peril of our position; he "felt" the angle on which we hung, and saw the
edge of the precipice, to which less than a quarter of a minute's slide
would carry us, and for the first time during the journey he grew giddy.
A cigar which he lighted for the purpose tranquilized him.
I hewed sixty steps upon this slope, and each step had cost a minute, by
Hirst's watch. The Mur de la Côte was still before us, and on this the
guide-books informed us two or three hundred steps were sometimes found
necessary. If sixty steps cost an hour, what would be the cost of two
hundred? The question was disheartening in the extreme, for the time at
which we had calculated on reaching the summit was already passed, while
the chief difficulties remained unconquered. Having hewn our way along
the harder ice we reached snow. I again resorted to stamping to secure a
footing, and while thus engaged became, for the first time, aware of the
drain of force to which I was subjecting myself. The thought of being
absolutely exhausted had never occurred to me, and from first to last I
had taken no care to husband my strength. I always calculated that the
"will" would serve me even should the muscles fail, but I now found that
mechanical laws rule man in the long run; that no effort of will, no
power of spirit, can draw beyond a certain limit upon muscular force.
The soul, it is true, can stir the body to action, but its function is
to excite and apply force, and not to create it.
While stamping forward through the frozen crust I was compelled to pause
at short intervals; then would set out again apparently fresh, to
find, however, in a few minutes, that my strength was gone, and that
I required to rest once more. In this way I gained the summit of the
Corridor, when Hirst came to the front, and I felt some relief in
stepping slowly after him, making use of the holes into which his feet
had sunk. He thus led the way to the base of the Mur de la Côte, the
thought of which had so long cast a gloom upon us; here we left our rope
behind us, and while pausing I asked Simond whether he did not feel
a desire to go to the summit. "Surely," was his reply, "but!--" Our
guide's mind was so constituted that the "but" seemed essential to its
peace. I stretched my hands toward him, and said: "Simond, we must do
it." One thing alone I felt could defeat us: the usual time of the
ascent had been more than doubled, the day was already far spent, and if
the ascent would throw our subsequent descent into night it could not be
contemplated.
We now faced the Mur, which was by no means so bad as we had expected.
Driving the iron claws of our boots into the scars made by the ax, and
the spikes of our batons into the slope above our feet, we ascended
steadily until the summit was attained, and the top of the mountain rose
clearly above us. We congratulated ourselves upon this; but Simond,
probably fearing that our joy might become too full, remarked: "But the
summit is still far off!" It was, alas! too true. The snow became soft
again, and our weary limbs sank in it as before. Our guide went on in
front, audibly muttering his doubts as to our ability to reach the top,
and at length he threw himself upon the snow, and exclaimed, "I give
up!"
Hirst now undertook the task of rekindling the guide's enthusiasm, after
which Simond rose, exclaiming: "Oh, but this makes my knees ache!" and
went forward. Two rocks break through the snow between the summit of the
Mur and the top of the mountain; the first is called the Petits Mulets,
and the highest the Derniers Rochers. At the former of these we paused
to rest, and finished our scanty store of wine and provisions. We had
not a bit of bread nor a drop of wine left; our brandy flasks were also
nearly exhausted, and thus we had to contemplate the journey to the
summit, and the subsequent descent to the Grands Mulets, with out the
slightest prospect of physical refreshment. The almost total loss of two
nights' sleep, with two days' toil superadded, made me long for a few
minutes' doze, so I stretched myself upon a composite couch of snow and
granite, and immediately fell asleep.
My friend, however, soon aroused me. "You quite frighten me," he said;
"I have listened for some minutes, and have not heard you breathe once."
I had, in reality, been taking deep draughts of the mountain air, but so
silently as not to be heard.
I now filled our empty wine-bottle with snow and placed it in the
sunshine, that we might have a little water on our return. We then
rose; it was half-past two o'clock; we had been upward of twelve hours
climbing, and I calculated that, whether we reached the summit or not,
we could at all events work "toward" it for another hour. To the sense
of fatigue previously experienced, a new phenomenon was now added--the
beating of the heart. We were incessantly pulled up by this, which
sometimes became so intense as to suggest danger. I counted the number
of paces which we were able to accomplish without resting, and found
that at the end of every twenty, sometimes at the end of fifteen, we
were compelled to pause. At each pause my heart throbbed audibly, as I
leaned upon my staff, and the subsidence of this action was always
the signal for further advance. My breathing was quick, but light and
unimpeded.
