THE SKI-RUNNER OF VERMALA
Vermala--The mysterious runner--The Plain of the
Dead--Popular beliefs--The purification of the grazings--A
haunted piece of rock--An awful noose is thrown over the
country-side--Supernatural lights and events--The Babel of
tongues--The Saillon and Brigue testimonies--The curé of Lens
and his sundial--The people’s cure--The Strubel--_Chauffage
central_--Did I meet the Ski-runner of Vermala?--My third
ascent of the Wildstrubel--A night encampment on the
glacier--Meditations on mountains, mountaineers, and the
Swiss--How to make _café noir_--Where to sleep and when not
to--Alpine refuges--The old huts and the new--The English
Alpinists and the Swiss huts--The Britannia hut.
The sheet 482 of the topographical atlas of Switzerland assigns the name
of Vermala to the _mayens_ in Canton Valais, situated above Sierre, at an
altitude of 4,500 feet or thereabouts. Swiss _mayens_ are places where
grass is grown that can be mown and on which cattle is grazed in autumn.
About 600 feet higher there is in the forest a clearing, with a
south-west exposure, in which the Mont Blanc range, framed in fir-trees,
presents itself in the distance to the appreciative eye as a beautiful
background to a picture of loveliness. If the bareness of the map
is to be trusted, this spot was not yet inhabited in 1884 when the
topographical survey was made.
The map is right, and yet it is not quite right. There were at that time
no ordinary dwelling-houses in the clearing, but people of ordinary mind
held that the Ski-runner of Vermala, whose presence on the country-side
was at that time exactly known, had his home somewhere in those parts.
From afar curious people would point out a rocky platform planted with
beautiful, well-spaced firs amongst which it would be pleasant to bask
in the sun in winter. But others were rather taken up with the peculiar
apparitions which at night were seen there skimming the rocks in a
sinister play of light. The map marks the place with a broken line,
between Vermala and Marolire, right above Praz-Devant.
It was said that in earlier times the mowers piled up their hay at the
top of the clearing in one or two _mazots_, or rough barns, set on short
posts, four in number, planted in the ground and crowned with flat stone
disks. But that hay had an unwelcome way of catching fire, consuming the
_mazots_ as well. Nothing was left but the stones. So the peasantry gave
up this unlucky storage ground.
At present no other mystery hovers about this spot than that which these
recollections call back to mind. The Forest Hotel occupies the site.
The sun holds divided sway in summer with the coolness of the woods, in
winter with King Frost. Here conventional tourists embrace at a glance
the most marvellous piece of Alpine scenery--from Monte Leone and beyond,
to Mont Blanc--that human eye can long for, such, that had Byron known
of it, he would have sent his world-sick Manfred to contemplate it from
Vermala.
The sweetness of this name would have rung as true to the poet’s ear as,
in the Italo-Celtic tongue, it rings to the ear of the rough mountaineer.
Would you not, for a while, when reading on the map names of such
romantic harmony, forget that they are mere geographical terms? Let us
personify those place names. Do not Vermala and Marolire spell out as
tunefully as the classically tender and melodious Daphnis and Chloe?
But then there might be a risk of forgetting that there is not a
halfpenny worth of love in this story. It is a homespun yarn, woven by
rustics in ignorance and fear, and would fall very flat on the ears
of civilised mankind, but for the curiosity roused by that consummate
sportsman whose humours shine through the woof of the story.
Whence did he come? Who was he? Nobody ever knew.
He had already disappeared from the country when a more enlightened
generation ceased to look upon him as a true ghost. There arose a class
of minds which ran to the opposite extreme and held him to be a superman
of the morrow. In the end he was described as the Ski-runner of Vermala,
when some acquaintance with the new implements called back popular
imagination within the bounds of reason. Then the glamour that had
gathered around his memory at last faded away.
The terraced plain of Crans on which there is now a golf course was not
then much frequented. The whole district was held to be inhospitable.
The Wildstrubel mountain group, which fills up all the space between
the Rawyl and Gemmi passes, bore a redoubtable reputation. It was still
more feared for the Plaine-Morte and the glacier of the same name, which
spread as a counterpane over his feet. Both the plaine and the glacier
were reputed abodes of the souls of the dead. Poor souls perishing with
cold in the cracks! Dante’s idea of an ice circle in hell harks back
to the rustic belief that souls serve their term of purgatory on the
Plaine-Morte and come down on certain sacramental nights to visit the
living and receive additional punishment from the contemplation of the
evil deeds they have left behind them to work themselves out.
