Part 1 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: The complete disguise]
The alternations of heat and cold are rapid and severe in all high mountain ranges, and it is folly to go about too lightly clad. Woollen gloves ought always to be in the mountaineer's pocket, for in a single hour, or less, he may experience a fall in temperature of sixty to eighty degrees. But in respect to the nature of the clothing there is little to be said beyond that it should be composed of flannels and woollens.
Upon the important subject of boots much might be written. My friends are generally surprised to find that I use elastic-side boots whilst mountaineering, and condemn them under the false impression that they will not give support to the ankles, and will be pulled off when one is traversing deep snow. I have invariably used elastic-side boots on my mountain expeditions in the Alps and elsewhere, and have found that they give sufficient support to the ankles and never draw off. My Alpine boots have always been made by Norman-a maker who knows what the requirements are, and one who will give a good boot if allowed good time.
It is fully as important to have proper nails in the boots as it is to have good boots. The quant.i.ty is frequently overdone, and when there are too many they are absolutely dangerous. Ice-nails, which may be considered a variety of crampon, are an abomination. The nails should be neither too large nor too numerous, and they should be disposed everywhere irregularly-not symmetrically. They disappear one by one, from time to time; and the prudent mountaineer continually examines his boots to see that sufficient numbers are left.(3) A handkerchief tied round the foot, or even a few turns of cord, will afford a tolerable subst.i.tute when nails cannot be procured.
If the beginner supplies himself with the articles which have been named, he will be in possession of all the gear which is _necessary_ for ordinary mountain excursions, and if he uses his plant properly he will avoid many of the disagreeables which are looked upon by some as almost unavoidable accompaniments of the sport of mountaineering. I have not throughout the volume ignored the dangers which are real and unavoidable, and say distinctly that too great watchfulness cannot be exercised at great alt.i.tudes. But I say now, as I have frequently said before, that the great majority of accidents which occur to mountaineers, especially to mountaineering amateurs in the Alps, are not the result of unavoidable dangers; and that they are for the most part the product of ignorance and neglect. I consider that falling rocks are the greatest danger which a mountaineer is likely to encounter, and in concluding these prefatory remarks I especially warn the novice against the things which tumble about the ears of unwary travellers.
CHAPTER I.
On the 23d of July 1860, I started for my first tour in the Alps. As we steamed out into the Channel, Beachy Head came into view, and recalled a scramble of many years ago. With the impudence of ignorance, my brother(4) and I, schoolboys both, had tried to scale that great chalk cliff. Not the head itself-where sea-birds circle, and where the flints are ranged so orderly in parallel lines-but at a place more to the east, where the pinnacle called the Devil's Chimney had fallen down. Since that time we have been often in dangers of different kinds, but never have we more nearly broken our necks than upon that occasion.
In Paris I made two ascents. The first to the seventh floor of a house in the Quartier Latin-to an artist friend, who was engaged, at the moment of my entry, in combat with a little Jew. He hurled him with great good-will, and with considerable force, into some of his crockery, and then recommended me to go up the towers of Notre Dame. Half-an-hour later I stood on the parapet of the great west front, by the side of the leering fiend which for centuries has looked down upon the great city, and then took rail to Switzerland; saw the sunlight lingering on the giants of the Oberland; heard the echoes from the cow-horns in the Lauterbrunnen valley and the avalanches rattling off the Jungfrau; and crossed the Gemmi into the Valais.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DEVIL OF NOTRE DAME.]
I was bound for the valley of Saas, and my work took me high up the Alps on either side; far beyond the limit of trees and the tracks of tourists.
The view from the slopes of the Weissmies, on the eastern side of the valley, 5000 or 6000 feet above the village of Saas, is perhaps the finest of its kind in the Alps. The full height of the three-peaked Mischabel (the highest mountain in Switzerland) is seen at one glance; 11,000 feet of dense forests, green alps, rocky pinnacles, and glittering glaciers.
The peaks seemed to me then to be hopelessly inaccessible from this direction.
I next descended the valley to the village of Stalden, and went up the Visp Thal to Zermatt, and stopped there several days. Numerous traces of the formidable earthquake-shocks of five years before still remained; particularly at St. Nicholas, where the inhabitants had been terrified beyond measure at the destruction of their churches and houses. At this place, as well as at Visp, a large part of the population was obliged to live under canvas for several months. It is remarkable that there was hardly a life lost on this occasion, although there were about fifty shocks, some of which were very severe.