I endeavored to ascertain whether the hip-joint, on account of the
diminished atmospheric pressure, became loosened, so as to throw the
weight of the leg upon the surrounding ligaments, but could not be
certain about it. I also sought a little aid and encouragement from
philosophy, endeavoring to remember what great things had been done by
the accumulation of small quantities, and I urged upon myself that the
present was a case in point, and that the summation of distances twenty
paces each must finally place us at the top. Still the question of time
left the matter long in doubt, and until we had passed the Derniers
Rochers we worked on with the stern indifference of men who were doing
their duty, and did not look to consequences. Here, however, a gleam
of hope began to brighten our souls: the summit became visible nearer,
Simond showed more alacrity; at length success became certain, and at
half-past three P.M. my friend and I clasped hands upon the top.
The summit of the mountain is an elongated ridge, which has been
compared to the back of an ass. It was perfectly manifest that we were
dominant over all other mountains; as far as the eye could range Mont
Blanc had no competitor. The summits which had looked down upon us in
the morning were now far beneath us. The Dôme du Goûté, which had held
its threatening "séracs" above us so long, was now at our feet. The
Aiguille du Midi, Mont Blanc du Tacul, and the Monts Maudits, the
Talèfre, with its surrounding peaks, the Grand Jorasse, Mont Mallet, and
the Aiguille du Géant, with our own familiar glaciers, were all below
us. And as our eye ranged over the broad shoulders of the mountain, over
ice hills and valleys, plateaux and far-stretching slopes of snow, the
conception of its magnitude grew upon us, and imprest us more and more.
The clouds were very grand--grander, indeed, than anything I had ever
before seen. Some of them seemed to hold thunder in their breasts, they
were so dense and dark; others, with their faces turned sunward, shone
with the dazzling whiteness of the mountain snow; while others again
built themselves into forms resembling gigantic elm trees, loaded with
foliage. Toward the horizon the luxury of color added itself to the
magnificent alternation of light and shade. Clear spaces of amber and
ethereal green embraced the red and purple cumuli, and seemed to form
the cradle in which they swung. Closer at hand squally mists, suddenly
engendered, were driven hither and thither by local winds; while the
clouds at a distance lay "like angels sleeping on the wing," with
scarcely visibly motion. Mingling with the clouds, and sometimes rising
above them, were the highest mountain heads, and as our eyes wandered
from peak to peak, onward to the remote horizon, space itself seemed
more vast from the manner in which the objects which it held were
distributed....
The day was waning, and, urged by the warnings of our ever-prudent
guide, we at length began the descent. Gravity was in our favor, but
gravity could not entirely spare our wearied limbs, and where we sank
in the snow we found our downward progress very trying. I suffered from
thirst, but after we had divided the liquefied snow at the Petits Mulets
among us we had nothing to drink. I crammed the clean snow into my
mouth, but the process of melting was slow and tantalizing to a parched
throat, while the chill was painful to the teeth.
THE JUNGFRAU-JOCH[58]
BY SIR LESLIE STEPHEN
I was once more standing upon the Wengern Alp, and gazing longingly at
the Jungfrau-Joch. Surely the Wengern Alp must be precisely the loveliest
place in this world. To hurry past it, and listen to the roar of the
avalanches, is a very unsatisfactory mode of enjoyment; it reminds one
too much of letting off crackers in a cathedral. The mountains seem to
be accomplices of the people who charge fifty centimes for an echo. But
it does one's moral nature good to linger there at sunset or in the
early morning, when tourists have ceased from traveling; and the jaded
cockney may enjoy a kind of spiritual bath in the soothing calmness of
scenery....
