A DETOUR TO ZERMATT
Whom should we meet at the hotel at Sion but my friend, Lady Q. She
immediately recognized me, and I had the pleasure of presenting to her
my niece and her husband. She was on her way to Zermatt and she
advised us to leave the car at Visp and take the State Railway over to
the region of the Matterhorn. That name amused Will. He asked Lady Q.
if we should not be permitted to see the original Vill of the Visp
there. Of course Lady Q., being English, saw his joke in a second and
thought it very bad, as we all did. The result of it was that we asked
her to join us on this trip. But she was expecting friends from Geneva
and therefore was obliged to forego the pleasure. So we started off
without her, but we adopted her advice. Just above Sion we had a good
view of the gorge through which rushes the turbulent Borgne coming
down from the wild Val d’Hérens. We crossed the Liène at
Saint-Léonard, and just as we reached Sierre we saw a company of
pedestrians starting off for the pleasant plateau of Montana. I have
seen it since standing up a thousand meters above the Rhône valley,
with its charming lakes reflecting the mountains beyond and its
splendid view of Mont Blanc and the Weisshorn and the heights between
them.
Sierre has its interest to the student of geology; for all around it
can be seen the remains of a tremendous rock-fall. It extended from
Pfyn almost to the mouth of the Liena. It dammed up the valley and
imprisoned the Rhône. But the Rhône, who had learned what he could do
with his mighty forces, grew more and more indignant; he swelled his
haughty breast, and, when he knew the right moment had come, he put
forth his energy and burst his way through. All the forces of the sky
helped him; the rains came to his aid, and the tempests and the sun
beat down on the snow-fields and contributed to his release. What a
sight it must have been when the rushing flood once more went roaring
down the valley! What billows, what sheets of sparkling foam, what
crashing of overturned forests and jangling of monstrous boulders
rolled along to be the wonder of succeeding ages!
Perhaps the pretty little ponds near Sierre are the relics of this
prehistoric freshet. All these regions too were haunted by the ancient
Kelts. Many warriors were killed hereabouts and were buried in graves
even now occasionally detected. I saw a beautifully designed bronze
sword which was found in one on the hill of Tevent.
Visp has three names: in French it is Viège. We admired the view up
the valley with its great snow pyramid, the Balfrin, more than twice
as high as Mount Washington. From here on Teeth become Horns; there
are any number of them: Schwarzhorn and Weisshorn and Rothorn, and
Faulhorn, and Spitzhorn and Magenhorn and Trifthorn and Mittaghorn and
Hohberghorn and the Brunegghorn and Täschhorn--all of them giants
covered with eternal snow.
We left the car at a hotel garage and took the train. Up, up we
climbed with the Visp River brawling at our left. Then crossing it we
reached Stalden between the two branches of the Visp and with superb
views. Here we were told was about the limit of the grape-culture. One
would not think that fruit could ripen so high above the sea. The
grade now and then becomes so steep that the rack and pinion has to
help the engine; there are viaducts--the one over the Mühlebach being
fifty meters high--and tunnels and long passages close to the
precipices, now running straight for a short distance, then winding
past sharp corners. The gorges of Kipfen and Selli are cluttered with
gigantic blocks of gneiss, over and among which the Visp makes its
precipitous way. Saint-Niklaus is almost sixteen hundred feet higher
than Visp, and Randa is more than a thousand feet higher than
Saint-Niklaus.
From Randa if one wanted to stop there is a convenient approach to the
Dom, which is said to be the highest mountain belonging entirely to
Switzerland. Its top is four thousand five hundred and fifty-four
meters high and it affords one of the grandest views in the Alps.
There are, however, others much more difficult; the Edelspitze on the
Gabelhorn, though four thousand feet lower, was not conquered until
1904; Professor Tyndall was the first to climb the Weisshorn. But that
was in 1861. He was nearly killed by the bombardment of rocks from
above.
Above the little hamlet of Täsch the road, after following the right
bank of the Visp, crosses it near the châlets of Zermettje, and,
gradually mounting high and higher above the river, it enters an
extraordinarily narrow defile, and, though every one is forewarned, at
the end of it comes the grand surprise--at the right the first glimpse
of the Matterhorn, or, as good Swiss like best to call it, Le Mont
Cervin--just a tantalizing glimpse, no more; but who would not
recognize it, standing up isolated and solitary like an enormously
exaggerated Indian arrow-head, or rather the flint from which it
comes?
If there is any one thing I detest in travelling it is tunnels; they
are marvellous; the skill of man in digging them, in so calculating
their direction and their level that though men start from opposite
sides of a high mountain, as they did at Mont-Cenis, at the
Loetschberg, at the Simplon, and at all the other great
mountain-bores, is beyond all praise; but practically they shut one
off from the light and the wide horizons.