In summer, the Valaisan peasant would not venture upon the Plain of the
Dead, had he not first sought the protection of the Holy Virgin and
saints. In winter he doubts not that the Plain of the Dead is reserved
for the evil ones by the holy Powers that be. As soon as the first winter
snow turns to white the brown, sunburnt slopes of the upper grazings,
these are laid under the ban by the piety of the villagers, if not by the
Church.
Who knows, say the vintners of Sierre, what is going on there? Assuredly,
nothing of worth, while the sun draws its daily course slowly on the
horizon from the Equinox of autumn to that of spring. Thus an alarming
scientific fact has become a nursery ground for fond popular beliefs.
We should easily sympathise with the credulity of those big children
if we would but imagine our own state of mind, did we believe we had
positive reason to fear lest the sun which had ripened the last harvest
might not return in spring to ripen the next, after we had exhausted
the garnered crops of the former year. And in what mood would we see
the shades of night enfolding us this evening, if we did not rest more
confidently in the hope of dawn than in the arms of sleep?
It is under the influence of motives of that kind that the inhabitants
of the populous villages thrown as a belt round the plateau of Crans
Mollens, Randogne, Montana, Chermignon, Lens, and Icogne--were quite
prepared to go into the forest to pick up their allotment of fire-wood,
and even to pilfer that of their neighbour. But, so long as their herds
and flocks--when the sun rises again full east and sets again full west,
which is the signal for the raising of the ban--have not been solemnly
escorted to the grazings by the priest with holy water and sprinkler,
they will not be seen ascending to the beats whence they retreated in the
autumn. And if any do visit those desecrated spots before they have again
been hallowed, even the boldest miscreants undertake the venture with a
sense of insecurity, knowing full well that, for the pure-minded, they
are committing sheer blasphemy.
The God of winter is still a God for heathens in the eyes of those
people. Nor should this call forth any astonishment. “How beautiful upon
the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.” If so, how
much more awful than elsewhere must appear there those of the arch-fiend!
He alone is of a nature sufficiently proof to fire to make his home in
ice with impunity. His followers alone are sufficiently witched to share
in his privilege.
Therefore, when the rumour was spread that a supernatural form haunted
the Vermala woods, it needed but little comment before it gained
credence. Everybody was pretty clear in his own mind as to what kind of
person he must be, and none needed to question others to know that they
thought exactly the same thing.
As might be expected, poachers, chamois hunters, and wood-cutters, people
with uneasy consciences--because they steal wood or game, and because
their occupation makes them particularly liable to mistrust each other
and to meditate on the Evil One--were among the first to believe a story
so much in keeping with the trend of their own thoughts. They could even
bear witness to its truth.
They had uplifted their eyes, at night, upon a shade so pellucid that the
moonbeams shone through it. The shade stole away among the trees like the
wind, with a slight rustling of the snow. Then, in a hollow lane leading
from the Mayens de Lens towards Chermignon, they had come across strange
marks which were not those of game, such as hares, foxes, or badgers.
They were not either the marks of any hoofed animal, whether it be a
four-footed beast or even the dreaded biped. Those marks soon seemed to
join together into tracks that flung themselves like huge ribbons all
over the country-side. But, of all those who would, none was able to
follow them out. Never had impressions like these been seen on the snow,
of which it was impossible to say whether the being who made them walked
backwards or forwards. Some said he was a creature mounted on a wheel or
riding on two. Others said he was a serpent crawling on his belly, so
unbroken was the track and so much did it keep winding about.
However much it seemed to roll away in every direction and to stop
nowhere, a few bold spirits determined to follow its course. They
forthwith found themselves plunging and diving in such deep snow that,
breathless and shivering, they gave up the chase, feeling numb at heart.
From that moment the public mind was made up. No creature in mortal
shape, no flesh could ever have marked the face of the snow with this
labyrinthine coil. To wind up this clue of thread one must either fly
like a bird, or blow like the wind, or be favoured with the malediction
of God. This last explanation being of all the most clear, and the most
creditable to the piety of the largest commune in the Canton du Valais,
it was accepted by the municipal council and the clergy.
In the spring--the next to the great disturbance--the melting snow
blotted out the dreadful spoor, the alarm it had caused and, of course,
the Runner, for want of his element.
As soon as they dared, people hurried up to the Vermala rock. There
they found the remains of a new and unexpected kind of habitation.
The drooping branches of a mighty fir appeared to have been pinned to
the ground by frost, consequent upon the piling of snow upon their
extremities. Then snow had been piled up higher and higher around the
tree, embedding other branches as it rose, which were cut away from
the trunk, except at the top, where they stretched out in the form of
a snow-covered dome. There had thus arisen a pyramid-shaped dwelling
enclosed in walls of ice, for the snow had clearly been brought to
transparency by the application of heat from within. And thus was
explained that wonderful effluvium of light, the shimmer of which looked
so sinister from afar. It is even said that some children picked among
the tufts of green grass which here and there began to grow about the
floor of the abandoned hut, pieces of a yellow amber-like substance which
shot forth sparks bathed in a soft purple radiance, when seen by them in
the darkness of their own homes.
