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Title: Alpine notes and the climbing foot
Author: Wherry, George
Language: English
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ALPINE NOTES AND THE CLIMBING FOOT
[Illustration: W. ALOIS KALBERMATTEN. XAVER IMSENG. A. B.]
Alpine Notes
&
The Climbing Foot
By
George Wherry
MA., M.C.Cantab., F.R.C.S.
Surgeon to Addenbrooke’s Hospital,
Cambridge; University Lecturer in
Surgery; Member of the Alpine Club
[Illustration]
Cambridge: Macmillan & Bowes
1896
PREFACE
The following pages were mostly written with pencil in the railway train
when the writer was returning from Alpine holidays. The letters were
published in the _Cambridge Chronicle_ as a record of the mountaineering
season, and extend over the past five years.
A few serious remarks on the climbing foot, and on accidents, are added
separately, and little attempt has been made to retouch these yearly
letters. Being “touched for the evil” has been known, according to the
court wags, to kill a feeble son of Tom Esmond’s. There being little but
evil in the lad’s composition, the royal touch which expelled the evil
from the patient was a fatal performance. Fearing it might prove so for
my poor tracts, they remain much as they were originally printed. Only of
this I feel assured, that similar notes, put into my hands when I began
climbing, would have been read by me with avidity.
If one of these papers be found now and then somewhat technical, and
to savour of another craft, more useful even than mountaineering, that
possible usefulness must be my excuse for these digressions.
The series of pictures to illustrate the chapter on the climbing foot
I hope will prove of interest. Mr. Stearn, the photographer, of Bridge
Street, Cambridge, has caught the expression in the infant’s foot, which
I kept in position with my finger, and the remarkable adaptation of the
tiny infant’s foot for climbing and all-four progression is very well
shown; also those by Captain Abney of the Swiss guides have come out
exceedingly well.
These notes may be found acceptable to any novitiate, who, after making
his first climb, can feel what Meredith’s hero in _The Amazing Marriage_
so well expresses to his comrade:
“I shall never forget the walk we’ve had. I have to thank you for the
noblest of pleasures. You’ve taught me—well, a thousand things; the
things money can’t buy. What mornings they were! and the dead-tired
nights! Under the rock, and up to see the snowy peak pink in a gap of
thick mist. You were right: it made a crimsoning colour shine like a new
idea. Up in those mountains one walks with the divinities, you said. It’s
perfectly true. I shall remember I did. I have a treasure for life! Now
I understand where you get your ideas. The life we lead down there is
hoggish. You have chosen the right.”
A small matter will suggest pleasant memories of mountaineering to those
(harmless degenerates, according to Max Nordau) who see the Mer de Glace
in every frozen puddle, as a child sees pictures in the fire.
Many a man helping a dish of Devonshire junket on his table, thinking of
Forbes’s viscous theory, watches for the place opposite the first gap
made by the spoon, where in the junket there forms a chasm parallel with
the side, still leaving a fringe or shelf attached to the edge of the
dish—for him at the moment that crack is a _bergschrund_—there he finds
at one point a bridge convenient for crossing, at another an impossible
yawning crevasse.
Such a man will not find these notes dull, for he can enjoy the plainest
junket, and though he finds recorded few new things, yet pleasant
thoughts will be suggested of the past, and infinite possibilities for
the future.
CAMBRIDGE, May 1, 1896.
CONTENTS
PAGE
AN ALPINE LETTER, 1895, 1
MOUNTAINEERING IN DAUPHINÉ, 1894, 19
SWITZERLAND AND SAVOY IN 1893, 42
AN ALPINE LETTER, 1892, 67
A MONTH UPON THE MOUNTAINS, 1891, 93
ON THE CLIMBING FOOT, 119
ON ACCIDENTS, 145
INDEX, 168
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
GROUP OF CLIMBERS, _Frontispiece_
“THE NEW ROUTE,” _Vignette_
A REGIMENT OF LARCHES ADVANCING ON VETERAN PINES, 6
MELCHIOR ANDEREGG, 1895, 16
SKETCH MAP OF THE HIGHEST POINT OF THE DAUPHINÉ, 20
LES ECRINS FROM THE GLACIER BLANC, 26
GROUP OF CLIMBERS, 32
LA MEIJE FROM THE VAL DES ETANÇONS, 36
ICEBERGS STRANDED ON THE BED OF THE MÄRJELEN SEE, 80
OLD STONE BRIDGE AT SAAS FÉE, 108
FOOT OF AN INFANT FIVE WEEKS OLD, SHOWING THE INSTEP TOUCHING
THE SHIN ON SLIGHT PRESSURE OF THE FINGER, 122
FOOT OF AN INFANT FIVE WEEKS OLD, TOUCHED WITH THE FINGER TO
SHOW THE ANGLE OF THE FOOT WITH THE LEG AND THE PREHENSILE
TOES, 124
FOOT OF AN INFANT FIVE WEEKS OLD. THE INSTEP IS MADE TO TOUCH
THE SHIN BY SLIGHT PRESSURE OF THE FINGER, 126
FOOT OF AN INFANT NEARLY A YEAR OLD—
FIRST POSITION, 128
SECOND POSITION, 130
GUIDE’S FOOT IN CLIMBING POSITION AGAINST THE SHOEHORN ROCK
AT ZERMATT (ALOIS KALBERMATTEN), 134
DO. (PETER PERREN), 136
GUIDE’S FOOT, TO SHOW THE ANGLE MADE BY THE FOOT WITH THE LEG
WITHOUT PRESSURE, 138
DO., ANOTHER POSITION, 140
FOOT OF EXPERIENCED AMATEUR, 143
ACT OF SITTING DOWN, USING ONLY ONE LIMB—
FIRST POSITION, 142
SECOND POSITION, 144
ALPINE NOTES
An Alpine Letter
1895
Training at Kandersteg—Climbing the south face of the
Birrenhorn—The viper’s cast—The larches replacing the pines—The
ascent of the Doldenhorn—The Petersgrat—The ascent of the
Bietschhorn—An interesting anniversary ascent—Ascent of Monte
Rosa by the Lys Pass—Cold feet on the glacier—The Furggen
Joch—Accident to a guide—Traverse of the Matterhorn—Naked feet
of guides photographed in climbing position—The Traverse of the
Charmoz—Farewell to Melchior—Lines to my lantern.
Every one should try to be in good training once a year, and experience
has confirmed my opinion that Kandersteg, in the Bernese Oberland, is a
good place to train for a climbing holiday. There the expeditions are
interesting enough without being too serious. The enervating effect
of what is ironically called carriage exercise, which only exercises
the carriage, and does nothing for the man inside, must be gradually
counteracted by hard work in fine air. Also it must be remembered that as
one grows older, training is more difficult, and too often hurried in the
process.
With a friend of former years, our first little climb up the
Tschingellochtighorn resulted in a ducking, and for myself it must be
confessed that the bodily fatigue of the first tug up steep slopes hardly
permits of the usual interests and enjoyments of the way. Now it is
rather sad to reflect upon those two black sluggish lizards that I was
too lazy to collect, and that a fine crop of yellow Gentians were merely
noticed without pleasure. Climbing the Tschingellochtigrat—a yellow
Gentian it was that: and very little more.
Every struggle makes the next more easy—at first it is a purgatory for
the pie-crust of the past year, then the later labour is all delight.
Mr. M., that veteran climber, hailed me on my arrival at Kandersteg with
a shout: with him was his son, already at sixteen well experienced in
mountain craft, and the well-beloved Melchior Anderegg. Mr. M. says “a
man is always at his best on the Alps,” and surely this is true; his body
is most freed from disorder, and his mind from cant, as he climbs away
from all the worries of life.
We had an expedition together, a pretty climb up the steep south face
of the Birrenhorn; on our way up to the rock we killed an adder. Near
this spot last year I found a perfect viper’s cast (eye-covers and lips
also quite entire). It is now in the Cambridge Museum, and proves that
Gilbert White is correct in his statement that the snake’s cast is turned
completely inside out. Here too are a great number of large white snails
like escargots—“O helix infelix tui quam miseresco sine sheetis aut
blankets dormientis al fresco.”
As my friend had made with me this same ascent last year, we were allowed
to lead the way up, and had a nice scramble, notes of which are to be
found in the _Alpine Journal_, and seen on a later page. This excursion
gives a good view of the forests of the two valleys seen from many points
above the Kander stream and Oeschinen See. No one can fail to note, when
once attention is aroused to it, how the larch is gaining ground in the
struggle for existence, and the pine is rapidly diminishing. Rarely does
one see a young Arolla pine, and the old trees are picturesque ruins.
In the Arolla valley the same observation may be made, and there are
decaying stumps of trees, 200 or 300 years old, remaining high up, near
the glaciers, where once a forest stood. A great advantage the larch
has in being a deciduous tree, shedding its thin and spiky leaves every
winter, and riding out the storm with bare poles, when the pine holds
on its evergreen branches a great weight of snow, and presents a large
surface for the tempest to burst upon.
When these pine trees stand together collecting snow, more opportunities
for avalanches occur, and ruin is scattered on the forest beneath. The
lovely green tints of the sprouting larches in Spring will bring us some
compensation if the pines are to be lost.
[Illustration: A REGIMENT OF LARCHES ADVANCING ON VETERAN PINES.]
According to Mr. Sowerby, in his _Forest Cantons_, the larches always
choose the crystalline rocks, while the pines prefer the limestone.
Starting from the Hotel at half-past one in the morning, we had a
roasting hot day on that beautiful snow-peak, the Doldenhorn. With Hari
as guide, we followed a large swinging oil-lamp, instead of the usual
lantern, and toiled up through jungle, to find the snow all fresh and
soft; lovely to look upon, but wearisome to travel up; a long ice-slope
at the top gave rest to all except our leader, who had to cut steps to
the final corniced ridge; there we held him with the rope in leaning over
to judge whether we might safely sit down upon the summit.
On our departure from Kandersteg, a lady and her husband joined us in
a delightful walk over the Petersgrat. We rested a night at the Selden
châlets in the hay, giving the lady the only bed of the place, and,
starting the next morning early, had an easy day over that beautiful
glacier pass, arriving at Ried in the Lötschen Thal in a broiling sun.
