_THE “MAIDEN” AND THE “MONK.”_
A REMINISCENCE.
“Over the ground white snow, and in the air
Silence. The stars, like lamps soon to expire,
Gleam tremblingly; serene and heavenly fair,
The eastern hanging crescent climbeth higher.
See, purple on the azure softly steals,
And Morning, faintly touched with quivering fire,
Leans on the frosty summits of the hills.”
--WILLIAM CALDWELL ROSCOE.
Time, nine o’clock on a cloudless evening some years ago; place, the
Bär Hotel at Grindelwald; season of the year, the middle of September,
the most enjoyable month in the higher Alps, given fine weather, of
all the twelve. Grindelwald lies in well-earned repose this lovely
night. No more do tourists in their thousands infest village, hotel
salons, and dining-rooms. No throng of touting guides and mule-drivers
lingers in the courtyard; no crowd of aspiring travellers makes noisy
preparation for the morrow’s excursions.
To me this tranquillity is very pleasant, as on the evening in
question, before the age of railways in that district, I drive up the
familiar valley, overshadowed by the huge walls of the Eiger, rising
amid myriads of twinkling stars, and as I alight at the doors of the
Bär, I congratulate myself upon many things.
“Now, Herr Fritz, hunt out my guide from the supper-room for me,
please. What! he is not here? Is there no telegram from him? Well, this
really is too bad! and the weather is magnificent! However, as he’s not
here, I certainly won’t sit and wait for him; so get me a couple of
guides, and to-morrow I will go for a walk amongst the mountains.”
Dinner over, enter the “couple of guides.” Here is sturdy old Peter
Baumann, and there, at the door, stands old Peter Kaufmann. “Well, what
shall we do to-morrow? where shall we go?” “All is good,” they say;
“we will go where you like.” “Very well; then let the Jungfrau be our
goal. I can start for it at 1 A.M., if you wish.” They smile pityingly
and remark, “It is nine hours to the Bergli hut, so we shall have quite
enough if we go there to-morrow, and up the mountain next day.” I don’t
believe them, and consult Boss; he says eleven hours. That settles the
question; so I retire to bed. I leave word with the guides to order
provisions, and to have me called at as late an hour as is consistent
with reaching the Bergli before nightfall. Result--they lay in a store
of meal-soup, and other atrocities, and arouse me from slumber at 6
A.M. By eight o’clock we are well on our way to the Bäregg, and have
overtaken another Jungfrau party--two Austrian gentlemen, with cheery
“English” Baumann and old Christian Almer. They progress upward at a
measured pace, but at the Bäregg restaurant we meet again, and spend
an idle hour, while our respective guides tie up emaciated pieces of
white wood into bundles of such extraordinary neatness, that they might
be “property” faggots appertaining to an amateur theatrical company.
Then on again, down rickety ladders, over swelling waves of ice, and
up a narrow track, with the sun beating on our backs, and never a drop
of water to be had. At last we all sink in a melting condition on a
grassy knoll, and insist on the production of drinkables. The guides,
in response, wriggle into sundry fissures of the earth, and extract
therefrom cupfuls of icy water, which they dole out in niggardly
quantities, exhorting their charges to be sparing in its use.
On again and up, till, with a desperate spurt, we assault the slippery
slopes of the glacier, and deposit ourselves in a panting heap on some
rocks facing the Bergli.
“How far to the hut, Baumann?” “Oh, two hours or so!” And it is now
11.30 A.M.! For this were we dragged from our downy couches and made
to walk up burning slopes under the rays of the autumnal sun! For this
were we hurried away from the seductive, though backless, benches of
the Bäregg! For this were we denied our second breakfast in three and a
half hours, on certain stony pathways where we would fain have halted!
11.30! Very well; here we shall remain and repose ourselves till 3 P.M.
We don’t, however. Two hours of gazing at the Eiger, the Mönch, and
the Schreckhorn produce an unpleasant stiffening of the joints; so
shortly after discovering this we collect our baggage--scattered over
about an acre of ground--and proceed across the level glacier towards
the steep snow slopes coming down from the Mönchjoch. After an hour or
two of threading our way amongst huge chasms, varied by passages in
tight-rope style over knife-edges of ice, we reach our hut. From here
we witness an acrobatic performance without having to undergo the
expense of an entry fee; indeed, the accommodation of the front row
of stalls is too shamefully bad for any one to suggest that we should
pay for it. Far down below us on the snow toil our fellow-travellers.
From time to time one of them, who, at starting, had declared himself
to be “no mountaineer,” casts himself on the white surface. The guides
and his friend haul. He slithers along a little; then suddenly rights
himself like a gutta-percha figure with a weight inside. On again--down
again--up again, so does the party advance.
Of the supper the less said the better; and yet I have heard of
Englishmen who like meal-soup!