No wonder that people spoke of Vermala in fearsome strains! What a pity
the most beautiful spot in the country was haunted!
In the ensuing winters, things went from bad to worse. People ceased
visiting the plateau de Crans for pleasure. Do you fancy, they said, that
strangers henceforth will ever set foot upon this ground, unless it be
for their sins?
[Illustration: ABOVE RIED, LOETSCHENTHAL.
To face p. 90.]
So much tribulation turned the feebler heads. Folk no longer understood
each other aright. They got confused over names. Those who called La
Zaat by its name were rebuked by those who called it La Chaux Sei, and
those parties both fell out with the supporters of the name Bellalui. No
one was quite clear about the identity of Petit Mont Tubang and Grand
Mont Tubang. They were in a mist as to Petit Mont Bonvin and Grand
Mont Bonvin. Everybody confused one and all of these with the Tonio de
Merdasson. In short, the mind of the country-side was muddled, now that
all eyes saw double when they looked in the direction of Vermala.
Old men, however, stiffened their backs and spoke in firm voices above
the new Babel of tongues. They said it had always been known before their
time and would ever hereafter be manifest, that the crest that is visible
from Lens is the brow of Bellalui, and they clinched the matter with the
reminder that when Bagnoud the mayor built his new house, he called it
Bellalui after the mountain.
As it happens, it was at Lens that the meteoric personage once more
called attention to himself.
Truth to say, though there was no one who did not expect his return,
there was nevertheless a general shudder when Jean Perrex who had gone to
Saillon, brought back the news that “he” was known to have brought out
of the stable the horse which had lately been bought with a new cart,
to show visitors over the country. “He” had put the horse to the cart
without collar, traces, or bridle. Without whip or ribbons, he had driven
to St. Pierre de Clages. He had tied the horse to the church door. Then
he had sat down on the grass at the foot of the Norman tower, between
the beehives of the curé and the wasps’ nest that is there sunk in the
soil. Nobody could say how and when they had seen him. It would have
been useless to ask what he was like. But it could not but be he, since
the abandoned horse and cart had been impounded, and the church was now
sinking more rapidly than heretofore.
The most convincing testimony, however, was that of Claudine Rey. Her
brother was in the habit of walking out with a girl who had a situation
in a hotel in Brigue. One night he had clambered up the wall to the
terrace, when the moon suddenly grinned through the clouds. Then, instead
of the girl he was to meet, whom should he see there to his right in the
arbour but “him” in the shape of a dwarfish, wizened wiseacre, clutching
in his right hand a death’s head, and with the fingers of his left
running rapidly along the lines of a book of charms!
When, on St. Martin’s eve, this account was given to the worthy curé of
Lens, who had gathered about his hearth some of his parishioners to crack
in goodly company the arolla nuts roasting in the ashes, the dear old man
shook his head; his mind was running on the words “Get thee behind me,
Satan.”
Then a gentle scratching was heard on the panes of the closed window. The
gathering looked that way and most turned pale. The first snow of the
coming winter was swirling and whirling against the glass, borne on the
soughing wind. And the bluish purple light poured forth from the wells of
memory into the sockets of their eyes.
The curé came out with his guests on his way to trim the church lamp. A
thin layer of snow covered the village lanes. He cast about him furtive
and mistrustful glances. The pure white carpet was as yet unsullied by
footprints. Would “he” come?
Now this curé was a bit of an astronomer and a clerical moralist. He took
every care of the sundial of his church tower and had adorned it with an
inscription, in two expressive lines:--
“Le temps passé n’est plus, l’éternité commence.
Pensez-y donc, mortels, et pensez-y d’avance.”
That night he stared at it. The piece of advice was as good as ever.
But the involutions of the meridian mean curve, drawn with such careful
exactness on the stone and painted with such a light hand in the gayest
colours, struck him now as being the exact counterfeit of the ribbons on
the snow. Was he not breaking away from his ordinary piety in accusing
his church dial of taking after an un-Christian pattern? Surely, he
was wronging his dial. And the good curé kept poring over the unholy
coincidence, in so far at least as his mind could find time to spare for
meditation upon matters of paramount importance.
