occasion had failed ignominiously. I had not advanced a yard beyond
my predecessors. Up to the height of nearly thirteen thousand feet
there were no extraordinary difficulties: the way so far might even
become "a matter of amusement." Only eighteen hundred feet remained,
but they were as yet untrodden, and might present the most formidable
obstacles. No man could expect to climb them by himself. A morsel of
rock only seven feet high might at any time defeat him if it were
perpendicular. Such a place might be possible to two, or a bagatelle to
three men. It was evident that a party should consist of three men at
least. But where could the other two men be obtained? Carrel was the
only man who exhibited any enthusiasm in the matter, and he in 1861 had
absolutely refused to go unless the party consisted of at least _four_
persons. Want of men made the difficulty, not the mountain.
The weather became bad again, so I went to Zermatt on the chance of
picking up a man, and remained there during a week of storms. Not one
of the good men, however, could be induced to come, and I returned to
Breuil on the 17th, hoping to combine the skill of Carrel with the
willingness of Meynet on a new attempt by the same route as before;
for the Hörnli ridge, which I had examined in the mean time, seemed
to be entirely impracticable. Both men were inclined to go, but their
ordinary occupations prevented them from starting at once.
My tent had been left rolled up at the second platform, and whilst
waiting for the men it occurred to me that it might have been blown
away during the late stormy weather; so I started off on the 18th to
see if this were so or not. The way was by this time familiar, and
I mounted rapidly, astonishing the friendly herdsmen,--who nodded
recognition as I flitted past them and the cows,--for I was alone,
because no man was available. But more deliberation was necessary
when the pastures were passed and climbing began, for it was needful
to mark each step in case of mist or surprise by night. It is one of
the few things which can be said in favor of mountaineering alone (a
practice which has little besides to commend it) that it awakens a
man's faculties and makes him observe. When one has no arms to help
and no head to guide him except his own, he must needs take note even
of small things, for he cannot afford to throw away a chance; and so
it came to pass upon my solitary scramble, when above the snow-line
and beyond the ordinary limits of flowering plants, when peering about
noting angles and landmarks, that my eyes fell upon the tiny straggling
plants,--oftentimes a single flower on a single stalk,--pioneers of
vegetation, atoms of life in a world of desolation, which had found
their way up--who can tell how?--from far below, and were obtaining
bare sustenance from the scanty soil in protected nooks; and it gave a
new interest to the well-known rocks to see what a gallant fight the
survivors made (for many must have perished in the attempt) to ascend
the great mountain. The gentian, as one might have expected, was there,
but it was run close by saxifrages and by _Linaria alpina_, and was
beaten by _Thlaspi rotundifolium_; which latter plant was the highest
I was able to secure, although it too was overtopped by a little white
flower which I knew not and was unable to reach....
Time sped away unregarded, and the little birds which had built their
nests on the neighboring cliffs had begun to chirp their evening hymn
before I thought of returning. Half mechanically, I turned to the
tent, unrolled it and set it up: it contained food enough for several
days, and I resolved to stay over the night. I had started from Breuil
without provisions or telling Favre, the innkeeper, who was accustomed
to my erratic ways, where I was going. I returned to the view. The
sun was setting, and its rosy rays, blending with the snowy blue, had
thrown a pale, pure violet far as the eye could see; the valleys were
drowned in a purple gloom, while the summits shone with unnatural
brightness; and as I sat in the door of the tent and watched the
twilight change to darkness, the earth seemed to become less earthly
and almost sublime: the world seemed dead, and I its sole inhabitant.
By and by the moon, as it rose, brought the hills again into sight,
and by a judicious repression of detail rendered the view yet more
magnificent. Something in the south hung like a great glow-worm in the
air: it was too large for a star, and too steady for a meteor, and
it was long before I could realize the incredible fact that it was
the moonlight glittering on the great snow-slope on the north side of
Monte Viso, at a distance, as the crow flies, of ninety-eight miles.
Shivering, at last I entered the tent and made my coffee. The night was
passed comfortably, and the next morning, tempted by the brilliancy of
the weather, I proceeded yet higher in search of another place for a
platform....