We, that is a little party of six Englishmen with six Oberland guides,
who left the inn at 3 A.M. on July 20, 1862, were not, perhaps, in a
specially poetical mood. Yet as the sun rose while we were climbing the
huge buttress of the Mönch, the dullest of us--I refer, of course,
to myself--felt something of the spirit of the scenery. The day was
cloudless, and a vast inverted cone of dazzling rays suddenly struck
upward into the sky through the gap between the Mönch and the Eiger,
which, as some effect of perspective shifted its apparent position,
looked like a glory streaming from the very summit of the Eiger. It was
a good omen, if not in any more remote sense, yet as promising a fine
day. After a short climb we descended upon the Gugg, glacier, most
lamentably unpoetical of names, and mounted by it to the great plateau
which lies below the cliffs immediately under the col. We reached this
at about seven, and, after a short meal, carefully examined the route
above us. Half way between us and the col lay a small and apparently
level plateau of snow. Once upon it we felt confident that we could get
to the top....
We plunged at once into the maze of crevasses, finding our passage much
facilitated by the previous efforts of our guides. We were constantly
walking over ground strewed with crumbling blocks of ice, the recent
fall of which was proved by their sharp white fractures, and with a
thing like an infirm toad stool twenty feet high, towering above our
heads. Once we passed under a natural arch of ice, built in evident
disregard of all principles of architectural stability. Hurrying
judiciously at such critical points, and creeping slowly round those
where the footing was difficult, we manage to thread the labyrinth
safely, whilst Rubi appeared to think it rather pleasant than otherwise
in such places to have his head fixt in a kind of pillory between two
rungs of a ladder, with twelve feet of it sticking out behind and twelve
feet before him.
We reached the gigantic crevasse at 7.35. We passed along it to a point
where its two lips nearly joined, and the side furthest from us was
considerably higher than that upon which we stood. Fixing the foot of
the ladder upon this ledge, we swung the top over, and found that it
rested satisfactorily against the opposite bank. Almer crept up it,
and made the top firmer by driving his ax into the snow underneath the
highest step. The rest of us followed, carefully roped, and with the
caution to rest our knees on the sides of the ladder, as several of the
steps were extremely weak--a remark which was equally applicable to one,
at least, of the sides. We crept up the rickety old machine, however,
looking down between our legs into the blue depths of the crevasse, and
at 8.15 the whole party found itself satisfactorily perched on the edge
of the nearly level snow plateau, looking up at the long slopes of
broken névé that led to the col....
When the man behind was also engaged in hauling himself up by the rope
attached to your waist, when the two portions of the rope formed an
acute angle, when your footing was confined to the insecure grip of one
toe on a slippery bit of ice, and when a great hummock of hard sérac was
pressing against the pit of your stomach and reducing you to a
position of neutral equilibrium, the result was a feeling of qualified
acquiescence in Michel or Almer's lively suggestion of "Vorwärts!
vorwärts!"
Somehow or other we did ascend. The excitement made the time seem short;
and after what seemed to me to be half an hour, which was in fact nearly
two hours, we had crept, crawled, climbed and wormed our way through
various obstacles, till we found ourselves brought up by a huge
overhanging wall of blue ice. This wall was no doubt the upper side of
a crevasse, the lower part of which had been filled by snow-drift. Its
face was honeycombed by the usual hemispherical chippings, which somehow
always reminds me of the fretted walls of the Alhambra; and it was
actually hollowed out so that its upper edge overhung our heads at a
height of some twenty or thirty feet; the long fringe of icicles which
adorned it had made a slippery pathway of ice at two or three feet
distance from the foot of the wall by the freezing water which dripped
from them; and along this we crept, in hopes that none of the icicles
would come down bodily.
The wall seemed to thin out and become much lower toward our left, and
we moved cautiously toward its lowest point. The edge upon which we
walked was itself very narrow, and ran down at a steep angle to the
top of a lower icefall which repeated the form of the upper. It almost
thinned out at the point where the upper wall was lowest. Upon this
inclined ledge, however, we fixt the foot of our ladder. The difficulty
of doing so conveniently was increased by a transverse crevasse which
here intersected the other system. The foot, however, was fixt and
rendered tolerably safe by driving in firmly several of our alpenstocks
and axes under the lowest step. Almer, then, amidst great excitement,
went forward to mount it. Should we still find an impassable system of
crevasses above us, or were we close to the top? A gentle breeze which
had been playing along the last ledge gave me hope that we were really
not far off. As Almer reached the top about twelve o'clock, a loud
yodel gave notice to all the party that our prospects were good. I soon
followed, and saw, to my great delight, a stretch of smooth, white snow,
without a single crevasse, rising in a gentle curve from our feet to the
top of the col.