Now to bed. Pleasant dreams, sweet repose. _Repose!_ Yes! Audible
repose for the Austrian after his gymnastic feats; for his friend, for
me, even for the guides, none. Well, we count to a hundred, to two
hundred, to two hundred backwards. We light lucifer-matches and examine
our watches. We even contemplate cutting the cords of the ambulance
arrangement, so that it may come down with a run on our slumbering
companion. We are fairly worked up to a murderous state of mind, and
almost of body, when--“Zwölf Uhr!” resounds in stentorian accents,
and we spring from our hay, and viciously shake the source of all our
discomfort. “What?” he says sleepily. “Twelve o’clock? No, thanks; no
Jungfrau for me!” and thereupon turns over and loses himself once more
in the land of dreams.
More meal-soup, followed by coffee, buttoning up of gaiters, packing
up of all the things we ought to have left behind, uncoiling of ropes,
jodeling of guides, and off we go.
What a joy to swing along over the frozen snow, from which countless
ice-crystals gleam up to us with bright innocent eyes, nowise resentful
that at every step they go crunch, crunch under our great clumsy
boots. The glacier streams down in a silver flood to our right. The
mountain-tops, bathed in brilliant moonbeams, seem to hang in the sky.
The radiant beauty of the night, the still, keen air, the silence of
the surroundings, all combine to make the seventeen minutes which it
takes us to reach the Mönchjoch, pass like so many seconds. From here,
dazzled by the startling loveliness of the view, and looking anywhere
but at my feet, I carelessly slip into the _bergschrund_. I am pulled
out, and in twenty-five minutes more we cross the Ober-Mönchjoch, and
see in front of us the shining robes of our “Maiden.” A jodel from the
guides, and we are running wildly down the snow slopes, across the
plateau, and on to the very mountain itself. It is now very cold, with
the chill of early dawn in the air. We have not gone far above the
Roththal Saddle when the purple of the sky grows warmer and warmer,
till at last the peak above us blushes in the rays of the rising sun.
A short half-hour more, and we cluster on our goal, pitying our friend
below in the hay of the Bergli.
It is early yet, and Baumann, good old sportsman that he is, says,
“Now we will go up the Mönch.” “No,” I reply, “I am out of training,
and to-morrow I must cross the Strahlegg. We will now go home.” But
Baumann blinks his eyes, and when we reach the plateau, makes a dead
halt. “The Bergli or the Mönch?” he inquires. The Mönch looks near,
and I weakly give in. Our fellow-travellers here leave us. We get on
to the ridge running up from the Ober-Mönchjoch. All goes swimmingly.
We reach the final crest. Alas! it is shining ice from end to end.
Old Kaufmann is awfully done; from time to time he crawls on to the
cornice. Baumann, from behind, shouts warningly. We seem to make no
progress. An hour passes. We are not half-way along the _arête_. “Now,
then,” I say, “let me get right on to the ridge and see the view; then
I am going home.” The guides protest, but I am obdurate; the cornice
and the great fatigue of Kaufmann have decided me. Eventually we go
down. Hurrying along the level snows, halting for as short a time as
possible at the Bergli, sliding and running where we can, at last we
reach the Grindelwald glacier. By now it is pitch-dark; our lantern
won’t behave properly; our candle continually goes out, and we wander
for an interminable time over ice and moraine. Finally, by a process
akin to that of “the survival of the fittest” (having tried about every
route on the glacier), we strike the Bäregg ladders, and thence hasten
down to the valley.
Having described the pleasures of climbing in autumn, it is but
fair that I should not ignore the single occasion on which I have
experienced bad weather at that season. It was on October 2nd, a year
later, that, with Ulrich Almer, Christian Jossi, and Herr Theophile
Boss, I set out from the Roththal hut to cross the Jungfrau. The
weather had been perfect for several days past, but on the previous
evening the sunset gave signs of a change, while the lightning, which
trembled along the western horizon, was another indication that a storm
was imminent.
It being, therefore, doubly important to make an early start, the
guides commenced by over-sleeping themselves, and it was nearly 5.30
A.M. before the hut was quitted. A lot of step-cutting retarded our
progress, and it was 11.35 A.M. before we halted, three or four minutes
below the summit, for our second breakfast since starting. Clouds
were now drifting up on all sides; but the more serious part of the
business was done, so the weather could not matter greatly to us. We
remained but a moment on the top, and then amidst shrieks of “Schnell!
Vorwärts!” from Jossi, we turned to descend in the teeth of a blinding
snowstorm. Well, it was cool; certainly it was not cold, for we wore
our gloves in our pockets. We had excellent steps, too, thanks to a
party who had ascended from the Bergli a couple of days previously.
The walk to the Mönchjoch was deadly dull, the only objects visible
being our noble selves. Under the leadership of such guides as ours,
however, we never deviated from the right direction for an instant,
though the tracks were, of course, by this time entirely obliterated. A
comfortable night at the Bergli was a good preparation for the descent,
through waist-deep snow, to the valley.