Nothing more was then known of those two poor fellows who went for their
last climb a few weeks before, left the little inn and never returned.
My companion had come with me to ascend the Bietschhorn, and we found
it a first-rate climb, requiring continual care because of the rotten
state of the rock arête. Every stone has to be tested before the weight
is allowed to rest upon it, and the movements over the ridge must be
lovingly and embracingly made without jerk or hurry. In Alpine slang
the mountain is badly in need of repair. We were on the summit during
an earthquake, of which we felt nothing, though at Zermatt there was
considerable alarm, and a climber on the Rothhorn is reported to have
had to sit tight as though on a bucking horse!
Next day we walked down to the Rhone valley, and came to Zermatt with
our guides, Alois Kalbermatten and Peter Perren. Here again Mr. M. was
actively at work with Melchior, and as he came down from Monte Rosa,
he told me how pleased he was to have made an anniversary ascent of a
mountain he had climbed forty years ago!
We made for the highest point of Monte Rosa by starting from the hut by
lantern-light, and going up the glacier as if to cross the Lys Joch, then
taking a rock arête to the summit, we descended by the usual snowy route
to the Gorner glacier, and so back to Zermatt. My feet had been very cold
on the glacier; the mass of nails carried, unless the soles of the boots
be very thick, chills the feet as the iron gets cold upon the ice, and
in this respect there is more to say for Mummery spikes, which carry
the feet slightly off the ice. F. Andenmatten, of Zermatt, made such a
successful improvement in clumping my boots, that he obtained an order
for another pair on the spot, and I believe him to be an artist of the
first rank for climbing boots.
On our next climb, in crossing the Furggen Joch to reach the Italian hut
above the Col du Lion, on the Italian side of the Matterhorn, we had an
awkward adventure. Perren was helping a porter, who carried up wood for
us, over the bergschrund, and was leaning forwards to reach him with his
axe, when down came a stone from above—“a bolt from the blue” and struck
poor Perren on the head. The blood ran over his face and gave him a
ghastly look. The blow did not result in ordinary shock, it only excited
him so that he would not sit down to have his hurt dressed, but shouted
out a noisy account of the accident. Fortunately I had an antiseptic
dressing and bandage in my rücksack, and though he had a nasty torn wound
of the scalp, I decided to proceed at least as far as the hut, though it
was five hours’ hard climb, and I felt doubtful as to whether he would be
fit to traverse the Matterhorn in the morning.
The main object of our expedition was to climb over the top of the
mountain from Italy and down the Swiss side to Zermatt. However, when
day broke he wished to proceed, and assured me that he could manage the
climbing. Rather than risk the success of the expedition, I offered to
come down with him, and pay him the same price, but he would not hear
of it, and the other guide being quite confident, with some misgiving
I went over the mountain with the wounded man. My fear was of brandy
combined with a hot sun, and images arose before me of a strong man
delirious on the awful precipices of this south side of the Matterhorn.
It was very soon apparent that my guide’s powers were fully equal to his
work, for our party went strongly and at a fair pace. We had breakfast
and rested half an hour on the classic rocks of the Tyndallgrat, and
reached the summit in less than five hours from the start, the second
time we have stood together on that snowy ridge which crowns the majestic
mountain. “Long Biner,” a Zermatt guide, who came up with a party from
the other side, here told us of the death of Emile Rey, and we were
filled with wonder that the famous climber should have ended his career
by a fatal slip when all his serious work was done on the Aiguille du
Géant—a mountain which he knew so well.
Returning to the Monte Rosa Hotel for a rest, I was fortunate in falling
in with Captain Abney, who kindly photographed for me the naked feet
of my guides in the act of climbing a rock. It has often been noticed
that a guide can go face forward, and whole-footed up a slope, while the
amateur following, and coming to the steep part, has to go on his toes
or turn sideways. It seems possible that the angle made by the foot with
the leg may be more acute in the guide who has climbed from infancy,
and though it is probably very much a matter of balance, I wished to
compare photographs of amateurs’ feet when put into similar action. The
guides wear thick leather boots loosely laced at the top, so that it is
difficult to see the play of the ankle.
There is a most interesting discussion by Darwin, in his voyage of the
_Beagle_, on muscular action and balance in riding, but of course in
the case of the guides’ feet there may be some structural difference,
hereditary and acquired, actually permitting more freedom of movement at
the ankle joint, which neither muscular action nor power of balance could
give to the amateur. These points are separately considered in another
chapter on the “Climbing Foot.”
On a memorable morning at the end of August, the morning of Miss
Sampson’s fatal accident upon the Triftjoch, while we were packing up to
travel over that same pass, my friend had a telegram to report the death
of his mother at Chamounix. It was his first great grief, and seemed the
one unbearable thing in life. With him I travelled to join his afflicted
family. The sorrow of others thus threw a strong shadow over me, and
my friend having gone to England, I had now little heart for further
climbing.
Nevertheless, taking my guides to Montanvers I traversed the Charmoz, a
very fine rock climb, in which five points of varying size are scrambled
over. There is a good deal of standing on one another’s shoulders in
acrobatic fashion in the ascents, and the use is frequent of a second
rope looped over a point of rock in the descents. The highest peak is the
last climbed, and its couloir is descended to the base of the rock to
join the route below the couloir of the first ascent. The glacier which
it is necessary to cross is, this year, in a dangerous state; falls of
ice are seriously frequent. When on the highest point of the Charmoz, the
most awful avalanche of stones came thundering down from near the top of
the adjacent Grépon. The noise was deafening, and a strong sulphurous
smell, which lasted some time afterwards, suggested, as Whymper says,
that the Devil was at the bottom of the business.
[Illustration: MELCHIOR ANDEREGG, 1895.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MR. MYLES MATHEWS.]
Wandering into Couttets’ Hotel at Chamounix quite without intention, I
witnessed a touching farewell between Mr. M. and Melchior. To see an
undemonstrative Englishman kiss his grey-bearded old guide on both
cheeks, when these two have climbed together for forty years, gives one
suddenly a glimpse of the pathos of life impossible to recall without
emotion.
Beautiful for weather, dreadful for disasters, this season will be
remembered as the year in which Emile Rey was killed on the Alps, and
Mummery lost in the Himalayas. All who knew the strong and genial
Benjamin Eyre have felt his loss, and he was a man with many friends.
Then alas! there were others to whom we say farewell for ever.
For this season I have said good-bye to my faithful guides, one of whom
is a friend of many other climbs, giving them a modest addition to their
moderate fees and the old rope, which I leave behind. My folding lantern
shall come away with me for future use; it shuts up into a leather case
no larger than the little sketch-book in which I write the following
somewhat heathenish, but very hopeful hymn:
Guide, who breaks my midnight sleep,
Leads me up the glacier steep,
Where the lantern’s feeble beams
Shine on snow and icy streams;
We fear no darkness in the night
While your strong hand controls the light.
Dawn will for the climber rise,
Daylight point him to the skies—
What if all be mist and cloud
When we reach that summit proud?
Who, conquering, can victory cry,
More gladly lives, dreads less to die!
Mighty Guide! who woke and led me here,
Lend Thy light to make my pathway clear.
Though dim at first on Life’s all doubtful way,
The struggle ends in dawn and perfect day;
Obscuring daylight hides my lantern and Thy star,
But purple glows with gold on glorious peaks afar.
Mountaineering in Dauphiné
1894
Wet weather at Kandersteg—Fly-fishing there—The fisherman’s
fear of a precipice—Birrenhorn ascent—Ascent of the
Blümlis-Alphorn—Chateau at Vizille—La Bérarde in the
Dauphiné—Accident to a guide’s tongue—Traverse of the
Pointe des Ecrins—Guide’s hand benumbed—Wild and impressive
scenery—Ascent of the Grande Aiguille—A frost-bitten porter—My
ascent of the Meije with a broken rib—The heel spikes of the
district.
The Alps of Dauphiné, which may be said to lie in France between the Mont
Blanc range and the Mediterranean Sea, would be best approached by Paris,
Lyons, and Grenoble, but as my climbing friend, A. B., was at Kandersteg,
I went there to meet him and a guide, and to stretch my legs on the
Swiss mountains. On the first day after my arrival we inspected, with a
view to attack the steep south face of the Birrenhorn, and surmounted the
only difficulty of the climb, a steep chimney where a rope is useful to
avoid risk. We planned to complete the ascent on the first fine day. On
this little mountain I found the most perfect snake’s cast I ever saw,
which I gave to Professor Newton. Its head end was in the hole where its
owner got rid of it. The films over the eyes were present, and by blowing
into the mouth I could inflate the cast to a lively resemblance of the
creature it had covered.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE HIGHEST MOUNTAINS IN THE DAUPHINÉ.
_Walker & Bontall sc._]
The weather in the Bernese Oberland was very bad, every day it rained
in the valleys and snowed on the peaks; on any expedition one was sure
to get wet, and mountains of any magnitude were impossible. With a
Surgeon-Major on leave from India I took a turn at fly-fishing, not
in the glacier water of the Kander, but in a pretty stream with pools,
where the trout, though small, would rise to a fly. His Himalayan
experience made the Surgeon-Major anxious to stock the glacier torrents
of Switzerland with Mahsir, a fish more powerful than the salmon, whose
first wild rush on tasting the hook gives such a fierce joy to the
sportsman.
My companion, who was a strong walker, described to me his horrible
sensations at the sight of a precipice. He told me that his father,
though he had shot game in the Himalayas, could never overcome this
fear. If the idea of space was absent my friend could climb well, but
I gathered that horizontal as well as vertical distance was concerned,
because he could not comfortably eat his lunch on a flat platform of an
acre of grassland when there were miles of country far distant below and
beyond. Mountain climbing for him was out of the question, his condition
was almost that of one suffering from agoraphobia or _la peur des
espaces_.
We engaged Joseph Truffer as guide, and as soon as he joined us we
completed the Birrenhorn expedition. It was a satisfaction to me to find
that he did not climb the couloir easily or at the first attempt, but we
had a good scramble on an interesting arête rather like the Portjengrat,
in which there is a rock hole or window to crawl through. We went home by
a long route up by way of the Ober-Oeschinen Alp, and got thoroughly wet
as usual.