On the morning of St. Martin’s Day, the village showed itself to be all
in a tangle of loops. The diabolical spoor went in and out round every
house. The figure eight of the sundial had thrown off innumerable copies
upon the ground. The bells were tolled in vain. To no purpose did the
chimes peal. In vain did the most Christianlike of all suns that ever
poured its kindly light upon Lens, kindle the most reassuring smile upon
the wrinkled stones of the old tower. Not a single parishioner was bold
enough to spurn with his foot the cabalistic loops that embraced the
bosom of Mother Earth in their oppressive grasp. Not a child dare step
across them, not even to go and dip his fingers in the holy water at the
church door.
The most thunder-struck was the curé. A truculent pentagram in red chalk
was displayed all over his distich, surrounded by a double circle that
looked like a green fairies’ ring designed in moss upon the church tower.
As for the good men of the largest _commune_ in Canton Valais, they
bethought themselves of a day of fasting, the natural remedy for their
orthodox faith to point out. But there was a sign against that too. The
pewter pots and mugs of the village tavern appeared that morning all set
up in a row upon the railings of the churchyard gate, upside down. They
would have to be fetched and brought back to their proper place. The
hardiest commoners were summoned. They took heart from their thirst. The
general anxiety was soothed by such an obvious way of drowning care.
The frequenters of the forests, whether they were honest day-labourers
or night-birds, knew alone, beyond all doubt, the identity of the
mischief-maker. For them the prime mover in the big upset was none other
than the _Strubel_, about whom the village elders would still relate, in
the dim light of the evening fires, dreadful stories of an ancient stamp,
such as suggest themselves in the woods after dark, when the old tree
stumps are phosphorescent and glow-worms come out of their retreats to
set up their tiny lamps on the edges of the rocks.
Of all creatures born of local lore the Strubel was to them the nearest
in kin. When the north wind blows the Strubel races from crest to crest,
from the Gemmi to the Rawyl, and from the Rawyl to the Gemmi. Up there
his long white shock of hair streaming in the wind, and upturned by
the gale, spreads as a plume across the sky. The tumbling folds of his
beard fill the precipitous ravines. A hail of icicles rattles out of his
roaring breast. The rush of his huge body, soaring amid snowflakes and
in glacier dust, awakens the slumbering elements. At night the Aurora
Borealis gathers in streamers around his brow. At dawn and at sunset a
diadem of snow-crystals sets a many-coloured band about his hoary head.
He flies, and his feet do but tip the top of the peaks, and his stature
rises aloft in an immense upward sweep. In a blue-and-white transparency,
such as one sees in glacier crevasses and in pure ice water, the spring
of his sinuous limbs uplifts him to the confines of atmosphere and
firmament.
Such is the poetic picture of the dread being which the shepherds still
worship secretly, far down in the recesses of their primitive hearts. And
it is he whose image the antics of an enigmatic ski-runner revived for
several winters, as our story shows, under the low and gloomy roofs of
the white-hooded chalets.
There is an evening hour, when, after cooking and partaking of the day’s
last meal, the family gathers round the domestic hearth. Then the last
embers are fanned into a congenial flame. The dying light of the hearth
kindles anew the memories of a bygone age. Is the time near when these
will die out for want of fuel, as the flame of that hearth when the
family goes to bed? But why should we link any melancholy after-thought
with their well-earned rest? The thought of the reward granted to their
toil pleases one’s moral sense. Yet he who, like me in this chapter, uses
figments of the past as a page decoration, cannot but regret that such
picturesque elements should be gradually, but surely, vanishing for ever
from the face of our modern world.
The accepted idea is that things have progressed. So they have. A nice
hotel crowns the Vermala rock. At night real electric light of industrial
origin has taken the place of the fantastic rays of old. There is a
_chauffage central_, fed with colliers’ coal, and stoked by porters
who never could produce heat without matter and on terms that were not
commercial. Now people dance at Vermala, they have music at night, they
lounge about in smoking-jackets, and, when all is said and done, I am one
of those who most enjoy the new situation.
Did I ever meet the Ski-runner of Vermala? I should have a vague fear
of being caught prevaricating should I answer either Yes or No. Truth
sometimes dwells in half-way houses.
I was staying at Vermala last winter. The glacier de la Plaine-Morte, and
the ascent of the Wildstrubel, were objects which a young man of my party
kept steadily in view. It was his second winter holiday in Switzerland. A
much-travelled man, he had camped out in Persia, and endured thirst and
hunger in some of the most God-forsaken spots of the globe. How would
he fare in the Wildstrubel country? A man may have done very well in
sandy deserts and yet find himself out of his depth in snow. He had ski,
but would they do as much for him on these charmed snows as a camel’s
spreading feet had done in the desert?
