I was rummaging among my books this morning when I came across Frey's
map of the Bernese Oberland, and forthwith forgot the object of my
search in the presence of this exhilarating discovery. Mr. Chesterton,
I think, once described how he evoked the emotions of a holiday by
calling a cab, piling it up with luggage, and driving to the station.
Then, having had his sensation, he drove home again. It seemed to me
rather a poor way of taking an imaginative holiday. One might as well
heat an empty oven in order to imagine a feast. The true medium of the
spiritual holiday is the map. That is the magic carpet that whisks you
away from this sodden earth and unhappy present to sunny lands and
serener days.
There are times when books offer no escape from the burden of things,
when, as Mr. Biglow says
I'm as unsoshul as a stone,
And kind o' suffercate to be alone;
but there are no circumstances in which a map will not do the trick. I
do not care whether it is a map of the known or the unknown, the
visited or the unvisited, the real or the fanciful. It was the jolly
map which Stevenson invented in an idle hour which became the seed of
"Treasure Island." That is how a map stimulated his fancy and sent it
out on a career of immortal adventure. And though you have not
Stevenson's genius for describing the adventure, that is what a map
will do for you if you have a spark of the boy's love of romance left
in your soul. It is the "magic casement" of the poet. I have never
crossed the Atlantic in the flesh, but, lord, what spiritual adventures
I have had with maps in the enchanted world on the other side! I have
sailed with Drake in Nombre Dios Bay, and navigated the grim straits
with Magellan, and lived with the Incas of Peru and the bloody Pizarro,
and gone up the broad bosom of the Amazon into fathomless forests, and
sailed through the Golden Gates on golden afternoons, and stood with
Cortes "silent upon a peak in Darien." I know the Shenandoah Valley
far better than I know Wimbledon Common, and have fought over every
inch of it by the side of Stonewall Jackson, just as I have lived in
the mazes of the Wilderness with Grant and Lee.
Do not tell me I have never been to these places and a thousand others
like them. I swear that I have. I have traversed them all in the
kingdom of the mind, and if you will give me a map and a rainy day
(like this) I will go on a holiday more entrancing than any that Mr.
Cook ever planned. It is not taking tickets that makes the traveller.
I have known people who have gone round the world without seeing
anything, while Thoreau could stay in his back garden and entertain the
universe.
But if maps of the unvisited earth have the magic of romance in them,
maps of the places you have known have a fascination no less rich and
deep. They, too, take you out on a holiday, but it is a holiday of
memory and not of the imagination. You are back with yourself in other
days and in other places and with other friends. You may tell me that
this was a dreary, rainy morning, sir, and that I spent it looking out
over the dismal valley and the sad cornfields with their stricken
crops. Nothing of the sort. I spent it in the Bernese Oberland, with
an incomparable companion. Three weeks I put in, sir, three weeks on
the glaciers. See, there, on this glorious map of Frey's, is Muerren,
from whence we started. In front is the mighty snow mass of the
Jungfrau, the Moench and the Eiger, shutting out the glacier solitudes
whither we are bound.
There goes our track up the ravine to Obersteinberg and there is the
Muetthorn hut, standing on the bit of barren rock that sticks out from
the great ice-billows of the Tschingelhorn glacier. Do you remember,
companion of mine, the mighty bowls of steaming tea we drank when we
reached that haven of refuge? And do you remember our start from the
hut at two o'clock in the morning, roped with our guide and with our
lanterns lit--and the silence of our march over the snow and ice
beneath the glittering stars, and the hollow boom of distant
avalanches, and the breaking of the wondrous dawn over the ice-fields,
and the unforgettable view as we reached the ridge of the Petersgrat
and saw across the Rhone Valley the great mountain masses beyond--the
Weisshorn, the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and the rest--touched to an
unearthly beauty by the flush of the new-risen sun? And the scramble
up the Tschingelhorn, and the long grind down the ice-slopes and the
moraine to the seclusion of the Lotschenthal? And then the days that
followed in the great ice region behind the Jungfrau; the long, silent
marches over pathless snows and by yawning crevasses, the struggle up
peaks in the dawn, and the nights in the huts, sometimes with other
climbers who blew in across the snows from some remote adventure,
sometimes alone as in that tiny hut on the Finsteraarhorn, where we
paid three and a half francs for a bunch of wood to boil our kettle?
There is the Oberaar hut standing on the ledge of a dizzy precipice.
Do you remember the sunset we saw from thence, when out of the general
gloom of the conquering night one beam from the vanished sun caught the
summit of the Dom and made it gleam like a palace in the heavens or
like the towers of the radiant city that Christian saw across the dark
river? And there at the end of the journey is the great glacier that
leaps down, seven thousand feet, between the Schreckhorn and the
Wetterhorn, to the gracious valley of Grindelwald. How innocent it
looks on this map, but what a day of gathering menace was that when we
got caught between the impassable crevasses, and night came on and the
rain came down and ... But let the magic carpet hasten slowly here....