During the evening the guides had discoursed at much length on a
feature of the morrow’s route, which, with all the picturesqueness of
inaccuracy, they described as an ice-wall. Now, an _Eiswand_ conveyed
to my imagination a green cliff, shiny of surface, slippery to the
touch, and perpendicular in formation. All these features were,
however, absent. The “wall,” which was about 170 feet in height, was
certainly of ice, but the ice was coated with firm snow to a depth
of several inches. I am not learned in angles, but I should say that
seventy-five degrees was somewhere near the slope of the first five
steps, after which the steepness steadily decreased. The last man,
assisted by a bit of whipcord doubled round a piece of firewood driven
in at the top, took seven minutes to come down, so the difficulties of
the way were not unduly great. I am obliged to enter into these details
because the character of this highly inoffensive slope was cruelly
maligned by the party previously referred to, and on our return to the
village, after a descent over the Zäsenberghorn, monotonous by reason
of its entire simplicity, we were questioned by a curious crowd as to
the horrors of the ice-wall. Our predecessors had already left the
place, so we could but fight the united army of credulous persons whom
they had left behind, and in whose imaginations the ice-wall of the
Mönchjoch no doubt lives even to the present day as one of the terrors
of mountaineering.
I have now told the worst of my experiences of autumn in the Alps. How
easily hundreds of climbers could cap it with their accounts of summer
in those regions!
APPENDIX.
As I put forward no claim whatever for originality in this little work,
I shall perhaps escape blame from climbers, and earn some thanks from
the general public, if I place in the way of the latter a poem, the
greater part of which appeared in the _Alpine Journal_ (volume xiv.,
page 64), and which consequently was not likely to have attracted the
attention of the non-mountaineering traveller. Through the courtesy
of the author, I am enabled to reprint it in full in these pages. We
who spend much of our time amongst “Heaven’s nearest neighbours,” grow
to love our surroundings more and more. It is often said that people
ascend peaks in order to boast of their achievements. Of some, no
doubt, this is true. But I cannot give better proof of how such persons
are looked upon by the true mountain-climber than by quoting the lines
I have referred to, with the spirit of which I, and thousands more,
are entirely in sympathy. The poem, entitled, “Mountain Midgets; or,
Thirty Years After,” is supposed to have been copied from a stranger’s
book in a well-known mountain resort, and is headed:--
TO MY FELLOW-GUESTS.
(_An Original Member of the Alpine Club speaks._)
I was with the men who conquered all the Alps, and climbing higher
Watched, from Caucasus or Andes, Phosphor soaring like a fire;
But, successors of De Saussure! You, presumably with souls,
Who treat Heaven’s nearest neighbours as the pit-bear treats his poles,
Show your foolish “forms” upon them, “cutting records” as you run,
Craving of a crowd that jeers you, notoriety--your bun!
You, who love an “Alpine centre” and an inn that’s full of people,
Where the tourists gape in wonder while their Jack beflags his steeple;
Stars, who twinkle with your axes, while girls “wonder what you are,”
Through a village, that’s the image of a Charity Bazaar;
Stars, who set beneath the wineshop, where “the men must have a drink”:
So the idler leads the peasant down the path where he will sink,
Till discredited, discarded, game for snobs who “stand a treat,”
The old guide of twenty summers touts for custom in the street!
Lads, whose prate is never-ceasing, till the _table d’hôte_ is crammed
With the _gendarmes_ you have collared, and the _cols_ you’ve
_spitzed_ or _kammed_!
Not for you the friendly _Wirthshaus_, where the _Pfarrer_ plays
the host,
Or the vine-hung _Osteria_, where the bowls go rattling most;
Not for you the liquid splendour of the sunset, as it dies,
Not for you the silver silence and the spaces of the skies,
Known of men who in the old time lodged in hollows of the rocks,
Ere those Circe’s styes, the Club-huts, harboured touristdom in flocks.
There you lie beside your porters in tobacco fumes enfurled,
And think more of cold plum-pudding than “the glories of the world”;
There you ponder with your fellows on the little left “to do,”
Plotting darkly Expeditions that may, partially, be New;
Boasting lightly, while the brightly-beading Bouvier brims the glasses,
How you’ll “romp up” avalanche tracks and you’ll rollick in crevasses;
Dreaming fondly of the glory that such “azure feats” must get,
When your guide narrates the story in the _Grindelmatt Gazette_;
Gloating grimly on the feelings Hobbs and Nobbs will strive to smother,
When they learn the Gross Narr Nadel has been just “bagged” by another:
Hobbs and Nobbs, who, slily stealing to our Grün Alp telescope,
May find solace in revealing how you faltered on the rope.
Mountain Midgets--thus I hail you, who to littleness your own
Fain would drag down Nature’s Greatest, leave earth’s minster-spires
alone!
Yet in vain an old man preaches. What is brought shall still be found,
Still the raw, relentless athlete make the Alps his running-ground;
Still the Greater breed the Lesser on through infinite degrees,
And the mountains have their Midgets--as the glaciers have their fleas.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON.