THE PIONEERS
Within the compass of this book, we cannot narrate the history of
Alpine passes, though the subject is intensely interesting, but we must
not omit all mention of the great classic traverse of the Alps. We
should read of Hannibal’s memorable journey not in Livy, nor even in
Bohn, but in that vigorous sixteenth-century translation which owes its
charm and force even more to Philemon Holland the translator than to
Livy.
Livy, or rather Holland, begins with Hannibal’s sentiments on “seeing
near at hand the height of those hills ... the horses singed with cold
... the people with long shagd haire.” Hannibal and his army were much
depressed, but, none the less, they advanced under a fierce guerilla
attack from the natives, who “slipt away at night, every one to his
owne harbour.” Then follows a fine description of the difficulties of
the pass. The poor elephants “were ever readie and anone to run upon
their noses”--a phrase which evokes a tremendous picture--“and the
snow being once with the gate of so many people and beasts upon it
fretted and thawed, they were fain to go upon the bare yce underneeth
and in the slabberie snow-broth as it relented and melted about their
heeles.” A great rock hindered the descent; Hannibal set it on fire
and “powred thereon strong vinegar for to calcine and dissolve it,”
a device unknown to modern mountaineers. The passage ends with a
delightful picture of the army’s relief on reaching “the dales and
lower grounds which have some little banks lying to the sunne, and
rivers withall neere unto the woods, yea and places more meet and
beseeming for men to inhabit.” Experts are divided as to what pass was
actually crossed by Hannibal. Even the Col de Géant has been suggested
by a romantic critic; it is certainly stimulating to picture Hannibal’s
elephants in the Géant ice-fall. Probably the Little St. Bernard, or
the Mont Genèvre, is the most plausible solution. So much for the great
traverse.
Some twenty-five glacier passes had been actually crossed before the
close of the sixteenth century, a fact which bears out our contention
that in the Middle Ages a good deal more was known about the craft of
mountaineering than is generally supposed. There is, however, this
distinctive difference between passes and peaks. A man may cross a pass
because it is the most convenient route from one valley to another.
He may cross it though he is thoroughly unhappy until he reaches his
destination, and it would be just as plausible to argue from his
journey a love of mountains as to deduce a passion for the sea in every
sea-sick traveller across the Channel. But a man will not climb a
mountain unless he derives some interest from the actual ascent. Passes
may be crossed in the way of business. Mountains will only be climbed
for the joy of the climb.
The Roche Melon, near Susa, was the first Alpine peak of any
consequence to be climbed. This mountain rises to a height of 11,600
feet. It was long believed to be the highest mountain in Savoy. On one
side there is a small glacier; but the climb can be effected without
crossing snow. It was climbed during the Dark Ages by a knight, Rotario
of Asti, who deposited a bronze tryptych on the summit where a chapel
still remains. Once a year the tryptych is carried to the summit, and
Mass is heard in the chapel. There is a description of an attempt on
this peak in the Chronicle of Novalessa, which dates back to the first
half of the eleventh century. King Romulus is said to have deposited
treasure on the mountain. The whole Alpine history of this peak is
vague, but it is certain that the peak was climbed at a very early
period, and that a chapel was erected on the summit before Villamont’s
ascent in 1588. The climb presents no difficulties, but it was found
discreet to remove the statue of the Virgin, as pilgrims seem to have
lost their lives in attempting to reach it. The pilgrimages did not
cease even after the statue had been placed in Susa.
[Illustration:
Bartholomew, Edin
]
Another early ascent must be recorded, though the climb was a very
modest achievement. Mont Ventoux, in Provence, is only some 6430 feet
above the sea, and to-day there is an hôtel on the summit. None the
less, it deserves a niche in Alpine history, for its ascent is coupled
with the great name of the poet Petrarch. Mr. Gribble calls Petrarch
the first of the sentimental mountaineers. Certainly, he was one of the
first mountaineers whose recorded sentiments are very much ahead of his
age. The ascent took place on April 26, 1335, and Petrarch described it
in a letter written to his confessor. He confesses that he cherished
for years the ambition to ascend Mont Ventoux, and seized the first
chance of a companion to carry through this undertaking. He makes the
customary statement as to the extreme difficulty of the ascent, and
introduces a shepherd who warns him from the undertaking. There are
some very human touches in the story of the climb. While his brother
was seeking short cuts, Petrarch tried to advance on more level ground,
an excuse for his laziness which cost him dear, for the others had made
considerable progress while he was still wandering in the gullies of
the mountain. He began to find, like many modern mountaineers, that
“human ingenuity was not a match for the nature of things, and that it
was impossible to gain heights by moving downwards.” He successfully
completed the ascent, and the climb filled him with enthusiasm. The
reader should study the fine translation of his letter by Mr. Reeve,
quoted in _The Early Mountaineers_. Petrarch caught the romance of
heights. The spirit that breathes through every line of his letter is
worthy of the poet.