It was still dark when Heinrich of the Looking Glass leapt up from our
bed of hay in the Dolfuss hut, lit the candle and began to prepare the
breakfast. Outside, the rain fell in torrents and the clouds hung
thick and low over glacier and peaks. Our early start for the
Gleckstein hut was thwarted. Night turned to dawn and dawn to day, and
still the rain pelted down on that vast solitude of rock and ice. Then
the crest of the Finstraarhorn appeared through a rent in the clouds,
patches of blue broke up the grey menace of the sky, the rain ceased.
Otmar and Heinrich hastily washed the iron cups and plates and swept
the floor of the hut, and then, shouldering our rucksacks and closing
the door of the empty hut, we scrambled down the rocks to the glacier.
It was 8.15 and the guidebooks said it was a seven hours' journey to
the Gleckstein. That seemed to leave ample margin; but do not trust
guide-books in a season of drought when the crevasses are open.
This wisdom, however, came later. All through the morning we made
excellent progress. The sun shone, the clouds hung lightly about the
peaks, the ice was in excellent condition. Heinrich, who brought up
the rear, occasionally broke into song. Now, when Heinrich sings you
know that all is well. When he whistles you are in a tight place. For
the rest he is silent. Otmar, his brother, is less communicative. He
goes on ahead silently under all conditions, skirting crevasses,
testing snow-bridges to see if they will bear, occasionally pausing to
consult his maps. Once only did he burst into song that day--but of
that later. Otmar is an autocrat on the ice or the rocks. In the hut
he will make your tea and oil your boots and help Heinrich to wash your
cups and sweep the floor. But out in the open he is your master. If
you ask him inconvenient questions he does not hear. If you suggest a
second breakfast before it is due his silence as he pounds forward
ahead humiliates you. If your pace slackens there is a rebuke in the
taut insistence of the rope.
It was eleven when we halted for our cold tea and sardines (white wine
for Otmar and Heinrich). The pause gave Heinrich an opportunity of
taking out his pocket looking-glass and touching up his moustache ends
and giving a flick to his eye-brows. Heinrich is as big and brawny as
an ox, but he has the soul of a dandy.
It had been easy going on the furrowed face of the ice, but when we
came to the snow slope that leads to the Lauteraar saddle our pace
slackened. The snow was soft, and we sank at each step up to our
shins. Otmar eased the passage up the slope by zigzagging, but it was
one o'clock when we came face to face with the wall of snow, flanked by
walls of rock, which form the "saddle." Otmar led my companion over
the rocks; but decided that Heinrich should bring me up the snow face.
Step cutting is slow work, and though Otmar, having reached the top of
the saddle, threw down a second rope, which Heinrich lashed round his
waist, it was two o'clock before that terrible wall was surmounted, and
we could look down the great glacier that plunged seven thousand feet
down into the hollow where Grindelwald lay with its red roofs and
pleasant pastures, its hotels and its tourists.
We had taken nearly six hours to surmount the pass; but we seemed,
nevertheless, to have the day well in hand. Four thousand feet down on
a spur of the Wetterhorn we could see the slate roof of the Gleckstein
hut. It seemed an easy walk over the glacier, but in these vast
solitudes of ice and snow and rock, vision is deceptive. The distant
seems incredibly near, for the familiar measurements of the eye are
wanting.
The weather had changed again. Clouds had settled on the mighty cliffs
of the Schreckhorn on our left and the Wetterhorn on our right. Mist
was rolling over the pass; rain began to fall. We cut short our lunch
(cold tea, cold veal, bread and jam), and began our descent, making a
wide detour of the glacier to the right in the direction of the
Wetterhorn. We descended a rocky precipice that cleaves the glacier,
crossed an ice slope on which Otmar had to cut steps, and came in view
of Grindelwald, lying like a picture postcard far down below--so
immediately below that it seemed that one might fling a stone down into
its midst.
At half-past three it began to dawn on me that things were not going
well. Otmar had, during the past three weeks, been the most skilful of
guides over most of the great glacier passes of the Oberland and up
many a peak; but so far we had seen nothing like the condition of the
Grindtlwaldfirn. The appalling slope of this great sea of ice makes a
descent in normal times a task of difficulty. But this year the long
drought had left open all the yawning crevasses with which it is
seamed, and its perils were infinitely increased.
Again and again Otmar sought a way out of the maze, taking us across
perilous snow bridges and cutting steps on knife-edges of ice where one
looked down the glittering slope on one side, and into the merciless
green-blue depths of the crevasse on the other. But wherever he turned
he was baulked. Always the path led to some vast fissure which could
be neither leapt nor bridged. Once we seemed to have escaped and
glissaded swiftly down. Then the slope got steeper and we
walked--steeper and Otmar began cutting steps in the ice--steeper and
Otmar paused and looked down the leap of the glacier. We stood silent
for his verdict. "It will not go." We turned on the rope without a
word, and began remounting our steps.
