_SEARCH ON THE MATTERHORN: A PROJECT._
In July 1865 my excellent friend Hirst and myself visited Glarus,
intending, if circumstances favoured us, to climb the Tödi. We had,
however, some difficulty with the guides, and therefore gave the
expedition up. Crossing the Klausen pass to Altdorf, we ascended the
Gotthardt Strasse to Wasen, and went thence over the Susten pass to
Gadmen, which we reached late at night. We halted for a moment at
Stein, but the blossom of 1863[22] was no longer there, and we did not
tarry. On quitting Gadmen next morning I was accosted by a guide, who
asked me whether I knew Professor Tyndall. ‘He is killed, sir,’ said
the man--‘killed upon the Matterhorn.’ I then listened to a somewhat
detailed account of my own destruction, and soon gathered that, though
the details were erroneous, something serious if not shocking had
occurred. At Imhof the rumour became more consistent, and immediately
afterwards the Matterhorn catastrophe was in every mouth, and in all
the newspapers. My friend and myself wandered on to Mürren, whence,
after an ineffectual attempt to cross the Petersgrat, we went by
Kandersteg and the Gemmi to Zermatt.
[22] Page 167.
Of the four sufferers on the Matterhorn one remained behind. But
expressed in terms either of mental torture or physical pain, the
suffering in my opinion was _nil_. Excitement during the first moments
left no room for terror, and immediate unconsciousness prevented pain.
No death has probably less of agony in it than that caused by the shock
of gravity on a mountain-side. _Expected_, it would be terrible; but
unexpected, not. I had heard, however, of other griefs and sufferings
consequent on the accident, and this prompted a desire on my part to
find the remaining one and bring him down.
I had seen the road-makers at work between St. Nicholas and Zermatt,
and was struck by the rapidity with which they pierced the rocks for
blasting. One of these fellows could drive a hole a foot deep into hard
granite in less than an hour. I was therefore determined to secure in
aid of my project the services of a road-maker. None of the Zermatt
guides would second me, but I found one of the Lochmatters of St.
Nicholas willing to do so. Him I sent to Geneva to buy 3,000 feet of
rope, which duly came on heavily laden mules to Zermatt. Hammers and
steel punches were prepared; a tent was put in order, and the whole
was carried up to the chapel by the Schwarz See. But the weather would
by no means smile upon the undertaking. I waited in Zermatt for twenty
days, making excursions with pleasant friends, but they merely spanned
the brief intervals which separated one rain-gush or thunderstorm from
another. Bound by an engagement to my friend Professor De la Rive, of
Geneva, where the Swiss naturalists had their annual assembly in 1865,
I was forced to leave Zermatt. My notion was to climb to the point
where the men slipped, and to fix there suitable irons in the rocks. By
means of ropes attached to these I proposed to scour the mountain along
the line of the glissade. There were peculiarities in the notion which
need not now be dwelt upon, inasmuch as the weather rendered them all
futile.
* * * * *
[I am not sure that the proposed search is practicable; it would
certainly require unusually good weather for its execution.--April
1871.]