Petrarch is not the only great name that links the Renaissance to the
birth of mountaineering. That versatile genius, Leonardo da Vinci,
carried his scientific explorations into the mountains. We have already
mentioned his great picture of storm and thunder among the hills, one
of the few mementos that have survived from his Alpine journeys. His
journey took place towards the end of the fifteenth century. Little is
known of it, though the following passage from his works has provoked
much comment. The translation is due to Mrs. Bell: “And this may be
seen, as I saw it, by any one going up Monboso, a peak of the Alps
which divide France from Italy. The base of this mountain gives birth
to the four rivers which flow in four different directions through the
whole of Europe. And no mountain has its base at so great a height as
this, which lifts itself above almost all the clouds; and snow seldom
falls there, but only hail in the summer when the clouds are highest.
And this hail lies (unmelted) there, so that, if it were not for the
absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not happen
more than twice in an age, an enormous mass of ice would be piled up
there by the layers of hail; and in the middle of July I found it very
considerable, and I saw the sky above me quite dark; and the sun as it
fell on the mountain was far brighter here than in the plains below,
because a smaller extent of atmosphere lay between the summit of the
mountain and the sun.”
We need not summarise the arguments that identify Monboso either with
Monte Rosa or Monte Viso. The weight of evidence inclines to the former
alternative, though, of course, nobody supposes that Da Vinci actually
reached the summit of Monte Rosa. There is good ground, however, for
believing that he explored the lower slopes; and it is just possible
that he may have got as far as the rocks above the Col d’Ollen, where,
according to Mr. Freshfield, the inscription “A.T.M., 1615” has been
found cut into the crags at a height of 10,000 feet. In this connection
it is interesting to note that the name “Monboso” has been found in
place of Monte Rosa in maps, as late as 1740.[1]
We now come to the first undisputed ascent of a mountain, still
considered a difficult rock climb. The year that saw the discovery of
America is a great date in the history of mountaineering. In 1492,
Charles VII of France passed through Dauphiny, and was much impressed
by the appearance of Mont Aiguille, a rocky peak near Grenoble that
was then called Mont Inaccessible. This mountain is only some seven
thousand feet in height; but it is a genuine rock climb, and is still
considered difficult, so much so that the French Alpine Club have paid
it the doubtful compliment of iron cables in the more sensational
passages. Charles VII was struck by the appearance of the mountain,
and ordered his Chamberlain de Beaupré to make the ascent. Beaupré, by
the aid of “subtle means and engines,” scaled the peak, had Mass said
on the top, and caused three crosses to be erected on the summit. It
was a remarkable ascent, and was not repeated till 1834.
We are not concerned with exploration beyond the Alps, and we have
therefore omitted Peter III’s attempt on Pic Canigou in the Pyrenees,
and the attempt on the Pic du Midi in 1588; but we cannot on the ground
of irrelevance pass over a remarkable ascent in 1521. Cortez is our
authority. Under his order, a band of Spaniards ascended Popocatapetl,
a Mexican volcano which reaches the respectable height of 17,850 feet.
These daring climbers brought back quantities of sulphur which the army
needed for its gunpowder.
The Stockhorn is a modest peak some seven thousand feet in height.
Simler tells us that its ascent was a commonplace achievement.
Marti, as we have seen in the previous chapter, found numberless
inscriptions cut into the summit stones by visitors, enthusiastic in
their appreciation of mountain scenery, and its ascent by Müller, a
Berne professor, in 1536, is only remarkable for the joyous poem in
hexameters which records his delight in all the accompaniments of
a mountain expedition. Müller has the true feelings for the simpler
pleasures of picnicing on the heights. Everything delights him, from
the humble fare washed down with a draught from a mountain stream,
to the primitive joy of hurling big rocks down a mountain side. The
last confession endears him to all who have practised this simple, if
dangerous, amusement.
