Part 10 (2/2)
From the purely athletic point of view, then, the mountaineering experience which has been gained almost exclusively in the Alps may, by a still further development in the future, enable the climber so to develop the art that he may reach the highest elevation on this worlds crust; and he may do this without running undue risk. _Cui bono?_ it may be asked; and it is nearly as hard to answer the question as it is to explain to the supine and unaspiring person the good that may be expected to accrue to humanity by reaching the North Pole; yet the latter project, albeit to some it seems like a struggle of man against physical forces which make or mar worlds, is one that is held to be right and proper to be followed. At the least an observer, even of limited powers, may reasonably be expected, supposing he accomplished such a feat as the ascent of Mount Everest, to bring back results of equal scientific value with the arctic traveller, while the purely geographical information he should gain would have fiftyfold greater practical value. The art and science of mountaineering has been learned and developed in the Alps, and the acquirement of this learning has been a pleasure to many. If the holiday nature of mountaineering should in the future be somewhat dropped, and if a few of those who follow should take up the more serious side, and make what has been a pastime into a profession (and why should not some do so? That which is worth doing at all is worth developing to the utmost possible limit), good will come, unless it be argued that there is no gain in extending geographical knowledge; and no advantage in rectifying surveys and rendering them as accurate as possible. As has been remarked by Mr.
Douglas Freshfield, the advantage of including in survey parties, such as are still engaged on our Indian frontier, the services of some who have made mountaineering a branch to be learnt in their profession, would be very distinct. Work done in the Alps would, in this direction, perhaps, bear the best fruit and reap the highest practical value which it might be hoped to attain. The value would be real. The search after truth, whether it be in the fields of natural science, of geography, or its to-be-adopted sister orography, can never fail to be right and good and beneficial.
Enthusiasm all this! you say. Granted freely. Without some enthusiasm and energy the world would cease to turn, and the r.e.t.a.r.ding section of mankind would be triumphant, save that they would be too languid to realise the victory of their principles.
But still, if properly qualified men are to be forthcoming to meet such a want, which undoubtedly seems to exist, the old training-ground must not be deserted; the playground of Europe must be regarded in relation to serious work in the same light that the playing-fields of Eton were regarded by one who was somewhat of an authority. The Great Dukes remark is too well known to need quotation. English folk may find it hard to hold their own against their near relations in athletic pursuits, such as cricket and sculling, but in mountaineering they undoubtedly lead, and will continue to do so. In one phase indeed of the pursuit their supremacy is menaced. In the matter of recognising the practical value to be obtained from mountaineering in surveying and the like, they are already behind other countries. The roll of honorary members of the Alpine Club comprises a list of men, most of whom have utilised their mountaineering experience to good purpose in advancing scientific exploration. In this department it is to be hoped that we shall not suffer ourselves to be outstripped, nor allow a store of valuable and laboriously acquired experience to remain wasted. The threatening cloud may pa.s.s off; the future of Alpine mountaineering may not prove to be so gloomy as it sometimes seems to the writer in danger of gradually becoming. The depression is, possibly, only temporary, and a natural consequence of reaction; and the zigzagging line on the chart, though it may never perhaps rise again to the point it once marked, yet may keep well at the normalbetter, perhaps, at such a level than at fever heat. The old cry that we know so well on the mountains, that meets always with a ready thrill of response, may acquire a wider significance, and men will be found to answer to the familiar call of Vorwrts, immer vorwrts!
After all, a century hence the mountaineering centres of to-day will perhaps still attract as they do now. It may be possible to get to Chamouni without submitting to the elaborately devised discomfort of the present Channel pa.s.sage, and without the terrors of asphyxiation in the carriages of the Chemin de Fer du Nord. Surely the charm of the mountains must always draw men to the Alps, even though the glaciers may have shrunk up and sunk down, though places like Arolla and the Grimsel may have become thriving towns, or radical changes such as a drainage system at Chamouni have been inst.i.tuted. If the glaciers do shrink, there will be all the more scope for the rock climber and the more opportunity of perfecting an art which has already been so much developed.
(M147)
A Rip van Winkle of our day, waking up in that epoch of the future, would for certain find much that was unaltered. The same types of humanity would be around him. Conceive this somnolent hero of fiction, clad in a felt wideawake that had once been white, in knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket, of which the seams had at one time held together, supporting his bent frame and creaking joints on a staff with rusted spike and pick. He descends laboriously from a vehicle that had jolted impartially generations before him (for the carriages of the valley are as little liable to wear out, in the eyes of their proprietors, as the wonderful one-hoss shay). He finds himself on a summer evening by the Htel de Ville at Chamouni, and facing the newly erected Opera-house. He looks with wondering eyes around. A youth (great-great-great-great-grandson of Jacques Balmat) approaches and waits respectfully by his side, ready to furnish information.
Why these flags and these rejoicings? the old man asks.
To celebrate the tercentenary of the first ascent of Mont Blanc, the boy answers.
The veteran gazes around, shading his eyes with his shrivelled hand. The travellers come in. First a triumphal procession of successful and intrepid mountaineers. Banners wave, cannon go offor more probably miss firebouquets are displayed, champagne and compliments are poured out; both the latter expressions of congratulation equally ga.s.sy, and both about equally genuine.
Who are these? the old man inquires.