To climb the Blümlis-Alphorn, the highest point of the range, we slept
out at a hut, which was unluckily occupied by workmen, who were building
another hut close by. Our night in dirty straw was not so pleasant
in dirty company, and the early morning was dark and threatening; we
started however at 4.30, led by Joseph Hari, a local man. After crossing
the glacier he took us over some smooth slabs of rock arranged like a
slated roof and coated with ice to make us careful. These safely crossed,
Truffer took the lead, and up the final steep everything was ice wherein
steps had to be laboriously cut to the summit. We stood on the top at 10
o’clock, but saw little of our surrounding glories, except occasionally
a brief glance round through the mists while standing perched in an ice
step. The weather ended up in snow, which shut us in on the glacier
below, and made us thankful to be well off the ice, and safely quit of
a mountain which, though usually an easy climb, could assert itself
seriously in a storm.
Taking Truffer with us, A. B. and I travelled to Dauphiné; we spent a
few hours at Grenoble to see the old church and the Bayard statue. While
at lunch at the Hotel Monnet I admired the oak wine jugs, which are
called there “Brocs.” There is a charming old chateau at Vizille, with a
lovely trout stream in the grounds full of big fish. The tennis court no
longer stands in which in 1788 a memorable meeting took place to protest
against the tax. The late President Carnot unveiled a statue in 1888 in
memory of this Revolutionary event and slept at the chateau as the guest
of Madame Casimir-Périer. The old soldier who took us round showed an
oubliette in the old part of the building—beneath its horrible shaft he
had seen armour-coated skeletons dug up.
[Illustration: LES ECRINS FROM THE GLACIER BLANC.]
We walked up to La Bérarde, a mule carrying our baggage. Immediately on
my arrival I was told of an awkward accident which had just happened.
Two parties were ascending a slope of ice when the last man of the first
caravan slipped out of his step and sent his iron-shod heel into the
jaw of the leader of the second caravan, who was too near. Poor Maximin
Gaspard got a bad torn wound of his tongue, cut by his teeth, which I had
to stitch up with silk and horse-hair. As he was in fine health the wound
healed well, and in a few days, in fact, as soon as ever he could feed,
he was climbing again. Maximin’s father, Pierre Gaspard, is the fine old
fellow who has made so many first ascents in these districts, and still
makes the great climbs.
The highest mountain in the Dauphiné, is the Pointe des Ecrins, 13,462
feet, its summit is a ridge of several beautiful points of snow and
rock. With Hippolyte Rodier to assist Truffer we started to traverse
this peak. We met on the way to the Challeret hut, a native with a dead
sheep on his shoulders; it had been killed by a stone falling from the
height above, and no doubt was to be made into “precipice mutton.” After
sleeping a few hours at the hut we got off at 1.30 in the morning, over
the glacier to the Col des Avalanches. Rodier led us to the couloir on
the south face, and we began to crawl up; this was a rock couloir, which
at a steep part was iced and caused some delay. Our leader, however, got
up to a firm position and I followed, but no one else came, and looking
down I saw Truffer wringing his hands and in distress. He explained that
his right hand was frost-bitten and he could not proceed; nevertheless,
he was pulled up by the help of the rope, and finding from the appearance
of the hand and from the pain, which is really a good sign of reaction,
that recovery was sufficient, we decided to proceed, with some misgiving
on my part. We gained the highest part of the Ecrins about 10 o’clock.
There was a great deal of fresh snow on the arête, and in coming down to
the glacier Blanc on the north side we worked hard for five hours without
a halt to reach the Col des Ecrins. Here we rested and then descended
a couloir of 1,000 feet to the glacier de la Bonne Pierre, with its
long and dreary moraine. There is a measurement station on this moraine
to register the movements of the glacier, and here we found a marmot
recently killed, its flesh almost entirely eaten, the entrails strewn
around. An eagle’s feather on the body suggested the mode of death. The
sight of the sheep killed by a stone, and still more the beautiful furry
marmot killed by an eagle, added in a strange way to the savagery of
the scene. In this wild region stern Nature seems to cry, “I care for
nothing, all shall go.” We had a long walk home, the last half-hour by
lantern light, having been eighteen hours over our expedition.
We wished next to traverse the Meije from La Bérarde to La Grave, which
neither of our guides had ever done, so it seemed best to let Truffer go
back to Switzerland, lest on a serious expedition his hand should fail
him again and its recovery be delayed. His helpless condition in the iced
couloir was explained by the fact that months before he had been ill with
a bad hand, and its vitality had been impaired by what was probably a
previous attack of frost-bite. Before his departure we had a lovely day
on the Grande Aiguille; on the top we basked and slept in the sun after
a lunch of tinned fruits and bread and butter. There is a little ice and
snow requiring care on this beautiful peak, but we climbed it up and
down without a rope, and here we passed over the slope where the tongue
accident occurred.
One evening I was aware of a pain in my chest, especially when I laughed,
and I was reminded that at Easter I had broken a rib—in climbing to the
top of a cromlech on Dartmoor called “The Spinster’s Rock,” but the bone
seemed to have mended in spite of some neglect, and was forgotten until
my compass box in the breast pocket jammed against the hurt in some
scramble and found out the weak point. I was warned by pains in certain
movements of the arms against any attempt to traverse the Meije, and
very sadly I had to see my friend take off our guides for a successful
expedition; for though with a suitable bandage on my chest I was quite
active, yet could not pull myself up by my arms in climbing.
[Illustration: JOSEPH TURC. PIERRE GASPARD. MATHON. HIPPOLYTE RODIER.
W. HERR VON RATH. A. B. HERR GRISAR.]
We had parted from Truffer with mutual regrets, for he was a very good
fellow, and taken on Joseph Turc, a more experienced man than Rodier, and
they worked well together. This Turc had just come over from La Grave
with a porter named Etienne. The latter, a poor wizened sun-baked little
man, had all his finger tips on each hand blackened with frost-bite;
his thumbs had escaped. It appears that a Frenchman who could not climb
well was taken by Turc to traverse the Meije from La Bérarde. They got
no further than the Pic Central, there they had to spend the night—next
day getting into La Grave. The poor porter was allowed to sleep with his
fingers in this bad state, and come back over a pass to La Bérarde where
in the afternoon I saw him. He had had some pain in the morning of this
day, and this encouraged me to attempt treatment; so during two or three
hours I rubbed him and watched him, and was assisted by my friend; it
was satisfactory to find a considerable improvement, especially in his
right hand, which next morning was even more apparently improved when
the limits of the black dead portions were more defined—his nails will
probably come off, and there will be ulcerated surfaces on his finger
ends, which will be months in healing. The aspect of this man presented
a pitiable combination of apathy and patience, reminding me of the
wolf-bitten Russian peasants I saw in Pasteur’s laboratory in the Rue
D’Ulm years ago. The guide with the frost-bitten feet, of whom I wrote in
my letter last year, is only now hobbling about with sticks, the wounds
of his amputated toes still unhealed, so much is the process of repair
hindered in tissues damaged by frost-bite.
What I call determination, but my friends describe as obstinacy, now
induced me, after three days’ rest, to climb the Meije, 13,081 feet. It
is a serious rock climb, decidedly stiffer than the Matterhorn, and I did
not attempt the traverse, but it was an error of judgment to have climbed
it in my crippled condition. Doubtless the fine air, which makes a man
laugh so easily, and makes the careworn light-hearted, steals away the
reason like champagne—making the old man seem young—so the poet writes—
“The plague of guide and chum, and wife and daughter
Is Senex who will climb and didn’t oughter.”
[Illustration: LA MEIJE FROM THE VAL DES ETANÇONS.]
My friend having returned to rest from his expeditions I took off the
guides for the ascent of the Meije. We walked up the valley and halted
at the hut. Joseph Turc wanted to put his skin of wine, containing over
five bottles, into my rücksack, and we had a difference, as I objected to
his claret leaking into my shirts, so he had to carry it separately; it
was quite an easy matter, as I had a porter to carry my sleeping bag to
a rock gîte where the night was to be passed, a climb of several hours.
On reaching the glacier, Joseph and I being in front of the others, who
carried the rope, he asked me if I was afraid to go over the glacier.
Probably he meant without the rope. I said it was what I had come for;
but when we began to get to steep ice I found he did not cut steps, and
as he had three large spikes in each of his heels he could go where I
could not follow without using my axe vigorously. He then said he could
not cut the steps because of his wine skin, and thus I was left either
to cut on up all the slopes or carry his skin. After a little hesitation
I offered to carry the wine for fear of hurting my rib, and I carried
it up to the sleeping place, though I did not find the steps cut much
better after his burden was removed.
We went to sleep under the stars on a lovely night, but the day broke
dark and gloomy, so that it was half-past four before we could start. We
roped at once, leaving the porter to take the things back, and Turc led,
but instead of placing me second I was left to the last. With my own rope
of 80 feet long it happened frequently that the men passed out of sight,
and I had no sort of communication with them unless I chose to pull and
shout. But this is well enough when going straight up. It is a difficult
corner or traverse where the position is a bad one; the experts who have
been on their own mountain before, leave the traveller alone to get round
his corner as best he can. “In medio tutissimus ibis,” is a good motto.
I gained the summit at nine o’clock, but just at the final struggle,
where it is necessary to straddle on a sharp red rock ridge, called the
“cheval rouge,” with fine precipices below, my rib gave way, and went
completely broken through. In spite of firm bandaging, the coming down
was a painful experience, for I could feel and even hear the ends of the
broken bone grating together; but I kept at it, going down steadily and
slowly with groans and grunts. The guides sang and shouted and drowned
my feeble exclamations. They had had a good feed with tinned peaches and
plenty of wine on the top when we rested, and it seemed to make them very
happy. They carried seven bottles of wine on this expedition, besides
each man a flask of brandy, and as I do most of my climbing on cold tea,
they had a good allowance.
Joseph Turc is a real genius at rock climbing, a truly brilliant
performer; but on ice, as he can’t cut steps, another time I should get
spikes or crampons. The guides here use three spikes in each heel, driven
in, fixed by gomphosis, not like the Mummery spikes with a screw.
