually being replaced by the ice-cold water below, and the warmed water deepens the pit in the ice, until a large bath is formed, often two or three feet deep, with steep sides, and no warning ledge or ridge around, so that a careless walker might go in, and in the dusk they are very difficult to avoid.

We had a dark experience on the glacier, and had to leave it for the icy-hearted moraine for fear of accidents, thankful to find shelter after some hours of weary stumbling along, when there was light enough to see our dangers but barely enough to permit us to avoid them. When in the welcome shelter of the hut, we shared with fleas and rats that rough abode—whether the rats in the straw had guides to this place is a curious problem; the fleas in the rugs were unusually fierce and hungry. There was a rat in the hut before its building was completed; when I called M. Constans’ attention to his first visitor, he remarked in surprise “Déjà!” but it no doubt migrated from the old Mountet Cabane near by to the Constantia, as the present place is called in honour of the architect.

All next day the weather was too bad to climb, and we had to give up our traverse of the Rothhorn this season, having been beaten in the same way last year after coming over the Triftjoch. We went to Zermatt over the Col Durand, which led us to an ice slope of some steepness up which steps had to be cut, and then over snow. As we neared the top of the pass, with no suggestion of any crack in the smooth white surface of snow, we walked along all roped together; quite suddenly our leading guide disappeared down a crevasse. I was last on the rope and saw nothing but his hat; however, he was soon out again by wrigglings on to his back, shook himself free of snow, and appeared to mind it about as much as a Newfoundland dog minds water. But it was a good lesson in the use of the rope, which alone can make such an ordinary journey safe. My first care in reaching Zermatt was to have my boots well nailed. English nails are no good, though Flack’s boots stood me well. My next thought was to present the local chemist with a prescription which puzzled him for the moment—Mr. Pulex Irritans—Rx: Pulvis usque ad mortem pulicibus ferocibus quantum sufficit. My friend said this dog Latin was appropriate, for dogs and fleas were inseparable. I was soon supplied with a tin of Keating.

The weather was too good for dawdling, and we proceeded to attack the Dent Blanche. Taking provisions and rugs to the Schönbühl rock, our men cut bits of dry trees with their ice axes before we left the woods below us to cross the glacier, and thus provided fuel to cook the excellent supper we enjoyed before we slept. There were two other parties on the rocks that night—the Stockje hut being in ruins. We crept into a hole and had a good night there, in a natural cave which was warm and dry. When in the small hours of the morning we were drinking our chocolate, a cry suddenly arose from one of the other parties that their rope was missing. We stirred the fires and searched with lanterns, and it was all very picturesque, but did not lead to discovery—the rope was lost. So only two parties started off early and began to climb, and reached the summit after a hot fatiguing ascent up ice, snow, and rock. The younger man of this other party climbed in a boating sweater, appeared to feel the heat exceedingly, and went to sleep whenever there was a halt. Before the descent was over he was decidedly ill, but fortunately not utterly collapsed until after the more dangerous ice slopes had been descended; his “legs” were then quite gone and he had to be supported by the guides before he reached the sleeping place, where we left him wrapped in my shawl with his friend faithfully beside him to pass the night.

The unlucky man whose rope had been lost was a Britisher not easily beaten. He sent his guides back on their tracks, and by daylight the rope had been found, where it had been carelessly dropped, upon the glacier; so that, though rather delayed, his ascent was made successfully, and the traveller returned by another route to Ferpècle. We, after having decided that the sick man was safe enough and fast asleep, found our way with difficulty in the dark, except for lanterns, across the glacier, whereon we wandered nearly three hours, and Xaver refreshed himself by falling into a big water bath. Finally we had to stay at Staffel Alp instead of at our hotel at Zermatt. But we here enjoyed a sound refreshing sleep all night, and walked down cheerfully in the sunlight of the early morning.

As the Weisshorn was to be our next peak we took train one afternoon to Randa and climbed up the Schalliberg some hours to the rocks below the ruined hut. This was a warm sleeping place, though rather exposed, where we slept well beneath the stars, woke up quite fresh, and enjoyed the climb immensely. On the rock arête at about 12,000 feet up, and while the dawn was lighting the peaks around, a dense black cloud appeared over Italy slowly moving towards the Matterhorn; lightning came flashing out of it every few seconds. It was a strange sight to witness this storm-cloud bursting over a distant land, while all about us the sky was clear and the stars were seen fading before the rising sun. A climber has related his experience in a thunderstorm which stopped him on the Dent Blanche, when the electric current made his goggles hiss upon his head. The hissing of the ice axe is generally near enough for an unpleasant sensation, and is not a rare occurrence, but the snow glasses being affected makes a more powerful appeal to the imagination. We had a good day on the Weisshorn (14,804 feet), and rested at the gîte on the rocks as we descended, then later had a refreshing tea at Randa, where we heard the first sad news of the loss of life that morning upon the Täschhorn just opposite us. A party of four, two gentlemen and two guides, trying to traverse the Täschhorn from Saas Fée to Randa, got benighted in the descent. By light of a lantern they got to a point of comparative safety where all four lay down to sleep, but only three woke up; Mr. Lucas had wandered off in the night and fallen over a precipice, where his body was found in the morning.