We were landed safely at Zermatt and for two days we had most perfect
views of that wonderful valley and its king of mountains. Here is
the story of its conquest. Until 1858 it was regarded as
unapproachable--in every sense of the word. But man is never satisfied
with the eternal negative. For seven years the battle was waged, and,
at last, in July, 1865, Edward Whymper, Lord Francis Douglas, David
Hadow and Charles Hudson, with three guides, succeeded in attaining
the top. Whymper related the story of the campaign in a volume.
[Illustration: LE MONT CERVIN.]
A high price was paid for the success. Every one knows that it is
easier to climb than it is to descend. This is particularly true of
mountain-excursions. There is a buoyant exhilaration in mounting,
especially for the first time; but in addition to the physical
difficulties of the descent there is the anticlimax which is moral; so
that often the last miles of the descent are sheer agony. “While
during an enthusiastic ascent the hope of a steadily nearing goal
lifts the climber over all difficulties, in descending only the
difficulties remain, while the fatigue increases and the interest
diminishes.”
In descending the Matterhorn Hadow lost his footing, and tumbled
against Croz, who, not being prepared, lost his. They took with them
Lord Francis and Hudson. Had not the rope to which they were attached
broken probably Whymper and the two guides Taugwalder, father and son,
would have all lost their lives. The survivors could see the doomed
four struggling vainly to stop the terrible glissade. Then they
disappeared over the precipice. Three of them fell on the Cervin
glacier four thousand feet below; Lord Francis Douglas’s body was
never recovered. Bringing the tragedy in their hearts the other three
safely reached Zermatt.
Three days later Jean Antoine Carrel and Jean Baptiste Bich reached
the top from the Italian side and they were followed by Professor
Tyndall, who went up by the Breuil route and came down to Zermatt. He
also wrote an account of it and one of the _pics_ was named for him.
That was in 1868, and since then, though it is still the most
dangerous of the larger peaks, it has been attained by hundreds. In
1867 a young girl, the daughter of J. B. Carrel, reached within less
than a hundred meters of the top, and the point where she was blocked
has been named for her Le Col de Félicité. Miss Lucy Walker, of
England, was the first woman to master the peak. She went up from the
Zermatt side, returning the same way, July 22, 1871. Miss Brevoort, an
American, was the first woman to make what is called the “traverse”
from Switzerland to Italy; that was also in 1871.
The year before, Javelle, with only one guide, Nicolas Kubel, reached
the top by remarkable good fortune, for no other ascent was made that
whole year. At the edge of the Gorner glacier they found a bunch of
Alpine roses, the highest arborescent vegetation they encountered.
Like many other persons, Javelle supposed that Mont Cervin was “a
simple giant pyramid unique in the boldness of its form, the hugeness
of its bulk, the pride of its isolation.” It is really, as Mr.
Coolidge says, “the butt end of a long ridge,” and not an isolated
mass rising above a glacial plateau. When they reached the arête
connecting the Hörnli with the base of the Cervin they rested for an
hour.
When they reached the first wall of the pyramid a fierce north wind
began to blow, but they scaled the rocks and then had to walk along an
icy arête. When they got about half-way “the sound of a dull rumbling”
reached them from above. It was the jealous Spirit of the Mountain who
was trying to bombard them with stones. They had just time to flatten
themselves against the crag, which, fortunately, hung over them. Great
rocks and boulders bounded within a meter of their heads; for half an
hour the baffled Spirit kept up his attack and then gave it up.
Visitors like ourselves, looking up to the Cervin, see a long couloir
which looks smooth and easy. Javelle says that it is cut up by
veritable ravines plowed by avalanches or worn in the strata of the
rock, so that the whole surface is far more rugged than it appears.
The adamantine gneiss with strata of serpentine schist wears but
slowly; but sometime the proud apex will be undermined and fall with a
world-shaking crash.
After they had climbed with much difficulty and fatigue for about an
hour they discovered the hut which some enterprising guides had
constructed of planks, walled up with stones. For a hundred feet the
precipice is perpendicular and to reach it they had to cling with
their fingers to the roughness of the rock. It is at a height of more
than thirty-eight hundred meters.
They reached it, and, while the guide was preparing supper, Javelle
went out to a hump in the crag to enjoy the spectacle:--
“My eyes turned first of all toward the summit of Le Cervin. The tawny
head of the colossus rose just above us. Through the crystalline air
of those upper regions it seemed scarcely five hundred feet away and
the rock stood out in startling ruggedness. The mighty flank of the
pyramid, tremendously seamed and naked, lay before me: Below lay the
lonely white plains of the Furgg and the Théodule glaciers; in
front beyond them Monte Rosa tossed up its magnificent cluster of
peaks....