The early history of Pilatus, another low-lying mountain, is much more
eventful than the annals of the Stockhorn. It is closely bound up with
the Pilate legend, which was firmly believed till a Lucerne pastor gave
it the final quietus in 1585. Pontius Pilate, according to this story,
was condemned by the Emperor Tiberius, who decreed that he should be
put to death in the most shameful possible manner. Hearing this, Pilate
very sensibly committed suicide. Tiberius concealed his chagrin, and
philosophically remarked that a man whose own hand had not spared him
had most certainly died the most shameful of deaths. Pilate’s body
was attached to a stone and flung into the Tiber, where it caused a
succession of terrible storms. The Romans decided to remove it, and the
body was conveyed to Vienne as a mark of contempt for the people of
that place. It was flung into the Rhone, and did its best to maintain
its reputation. We need not follow this troublesome corpse through
its subsequent wanderings. It was finally hurled into a little marshy
lake, near the summit of Pilatus. Here Pilate’s behaviour was tolerable
enough, though he resented indiscriminate stone-throwing into the lake
by evoking terrible storms, and once a year he escaped from the waters,
and sat clothed in a scarlet robe on a rock near by. Anybody luckless
enough to see him on these occasions died within the twelve-month.
So much for the story, which was firmly believed by the good citizens
of Lucerne. Access to the lake was forbidden, unless the visitor was
accompanied by a respectable burgher, pledged to veto any practices
that Pilate might construe as a slight. In 1307, six clergymen were
imprisoned for having attempted an ascent without observing the local
regulations. It is even said that climbers were occasionally put to
death for breaking these stringent by-laws. None the less, ascents
occasionally took place. Duke Ulrich of Württemberg climbed the
mountain in 1518, and a professor of Vienna, by name Joachim von Watt,
ascended the mountain in order to investigate the legend, which he
seems to have believed after a show of doubt. Finally, in 1585, Pastor
John Müller of Lucerne, accompanied by a few courageous sceptics,
visited the lake. In their presence, he threw stones into the haunted
lake, and shouted “Pilate wirf aus dein Kath.” As his taunts produced
no effect, judgment was given by default, and the legend, which had
sent earlier sceptics into gaol, was laughed out of existence.
Thirty years before this defiant demonstration, the mountain had been
ascended by the most remarkable of the early mountaineers. Conrad
Gesner was a professor at the ancient University of Zürich. Though not
the first to make climbing a regular practice, he was the pioneer of
mountain literature. He never encountered serious difficulties. His
mountaineering was confined to those lower heights which provide the
modern with a training walk. But he had the authentic outlook of the
mountaineer. His love for mountains was more genuine than that of many
a modern wielder of the ice-axe and rope. A letter has been preserved,
in which he records his resolution “to climb mountains, or at all
events to climb one mountain every year.”
We have no detailed record of his climbs, but luckily his account of an
ascent of Pilatus still survives, a most sincere tribute to the simple
pleasures of the heights. It is a relief to turn to it after wading
through more recent Alpine literature. Gesner’s writing is subjective.
It records the impress of simple emotions on an unsophisticated
mind. He finds a naïve joy in all the elemental things that make up
a mountain walk, the cool breezes plying on heated limbs, the sun’s
genial warmth, the contrasts of outline, colour, and height, the
unending variety, so that “in one day you wander through the four
seasons of the year, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.” He explains
that every sense is delighted, the sense of hearing is gratified by the
witty conversation of friends, “by the songs of the birds, and even
by the stillness of the waste.” He adds, in a very modern note, that
the mountaineer is freed from the noisy tumult of the city, and that
in the “profound abiding silence one catches echoes of the harmony of
celestial spheres.” There is more in the same key. He anticipates the
most enduring reward of the mountaineer, and his words might serve
as the motto for a mountain book of to-day: “Jucundum erit postea
meminisse laborum atque periculorum, juvabit hæc animo revolvere et
narrare amicis.” Toil and danger are sweet to recall, every mountaineer
loves “to revolve these in his mind and to tell them to his friends.”
Moreover, contrast is the essence of our enjoyment and “the very
delight of rest is intensified when it follows hard labour.” And then
Gesner turns with a burst of scorn to his imaginary opponent. “But, say
you, we lack feather beds and mattresses and pillows. Oh, frail and
effeminate man! Hay shall take the place of these luxuries. It is soft,
it is fragrant. It is blended from healthy grass and flower, and as you
sleep respiration will be sweeter and healthier than ever. Your pillow
shall be of hay. Your mattress shall be of hay. A blanket of hay shall
be thrown across your body.” That is the kind of thing an enthusiastic
mountaineer might have written about the club-huts in the old days
before the hay gave place to mattresses. Nor does Gesner spoil his
rhapsody by the inevitable joke about certain denizens of the hay.