At Zermatt, though the hotels seem crowded, there are not many climbers, they go up higher or appear only for a day and off again. The place is full of people—omnibuses run over you in the streets—and you may be there some time before you notice that Mdlle. Biner has now started a cabin near the Monte Rosa and shaves you as well as ever, advertising herself as a coiffeuse. She is dressed in black, mourning for her brother, the guide killed this year with young Seiler on the Matterhorn. Just up the street is a tailleuse, a useful person sometimes after climbing rocks, and when your wardrobe is scanty.

Leaving Zermatt we spent one night at the Schwarzsee Hotel, close to the Matterhorn, intending to cross over into Italy by the Furgg-joch—this pass skirts the Matterhorn; we climbed to the top in about two and a half hours; starting from our inn at 4, we arrived at Valtournanche about 10 A.M. Then taking a carriage after a long rest and refreshment, our driver just made us miss the train at Châtillon, when the Italian sun was at its hottest; we had a siesta and dined there, and so in the evening to Aosta, where we slept the night. We took places in the diligence to Courmayeur next morning, and saw Mont Blanc before us in a few hours. The Aiguille Blanche de Péteret is well seen from the road, a sad reminder to all Cambridge men of Dr. Frank Balfour, who perished on that mountain in 1882. It has been climbed by Sir Seymour King, and again this year by Dr. Güssfeldt with Emile Rey as guide. Six hundred francs is said to have been paid as fee for guidance.

We were up early for an eight hours’ climb, with a final rock scramble to the Italian Quintino Sella club hut on the Aiguille Grise (11,812 feet). Here we had good food and sleep; our men went out for an hour and cut steps up a steep ice slope, ready for the ascent of Mont Blanc in the morning. As this ice slope appeared to be dangerous from falling stones, we began early, and were greatly helped by the steps already cut; if any stones came down we were not aware of them, though out of sight is not out of mind in these steep places.

The weather when we began our climb in the dusk before the day broke was very threatening, and later on a light fall of snow and hail gave us anxiety, as we clambered up the steep rocks, lest we should be driven back to our hut, the difficulty and danger of such a repulse increasing every hour until it was necessary to go on and make the ascent whatever befell us.

We passed on the higher rocks an enormous rusty ice axe of an ancient pattern, which doubtless has a story; we left it on the spot for others to wonder at. We made the ascent in about eight hours, including halts, and I stood on the highest point in these Alps—the great snow summit of Mont Blanc—15,780 feet. But let us not be proud, the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, is nearly twice as high.

On the curve of snow at the highest point a huge timber skeleton of a building is erected; heavy beams as thick as my body, strongly fixed together, make a truncated pyramid with a rectangular base, which looks as if it might stand the storms, or get buried in snow. At present the wind whistles through, and it presents no surface to the blast. M. Vallot, who is building this for an observatory, has had to plant the foundations in ice, finding no rock after thirty feet excavation. Whether the ice will move, or piled up snow will displace the structure, remains to be proved. Snow collects always more on the north (French) aspect of the summit, and this tendency to collect may be increased by the obstruction. The workmen stated at Chamounix that plum stones were found at a depth of twenty feet, and if this be true it is exceedingly interesting and important as showing that these stones, which must have been dropped on the summit by travellers, had maintained their verticalness, and had not been carried down towards the glaciers below. There the hut stands at present with a small tricolour flag floating alongside. My vulgar wish to climb the timbers was unexpressed and unfulfilled. We were shut in completely by dark fog. Cold wind and the dangers of storm drove us down to just below the top on the Chamounix side, where there is a hut built as an observatory. This shelter we feared at first to leave; wind and darkness kept us there, no tracks were visible, nor anything to guide us but the snow all round. The wind was not the dangerous (south) Föhn wind, and presently, after a cold blast, we were able for a moment to see our direction; then by the advice of our guides we hurried down over the Grand Plateau, scuttling and sliding to the Grands Mulets, and safety, in two hours and ten minutes. After a cup of tea and a rest we continued our journey over the beautiful glacier des Bossons in bright sunshine. We reached Couttet’s capital hotel in Chamounix at six o’clock, thus traversing Mont Blanc from Italy into France in fourteen hours, including halts by the way. This is a far finer expedition than up and down from Chamounix, but is not so popular, and the traveller, bringing with him foreign guides into the place, is not saluted by a salvo of artillery.