I got to the Inn in time to change for the table d’hôte, not in the
least fatigued, only blaming myself for the painful ordeal I had passed
through. While changing my garments in the small bedroom we occupied
together, my companion could plainly hear across the room the grating of
my fractured rib. So soon as exertion ceased I was entirely well, and had
a good dinner and night’s rest.
No traveller who goes for mountain expeditions to the Dauphiné district
will leave without feeling a debt of gratitude (mixed with envy) to his
own countrymen who have climbed and walked all over this wonderful
country. The maps and climber’s guide by Mr. Coolidge are marvels of
convenience and accuracy, and must be carried by everyone who wishes to
learn his way about these very difficult regions. Mr. Whymper ought to be
as proud of the conquest of the Pointe des Ecrins as of the Matterhorn.
My friend had a good climb on the Pic Bourcet, but of course I did
not attempt this, returning to England by easy stages, halting at
Aix-les-Bains and at Paris. In London I found laughing at “Charley’s
Aunt” a serious matter for my damaged rib, though I thoroughly enjoyed
this absurd farce, as I enjoyed every day of my vacation, and there was
no day I would not willingly live over again.
Switzerland and Savoy
1893
Begin at Kandersteg—Benighted on the Zinal glacier—Glacier
tables and baths—Wild beasts in the hut—The Col Durand—Guide
in a crevasse—Ascent of the Dent Blanche—A climber
exhausted—Ascent of the Weisshorn—A thunderstorm—Death of Mr.
Lucas and Mr. Seiler. The Furggen Joch—Italy and the Italian
side of Mont Blanc—The hut on the Aiguille Grise—The traverse
of Mont Blanc—Anxiety as to weather—The observatory on the
summit—Ascent of Aiguille du Dru. Ascent of the Aiguille
Verte—Frost-bitten guide—Peculiar dangers of a fine season.
When Albert Smith made the ascent of Mont Blanc in 1851, he did not seem
to enjoy himself much; he was thoroughly exhausted and done up, as well
he might be, with sixteen guides, and £20 worth of provisions. If he did
not have a good time our fathers did, in hearing his lecture, or in
reading his dear little book. They listened with the greatest interest
to his serio-comic groans. A hundred bottles of wine, sixty-seven fowls,
joints of meat in proportion, and ten cheeses carried up the mountain
ought to have led to trouble somewhere. On the other hand I enjoyed
myself so much in the ascent of Mont Blanc that I fear I have nothing
left to entertain others. My climbing friend was with me and two guides,
also friends of former years; we had no certificate and no cannon. Nor
was there any pretty Julie down below to give me a cornelian heart and
talk about “une alliance.”
But I will begin at the beginning, and travel first from Cambridge to
Kandersteg, from the land of fen and bog to the land of fine air and
bright mountains—the Bernese Oberland. At Kandersteg my friend was
staying in Egger’s most comfortable inn, and there we made a plan of
campaign. We were fortunate in crossing the Gemmi to obtain a fine view
of the mountains we were about to attack. We slept at Sierre in the
Rhone Valley, and in the morning went up the Val D’Anniviers, one of the
finest valleys in the Alps, a beautiful journey to Zinal, where we met
our trusty guides—Alois Kalbermatten and Xaver Imseng. We must needs try
and reach the hut high up the glacier that same night, and consequently
got benighted, and arrived very late at the Mountet Cabane, rather cross
and tired. While the daylight lasted I saw on the glacier hundreds of
glacier-tables, like a crop of gigantic mushrooms. The hot weather this
year may have made these more apparent, for on all the glaciers I walked
over they seemed more conspicuous than usual. A stone, as big as a teacup
or a cottage, when it lies upon the glacier, protects the ice beneath
from the sun, so that in time the ice melting all round leaves the stone
perched on a pedestal of ice. The icy pyramid gradually yields on the
sunny side, and allows the stone to tilt and fall always in the same
direction. On the Gorner Glacier I saw a stone supported by two separate
pyramids, but this is unusual. If the stone which lies upon the glacier
be thin enough, it may be so warmed through by the sun that it makes a
hole for itself in the ice, and is buried in a pit full of water. So may
dirt make a bath in the glacier, or if it be in large quantity, may leave
a cone of solid ice all dirt covered, looking like a large ant heap.
The deep pits full of water are started in the manner indicated, but the
sun-warmed surface water is continually being replaced by the ice-cold
water below, and the warmed water deepens the pit in the ice, until a
large bath is formed, often two or three feet deep, with steep sides, and
no warning ledge or ridge around, so that a careless walker might go in,
and in the dusk they are very difficult to avoid.
We had a dark experience on the glacier, and had to leave it for the
icy-hearted moraine for fear of accidents, thankful to find shelter after
some hours of weary stumbling along, when there was light enough to see
our dangers but barely enough to permit us to avoid them. When in the
welcome shelter of the hut, we shared with fleas and rats that rough
abode—whether the rats in the straw had guides to this place is a curious
problem; the fleas in the rugs were unusually fierce and hungry. There
was a rat in the hut before its building was completed; when I called
M. Constans’ attention to his first visitor, he remarked in surprise
“Déjà!” but it no doubt migrated from the old Mountet Cabane near by to
the Constantia, as the present place is called in honour of the architect.
All next day the weather was too bad to climb, and we had to give up our
traverse of the Rothhorn this season, having been beaten in the same way
last year after coming over the Triftjoch. We went to Zermatt over the
Col Durand, which led us to an ice slope of some steepness up which steps
had to be cut, and then over snow. As we neared the top of the pass,
with no suggestion of any crack in the smooth white surface of snow,
we walked along all roped together; quite suddenly our leading guide
disappeared down a crevasse. I was last on the rope and saw nothing but
his hat; however, he was soon out again by wrigglings on to his back,
shook himself free of snow, and appeared to mind it about as much as a
Newfoundland dog minds water. But it was a good lesson in the use of
the rope, which alone can make such an ordinary journey safe. My first
care in reaching Zermatt was to have my boots well nailed. English nails
are no good, though Flack’s boots stood me well. My next thought was to
present the local chemist with a prescription which puzzled him for the
moment—Mr. Pulex Irritans—Rx: Pulvis usque ad mortem pulicibus ferocibus
quantum sufficit. My friend said this dog Latin was appropriate, for dogs
and fleas were inseparable. I was soon supplied with a tin of Keating.
The weather was too good for dawdling, and we proceeded to attack the
Dent Blanche. Taking provisions and rugs to the Schönbühl rock, our men
cut bits of dry trees with their ice axes before we left the woods below
us to cross the glacier, and thus provided fuel to cook the excellent
supper we enjoyed before we slept. There were two other parties on the
rocks that night—the Stockje hut being in ruins. We crept into a hole
and had a good night there, in a natural cave which was warm and dry.
When in the small hours of the morning we were drinking our chocolate,
a cry suddenly arose from one of the other parties that their rope was
missing. We stirred the fires and searched with lanterns, and it was all
very picturesque, but did not lead to discovery—the rope was lost. So
only two parties started off early and began to climb, and reached the
summit after a hot fatiguing ascent up ice, snow, and rock. The younger
man of this other party climbed in a boating sweater, appeared to feel
the heat exceedingly, and went to sleep whenever there was a halt. Before
the descent was over he was decidedly ill, but fortunately not utterly
collapsed until after the more dangerous ice slopes had been descended;
his “legs” were then quite gone and he had to be supported by the guides
before he reached the sleeping place, where we left him wrapped in my
shawl with his friend faithfully beside him to pass the night.
The unlucky man whose rope had been lost was a Britisher not easily
beaten. He sent his guides back on their tracks, and by daylight the rope
had been found, where it had been carelessly dropped, upon the glacier;
so that, though rather delayed, his ascent was made successfully, and the
traveller returned by another route to Ferpècle. We, after having decided
that the sick man was safe enough and fast asleep, found our way with
difficulty in the dark, except for lanterns, across the glacier, whereon
we wandered nearly three hours, and Xaver refreshed himself by falling
into a big water bath. Finally we had to stay at Staffel Alp instead of
at our hotel at Zermatt. But we here enjoyed a sound refreshing sleep all
night, and walked down cheerfully in the sunlight of the early morning.
As the Weisshorn was to be our next peak we took train one afternoon to
Randa and climbed up the Schalliberg some hours to the rocks below the
ruined hut. This was a warm sleeping place, though rather exposed, where
we slept well beneath the stars, woke up quite fresh, and enjoyed the
climb immensely. On the rock arête at about 12,000 feet up, and while
the dawn was lighting the peaks around, a dense black cloud appeared
over Italy slowly moving towards the Matterhorn; lightning came flashing
out of it every few seconds. It was a strange sight to witness this
storm-cloud bursting over a distant land, while all about us the sky was
clear and the stars were seen fading before the rising sun. A climber has
related his experience in a thunderstorm which stopped him on the Dent
Blanche, when the electric current made his goggles hiss upon his head.
The hissing of the ice axe is generally near enough for an unpleasant
sensation, and is not a rare occurrence, but the snow glasses being
affected makes a more powerful appeal to the imagination. We had a good
day on the Weisshorn (14,804 feet), and rested at the gîte on the rocks
as we descended, then later had a refreshing tea at Randa, where we heard
the first sad news of the loss of life that morning upon the Täschhorn
just opposite us. A party of four, two gentlemen and two guides, trying
to traverse the Täschhorn from Saas Fée to Randa, got benighted in the
descent. By light of a lantern they got to a point of comparative safety
where all four lay down to sleep, but only three woke up; Mr. Lucas had
wandered off in the night and fallen over a precipice, where his body was
found in the morning.
At Zermatt, though the hotels seem crowded, there are not many climbers,
they go up higher or appear only for a day and off again. The place is
full of people—omnibuses run over you in the streets—and you may be there
some time before you notice that Mdlle. Biner has now started a cabin
near the Monte Rosa and shaves you as well as ever, advertising herself
as a coiffeuse. She is dressed in black, mourning for her brother, the
guide killed this year with young Seiler on the Matterhorn. Just up the
street is a tailleuse, a useful person sometimes after climbing rocks,
and when your wardrobe is scanty.