The rocks of the southwest ridge are by no means difficult for some
distance above the Col du Lion. This is true of the rocks up to the
level of the Chimney, but they steepen when that is passed, and
remaining smooth and with but few fractures, and still continuing to
dip outward, present some steps of a very uncertain kind, particularly
when they are glazed with ice. At this point (just above the Chimney)
the climber is obliged to follow the southern (or Breuil) side of the
ridge, but in a few feet more one must turn over to the northern (or
Z'Mutt) side, where in most years Nature kindly provides a snow-slope.
When this is surmounted, one can again return to the crest of the
ridge, and follow it by easy rocks to the foot of the Great Tower. This
was the highest point attained by Mr. Hawkins in 1860, and it was also
our highest on the 9th of July.
[Illustration: KLEINE SCHEIDEGG (THE JUNGFRAU)]
This Great Tower is one of the most striking features of the ridge.
It stands out like a turret at the angle of a castle. Behind it a
battlemented wall leads upward to the citadel. Seen from the Théodule
pass, it looks only an insignificant pinnacle, but as one approaches
it (on the ridge), so it seems to rise, and when one is at its base
it completely conceals the upper parts of the mountain. I found here
a suitable place for the tent, which, although not so well protected
as the second platform, possessed the advantage of being three hundred
feet higher up; and fascinated by the wildness of the cliffs, and
enticed by the perfection of the weather, I went on to see what was
behind.
The first step was a difficult one: the ridge became diminished to the
least possible width, it was hard to keep one's balance, and just where
it was narrowest a more than perpendicular mass barred the way. Nothing
fairly within arm's reach could be laid hold of: it was necessary to
spring up, and then to haul one's self over the sharp edge by sheer
strength. Progression directly upward was then impossible. Enormous
and appalling precipices plunged down to the Tiefenmatten glacier on
the left, but round the right-hand side it was just possible to go.
One hinderance then succeeded another, and much time was consumed in
seeking the way. I have a vivid recollection of a gully of more than
usual perplexity at the side of the Great Tower, with minute ledges
and steep walls; of the ledges dwindling down, and at last ceasing; of
finding myself, with arms and legs divergent, fixed as if crucified,
pressing against the rock, and feeling each rise and fall of my chest
as I breathed; of screwing my head round to look for a hold and not
seeing any, and of jumping sideways on to the other side....
[The gully] was an untrodden vestibule, which led to a scene so wild
that even the most sober description of it must seem an exaggeration.
There was a change in the quality of the rock, and there was a change
in the appearance of the ridge. The rocks (talcose gneiss) below this
spot were singularly firm,--it was rarely necessary to test one's
hold: the way led over the living rock, and not up rent-off fragments.
But here all was decay and ruin. The crest of the ridge was shattered
and cleft, and the feet sank in the chips which had drifted down;
while above, huge blocks, hacked and carved by the hand of time,
nodded to the sky, looking like the gravestones of giants. Out of
curiosity I wandered to a notch in the ridge, between two tottering
piles of immense masses which seemed to need but a few pounds on one
or the other side to make them fall, so nicely poised that they would
literally have rocked in the wind, for they were put in motion by a
touch, and based on support so frail that I wondered they did not
collapse before my eyes. In the whole range of my Alpine experience
I have seen nothing more striking than this desolate, ruined, and
shattered ridge at the back of the Great Tower. I have seen stranger
shapes,--rocks which mimic the human form, with monstrous leering
faces, and isolated pinnacles sharper and greater than any here,--but I
have never seen exhibited so impressively the tremendous effects which
may be produced by frost, and by the long-continued action of forces
whose individual effects are imperceptible.
It is needless to say that it is impossible to climb by the crest of
the ridge at this part; still, one is compelled to keep near to it, for
there is no other way. Generally speaking, the angles on the Matterhorn
are too steep to allow the formation of considerable beds of snow, but
here there is a corner which permits it to accumulate, and it is turned
to gratefully, for by its assistance one can ascend four times as
rapidly as upon the rocks.