So we set forth late one morning, after paying the usual penalty to the
photographic fiend. So great an honour conferred by a number of fair
women inspired us with proper pride. It was a most strengthening draught
to harden us against the trials that might be in store, but it also
worked so insidiously as to cause us to overlook the wise saw of the most
bourgeois of French fabulists: “Rien ne sert de courir, il faut partir
à temps,” which, topically rendered, might mean: “A man who has started
late need never hope to make up for lost time when going uphill on ski.”
The glacier de la Plaine-Morte lies at the altitude of 9,500 feet
approximately, measured at the brim, or lip, which we had to overcome
before we could dip down to the surface of that shroud of the dead. We
were setting out for it from the altitude of 5,500 feet, and allowing
for unavoidable “downs” that would break the upline, we had quite 5,000
feet of vertical displacement before us.
At whatever hour of the day we might have started we had that much to
ascend by sunset, if we wished to reach the Hildebrand hut in comfortable
circumstances, and so the true bourgeois spirit would have us do. Had
we been in military mood we should have borne with the dictates of
punctuality. Unfortunately we had received attentions that had raised
us beyond ourselves. We chose to trust our elation to bring us on over
the ground. But the 5,000 feet we had to ascend would not grow less. The
sun would not delay its progress. The ups and downs would not smooth
themselves out, however much gentle pressure our planks might bring to
bear upon them. The refreshing compliments we had stored up would not
check the flight of time.
All too early Night put in a punctual appearance upon the scene. She
found us, indeed, sailing gently along the shroud of the dead, but far
from the place prepared to shelter weary Alpinists.
We seemed to be in for the same adventure as a friend of mine who spent
the night wandering on the glacier during a wind and snowstorm. The
dead then might almost have been moving under their shrouds in every
direction. He did not lose his way, but was impressed by solitude and by
the weirdness of the shifting snows, let alone the fatigue that loosened
his limbs. He confided to me quite lately how odd he still thought it
that he did not go off his “chump.”
Anyhow, Mr. B., my present companion, decided that he saw something happy
in the situation, the beckoning finger of a friendly fate, that would
guard us while we spent that January night on the open glacier. The
air was still and clear. The cold might be keen, but not sharp, though
somebody since would absolutely have it that the thermometer marked that
night at Vermala 2.2 Fahrenheit.
As Mr. B. was anxious to view this escapade as a fit counterpart to
his nights in the Persian desert, the situation could be accepted with
equanimity. He was possessed of the true romantic spirit. Poor man! He
was afflicted with much thirst. I had, unfortunately, nothing better to
offer him than the carefully worded expression of my regret that he had
not been able to get himself fitted up, before he left Persia, with some
of the valuable water compartments of his Bactrian camels. So by ten
o’clock we laid ourselves demurely down on the angular glacier moraine,
pretty confident that long before the hour struck for the sun to rise, we
should be anxious to roll the shutters away from the Palace of Dawn.
On the contrary, when the sun stepped out of his car upon the glacier
and, at the most reasonable hour of eight on the clock, knocked us up, we
were still reclining in our _alcôve_. Shall I say that we found at our
bedside shaving water and a cup of tea? No, for this would be a really
undue elongation of truth. But we saw the “boots” busy lighting odd
scraps of paper and slipping them into our shoes to soften the frozen
leather. We thanked him and were about to tip him when he took fright
and flew away upon a sunbeam, leaving behind a pot of blacking and an
electric brush.
If I ever did set eyes upon the Ski-runner of Vermala, it was during that
night, nor could it have been in a better setting than on the Plain of
the shrouded Dead. In fact, in the supposition that he is a person that
never existed, the glacier de la Plaine-Morte would cry out for him.
Glaciers are legion, but there is only one glacier de la Plaine-Morte.
Measured with tape, its size, as our readers have learnt in a preceding
chapter, would come out at a few miles.
Sir Martin Conway, in his “Alps from End to End,” comes nearer to
conveying a correct impression, because he measures it by the standard of
his own mind.
Those who have in any weather entrusted themselves in winter to that ice
cup scooped out of the top of lofty Alpine battlements, may alone imagine
in its true character the Alpine world as it was in those dim and distant
days, when half Europe would have been too small to hold the glories of
the Plaine-Morte in its prehistoric stage of being.
Since last year (1911), a cable railway runs passengers up from Sierre
to Montana-Vermala. Some day, perhaps, the railway may be taken 5,000
feet higher. It would then pass the place where we spent the hours of
our mystic night, alternately watchful and asleep, taking in the immense
charm that flowed in upon us, and seeking in short terms of slumber rest
from our meditation.
[Illustration: WILDSTRUBEL AND PLAINE MORTE GLACIER.
To face p. 100.]