At Zermatt I wandered in many directions, but the weather was bad, and my work was much r.e.t.a.r.ded. One day, after spending a long time in attempts to sketch near the Hornli, and in futile endeavours to seize the forms of the peaks as they for a few seconds peered out from above the dense banks of woolly clouds, I determined not to return to Zermatt by the usual path, and to cross the Gorner glacier to the Riffel hotel. After a rapid scramble over the polished rocks and s...o...b..ds which skirt the base of the Theodule glacier, and wading through some of the streams which flow from it, at that time much swollen by the late rains, the first difficulty was arrived at, in the shape of a precipice about three hundred feet high. It seemed that it would be easy enough to cross the glacier if the cliff could be descended; but higher up, and lower down, the ice appeared, to my inexperienced eyes, to be impa.s.sable for a single person. The general contour of the cliff was nearly perpendicular, but it was a good deal broken up, and there was little difficulty in descending by zigzagging from one ma.s.s to another. At length there was a long slab, nearly smooth, fixed at an angle of about forty degrees between two wall-sided pieces of rock. Nothing, except the glacier, could be seen below. It was an awkward place, but I pa.s.sed it at length by lying across the slab, putting the shoulders stiffly against one side, and the feet against the other, and gradually wriggling down, by first moving the legs and then the back. When the bottom of the slab was gained a friendly crack was seen, into which the point of the baton could be stuck, and I dropped down to the next piece. It took a long time coming down that little bit of cliff, and for a few seconds it was satisfactory to see the ice close at hand. In another moment a second difficulty presented itself. The glacier swept round an angle of the cliff, and as the ice was not of the nature of treacle or thin putty, it kept away from the little bay, on the edge of which I stood. We were not widely separated, but the edge of the ice was higher than the opposite edge of rock; and worse, the rock was covered with loose earth and stones which had fallen from above. All along the side of the cliff, as far as could be seen in both directions, the ice did not touch it, but there was this marginal creva.s.se, seven feet wide, and of unknown depth.
All this was seen at a glance, and almost at once I concluded that I could not jump the creva.s.se, and began to try along the cliff lower down; but without success, for the ice rose higher and higher, until at last further progress was stopped by the cliffs becoming perfectly smooth. With an axe it would have been possible to cut up the side of the ice; without one I saw there was no alternative but to return and face the jump.
Night was approaching, and the solemn stillness of the High Alps was broken only by the sound of rus.h.i.+ng water or of falling rocks. If the jump should be successful,-well; if not, I fell into that horrible chasm, to be frozen in, or drowned in that gurgling, rus.h.i.+ng water. Everything depended on that jump. Again I asked myself, ”Can it be done?” It _must_ be. So, finding my stick was useless, I threw it and the sketch-book to the ice, and first retreating as far as possible, ran forward with all my might, took the leap, barely reached the other side, and fell awkwardly on my knees.
The glacier was crossed without further trouble, but the Riffel,(5) which was then a very small building, was crammed with tourists, and could not take me in. As the way down was unknown to me, some of the people obligingly suggested getting a man at the chalets, otherwise the path would be certainly lost in the forest. On arriving at the chalets no man could be found, and the lights of Zermatt, s.h.i.+ning through the trees, seemed to say, ”Never mind a guide, but come along down, I'll show you the way;” so off I went through the forest, going straight towards them. The path was lost in a moment, and was never recovered. I was tripped up by pine-roots, tumbled over rhododendron bushes, fell over rocks. The night was pitch dark, and after a time the lights of Zermatt became obscure, or went out altogether. By a series of slides, or falls, or evolutions more or less disagreeable, the descent through the forest was at length accomplished; but torrents of formidable character had still to be pa.s.sed before one could arrive at Zermatt. I felt my way about for hours, almost hopelessly; by an exhaustive process at last discovering a bridge, and about midnight, covered with dirt and scratches, re-entered the inn which I had quitted in the morning.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The church in difficulties]
Others besides tourists get into difficulties. A day or two afterwards, when on the way to my old station, near the Hornli, I met a stout cure who had essayed to cross the Theodule pa.s.s. His strength or his wind had failed, and he was being carried down, a helpless bundle and a ridiculous spectacle, on the back of a lanky guide; while the peasants stood by, with folded hands, their reverence for the church almost overcome by their sense of the ludicrous.
I descended the valley, diverging from the path at Randa to mount the slopes of the Dom,(6) in order to see the Weisshorn face to face. The latter mountain is the n.o.blest in Switzerland, and from this direction it looks especially magnificent. On its north there is a large snowy plateau that feeds the glacier of which a portion is seen from Randa, and which on more than one occasion has destroyed that village. From the direction of the Dom (that is, immediately opposite) this Bies glacier seems to descend nearly vertically. It does not do so, although it is very steep. Its size is much less than formerly, and the lower portion, now divided into three tails, clings in a strange, weird-like manner to the cliffs, to which it seems scarcely possible that it can remain attached.
[Ill.u.s.tration: At the St. Bernard]
Arriving once more in the Rhone valley, I proceeded to Viesch, and from thence ascended the Eggischorn; on which unpleasant eminence I lost my way in a fog, and my temper shortly afterwards. Then, after crossing the Grimsel in a severe thunderstorm, pa.s.sed on to Brienz, Interlachen, and Bern; and thence to Fribourg and Morat, Neuchatel, Martigny, and the St.
Bernard. The ma.s.sive walls of the convent were a welcome sight as I waded through the snow-beds near the summit of the pa.s.s, and pleasant also was the courteous salutation of the brother who bade me enter. He wondered at the weight of my knapsack, and I at the hardness of his bread. The saying that the monks make the toast in the winter that they give to tourists in the following season is not founded on truth; the winter is their most busy time of the year. But it _is_ true they have exercised so much hospitality, that at times they have not possessed the means to furnish the fuel for heating their chapel in the winter.(7)
Instead of descending to Aosta, I turned aside into the Val Pelline, in order to obtain views of the Dent d'Erin. The night had come on before Biona was gained, and I had to knock long and loud upon the door of the cure's house before it was opened. An old woman, with querulous voice, and with a large goitre, answered the summons, and demanded rather sharply what was wanted; but became pacific-almost good-natured-when a five-franc piece was held in her face, and she heard that lodging and supper were requested in exchange.
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