The people who had been watching us from the Wengern Alp had been
firing salutes all day, whenever the idea struck them, and whenever we
surmounted a difficulty, such as the first great crevasse. We heard the
faint sound of two or three guns as we reached the final plateau. We
should, properly speaking, have been uproariously triumphant over our
victory. To say the truth, our party of that summer was only too apt to
break out into undignified explosions of animal spirits, bordering at
times upon horseplay....
The top of the Jungfrau-Joch comes rather like a bathos in poetry. It
rises so gently above the steep ice wall, and it is so difficult to
determine the precise culminating point, that our enthusiasm oozed out
gradually instead of producing a sudden explosion; and that instead of
giving three cheers, singing "God Save the Queen," or observing any of
the traditional ceremonial of a simpler generation of travelers, we
calmly walked forward as tho' we had been crossing Westminster Bridge,
and on catching sight of a small patch of rocks near the foot of
the Mönch, rushed precipitately down to it and partook of our third
breakfast. Which things, like most others, might easily be made into an
allegory.
The great dramatic moments of life are very apt to fall singularly flat.
We manage to discount all their interest beforehand; and are amazed to
find that the day to which we have looked forward so long--the day,
it may be, of our marriage, or ordination, or election to be Lord
Mayor--finds us curiously unconscious of any sudden transformation and
as strongly inclined to prosaic eating and drinking as usual. At a later
period we may become conscious of its true significance, and perhaps the
satisfactory conquest of this new pass has given us more pleasure in
later years than it did at the moment.
However that may be, we got under way again after a meal and a chat, our
friends Messrs. George and Moore descending the Aletsch glacier to the
Aeggischhorn, whose summit was already in sight, and deceptively near in
appearance. The remainder of the party soon turned off to the left, and
ascended the snow slopes to the gap between the Mönch and Trugberg. As
we passed these huge masses, rising in solitary grandeur from the center
of one of the noblest snowy wastes of the Alps, Morgan reluctantly
confest for the first time that he knew nothing exactly like it in
Wales.
XI
OTHER ALPINE TOPICS
THE GREAT ST. BERNARD HOSPICE[59]
BY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES
The Pass of the Great St. Bernard was a well-known one long before the
hospice was built. Before the Christian era, the Romans used it as a
highway across the Alps, constantly improving the road as travel over
it increased. Many lives were lost, however, as no material safeguards
could obviate the danger from the elements, and no one will ever know
the number of souls who met their end in the blinding snows and chilling
blasts of those Alpine heights.
To Bernard de Menthon is due the credit of the mountain hospice. He was
the originator of the idea and the founder of the institution. He has
since been canonized as a saint and he well deserved the honor, if it be
a virtue to sacrifice oneself, as we believe, and to try and save the
lives of one's fellows! It is no easy existence which St. Bernard chose
for himself and followers. The very aspect of the pass is grand but
gloomy. None of the softness of nature is seen. There is no verdure, no
beauty of coloring, nothing but bleak, bare rock, great piles of stones,
and occasional patches of fallen snow. It is thoroughly exposed, the
winds always moaning mournfully around the buildings....
The trip begins at Martigny. First there is a level stretch, then a
long, steady climb, after which begins the real road to the pass. The
views are very lovely, and while quite different in some ways excel
all passes except the famous Simplon. The scenery is very varied,
the mountains are far enough off to give a good perspective, and the
villages are most picturesque. The absence of snow peaks in any great
number will be felt by some, but even a lover of such soon forgets the
lack in the exceeding beauty and loveliness of the valleys.