The _amateurs_ of mountain scenery whom the rail may bring up here
will not be so single-minded about it as we were. They will look for
something else to lie upon than a gritty stone bed. They will allow a
wooden barrier to intercept the pulsation of nature on its way to their
souls. They will not catch in full the gracious calls which pass in
the stillness between heaven and earth, and roll in harmoniously upon
the mind, as a sonorous shore echoes the beat of the waves. My young
companion, more restless because the situation was so overmasteringly
novel, looked around for distractions which I needed not. I have often
stood, or lain, like that, looking from the outside upon the play of life
in which I otherwise bear my faint part. I like to withdraw from the
stage of the company directed by Messrs. Time and Space in which we are,
with as much humbleness as the master dramatists could be with pride,
composers, actors, and managers of some small theatrical contribution. I
am then doubtful whether I feel some approach in me to the lotus eater’s
frame of mind, or whether I rejoice in the overflowing energy of the
superman.
There is a deep meaning in the Gospel passage that shows us the Son of
man being led upon a hill, and upon a temple pinnacle, that He may be
tempted by the sight of those aspects of the world which it was His
mission to forswear, combat and finally to overcome by the spirit and
succumb to in the flesh. It is on pinnacles such as these that we may
behold ourselves.
Let us see. Is he who learns his philosophy by conversation with the
mountains not at once a lotus eater and a superman? He acquires from them
a firm conviction that--
“Il mondo va da sè.
Le monde se fait lui-même;”
which apophthegm breathes the spirit of abdication and is a source of
weakness for him.
On the other hand, the conscious personal power by which he overcomes the
savage forces and the blind puttings-forth of might by Nature, does mark
him out as instancing in himself human courage, a well-created _physique_
and some superiority.
When his energy is excited, he caresses the illusion that he could
crush his fellow beings, if he thought it worth doing. But his dignity
forbids. His fellows need have no fear, for there is some taming effect
in his haughtiness. The loftiness of his spirit lames his hand for battle
against those in whom he hardly recognises his like.
He cannot take the affairs of men so seriously that he would whip up in
himself the ambition to take after Napoleon or Cæsar.
When he is in lotus-eating mood, the Rubicon is really too big a thing to
be crossed lightly.
When he is in his superman’s temper, the undertaking is indeed so small
that it is not worth while that such as he should be bothered with it.
The Swiss, as a people, have shown in a high degree that such is the
mental composition of a true mountain race. Left for six hundred years to
their unbroken line of development, they show in the successive layers
of the formation of their national mind the stages of the process.
They first won in the Alps, by arms, sufficient room for themselves, and
set round their borders a ring-fence of impassable pikes. Then, turning
to supermen, they fought the battles of others, for the sake of war,
despising power, and moving untempted in the domains of kings.
In the nineteenth century, the reflective mountain spirit gained hold
on them. They held war as an immoral pursuit and ceased from being
mercenaries. But their contemptuous loftiness remained. Without despising
their former glory they, as it were, drew into themselves and drew
themselves up at the same time.
They have become the typically lotus-eating neutral nation in Europe,
supermen still in a way and armed to the teeth, but with swords ever
sheathed and with bayonets ever resting in the scabbard.
In their national life the Swiss practice political self-education, and
would do so rather than seek the means of making their influence felt
among nations. The Swiss are but a small and insignificant nation, but
their history shows that, disillusioned of mere strength, they passed to
the consciousness of a moral identity.
They became self-centred, and liked to keep aloof from other people’s
affairs. They formed the conclusion that--
“Le monde se fait lui-même.
Il mondo va da sè;”
and, in the public life of Europe, assumed the part of spectators and
political moralists.
For Napoleon, a mere village or two were a sufficient stake for which to
set Europe ablaze. With material means, he built up a political society
that soon crumbled away. Had the French been by temperament lotus-eating
supermen, would they have followed him? They too would have answered him
with the words--
“Le monde se fait lui-même.
Il mondo va da sè.”
The victories of fourteen years could not make a Buonapartist Europe.
What subsists of the Superman’s adventure? It had been just as well
for him, had he stood on the edge of the glacier of the Plaine-Morte,
withstanding temptation, though he had thereby shorn Elba and St. Helena
of their title to fame.
The bent of the mountaineer’s mind is turned inwards, towards the
education of self. As a superman he pits himself against nature, to man
he is kind and just. He is the lotus-eater who would forget the things,
the seeking after which would turn him away from self tuition.
He is a kind of Marcus Aurelius who does the share allotted to him in the
common task, and then withdraws into his higher self, preserving a kindly
interest in those who have built up no such upper chambers.