The Tower was now almost out of sight, and I looked over the central
Pennine Alps to the Grand Combin and to the chain of Mont Blanc.
My neighbor, the Dent d'Hérens, still rose above me, although but
slightly, and the height which had been attained could be measured by
its help. So far, I had no doubts about my capacity to descend that
which had been ascended; but in a short time, on looking ahead, I
saw that the cliffs steepened, and I turned back (without pushing on
to them and getting into inextricable difficulties), exulting in the
thought that they would be passed when we returned together, and that I
had without assistance got nearly to the height of the Dent d'Hérens,
and considerably higher than any one had been before. My exultation was
a little premature.
About five P.M. I left the tent again, and thought myself as good as
at Breuil. The friendly rope and claw had done good service, and had
smoothed all the difficulties. I lowered myself through the Chimney,
however, by making a fixture of the rope, which I then cut off and
left behind, as there was enough and to spare. My axe had proved a
great nuisance in coming down, and I left it in the tent. It was
not attached to the bâton, but was a separate affair,--an old navy
boarding-axe. While cutting up the different snow-beds on the ascent,
the bâton trailed behind fastened to the rope; and when climbing the
axe was carried behind, run through the rope tied round my waist, and
was sufficiently out of the way, but in descending, when coming down
face outward (as is always best where it is possible), the head or the
handle of the weapon caught frequently against the rocks, and several
times nearly upset me. So, out of laziness if you will, it was left in
the tent. I paid dearly for the imprudence.
The Col du Lion was passed, and fifty yards more would have placed me
on the "Great Staircase," down which one can run. But on arriving at
an angle of the cliffs of the Tête du Lion, while skirting the upper
edge of the snow which abuts against them, I found that the heat of the
two past days had nearly obliterated the steps which had been cut when
coming up. The rocks happened to be impracticable just at this corner,
so nothing could be done except make the steps afresh. The snow was too
hard to beat or tread down, and at the angle it was all but ice: half a
dozen steps only were required, and then the ledges could be followed
again. So I held to the rock with my right hand, and prodded at the
snow with the point of my stick until a good step was made, and then,
leaning round the angle, did the same for the other side. So far well,
but in attempting to pass the corner (to the present moment I cannot
tell how it happened) I slipped and fell.
The slope was steep on which this took place, and descended to the top
of a gully that led down through two subordinate buttresses towards
the Glacier du Lion, which was just seen, a thousand feet below. The
gully narrowed and narrowed until there was a mere thread of snow
lying between two walls of rock, which came to an abrupt termination
at the top of a precipice that intervened between it and the glacier.
Imagine a funnel cut in half through its length, placed at an angle
of forty-five degrees, with its point below and its concave side
uppermost, and you will have a fair idea of the place.
The knapsack brought my head down first, and I pitched into some rocks
about a dozen feet below: they caught something, and tumbled me off
the edge, head over heels, into the gully. The bâton was dashed from
my hands, and I whirled downward in a series of bounds, each longer
than the last,--now over ice, now into rocks,--striking my head four
or five times, each time with increased force. The last bound sent me
spinning through the air, in a leap of fifty or sixty feet, from one
side of the gully to the other, and I struck the rocks, luckily, with
the whole of my left side. They caught my clothes for a moment, and I
fell back on to the snow with motion arrested: my head fortunately came
the right side up, and a few frantic catches brought me to a halt in
the neck of the gully and on the verge of the precipice. Bâton, hat,
and veil skimmed by and disappeared, and the crash of the rocks which I
had started, as they fell on to the glacier, told how narrow had been
the escape from utter destruction. As it was, I fell nearly two hundred
feet in seven or eight bounds. Ten feet more would have taken me in one
gigantic leap of eight hundred feet on to the glacier below.
The situation was still sufficiently serious. The rocks could not be
left go for a moment, and the blood was spurting out of more than
twenty cuts. The most serious ones were in the head, and I vainly
tried to close them with one hand while holding on with the other. It
was useless: the blood jerked out in blinding jets at each pulsation.