Do you not see the number on their banner? answers the youth; they are the heroes of the forty-fifth section of the tenth branch of the northern division of the Savoy Alpine Club.
Ah! the old man murmurs to himself, with a sigh of recollection, I can remember that they were numerous even in my day.
Then follows a sad-looking, dejected creature, stealing back to his hotel by byways, but with face bronzed from exposure on rocks, not scorched by sun-reflecting snow; his boots scored with mult.i.tudinous little cuts and scratches telling of difficult climbing; his hands as brown as his face; his finger-nails, it must be admitted, seriously impaired in their symmetry.
And who is this? Has he been guilty of some crime? the old man asks.
Not so, the answer comes; he has just completed the thousandth ascent of the Aiguille...; he comes of a curious race which, history relates, at one time much frequented these districts; but that was a great while agolong before the monarchy was re-established. You do well to look at him; that is the last of the climbing Englishmen. They always seem depressed when they have succeeded in achieving their ambition of the moment; it is a characteristic of their now almost extinct race.
(M148)
And what about the perils of the expedition? the old man asks, brightening up a little as if some old ideas had suddenly flashed across his mind. I would fain know whether the journey is different now from what it was formerly; yet the heroes would mock me, perchance, if I were to interrogate them.
Not at all, the youth replies. There are but few of the first party who would not vouchsafe to give you a full account, and might even in their courtesy embellish the narrative with flowers of rhetoric. But it is unnecessary. They will print a detailed and full description of their exploits. It has all been said before, but so has everything else, I think.
That is true, the old man murmurs to himself; it was even so in my time, and two hundred years before I lived a French writer commenced his book with the remark, _Tout est dit._ But what of the other, the dejected survivor? does he not too write?
Yes, indeed, but not in the same strain; he will but pour out a little gentle sarcasm and native spleen, in mild criticism of the fulsome periods he peruses in other tongues.
Ah me! thinks the old man, in one respect then I need not prove so much behind the time. If the memory of the Alpine literature of my day were still fresh, I could hold mine own with those I see around.
May I be permitted, in conclusion, to come back to our own day, and to say a very few words on the subject of mountaineering accidents? Most heartily would I concur with any one who raised the objection that such remarks are out of place in a chapter on the mountaineering of the future. But perhaps we have been looking too far ahead, and there may be a period to follow between this our time and the future to be hoped for.
(M149)
It has sometimes been stated and written that no one desires to remove from mountaineering all danger. The dangers of mountaineering have been divided by a well-known authority into real and imaginary. The supposed existence of the latter is, I grant, desirable, especially to the inexperienced climber; but I shall always contend that it ought to be the great object of every votary of the pursuit to minimise the former to the utmost of his ability. Now, it is only by true experiencethat is, by learning gradually the art of mountaineeringthat the climber will achieve this result. Few of those unacquainted with the subject can have any idea of the extraordinary difference between the risk run on a difficult expedition (that is, on one where difficulties occur: the name of the peak or pa.s.s has little to do with the matter) by a practised mountaineer who has learned something of the art, and an inexperienced climber who has nothing but the best intentions to a.s.sist his steps. The man of experience bears always in mind the simple axioms and rules of his craft; if he does not he is a bad mountaineer. If the plain truth be told, accidents in the Alps have almost invariably, to whomsoever they befell, been due to breaking one or more of these same well-known rules, or, in other words, to bad mountaineering. That such is no more than a simple statement of fact a former president of the Alpine Club, Mr. C. E. Mathews, has abundantly proved.(14) Numbers of our countrymen, young and old, annually rush out to the Alps for the first time. Fired with ambition, or led on by the fascination of the pastime, with scarcely any preliminary training and no preliminary study of the subject, they at once begin to attack the more difficult peaks and pa.s.ses. Success perhaps attends their efforts. Unfit, they go up a difficult mountain, trusting practically to the ability of the guides to do their employers share of the work as well as their own.
They descend, and think to gauge their skill by the name of the expedition undertaken. The state of the weather and of the mountain determine whether such a performance be an act of simple or of culpable folly. For such the imaginary dangers are the most formidable. If they had taken the trouble to begin at the beginning, to learn the difference between the stem and stern of a boat before attempting to navigate an ironclad, they would have recognised, and profited by, the true risks run. As it is, they are probably inflated with conceit at overcoming visionary difficulties. They may make, indeed, in this way what in Alpine slang is called a good book; but by far the greater number fail to perceive that there is anything to learn. It is a pastimean amus.e.m.e.nt; they do not look beyond this. But these same climbers would admit that in other forms of sport, such as cricket or rowing, proficiency is not found in beginners. It is in the study and development of the amus.e.m.e.nt that the true and deeper pleasure is to be found. A tyro in cricket would make himself an object of ridicule in a high-cla.s.s match; the novice in the art of rowing would be loth to display his feeble powers if thrust into a racing four with three tried oarsmen; and yet the embryo climber can see nothing absurd in attacking mountains of recognised difficulty. Inexperience in the former instances at least could cause no harm, while ignorance of the elementary principles of mountaineering renders the climber a serious source of danger not only to himself but to others. There is no royal road to the acquirement of mountaineering knowledge. It is just as difficult to use the axe or alpenstock properly as the oar or the racquet; just as much patient, persevering practice is needed; but it is not on difficult expeditions that such inexperience can be best overcome.
(M150)
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