That sort of man is not an adept at self-sacrifice, because sacrifice is
the opposite of education. If he entirely gave himself away, he would
have no inner garden left to cultivate, and in which to plant his own
vine and sit under his own fig-tree. But if you need not expect him to
die for you, or live for you, neither does he expect you to do the like
on his behalf. Mountaineers are known to help each other when their
lives are in danger in cases of Alpine peril. In self-love they practice
self-reliance. “Exercise _thyself_” would be their motto.
Why? because the mountaineer believes in his Creator and looks upon His
work as a good piece of work, the quality of which the creature has
to justify in itself. So in the end should the mountaineer perish at
the hands of the forces of Nature which he has, by right of spiritual
conquest, transformed into moral values for the world, with him it is a
case of _invicto animo vicit moles_.
While I was thus trimming the lamp of my thoughts Mr. B. contrived
sundry little amusements for himself. He brought out of his bag an
extremely smart dressing-gown and bedroom slippers. He arrayed himself
in the former and dressed his feet in the latter. Then he smoked the few
cigarettes he found in his pockets. Then we shared the frozen sandwiches
that were left over for our evening meal. When those occupations were
exhausted, it might almost be described as a fortunate factor in the
situation that his thirst would not depart from him. How to slake it
became the main concern that whiled away the long hours of the night for
the sleepless Londoner.
The problem was as follows: being given snow ad _infinitum_ and a very
fair quantity of ground coffee beans, how to produce a refreshing and
fortifying beverage whose supreme quality consists in being black, hot,
pure, and strong:--
“Noir comme le diable,
Chaud comme l’enfer,
Pur comme un ange,
Fort comme l’amour;”
but which, under the circumstances, would be valued principally for its
quantity.
The improvised cook looked about him for a coffee-pot. He found nothing
in his bag that would do. But there was in mine a small tin pot which
had resided there from time immemorial. It was somewhat dented with age,
and bore many signs of the hardness of its lot, though its office was
of a quite amiable description. It carried about my smoked glasses and
sundry silk veils. I liked to have these by me--though I personally never
use them--because they often came in conveniently to relieve from the
glare of the sun those tender-skinned representatives of the fair sex
who insist on not making sufficient preparations to go over glaciers.
The pot contained also some cotton wadding, tintacks, pins, and such
like necessaries of hut life. With regret I poured these forth upon a
dry patch of ground, and committed the pot to the mercies--whatever they
might be--of the would-be cook.
Some time later our camping ground was wrapped in a sheet of light. I
looked round. My friend had done wonders. He had scooped a nice square
hole in the snow and planted in it our lantern, in which he had stuck
and lit one of our tapers. The light from the taper had suddenly flashed
upon the scene through the transparent wall of snow. Then some of the
coffee was poured into my tin pot, and this was placed on the top of the
lantern and lumps of snow were heaped upon the coffee.
Then began the labours of Hercules. The snow in the pot melted very
properly, but that which walled in the stove would do likewise. It either
fell in and smothered the lantern below, or else fell from above and put
out the taper.
All night long the cunning of the young engineer was kept devising means
of meeting every fresh emergency. Anyhow, at every watch in the night I
was kept supplied with a few mouthfuls of hot coffee.
So well did this suffice that, on striking our tents at eight
o’clock--_façon de parler_, for we had between us but one dressing-gown
to take off before revealing to an astonished world the effectiveness of
our Burberrys--we gave no thought to the Rohrbachhaus, but made our way
straight to the Wildstrubel, between the Raezli and Lämmern glaciers.
Once more the popular notion that to allow one’s self to fall asleep
on an open glacier is to court an awakening in the other world, had
been effectually dispelled. Provided one is clad to perfection in
weather-proof material, with chamois leather underwear over the usual
woollen undergarments, one need have no fear as long as the air is still
and free from falling snow.
On the contrary, in a violent snowstorm and with a heavy wind, nothing
but an actual place of shelter can afford sufficient protection. For all
that some people will push their dread to the most ridiculous extremes.
I met, not very long ago, a young German, an otherwise doughty lad,
who, rather than spend the night in one of the extremely comfortable
Concordia huts on the Aletsch glacier, preferred, after coming up on ski
the whole way from the Loetschenthal, to reach Rieder Alp in an exhausted
condition, at much greater risk than if he had stopped on the way.
It is reported by de Saussure that the dread with which the men hired
by him in Chamounix to ascend Mont Blanc looked forward to the night
which must unavoidably be spent on the glacier des Bossons, was the main
difficulty he had to contend with in keeping up their _morale_. No sooner
had they reached the spot marked out for pitching the tents, than they
dug for themselves an underground recess and buried themselves therein,
as though they expected a hail of bullets to pepper them all night.