Leaving Zermatt we spent one night at the Schwarzsee Hotel, close to the
Matterhorn, intending to cross over into Italy by the Furgg-joch—this
pass skirts the Matterhorn; we climbed to the top in about two and a half
hours; starting from our inn at 4, we arrived at Valtournanche about 10
A.M. Then taking a carriage after a long rest and refreshment, our driver
just made us miss the train at Châtillon, when the Italian sun was at its
hottest; we had a siesta and dined there, and so in the evening to Aosta,
where we slept the night. We took places in the diligence to Courmayeur
next morning, and saw Mont Blanc before us in a few hours. The Aiguille
Blanche de Péteret is well seen from the road, a sad reminder to all
Cambridge men of Dr. Frank Balfour, who perished on that mountain in
1882. It has been climbed by Sir Seymour King, and again this year by Dr.
Güssfeldt with Emile Rey as guide. Six hundred francs is said to have
been paid as fee for guidance.
We were up early for an eight hours’ climb, with a final rock scramble to
the Italian Quintino Sella club hut on the Aiguille Grise (11,812 feet).
Here we had good food and sleep; our men went out for an hour and cut
steps up a steep ice slope, ready for the ascent of Mont Blanc in the
morning. As this ice slope appeared to be dangerous from falling stones,
we began early, and were greatly helped by the steps already cut; if any
stones came down we were not aware of them, though out of sight is not
out of mind in these steep places.
The weather when we began our climb in the dusk before the day broke was
very threatening, and later on a light fall of snow and hail gave us
anxiety, as we clambered up the steep rocks, lest we should be driven
back to our hut, the difficulty and danger of such a repulse increasing
every hour until it was necessary to go on and make the ascent whatever
befell us.
We passed on the higher rocks an enormous rusty ice axe of an ancient
pattern, which doubtless has a story; we left it on the spot for others
to wonder at. We made the ascent in about eight hours, including halts,
and I stood on the highest point in these Alps—the great snow summit of
Mont Blanc—15,780 feet. But let us not be proud, the highest mountain in
the world, Mount Everest, is nearly twice as high.
On the curve of snow at the highest point a huge timber skeleton of a
building is erected; heavy beams as thick as my body, strongly fixed
together, make a truncated pyramid with a rectangular base, which looks
as if it might stand the storms, or get buried in snow. At present
the wind whistles through, and it presents no surface to the blast.
M. Vallot, who is building this for an observatory, has had to plant
the foundations in ice, finding no rock after thirty feet excavation.
Whether the ice will move, or piled up snow will displace the structure,
remains to be proved. Snow collects always more on the north (French)
aspect of the summit, and this tendency to collect may be increased by
the obstruction. The workmen stated at Chamounix that plum stones were
found at a depth of twenty feet, and if this be true it is exceedingly
interesting and important as showing that these stones, which must
have been dropped on the summit by travellers, had maintained their
verticalness, and had not been carried down towards the glaciers below.
There the hut stands at present with a small tricolour flag floating
alongside. My vulgar wish to climb the timbers was unexpressed and
unfulfilled. We were shut in completely by dark fog. Cold wind and the
dangers of storm drove us down to just below the top on the Chamounix
side, where there is a hut built as an observatory. This shelter we
feared at first to leave; wind and darkness kept us there, no tracks were
visible, nor anything to guide us but the snow all round. The wind was
not the dangerous (south) Föhn wind, and presently, after a cold blast,
we were able for a moment to see our direction; then by the advice of our
guides we hurried down over the Grand Plateau, scuttling and sliding to
the Grands Mulets, and safety, in two hours and ten minutes. After a cup
of tea and a rest we continued our journey over the beautiful glacier
des Bossons in bright sunshine. We reached Couttet’s capital hotel in
Chamounix at six o’clock, thus traversing Mont Blanc from Italy into
France in fourteen hours, including halts by the way. This is a far finer
expedition than up and down from Chamounix, but is not so popular, and
the traveller, bringing with him foreign guides into the place, is not
saluted by a salvo of artillery.
Next day we were at Montanvert admiring the Mer de Glace, and during
thunderstorms of many hours we made our arrangements to climb the
Aiguille du Dru. Sleeping out under a rock, where we had passed a stormy
night last year, we began in fine weather our steep ascent mostly of
rocks, with plenty of opportunities for adventures on the way. There is
one place in climbing the rocks where a rope is hung over a precipice,
and by gently swinging on this rope a long step or giant stride is
made across to a foothold beyond. It is only one of the many positions
in mountaineering where imagination shows you what a slight distance
there is between what you are and what you may become. In the descent a
frightful avalanche of stones fell down just as we cleared the rocks, but
it was not near enough to shake our nerves.
On the 28th of August I slept at the Couvercle to climb the Aiguille
Verte. This sleeping place is a good one where an enormous rock overhangs
the little platform on which the sleeper stretches, and it is grandly
situated above the famous Jardin in the Glacier de Talèfre. Being roused
before midnight in threatening weather, we hesitated before attacking
such a mountain as the Aiguille Verte with a high wind and storm-clouds
in prospect; meantime we had some hot chocolate, and only set off with
some misgivings at one in the morning. The wind moderated as the day
broke, we got over the bergschrund, and made a successful ascent in about
nine hours. The summit of the Verte is of snow, commanding a fine view
of Mont Blanc and the peaks around. We noted with feelings of annoyance
that the majestic snow curve upon the head of the Monarch is broken by
the erection of Vallot’s wooden building, which looks from here like a
projection of dark rocks. Time may revenge himself, and play skittles
with the timbers.
When I parted from my guides, whose conduct was worthy of all praise,
and came down to Chamounix, I saw there a most piteous sight, that of a
fine young fellow with both feet frost-bitten. All the toes of both feet
were black, and large blisters appeared on the reddened skin of the foot
above the blackened toes. He was a guide named Maquignaz, and forty-eight
hours before my visit had been exposed during one night on the Italian
side of Mont Blanc; he was with Mr. F. and another guide, a cousin of the
same name. The others of the party put their feet into their knapsacks,
and took such like precautions, and so escaped. On examining this poor
fellow’s boots I discovered that, though sound enough in the soles, they
had the tongues fastened only halfway up the upper leathers, and with no
gaiters or other wrapping except his trousers, he must have got his feet
wet. The latest accounts I heard were not hopeful as to saving the big
toes. Without the great toes he cannot climb again and his occupation
will be gone; the loss of the little toes is not so serious. The
reflection after such a sad sight is forced upon one, that though over
sixty deaths are said to have occurred on Mont Blanc, history takes small
account of the travellers who have lost portions of their bodies upon the
mountains and had their after lives wrecked by their maimed condition.
The delay caused by an endeavour to help this unfortunate man, decided
me to journey to Geneva with my friend rather than travel alone over
the Tête Noire. It was late next night before I reached Zermatt again
and joined my wife, who had reached the Riffelberg from Paris ten days
previously. We found most comfortable quarters at the Riffel Alp lower
down, in an enormous hotel, where two hundred and seventy people dined
every day, including an archbishop and forty-five clergymen.
The weather this year has been good for climbers, though there have
been peculiar dangers associated with the sunshine; and as every season
has its own peculiar dangers, so this year the weather was almost too
good. The sun tamed the severity of giant peaks, and made the descents
dangerous from avalanches.
The great rocks have been bared of ice and snow and tempted attacks,
while earth-fast and frost-bound stones were loosened from the heights
above and made the mountains dangerous. The steep couloirs of the
Aiguille Verte were decidedly dangerous from falling stones, and though
I do not pretend to have any hair-erecting story to tell, it will be
understood that we made our way up and down on the rocks, as much as
possible avoiding the tracks of the stones. The traverses across the
couloirs were as rapid as caution could permit, and only made when
absolutely necessary. Great stones occasionally hurtling down as if
shot from a catapult, with enough force to dash the brains out or hurl
to destruction the poor climber balanced in his ice step. Thus upon the
Aiguille Noire a man was killed by a blow on the head, and many had
narrow escapes. On all great mountains where ice, snow, and rock have all
to be climbed over, it must be difficult to find weather which will suit
so as to find everything in perfect order, but for the true enjoyment
of a climb both the man and the mountain must be in fine condition. The
weather of the day I have described on Mont Blanc, though it gave us
some uneasiness, was just perfect for avoidance of fatigue and mountain
sickness. Absence of sun and presence of wind enabled the climbers to
feel fairly vigorous, though at such a height. In other conditions of
hot, still weather, the strain might have been severe.
These days are now delightful memories for me, and if my remarks just
written do not rise above what Scott called the “ordinary bow-wow,” at
least they are “high notes” in one sense, and may find an echo in the
hearts of those who love the mountains.
An Alpine Letter
1892
Saas Fée—Grimsel Pass—Mountain sickness—A tired lady on
the Matterhorn—Ascent of the Matterhorn—Ascent of the
Ober-Gabelhorn—The Trift Joch from Zermatt to Zinal—The
Concordia Hut—The Jungfrau—The Lötschen Lücke—Mr. Nettleship’s
death on Mont Blanc—Beaten by bad weather on the Dru—The
disaster at St. Gervais—Neuchâtel to Bâle.
“In all my wanderings round this world of care” I have found few places
so free from the black canker as the mountain tops. Let the climber carry
out a burden as big as was Christian’s in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, he
leaves it all behind upon the high peaks. If Mr. Gladstone could only
have managed to attain to the summit of Snowdon he might have seen more
than the coast of Ireland.
Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the
inside of a man. So once again I take my holidays upon the Alps, and
will hope that the following account may interest readers who travel,
for these like to be reminded of beautiful places they have visited, and
those who stay at home may be encouraged to try the mountains abroad.