At last, in a moment of inspiration, I kicked out a big lump of snow
and stuck it as a plaster on my head. The idea was a happy one, and
the flow of blood diminished: then, scrambling up, I got, not a
moment too soon, to a place of safety and fainted away. The sun was
setting when consciousness returned, and it was pitch dark before the
Great Staircase was descended; but by a combination of luck and care
the whole four thousand eight hundred feet of descent to Breuil was
accomplished without a slip or once missing the way.
I slunk past the cabin of the cowherds, who were talking and laughing
inside, utterly ashamed of the state to which I had been brought by my
imbecility, and entered the inn stealthily, wishing to escape to my
room unnoticed. But Favre met me in the passage, demanded, "Who is it?"
screamed with fright when he got a light, and aroused the household.
Two dozen heads then held solemn council over mine, with more talk than
action. The natives were unanimous in recommending that hot wine (syn.
vinegar), mixed with salt, should be rubbed into the cuts. I protested,
but they insisted. It was all the doctoring they received. Whether
their rapid healing was to be attributed to that simple remedy or to a
good state of health, is a question; they closed up remarkably soon,
and in a few days I was able to move again....
As it seldom happens that one survives such a fall, it may be
interesting to record what my sensations were during its occurrence. I
was perfectly conscious of what was happening, and felt each blow, but,
like a patient under chloroform, experienced no pain. Each blow was,
naturally, more severe than that which preceded it, and I distinctly
remember thinking, "Well, if the next is harder still, that will be
the end!" Like persons who have been rescued from drowning, I remember
that the recollection of a multitude of things rushed through my head,
many of them trivialities or absurdities which had been forgotten long
before; and, more remarkable, this bounding through space did not
feel disagreeable. But I think that in no very great distance more
consciousness as well as sensation would have been lost, and upon that
I base my belief, improbable as it seems, that death by a fall from a
great height is as painless an end as can be experienced.
The battering was very rough, yet no bones were broken. The most severe
cuts were, one four inches long on the top of the head, and another of
three inches on the right temple; this latter bled frightfully. There
was a formidable-looking cut, of about the same size as the last, on
the palm of the left hand, and every limb was grazed or cut more or
less seriously. The tips of the ears were taken off, and a sharp rock
cut a circular bit out of the side of the left boot, sock, and ankle at
one stroke. The loss of blood, although so great, did not seem to be
permanently injurious. The only serious effect has been the reduction
of a naturally retentive memory to a very commonplace one; and although
my recollections of more distant occurrences remain unshaken, the
events of that particular day would be clean gone but for the few notes
which were written down before the accident.
A TYPICAL DUTCH CITY.
EDMONDO DE AMICIS.
[De Amicis, a traveller of Italian birth, has given us a number
of highly interesting records of travel, including works on
Algeria, Spain, Holland, Paris, Constantinople, etc. Among these,
"Holland and its People" is perhaps the most entertaining, and
as a specimen of its manner we select from it the description of
Rotterdam, as a typical example of a Dutch city. This selection
is from the translation by Caroline Tilton, published by G. P.
Putnam's Sons.]
When we arrived in sight of Rotterdam it rained and was foggy; we
could see, as through a veil, only an immense confusion of ships,
houses, windmills, towers, trees, and people in motion on the dykes and
bridges; there were lights everywhere; a great city with such an aspect
as I had never seen before, and which fog and darkness soon hid from me
altogether. When I had taken leave of my travelling companions, and had
put my luggage in order, it was night. "So much the better," I thought,
as I entered a carriage; "I shall see the first Dutch city by night,
which must be a strange spectacle." And, indeed, when M. Bismarck was
at Rotterdam he wrote to his wife that at night he saw spectres on the
roofs.
It is difficult to make much of the city of Rotterdam, entering it
at night. The carriage passed almost immediately over a bridge that
resounded hollowly beneath it; and while I thought myself, and was, in
fact, within the city, I saw with amazement on my right and left two
rows of ships vanishing in the gloom.