Yet, they had hardly been herded together for half an hour, when such
a terrible epidemic of heat broke out among the huddled pack that they
dribbled out one after another, saying they preferred a fair battle with
the elements to such a process of extinction.
The history of the construction of Alpine huts enables us to trace the
progress which public opinion has made since. The first huts were simply
caves, walled in on the open side with a rough stone dyke, and on the
floor of which was strewn some straw, while a few utensils and a stove
lay about, all higgledy-piggledy, with some logs of fir or pine wood.
They were dirty, damp dens.
Now, such ill-conditioned refuges have been given up as an absurd and
rudimentary conception of our forefathers. They sought a well hidden away
nook. We choose the most exposed spur of hill that is near our route. We
build on high, preferring places exposed to the full fury of the blast,
and we erect wooden houses that appear too fragile to resist the violent
onset of the storm fiends. But such refuges as these are dry and airy,
the snow has but little chance of choking them up. The light shining
through the windows when a party is gathered therein after dark, is as a
mast light on ships anchored at sea.
The stored-up wood keeps dry. The emergency provisions that a party may
leave for the next--a party perhaps less favoured--do not rot away. And
when the sun shining upon those lofty mansions lights up the yellow or
brown pine wood, a sense of near comfort and of coming security pervades
the weary traveller’s breast and warms the cockles of his heart.
This progress has to be paid for in the form of a light tax levied upon
the traveller to defray for the Swiss Alpine Club some portion of the
expense incurred in keeping the huts in order and regularly supplying
them with fire-wood. The original characteristic of the huts, which were
intended to be mere emergency refuges open gratis to all, has somewhat
suffered in this respect from the new policy. Visitors are now requested
in most of them, by an appropriate notice, to deposit their contribution
in a receptacle fastened to the wall. This may be the most convenient
way of collecting the money due. But it means that sums of money--not
inconsiderable in the opinion of any one badly in want--are left for
rather long periods in uninhabited premises which are far from being
inaccessible.
It has happened that cash-boxes have been rifled. A less objectionable
way of managing this little piece of business is surely within the
resources of civilisation. It is not justifiable that any other premium
than wholesome exercise and natural beauty, should be held up as an
inducement to make an excursion on the glaciers of Switzerland.
While here on the subject of huts, the awkward position which their great
multiplication of late years entailed upon the British clubs, may be
suitably laid before the reader. As the huts of the Swiss Alpine Club
became more and more frequented, questions of preferential rights of
admission came to the fore. It was obvious that non-Swiss clubs, able to
grant terms of reciprocal admission to the Swiss, must obtain for their
members, in the Swiss huts, preferential rights over Alpine clubs who
were so by genuine profession and yet had no local habitation in the Alps
or elsewhere in which they might hope to offer hospitality in their turn,
as an acknowledgement of hospitality received.
Consequently, when notices were put up in the Swiss Alpine Club huts,
which number now from seventy-five to eighty, showing what clubs enjoyed
a right of admission on the score of reciprocity, the absence of any
and every English club struck the eye. English visitors were then able
to realise that they had been drawing benefit from the hospitality
provided--for all and sundry, it is true--by a large body of private
persons in Switzerland. In spite of every desire to remedy this situation
by contributing to the expense of building and maintaining the Swiss
huts, English climbers could not obtain a definite _locus standi_, for
want of being able to come under a reciprocity clause. Even at present it
would be idle to hope that English clubs may be quoted by name, beside
the Swiss, French, German-Austrian, and Italian clubs. But the following
arrangement was come to, on the initiative of English climbers, and with
the concurrence of the Swiss Alpine Club:--
1. A committee was formed in London, of an administrative character, to
serve as a rallying point for Englishmen who might wish to enter one of
the sections of the Swiss Alpine Club. The members recruited in that
fashion for the Swiss club formed an association of British members of
the Swiss Alpine Club, which is recognised by the Swiss club, but has no
corporate existence within that club.
2. The new association, which now numbers little less than 400 members,
started a subscription with a view to providing the Swiss club with funds
sufficient for the building of a first-class hut on the Klein Allalin
Horn above Saas Fée, at the expense of £800. This hut was built by the
care, and will remain under the administration of the Geneva section of
the Swiss Alpine Club. It was completed and inaugurated this year (1912).
The Britannia hut deserves particular mention in these pages, because it
has been contributed to by the ski-ing clubs of Great Britain, on account
of the first-rate opportunities it offers for ski tours in the High Alps.
It occupies a central position in the Mischabel range which, from the top
of Monte Rosa to the glacier of Ried that rolls down from the Balfrin to
within 4 miles of St. Niklaus, is one of the finest ski-ing fields of
Switzerland.
[Illustration: The Strubel.]