[Illustration: MONTE ROSA.]
“From the hut on Le Cervin no disrespect to Monte Rosa is possible.
The true sovereign is restored to rank and position. The mountain is
seen to be vast, mighty, magnificent as it is not from any other point
of view; its rivals are humbled, and its summit, gracious and noble
rather than haughty, shines unquestionably the highest of all in the
sky.”
Then came the sunset:--
“The vast triangular shadow of Le Cervin stretched before us across
the Furgg and the Théodule glaciers as far as the Gorner glacier. At
our left the Zermatt valley already lay in a bluish darkness; it
seemed as if the night were emerging from those depths. A moment later
and the whole amphitheater of snow-covered cliffs shone with a divine
glory. Only two tints, but those graduated in a thousand delicate
shades, were used in this mighty painting. One was a soft deep azure,
the azure of the invading shadows; the other a pure ethereal gold
flung forth by the last rays of the sun. In the sky the two tints
intermingling, shed a splendid violet reflection on the zenith.”
A slight hint at the dangers to which the climber is exposed was
afforded just before they had left the couloir for the shoulder. A
projecting knob on which they had set foot slipped away and went
bounding down the side a thousand meters: “The Cervin counted one more
wrinkle!”
When they reached the arête they had their last chance for
resting:--“Before us towered the escarpment of rugged red rocks and
above them the last heights of Le Cervin, the crest of which was
invisible. On both sides of the arête were blood-curdling abysses.
Seated on a narrow ridge, surrounded by precipices and near the scene
of one of the most tragic of Alpine accidents, we passed in silence
one of those moments that refuse to be forgotten. About a hundred
meters higher, on the steep slope, must have occurred the fall of the
four unfortunates who were dashed to pieces during the first ascent. I
tried to revisualize that dreadful drama. I failed; the abyss had
resumed its eternal silence. What meant to it the fall of those four
men, full of life, youth and intelligence? Only the least of the
avalanches that furrow it in a season.”
The two men roped themselves together, and using the extremest care to
get a foothold either in the ice or on bosses of the rock, they
mounted to the very edge of the vertical wall which measured the whole
height of the Cervin. The summit, says Javelle, is only the
culminating point of a sharp, notched arête about a hundred meters
long. On the south side is a frightful precipice out of sight. “It is
impossible to stand on the slender summit; its crest is too sharp and
the wind playing over it usually crowns it with needles of ice. With
his ax Knubel made a hole in the ice a little lower down. This was our
seat, and what monarch ever had such a throne?
“All around the summit lay an immense bottomless void, above which
stood the circle of the giants of the Valais--Monte Rosa and her proud
rivals, the Mischabel, the Weisshorn, the Rothorn, La Dent Blanche;
then all the Alps with their maze of gigantic ramifications from the
Viso group to considerably beyond the Ortler, an innumerable army of
glittering or somber peaks, the immense undulating line of which was
lost in the blue at the two ends of the horizon. To the north extended
the unbroken profile of the Jura; then beyond, merging into the sky,
the hills of France toward the Haute-Champagne or the Franche-Comté.”
After half an hour on the peak, Javelle and his guide started back
and in safety reached the valley of Zermatt. Since then one might
almost say familiarity with that wonderful peak has bred contempt.
Javelle, himself, in a later article describing another ascent,
complains:--“To-day alas! for the true lovers of the Cervin, the whole
of this side of the noble mountain seems to be profaned.”
Already it has been planned to build a railway up Le Cervin. The day
of conquering mighty peaks in the Alps is past. Scarcely one is now
left for the adventurer to grapple with and the Alpine guides are
finding profitable fields in the vastly mightier mountains of the
Himalaya or the Canadian Rockies.
For the old and the lazy, for delicate women, the electric cars that
climb Mont Blanc, and so many others of the Alpine mountains, give the
effect of the height and the enormous stretch of horizon; but still,
even though the Alpine Club builds shelters and attaches aerial
ladders and climbing chains, there is something exhilarating in the
actual climbing of lofty mountains, and that the danger is not wholly
eliminated is shown by the reports that come every summer of some
unfortunate parties who try to “negotiate” those jealous giants of the
skies. And when one is standing or sitting on one of their peaks
one can say with John Stuart Blackie:--
“I love the eye’s free sweep from craggy rim;
I love the free bird poised at lofty ease
And the free torrent’s far up-sounding hymn;
I love to leave my littleness behind
In the low vale where little cares are great.”
[Illustration: THE NEEDLE OF THE MATTERHORN.]