Leaving the bridge, we passed through a street, lighted, and full of
people, and found ourselves upon another bridge, and between two rows
of vessels as before, and so on from bridge to street, from street to
bridge, and, to increase the confusion, an illumination of lamps at
the corners of houses, lanterns on masts of ships, light-houses on the
bridges, small lights under the houses, and all these lights reflected
in the water. All at once the carriage stopped, people crowded about;
I looked out and saw a bridge in the air. In answer to my question,
some one said that a vessel was passing. We went on again, seeing a
perspective of canals and bridges crossing and recrossing each other,
until we came to a great square, sparkling with lights, and bristling
with masts of ships, and finally we reached our inn in an adjacent
street.
My first care on entering my room was to see whether Dutch cleanliness
deserved its fame. It did, indeed, and may be called the religion of
cleanliness. The linen was snow-white, the windows transparent as the
air, the furniture shining like a crystal, the floors so clean that a
microscope could not discover a black speck. There was a basket for
waste paper, a tablet for scratching matches, a dish for cigar-ashes, a
box for cigar-stumps, a spittoon, and a boot-jack; in short, there was
no possible pretext for soiling anything.
My room examined, I spread a map of Rotterdam upon the table, and made
some preparatory studies for the morrow.
It is a singular thing that the great cities of Holland, although built
upon a shifting soil, and amid difficulties of every kind, have all
great regularity of form. Amsterdam is a semicircle, the Hague square,
Rotterdam an equilateral triangle. The base of the triangle is an
immense dyke, which defends the city from the Meuse, and is called the
Boompjes, signifying, in Dutch, small trees, from a row of little elms,
now very tall, that were planted when it was first constructed.
Another great dyke forms a second bulwark against the river, which
divides the city into two almost equal parts, and from the middle of
the left side to the opposite angle. That part of Rotterdam which is
comprised between the dykes is all canals, islands, and bridges, and
is the new city; that which extends beyond the second dyke is the old
city. Two great canals extend along the other two sides of the town to
the apex, where they meet, and receive the waters of the river Rotte,
which, with the affix of _dam_, or dyke, gives its name to the city.
Having thus fulfilled my conscientious duty as a traveller, and with
many precautions not to soil, even by a breath, the purity of that
jewel of a chamber, I abandoned myself with humility to my first Dutch
bed.
Dutch beds--I speak of those in the hotels--are generally short and
wide, and occupied, in a great part, by an immense feather pillow in
which a giant's head would be overwhelmed. I may add that the ordinary
light is a copper candlestick, of the size of a dinner-plate, which
might sustain a torch, but holds, instead, a tiny candle about the size
of a Spanish lady's finger.
In the morning I made haste to rise and issue forth into the strange
streets, unlike anything in Europe. The first I saw was the Hoog
Straat, a long, straight thoroughfare, running along the interior dyke.
The unplastered houses, of every shade of brick, from the darkest
red to light rose-color, chiefly two windows wide and two stories
high, have the front wall rising above and concealing the roof, and
in the shape of a blunt triangle surmounted by a parapet. Some of
these pointed façades rise into two curves, like a long neck without
a head; some are cut into steps like the houses that children build
with blocks; some present the aspect of a conical pavilion, some of a
village church, some of theatrical cabins. The parapets are in general
surrounded by white stripes, coarse arabesques in plaster, and other
ornaments in very bad taste; the doors and windows are bordered by
broad white stripes; other white lines divide the different stories;
the spaces between the doors in front are marked by white wooden
panels, so that two colors, white and red, prevail everywhere, and
as in the distance the darker red looks black, the prospect is half
festive, half funereal, all the houses looking as if they were hung
with white linen. At first I had an inclination to laugh, for it seemed
impossible that it could have been done seriously, and that quite
sober people lived in those houses. They looked as if they had been
run up for a festival, and would presently disappear, like the paper
frame-work of a grand display of fireworks.
While I stood looking vaguely at the street, I noticed one house that
puzzled me somewhat; and, thinking that my eyes had been deceived,
I looked more carefully at it, and compared it with its neighbors.
Turning into the next street, the same thing met my astonished gaze.
There is no doubt about it: the whole city of Rotterdam presents the
appearance of a town that has been shaken smartly by an earthquake, and
is on the point of falling into ruin.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL DUTCH WINDMILL]