In order to avoid the hot part of the Rhone Valley, and to reach Saas
Fée, our first halting place, by an interesting route, my wife and I took
the train for Lucerne—by way of Calais, Rheims, Laon, and Bâle. This
journey takes less than a day. Starting from London at 11 A.M. we found
ourselves the following morning in a boat on the blue Lake of Lucerne
with the mountains around us. Travelling by rail over the Brünig Pass,
which we had crossed on foot ten years before, we reminded each other of
a long walk from Meiringen to Lauterbrunnen in one day, over the Greater
and the Lesser Sheidecks when our porter over-ate himself at Grindelwald,
about midway, and nearly collapsed at the end of the journey, turning
very white and sick in the steep descent to Lauterbrunnen. We came to
Meiringen, still chiefly in ruins from the recent fire. The hot, strong
Föhn wind blowing from the south is the cause of these awful fires,
it will both start and spread the flames. For miles round Meiringen
there are notices forbidding smoking in the open road when this wind is
blowing. From this sad spot by easy roads we came to Guttannen and here
spent the night, rising early next morning for a walk over the Grimsel
Pass, with a man to carry our light luggage.
The first early morning walk in Switzerland is always delicious, and
wipes away the discomfort of the journey out. We stayed at Handeck to
look at the finest waterfall in the country. Two converging torrents,
“with a mighty uproar,” pour their waters into an unfathomable,
mysterious abyss, hidden by clouds of spray, where a rainbow arches in
the sun.
As we walk up the pass, which has been described as a “sepulchre unburied
by the sun,” there are, on either hand, enormous, dark, smoothly rounded
rocks, the evidence of glacier action in the ages gone. The Grimsel
Hospice is situated in the most savage rock scenery, and is not improved
by containing a piano, electric bells, and a smart waiter in dress
clothes. However, I made use of their telegraph to order a mule from Saas
Fée to meet us at Stalden for my wife to ride up there. All the crooked
places are now being made plain by means of telegraphs and railways!
A great new road is in process of making over this pass, and as
we reached the summit, the blasting operations were heard in many
explosions; each was at first like the pop of a champagne cork, but after
a pause came a tremendous thundering echo from all the mountains around.
We left the Rhone glacier on our left hand, and descended to Obergestelen
in the upper part of the Rhone valley, taking there a carriage to Brieg.
The sensations are delightful on a sunny day, when, after some hours’
walking in bleak, bare, rock wilderness, you come down into a green and
fertile valley; the effect of the keen fresh air is still with you as you
drive along among the trees and flowers in the sun, and you are cheered
with a sense of well-being in the present and the future. Here you
“cannot see the smiling earth and think there’s hell hereafter.” A night
was spent at Brieg and then a short journey by rail to Visp and up to
Stalden, from whence I followed my wife’s mule to Fée. After spending a
few days in comfortable quarters there I left to make some expeditions.
My climbing friend, A. B., was at the Eggishorn Hotel, and had just made
the ascent of the Finsteraarhorn, the highest peak of the Oberland,
whereupon he had been taken with mountain-sickness, and made his ascent
with some difficulty, his guide helping him on and holding his head
occasionally while he vomited. His trouble was, probably, caused by
his going too fast up his first peak, for, though accustomed to the
mountains, he had only been out from England a few days of this season.
This interesting malady is well described in Whymper’s travels amongst
the Great Andes of the Equator; both himself and his men suffered from
headache and fever, but the conditions were very different from what
obtains on our mountains; the highest point is here only 15,700 feet
(Mont Blanc), compared with over 20,000 on Chimborazo. All exertion seems
more severe at great heights, and though in Europe mountain-sickness is
rare, there are few climbers who have not felt at 14,000 feet a sense of
breathlessness if going upwards at any great pace. It is often hard to
distinguish it from mere fatigue, and I do not think that guides would
acknowledge it in themselves; but for myself I have had the feeling, and
“thought I could not breathe in that fine air.” Whymper’s observations
prove that man may gradually accustom himself to these great alterations
in barometric pressure, though the dangers of want of training and of
sudden ascents are well known.
Paul Bert, by means of a metal cylinder, in which he shut himself, had
the pressure of the air reduced to be equivalent with that on Mont Blanc,
but was soon sick and dizzy; afterwards, in experiments, he was able so
much to revive himself with bags of oxygen gas, that three balloonists
were emboldened to ascend to a height of 28,000 feet, taking with them
a supply of oxygen: with the result that when the balloon again reached
earth two of the aeronauts were dead, and the third had a very narrow
escape. Man has not yet gained the summit of Mount Everest.
Very extraordinary is the description given of the effects of altered
atmospheric pressure by early climbers. Mr. Fellows (afterwards Sir
Charles Fellows) in 1827, with Mr. Hawes and ten guides, writes that at
the distance of 1000 feet below the summit of Mont Blanc, “the effect of
the rarity of the air was still more striking, for the noses of several
of our guides burst out with blood.... None of us were free from many
effects of the peculiarities of the atmosphere: we all spat blood;
the eyes of all were blood-shot, our faces were blistered, and in our
respiration we all suffered intensely; for it was impossible to proceed
many paces without stopping to recover our breath.” Near the summit “two
of our guides fell from faintness, and copiously vomited blood, while all
of us gave proof of its internal loss (we all experienced symptoms of
haematuria).” Mr. Fellows and his companions suffered less than did the
guides.
Those who are interested in this subject should read the account of
the ascent of the German Emperor’s balloon Phœnix in 1895, in which
Coxwell’s record was beaten. Oxygen cylinders were used.
My friend, A. B., joined me at Schwarz See to climb the Matterhorn. Our
two guides were also ready; the leading man, Alois Kalbermatten, we
usually called Hercules; his brother, a still stronger man, was named
Quinbus Flestrin, or the man-mountain. Together we went up to the hut to
spend the night, ready to begin our ascent in the morning. As we were
thinking about supper there came down a wretched, worn-out, grey lady,
who said she had been up the Matterhorn, was too exhausted to proceed,
and must stay the night with us. The place was very unfit, dirty, and
stuffy, so we made her rest awhile, restoring her with brandy and
lemonade. I then made her guides rope her carefully the whole of the way
down, and she reached the hotel safely.
On a fine day when the Matterhorn will “go,” the hut is always crowded,
chiefly with foreigners, and we stretched ourselves on the bunkers
alongside of a polyglot Pole, who talked half the night. Italian guides
stole one of our lanterns, and my friend’s silk scarf.
We had a lovely day for our ascent, which occupied six hours, including
halts and feedings. Upon the summit we spent about an hour of most
glorious life in view of Italy on one side and Switzerland on the other,
while we walked carefully on the delicate ridge of snow which forms the
apex of the peak. The ascent of the Matterhorn from the Zermatt side
is more interesting historically than as a climb. The hut occupied by
Whymper in early attempts still remains, and as the guides pass the fatal
spot they cheerfully point out where poor so and so broke his neck, where
poor Dr. B. died. The shattered photographic apparatus remains on the
precipice upon which, two years ago, an entire party was killed.
The difficult parts near the top are now so strongly roped that some are
tempted to make this climb who are not fitted by previous training, and
as a tired man is a dangerous man on a steep mountain which is 14,700
feet high, I fear we have not done with accidents on the Matterhorn. The
descent ought to be carefully done, and almost as long a time given to it
as the ascent. At present there is no railway up, but such a project is
seriously in the air, or, like the mountain, _in nubibus_.
After a pleasant day at Schwarz See wandering above the beautiful
Zmutt valley, we went to Zermatt and thence to the Trift Inn to try
the Ober-Gabelhorn, but bad weather beat us back. Later on we were
successful, and had a glorious day, starting at two in the morning in the
starlight.
“So climbers by some Alpine mere,
Walk very softly thro’ the clear
Unlitten dawn of day:
The morning star before them shows
Beyond the rocks, beyond the snows,
Their never-travelled way.”
We were five and a half hours climbing up, and were back about half an
hour after mid-day. The snow was in good order, but coming down we had
a run to dodge falling stones, though none came upon us. Next day we
crossed the Trift Joch, a famous pass from Zermatt to Zinal. From our inn
we reached the Mountet hut under five hours, intending to return over the
Rothhorn next day; but at the hut a great storm of hail and wind kept us
in shelter for a time, and drove us down in the afternoon to Zinal, where
it rained night and day continuously.
[Illustration: ICEBERGS STRANDED ON THE BED OF THE MÄRJELEN SEE AFTER THE
DEPARTURE OF THE WATER.]
With such a downfall, which on the high peaks would be mostly snow, it
was useless to think of any Zermatt mountains at present, so we decided
to go to the Eggishorn Hotel, and then try the Jungfrau, one of the
Oberland giants. The storm had rather scattered me, for I had some wraps
at the Trift inn, a bag at Zermatt, unpaid bills at both places, besides
a wife at Saas Fée. However, this was settled so far as luggage and
payment concerned me, by sending our man to arrange it, and we went off
to the Eggishorn. On a Sunday afternoon, after service in the little
church, we walked to the Concordia hut, and found the Märjelen See
drained almost dry; instead of a great blue sheet of water with icebergs
floating in it, there is nothing but a muddy pond. This is partly the
result of draining operations, and makes the valley below much safer as
a dwelling place, but takes away from the beauty of this part of the
great Aletsch glacier.
It is interesting to note the great stones which now and then are carried
about on these icebergs, or left stranded when the water is low; thus
illustrating, on a small scale, the theory which best explains the
position of erratic boulders—namely, that they were carried by icebergs
in the glacial age.
The Concordia hut is grandly situated near the beginning of the great
glacier, close to the Oberland mountains, and is a starting-point for
many expeditions. A member of the Swiss Alpine Club who shared the hut
with us was a most excitable little man, and signalled his arrival by
letting off with a frightful explosion a large maroon, and to my horror
he carried another, quite as large as my fist, ready for his departure
in the morning. He actually began to light the thing inside the hut just
before our start, but we got outside and out of the way, while in the
darkness before the dawn, under the quiet stars, he yelled, and waved his
hands about, and burst his infernal machine. It is hard to forgive these
queer foreign manners. He afterwards stopped his guide that he might
exchange cards with us.
After this adventure we had a quiet time and a perfect day on the
Jungfrau. We took five and a half hours to make the ascent, including
breakfasts and halts. There is just room to stand or sit carefully on
the highest point of snow. We had a glorious view. The beautiful green
valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen spread at our feet, and all the
peaks around us far and near were perfectly defined. The sun was all day
very powerful, and the reflection off the recent snow was dazzling in
brightness; my face and ears got touched slightly in spite of anointing
with lanoline, and peeled, though not painfully, during the next few
days. To prevent sunburn hazeline cream is a most excellent application,
combining a vegetable astringent with lanoline.