There follows an eloquent description of the ascent and an analysis
of the Pilate legend. Thirty years were to pass before Pastor Müller
finally disposed of the myth, but Gesner is clearly sceptical, and
concludes with the robust assertion that, even if evil spirits
exist, they are “impotent to harm the faithful who worship the one
heavenly light, and Christ the Sun of Justice.” A bold challenge to
the superstitions of the age, a challenge worthy of the man. Conrad
Gesner was born out of due season; and, though he does not seem to
have crossed the snow line, he was a mountaineer in the best sense of
the term. As we read his work, we seem to hear the voice of a friend.
Across the years we catch the accents of a true member of our great
fraternity. We leave him with regret, with a wish that we could meet
him on some mountain path, and gossip for a while on mountains and
mountaineers.
But Gesner was not, as is sometimes assumed, alone in this sentiment
for the hills. In the first chapter we have spoken of Marti, a
professor at Berne, and a close friend of Gesner. The credit for
discovering him belongs, I think, to Mr. Freshfield, who quotes some
fine passages from Marti’s writings. Marti looks out from the terrace
at Berne on that prospect which no true mountain lover can behold
without emotion, and exclaims: “These are the mountains which form our
pleasure and delight when we gaze at them from the highest parts of
our city, and admire their mighty peaks and broken crags that threaten
to fall at any moment. Who, then, would not admire, love, willingly
visit, explore, and climb places of this sort? I should assuredly call
those who are not attracted by them dolts, stupid dull fishes, and slow
tortoises.... I am never happier than on the mountain crests, and
there are no wanderings dearer to one than those on the mountains.”
This passage tends to prove that mountain appreciation had already
become a commonplace with cultured men. Had Marti’s views been
exceptional, he would have assumed a certain air of defence. He would
explain precisely why he found pleasure in such unexpected places. He
would attempt to justify his paradoxical position. Instead, he boldly
assumes that every right-minded man loves mountains; and he confounds
his opponents by a vigorous choice of unpleasant alternatives.
Josias Simler was a mountaineer of a very different type. To him
belongs the credit of compiling the first treatise on the art of Alpine
travel. Though he introduces no personal reminiscences, his work is so
free from current superstition that he must have been something of a
climber; but, though a climber, he did not share Gesner’s enthusiasm
for the hills. For, though he seems to have crossed glacier passes,
whereas Gesner confined himself to the lower mountains, yet the note
of enthusiasm is lacking. His horror of narrow paths, bordering on
precipices, is typical of the age; and if he ventured across a pass he
must have done so in the way of business. There is, as we have already
pointed out, a marked difference between passes and mountains. A
merchant with a holy horror of mountains may be forced to cross a pass
in the way of business, but a man will only climb a mountain for the
fun of the thing. It is clear that Simler could only see in mountains
a sense of inconvenient barriers to commerce, but as a practical man
he set out to codify the existing knowledge. Gesner’s mountain work
is subjective; it is the literature of emotion; he is less concerned
with the mountain in itself, than with the mountain as it strikes the
individual observer. Simler, on the other hand, is the forerunner of
the objective school. He must delight those who postulate that all
Alpine literature should be the record of positive facts. The personal
note is utterly lacking. Like Gesner, he was a professor at Zürich.
Unlike Gesner, he was an embodiment of the academic tradition that is
more concerned with fact than with emotion. None the less, his work
was a very valuable contribution, as it summarised existing knowledge
on the art of mountain travel. His information is singularly free from
error. He seems to have understood the use of the rope, alpenstocks,
crampons, dark spectacles, and the use of paper as a protection
against cold. It is strange that crampons, which were used in Simler’s
days, were only reintroduced into general practice within the last
decades, whilst the uncanny warmth of paper is still unknown to many
mountaineers. His description of glacier perils, due to concealed
crevasses, is accurate, and his analysis of avalanches contains much
that is true. We are left with the conviction that snow- and ice-craft
is an old science, though originally applied by merchants rather than
pure explorers.
We quoted Simler, in the first chapter, in support of our contention
that foreigners came in great numbers to see and rejoice in the beauty
of the Alps. But, though Simler proves that passes were often crossed
in the way of business, and that mountains were often visited in search
of beauty, he himself was no mountain lover.