It was half-past four. The mist was thickening, the rain falling
steadily. Below, the red roofs and green pastures of Grindelwald
gleamed in the sunlight of the valley. Nearer, the slate roof of the
Gleckstein on its spur of rock was still visible. Two hours before it
had seemed but a step to either. Now they seemed to have receded to
another hemisphere.
For the first time there flashed through the mind the thought that
possibly we should not reach the hut after all. A night on the
glacier, or rather on the dark ridges of the Wetterhorn! A wet night,
too.
The same thought was working in Otmar's mind. No word came from him,
no hint that he was concerned. But the whole bearing of the man was
changed. In the long hours of the morning he had led us listlessly and
silently; now he was like a hound on the trail. The tug of the rope
became more insistent. He made us face difficulties that he had
skirted before; took us on to snow-bridges that made the mind reel;
slashed steps with his ice axe with a swift haste that spoke in every
stroke of the coming night. Once I failed to take a tricky snow ridge
that came to a point between two crevasses, slipped back, and found
myself in the crevasse, with my feet dancing upon nothing. The rope
held; Otmar hauled me out without a word, and we resumed our march.
Heinrich had been unroped earlier and sent to prospect from above for a
possible way out. We followed at his call, but he led us into new
mazes, down into a great cavern in the glacier, where we passed over
the ruined walls and buttresses of an ice cathedral, emerging on the
surface of the glacier again, only to find ourselves once more checked
by impassable gulfs.
It was now half-past five. We had been three and a half hours in
vainly attempting to find a way down the ice. The mist had come thick
upon us. The peaks were blotted out, Grindelwald was blotted out; the
hut was no longer visible. Only an hour and a half of light remained,
and the whole problem was still unsolved. The possibility of a night
on the ice or the rocks began to approach the sphere of certainty. My
strength was giving out, and I slipped again and again in the ice
steps. A kind of dull resignation had taken possession of the mind.
One went forward in a stupor, responsive to the tug of the rope, but
indifferent to all else.
Otmar was now really concerned. He came from a valley south of the
Rhone, and was unfamiliar with this pass; but he is of a great strain
of Alpine guides, is proud of his achievements--he had led in the first
ascent of the Zmutt ridge of the Matterhorn that year--and to be
benighted on a glacier would have been a deadly blow to his pride.
He unroped himself, and dashed away in the direction of the ridge of
the Wetterhorn that plunged down on our right. We watched him skimming
across crevasses, pausing here and there to slash a step in the ice for
foothold, balancing himself on icy ridges and vanishing into a couloir
of the mountain--first depositing his rucksack on the rocks to await
his return. Five minutes passed--ten. Heinrich startled the silence
with an halloo--no answer. A quarter of an hour--then, from far below,
a faint cry came.
"It will go," said Heinrich, "get on." We hurried across the
intervening ice, and met Otmar returning like a cat up the rocks. Down
that narrow slit in the mountain we descended with headlong speed.
There were drops of thirty and fifty feet, slabs of rock to cross with
negligible foot and hand holds, passages of loose rock where a careless
move would have sent great stones thundering on the heads of those
before. Once Heinrich lowered me like a bale of goods down a
smooth-faced precipice of fifty feet. Once he cried: "Quick: it is
dangerous," and looking up at the crest of the Wetterhorn I saw a huge
block of ice poised perilously above our downward path.
The night was now upon us. We were wet to the skin. A thunderstorm of
exceptional violence added to the grimness of the setting. But we were
down the ridge at last. We raced across a narrow tongue of the glacier
and were safe on the spur of rocks where we knew the Gleckstein hut to
be. But there was no light to guide us. We scrambled breathlessly
over boulders and across torrents from the Wetterhorn, each of us
hardly visible to the other in the thickening mist, save when the blaze
of lightning flashed the scene into sudden and spectral clearness. At
last we struck a rough mountain path, and five minutes later we lifted
the latch of the hut.
"What is the time, Heinrich?"
"Half-past eight."
"What would you have done, Otmar, if we had been benighted?"
Otmar did not hear. But as he got the wood and made the fire, and
emptied the rucksacks of our provisions, he began to sing in a pleasant
tenor voice. And Heinrich joined in with his full bass.
And presently, stripped of our wet clothes and wrapped in blankets, we
sat down to a glorious meal of steaming tea--in an iron teapot as large
as a pail--tongue, soup, potted chicken, and jam.
"That was a narrow escape from a night on the mountains," I said.
"It is a very foolish glacier," said Heinrich.
Otmar said nothing.
Five hours later Otmar woke us from our bed of hay.
"It is fine," he said. "The Wetterhorn will go."
* * * * *
As I look up it is still raining and the sad sheaves still stand in the
sodden fields. But I have been a journey. I have had three weeks in
the Oberland--three weeks of summer days with a world at peace, the
world that seems like a dream we once had, so remote has it become and
so incredible. I roll up my magic carpet and bless the man who
invented maps for the solace of men.