Early on the morning following we crossed the Lötschen Lücke, a
beautiful pass of snow and ice, with the finest crevasses full of
strange ice architecture, and came to Ried in the Lötschen Thal, where
is a comfortable inn at the foot of the Bietschhorn, the mountain we
were anxious to climb. Here the weather broke, great clouds came with a
south-west wind, and gathered all over Italy. The peaks could not be seen
in the stormy sky, while a large eagle or lämmergeyer hovered over the
hotel.
We had to give up our expedition, and after a quiet day in this peaceful
inn we went down to the Rhone Valley, dined at Sierre, slept at
Sion—lulled to sleep by pouring rain—and next night came to Chamounix
by way of the Tête Noire. A shadow was over Chamounix because of the
sad death on Mont Blanc of that well-known Oxford scholar, Mr. R. L.
Nettleship. I saw the newly turned sods on his grave in the little
churchyard, and heard again the story of his loss, so far as it ever will
be known. After a stormy night spent in a snow shelter, his guides came
down and left his body on the mountain, where it was found by a search
party later on. Mr. Myer’s beautiful lines seem to have been made for
such an event:
“Here let us leave him; for his shroud the snow,
For funeral lamps he has the planets seven,
For a great sign the icy stair shall go
Between the heights to heaven.”
The survivors must have been very strong fellows and able to carry very
thick clothing. Certainly a storm on a great mountain is very awful to
encounter, and the strongest man may die if he tries to face it and fight
the elements.
At Montenvers, above Chamounix, there is the well-known inn, comfortable
enough if the weather be fine, from which we took blankets and food, and
crossing the _mer de glace_, bivouacked a few hours up the rocks on the
other side, in order to climb the Aiguille du Dru.
“The Dru is a Dragon of mountains,
They _scaled_ him long ago.”
Pardon the parody. But we were not to be fortunate—an angry sunset, so
gorgeous as to repay any day of laborious mountain climbing, was followed
before midnight by a storm of wind, hail, thunder, and lightning.
Crouched under a rock with the rain running into our ears, we got through
the hours of darkness, and in the morning, though we could hardly stand
up for the wind, our guides managed to light a fire in a deep hole, and
cooked some chocolate for us, and, as soon as the weather and daylight
allowed us, we climbed down to the inn.
My wife in my absence had arrived there, while I was on a rock all night
in the storm, and we each had our adventures to relate. A few days of
broken weather ended in snow all round the hotel. No more mountains were
to be climbed by me this year, and regretful good-byes had to be said to
my guides.
Our journey home was made by Geneva. On the way we passed the scene of
the great catastrophe at St. Gervais in July last. Here miles of mud
covered the green meadows, uprended trees stripped of their bark and
branches, demolished houses, fragments of timber and rock, were strewn
about wherever they had been hurled by the violence of the flood. An
inhabitant of a near village told me that at one in the morning the
avalanche and deluge came down on the ill-fated hotel, crushed down
everything in its way; that he saw next day the people who were saved
from the flood were dying in numbers, as he said, choked and poisoned
(_empoisonné_) by the filthy stuff which had filled their mouths, lungs,
and stomachs. One hundred and twenty-five bodies were found, but the
number of the dead will never be known. Only a week ago an arm and
part of the bust had been found five miles from St. Gervais; many such
dreadful relics are yet to be discovered. A baby still in its cradle was
carried miles away to a village below, but had not survived the perilous
voyage.
The best account of the cause of this catastrophe appeared November 1892,
in _Knowledge_, written by The Right Hon. Sir Edward Fry. An enormous
amount of subglacial water was suddenly let loose from high up on the
Tête Rousses glacier, where two great chasms were photographed next day.
The moving mass of ice and water destroyed the village of Bionnay and
hurled down everything in its irresistible course, including a rock of
vast dimensions. “The villagers of Bionnay were intending to celebrate a
fête on the 14th July, and, with a view to letting off feux de joie on
that occasion, holes had been bored in a stone then in the village. That
stone, with its holes, is now at St. Gervais, and was probably highly
effective in the destruction of the baths. It is rather a rock than a
stone. It is further stated that the iron safe in the office of the baths
was carried five miles down the stream to Sallanches, where it was
found.”
Geologists do not perhaps yet realize what such deluging catastrophe can
effect. Slow action, as of evolution among the living, and the gradual
change effected by ice and water in the inorganic world, chiefly impress
us to-day. But such conditions of ice as are described by Sir Martin
Conway in his valuable book on the Karakoram-Himalayan glacier, whereon
large quantities of water would lie with no crevasses or chinks to carry
it away, seem to afford opportunities for catastrophe on a gigantic
scale, and help the imagination to realize such possibilities in the
glacial age.
These great disasters, with the terrible boiler explosion on the Lake
of Geneva, have made the fire at Grindelwald seem quite a small affair,
and there have been very few climbing fatalities this season. My wife
told me that a victim of the Grindelwald fire arrived at Fée in his only
surviving suit of clothes. To the victim the rhyme fitted aptly:
“I’ve lost my portmanteau! I pity your grief!
My sermons were in it! I pity the thief!”
For all the poor parson’s garments were looted, but he discovered at the
Fée post-office his two bags crammed one inside the other, containing
only his twelve original sermons and two old shoes!
A romantic robbery took place at Arolla, where a gentleman walking alone
on the glacier was set upon by a brigand, who covered him with his gun,
and made him put his property on the snow—a selection was then made by
this Italian rascal, who fled over the frontier into his own country,
where such thieves abound.
The railway journey through Neuchâtel to Bâle is through fine country,
and Bâle itself between the Black Forest and the Jura, with its old-world
look and its bridges over the Rhine, is well worth a visit. You will find
here memorials of Erasmus, of Holbein, of Paracelsus, with museums full
of interesting mediaeval work—while at the Hospital you have evidence
that modern methods are understood, and the appliances, especially on
the surgical side, are the best obtainable in Europe. Three hundred beds
are contained in the building, and, like our own noble institution of
Addenbrooke’s, this is endowed and supported by liberal citizens, who
wisely use their wealth and knowledge, not merely for profit and loss,
but “for the glory of God and the relief of man’s estate.”
A Month upon the Mountains
1891
Contrast between fens and mountains—The south side of the Lake
of Geneva—The Great St. Bernard Pass—The St. Bernard dogs—A
walk in Italy—The St. Theodule Pass—Last year’s accident
on the Matterhorn—The Täsch Alp hut and a lady climber—The
Mischabeljoch and Alphubel mountain—Saas Fée and the walk by
the chapels—The old stone bridge at Fée—The Portjengrat—The
ascent of the Südlenzspitze and Nadelhorn—The Laquinhorn with
Mr. Eyre—The Rothhorn ascent from Zermatt—The Märjelen See.
What change can be imagined greater than from these “gray flats” to the
glorious snow mountains? The sea, except where there may be a bold and
broken coast line, is too much like our own surrounding surface, which
God never meant to be seen, and which, according to our forefathers, we
owe entirely to Drains, Dutchmen, and the Devil. My wife and I are both
active persons, and, as we usually take our excursions in the Alps, it
may interest other travellers to have this year a brief account of a fen
man’s adventures in foreign parts. To start at 11 o’clock in the morning
from London it was formerly necessary to sleep in town overnight: now the
train serves, and we go direct from Cambridge and travel in twenty-four
hours to Switzerland. Rather avoiding the more usual routes, after a
nasty game of pitch and toss in the channel we arrive at Paris, cross
that city in a cab, refusing to be dropped by the ingenious driver at
the wrong station (Vincennes instead of P.L.M.), dine comfortably, and
then sleep uncomfortably in the carriage until we reach the Lake of
Geneva, the south side of which, by the way, is not so well known as is
the other. This blue sheet of water is shaped like a crescent moon, the
horns pointed downwards so that the concave edge is south, and along
this we coasted fifty miles in a small steamboat, admiring the beauty
of the lovely lake and the vine-covered slopes of the shore with the
mountains beyond. It was too far away to the north for any view of the
other coast—or of the famous castle of Chillon. On board we can wash,
feed, and write letters, delight ourselves with the varied scenes around,
the voyage made more refreshing from the contrast after the dusty shaking
railway box in which we were packed so many hours.
Landing at Bouveret—our heavy luggage having been sent by post to Zermatt
from Geneva—we are free of everything except satchel and stick, knapsack
and ice-axe. A short journey by train to Martigny in the Rhone Valley
brings us at about 4 P.M. on the second day of our travels, and here we
took a one-horse carriage up as far as Liddes, on our way over the famous
Great St. Bernard Pass. At 9 o’clock the new inn at Liddes was all dark
and shut up, but we soon had out the landlord, who got us supper and good
beds. Next morning we were up at 4 o’clock, and I walked after my wife’s
mule as far as the Hospice, just halting to see the place, the monks, and
dogs. All is very like the Hospice on the Simplon Pass, with like rules
and regulations for the society of Austin Canons regular who live here
a life of genuine charity. Alas! to give up the cherished delusion that
the dogs search for lost travellers in the snow! Have we not seen the
picture of the dog with a child on its back and brandy keg round its
neck? “Travellers pass every day during the winter, notwithstanding the
perils of such a journey at such times. These persons, when they arrive
at a certain house not far from the summit, are desired to wait until
the following morning, when a servant and a dog descend from the top to
this kind of refuge and take up all the persons assembled, the servant
being conducted by the dog, who, it appears, never misses his way, but,
entirely hidden, except his tail, in the snow, directs the march of the
whole cavalcade.” If any traveller lie dead or dying in the track, the
dog will probably discover him, and in this way rescue has come for
wanderers over the pass when lost between the stations.
There are five or six dogs at the Hospice; they are not so fine and large
as the show of St. Bernard dogs in England. They are bred in the canton
of Berne, and are supposed to be a cross between the Newfoundland and the
Pyrenean.