It is a relief to turn to Scheuchzer, who is a living personality. Like
Gesner and Simler, he was a professor at Zürich, and, like them, he
was interested in mountains. There the resemblance ceases. He had none
of Gesner’s fine sentiment for the hills. He did not share Simler’s
passion for scientific knowledge. He was a very poor mountaineer, and,
though he trudged up a few hills, he heartily disliked the toil of
the ascent: “Anhelosæ quidem sunt scansiones montium”--an honest, but
scarcely inspiring, comment on mountain travel. Honesty, bordering on
the naïve, is, indeed, the keynote of our good professor’s confessions.
Since his time, many ascents have failed for the same causes that
prevented Scheuchzer reaching the summit of Pilatus, but few
mountaineers are candid enough to attribute their failure to “bodily
weariness and the distance still to be accomplished.” Scheuchzer must
be given credit for being, in many ways, ahead of his age. He protested
vigorously against the cruel punishments in force against witches. He
was the first to formulate a theory of glacier motion which, though
erroneous, was by no means absurd. As a scientist, he did good work
in popularising Newton’s theories. He published the first map of
Switzerland with any claims to accuracy. His greatest scientific work
on dragons is dedicated to the English Royal Society, and though
Scheuchzer’s dragons provoke a smile, we should remember that several
members of that learned society subscribed to publish his researches on
those fabulous creatures.
With his odd mixture of credulity and common sense, Scheuchzer often
recalls another genial historian of vulgar errors. Like Sir Thomas
Browne, he could never dismiss a picturesque legend without a pang. He
gives the more blatant absurdities their quietus with the same gentle
and reluctant touch: “That the sea is the sweat of the earth, that the
serpent before the fall went erect like man ... being neither consonant
unto reason nor corresponding unto experiment, are unto us no axioms.”
Thus Browne, and it is with the same tearful and chastened scepticism
that Scheuchzer parts with the more outrageous “axioms” in his
wonderful collection. But he retained enough to make his work amusing.
Like Browne, he made it a rule to believe half that he was told. But on
the subject of dragons he has no mental reservations. Their existence
is proved by the number of caves that are admirably suited to the needs
of the domestic dragon, and by the fact that the Museum, at Lucerne,
contains an undoubted dragon stone. Such stones are rare, which is
not surprising owing to the extreme difficulty of obtaining a genuine
unimpaired specimen. You must first catch your dragon asleep, and then
cut the stone out of his head. Should the dragon awake the value of the
stone will disappear. Scheuchzer refrains from discouraging collectors
by hinting at even more unpleasant possibilities. But then there is no
need to awaken the dragon. Scatter soporific herbs around him, and help
them out by recognised incantations, and the stone should be removed
without arousing the dragon. In spite of these anæsthetics, Scheuchzer
admits that the process demands a courageous and skilled operator, and
perhaps it is lucky that this particular stone was casually dropped
by a passing dragon. It is obviously genuine, for, if the peasant
who had picked it up had been dishonest, he would never have hit on
so obvious and unimaginative a tale. He would have told some really
striking story, such as that the stone had come from the far Indies.
Besides, the stone not only cures hæmorrhages (quite commonplace stones
will cure hæmorrhages), but also dysentery and plague. As to dragons,
Scheuchzer is even more convincing. He has examined (on oath) scores of
witnesses who had observed dragons at first hand. We need not linger
to cross-examine these honest folk. Their dragons are highly coloured,
and lack nothing but uniformity. Each new dragon that flies into
Scheuchzer’s net is gravely classified. Some dragons have feet, others
have wings. Some have scales. Scheuchzer is a little puzzled whether
dragons with a crest constitute a class of their own, or whether the
crest distinguished the male from the female. Each dragon is thus
neatly ticketed into place and referred to the sworn deposition of some
_vir quidam probus_.
But the dragons had had their day. Scheuchzer ushers in the eighteenth
century. Let us take leave of him with a friendly smile. He is no
abstraction, but a very human soul. We forget the scientist, though
his more serious discoveries were not without value. We remember only
the worthy professor, panting up his laborious hills in search of
quaint knowledge, discovering with simple joy that Gemmi is derived
from “gemitus” a groan, _quod non nisi crebris gemitibus superetur_.
No doubt the needy fraternity soon discovered his amiable weakness.
An unending procession must have found their way to his door, only
too anxious to supply him with dragons of wonderful and fearful
construction. Hence, the infinite variety of these creatures. When
we think of Scheuchzer, we somehow picture the poor old gentleman,
laboriously rearranging his data, on the sworn deposition of some
_clarissimus homo_, what time the latter was bartering in the nearest
tavern the price of a dragon for that good cheer in which most of
Scheuchzer’s fauna first saw the light of day.