Toward the top of the pass there is quite a transformation. Both the
road and the scenery change, the first becoming more and more steep
and stony, the latter showing more and more of savage grandeur, as the
green, smiling valleys are no longer seen, but in their place appear
barren and rugged rocks and slopes, with the marks of the ravages
wrought by storm, landslide and avalanche. The wind has fuller play
and seems to moan in a mournful, dirge-like manner, accentuating the
characteristics of bleakness and desolation which obtain at the top of
the pass, all the more noticeable if the traveler arrives at dusk, just
as the sun has disappeared behind the mountains.
In this dreary place stands the hospice. The present buildings are not
very old, the hospice only dating from the sixteenth century and the
church from the seventeenth century, while the other structures, which
have been built for the accommodation of strangers are comparatively
new. Twelve monks of the Augustinian Order are regularly in residence
here. They come when about twenty years of age; but so severe is the
climate, so hard the life and so stern the rule that, after a service of
about fifteen years, they generally have to seek a lower altitude, often
ruined in health, with their powers completely sapped by the rigors and
privations which they have endured. Altho the hospice and the adjoining
hostelry for the travelers are cheerless in the extreme, there is always
a warm welcome from the monks. No one, however poor, is refused bed
and board for the night, and there is no "distinction of persons."
The hospitality is extended to all, free of charge, this being the
invariable rule of the institution, but it is expected, and rightly so,
that those who can do so will deposit a liberal offering in the box
provided for the purpose. The small receipts, however, show what a great
abuse there is of this hospitality, for a large number of those who come
in the summer could well afford to give and to give largely.
We hear much of the courage and perseverance of Hannibal and Cæsar in
leading their armies over the Alps! We see pictures of Napoleon and his
soldiers as they toiled up the pass, dragging along their frozen guns,
and perhaps falling into a fatal sleep about their dying camp fires at
night! And we rightly admire such bravery, and thrill with admiration at
the tale. Yet those armies which crossed the Alps failed to equal the
heroic self-sacrifice of those soldiers of the cross, the Monks of the
Grand St. Bernard, who remain for years at their post, unknown and
unsung by the wide, wide world, simply to save and shelter the humble
travelers who come to grief in their winter journey across the pass, in
search of work.
AVALANCHES[60]
BY VICTOR TISSOT
Beside this dazzling, magnificent snow, covering the chain of lofty
peaks like an immaculate altar cloth, what a gloomy, dull look there
is in the snow of the plains! One might think it was made of sugar or
confectionery, that it was false like all the rest.
To know what snow really is--to get quit of this feeling of artificial
snow that we have when we see the stunted shrubs in our Parisian gardens
wrapt, as it were, in silk paper like bits of Christmas trees--it must
be seen here in these far-off, high valleys of the Engandine, that lie
for eight months dead under their shroud of snow, and often, even in the
height of summer, have to shiver anew under some wintry flakes.
It is here that snow is truly beautiful! It shines in the sun with a
dazzling whiteness; it sparkles with a thousand fires like diamond dust;
it shows gleams like the plumage of a white dove, and it is as firm
under the foot as a marble pavement. It is so fine-grained, so compact,
that it clings like dust to every crevice and bend, to every projecting
edge and point, and follows every outline of the mountain, the form of
which it leaves as clearly defined as if it were a covering of thin
gauze. It sports in the most charming decorations, carves alabaster
facings and cornices on the cliffs, wreathes them in delicate lace,
covers them with vast canopies of white satin spangled with stars and
fringed with silver.
And yet this dry, hard snow is extremely susceptible to the slightest
shock, and may be set in motion by a very trifling disturbance of the
air. The flight of a bird, the cracking of a whip, the tinkling of
bells, even the conversation of persons going along sometimes suffices
to shake and loosen it from the vertical face of the cliffs to which it
is clinging; and it runs down like grains of sand, growing as it falls,
by drawing down with it other beds of snow. It is like a torrent, a
snowy waterfall, bursting out suddenly from the side of the mountain;
it rushes down with a terrible noise, swollen with the snows that it
carries down in its furious course; it breaks against the rocks, divides
and joins again like an overflowing stream, and with a wild tempest
blast resumes its desolating course, filling the echoes with the
deafening thunder of battle.