The Great St. Bernard, though not so grand as other high passes, is full
of historical interest—we are on the track of the great Napoleon, we
lunch in the same room at Bourg St. Pierre—we realize what it must have
cost him to drag his cannon over such a place. From the Hospice we both
walk an hour down to St. Rémy, the Italian frontier—with our muleteer,
who left his animal at the Hospice, to carry our things; he was anxious
to know whether I had tobacco or cigars, and carefully hid his own modest
packet before he led us to the Custom House. The soldiers dismissed us
civilly after a complete inspection of our knapsacks.
At St. Rémy, after lunch we drove down to Aosta. In this valley live
many cretins; everything else is perfectly beautiful under the blue
Italian sky, strangely different from the desolate and dreary pass above.
From Aosta a short railway journey brought us to Châtillon at about 4
P.M., on our third day out. Hiring a likely looking man, named Luigi
Bich, to carry our traps up to Valtournanche, we finished the day by
a good four hours’ walk, all up hill, with a very fine view of the
Matterhorn at the end of our climb. Here we sup and sleep, rising before
day to follow a lantern and walk over the St. Theodule Pass to our hotel
at Schwarz See, above Zermatt. We had breakfast at Breuil, best known to
British travellers from its forming the base of operations in the ascent
of the Matterhorn from the Italian side.
Our guide, who seemed rather out of condition, begged to be allowed
to bring along a boy, his nephew, who was to be no further expense to
monsieur. When we reached the top of the pass after a hot and fatiguing
walk through fresh snow, a little mountain inn offered us rest and
refreshment. The view is very fine, especially of the Matterhorn and the
range on the other side beginning with the Breithorn; here the sunlight
on the vast snow slopes was far too brilliant to be faced without dark
glasses. After a short noon-day sleep this is indeed like waking in
another world. The wily Italian at the proper moment now interviewed me,
and represented that it was impossible he could properly care for madame
unless he should bring his boy also; of course the boy went with us, and
obtained a vast amount of pleasure at a small cost to his employer.
We roped as in duty bound over the névé, and came to Schwarz See; the
hotel is built on one of the spurs of the Matterhorn, about three hours
above Zermatt. As usual we found friends in residence, and after so long
a journey were glad of the shelter of a comfortable inn. A daughter of
the great Alexander Seiler is in charge, and is devoted to the care of
her visitors, who find all they can possibly wish for, and more than
would be expected at 8,000 feet above the sea.
One object of my visit here was to climb the Matterhorn, that grand
rock which is more impressive than most higher peaks from its isolated
position, standing “alone in its glory.” It is impossible to avoid
thinking of the many mountaineers who have been killed there; one comes
to regard it as a great gravestone in memory of these, and can fully
realize the expression of Tyndall as to the “moral effect” of this
mountain upon the climber. Unfortunately, the Matterhorn would not “go”
this year—only three ascents were made so far as I know—whereas in a good
year 75 have gone up.
Of these three ascents I witnessed the second, and could see with a
telescope that it was a long and laborious business, with much snow to
plough through, and many steps to be cut. The man with his two guides
came down just before dark, so why the _Times_ should in the notice of
this feat have left the poor fellow on the summit at 9 P.M. it is hard to
say. In September a party of five got up, and came down with difficulty,
much of the descent being by lantern, and only arrived at Schwarz See at
3 in the morning. They had found, near where ropes are stretched over a
difficult bit of the mountain, a portion of the camera which belonged to
the party of three who were killed last year, thus confirming one theory
of the disaster, that in the descent the box on the back touched the
steep slope, and throwing the bearer off his step, hurled the whole party
to destruction.
A man who saw their bodies told me that they were battered beyond
recognition, and described how the brother of one of the victims howled
loudly at the sight, in that utter abandonment to grief so rarely seen in
a strong man, so terrible to witness.
But these are the adventures of others—to continue my own. By a short
excursion round to Staffel Alp I nearly completed a tour of the
Matterhorn; it appears from this aspect like an enormous snow cathedral,
just the tower remaining to show the dark rock of the peak, the rest is
ice and snow.
The weather was too uncertain to attempt much of an expedition, and
after a week, down came the snow—over boot tops—all round the hotel. But
all is ready, guides are waiting, an active friend comes to the hotel,
and as soon as the sun shines we go down to Zermatt, where I part with my
wife, she to journey next morning to Rieder Furka, while I and my friend
with guides sleep up at the Täsch Alp hut for an ascent in the early
morning.
My first experience here occurred of a real lady climber in action;
she had sent on her guide and secured a room to herself, rather hard
upon the unfortunate male, as the dens of the wooden cabin contain each
two or three beds. My friend and I had to toss up who should sleep on
the floor—I won the only remaining bed. This lady was dressed in a
Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and worsted stockings; she looked very
business-like; one of my guides was much interested and said, “She is
a gentleman-lady.” She was a Viennese, and kept possession of her more
comfortable quarters, though my friend was not polite enough to say that
he preferred sleeping on the floor. On this point I feel very strongly,
that a lady should behave on such occasions exactly as if the cabin were
a railway carriage.
At about half-past two we were up, intending to traverse the
Mischabeljoch, and ascend the Alphubel Mountain, thence down to Saas Fée.
We followed a lantern up to the snow and rock, on a very steep, frozen
moraine, awkward to walk on in the dark; then roped, and had a good day,
except that the snow was fresh and fatiguing. Also we were longer in the
descent than we liked, my friend’s knee, which had been slightly hurt on
a mountain some days before, was now rather severely taxed, and this was
the only expedition we accomplished together. We stayed at Saas Fée, one
of the best places in Switzerland, good for walkers or climbers; it is
about three-quarters of an hour above Saas Grund—said to be the abode of
Mrs. Grundy, who has not yet reached Saas Fée.
The most charming walk down to the valley is by the chapels, of which
there are a dozen or more, each full of quaint, coloured wooden figures,
about two feet high, representing scenes in the life of our Lord. The
artistic merit of these figures is very unequal—some few are said to be
the work of an Italian artist named Tabaketti, of the sixteenth century,
who crossed the frontier and worked on the Swiss side. An odd effect
is produced by the villainous-looking wretches who are torturing the
Saviour, being represented with goitres and a cretinous aspect truly
repulsive.
A few minutes’ walk from the hotel towards Mattmark is a wonderful
old bridge over the mountain torrent. It is one of the most ancient
structures in Switzerland; flat stones are laid, over-lapping more and
more, to meet similarly placed flat stones on the other side of the
stream, advantage being taken of big boulders of rock which approach to
form natural buttresses. The whole is so overgrown with trees and moss
that many pass over it without notice.
At Saas Fée, on a moraine in the midst of glaciers and ice falls, there
is a tiny timber-built inn, presided over by Clara, who is well known for
the good tea she always gives the tired traveller, and certainly her name
ought to appear in the guide books. If only a hut could be built higher
up the Lange Fluh, mountaineers could sleep above, and Clara could supply
provisions from below; this would be a real gain to climbers.
[Illustration: OLD STONE BRIDGE AT SAAS FÉE.]
To test my friend’s feeble knee, he was to try the Portjengrat, a most
interesting climb, in which I was much tempted to join; but having done
it in a former season, I took a lazy day—then finding that after his
climb my friend limped a good deal, I set about a serious expedition,
the ascent of the Südlenzspitze, without him. With two good guides, and
a porter to carry up blankets, firewood, and provisions, I started one
afternoon and reached a rock some hours above Fée, where we were to
sleep; with our axes we cleared away several hundredweight of ice and
snow, lighted a fire, cooked two tins of Moir’s turtle soup, mixing it
in a big pot with pannikins of snow. Words can’t express how good it
was, how it hit the right place! We ate in the dark, except for a feeble
lantern; then spreading a rug over the little shelf we had cleared, we
all lay down as tight as sardines in a tin, so that I could not even
turn on my long axis. I was not very cold, having on three pairs of
stockings, three waistcoats, a shawl, a rug, and the blanket in which
we were all packed. There was no need for me to fear walking in my
sleep over a precipice. I didn’t sleep. The wind nearly blew me out of
my rug and howled like a savage beast, but at length the morning broke
and “tipped the hills with gold.” Day-dawns such as these live in the
memory for ever. After a cup of hot chocolate, the porter went down, and
we began to climb the Südlenzspitze, a peak over 14,000 feet high, next
to the Dom one of the highest points in Switzerland; several parties
had failed this year, and we were anxious to do it with the Nadelhorn
as well, to crown our success. The Südlenzspitze is not a “guide book
mountain,” but it is a good climb, and there is an awkward _gendarme_,
or pinnacle, standing up like an obstructing sentinel on a ridge along
which it is necessary to travel. This _gendarme_ may be the size of a
church or not larger than a lamp post, and give serious trouble to the
climber. However, we struggled to the top, and found a tremendous wind on
the peak, so that we had to wear our sleeping caps over our ears and feel
now and then our frozen features. Byron must have imagined such an ascent
when he wrote those fine lines:
He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow.
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though far above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to these summits led.
We left a card in a bottle at the top, where none had been this year
before us. Descending a steep snow edge to come to visiting terms with
the Nadelhorn—a peak of steep but easy rocks with some gendarmerie—my
leading guide loosened a big stone at the top, which narrowly missed me
and dropped on the man below, hitting on the steel of his axe, but he
held firm, and this was the only escape I was aware of. We came down into
a snow storm and thick mist, but got safely home after fifteen hours’
climbing, then a light dinner with a glass of champagne, and so to bed.
From Fée I walked with a strong man who wanted to stretch his legs to
climb the Laquinhorn. It is a long way there and back, but not a great
climb; we returned by the chapels, after a roasting day in the sun. My
companion had bargained with me over night that he was to be allowed to
stop and feed every four hours. He did so, and ate up everything, even
the cheese; the guides then hurried us home lest they themselves should
be eaten too! Alas! there will be no more such pleasant walks. Eyre was
killed on the Sparrenhorn, 1895. Later on, again I went to Zermatt, slept
at the Trift Inn, and climbed the Rothhorn. I greatly wished to go down
from the summit to Zinal and back by the Trift Pass next day, but my
guides would not permit the descent to the Constantia Hut, and no doubt
they were right. How do these men, Xaver Imseng and Alois Kalbermatten,
win my regard? Xaver has an angel face, and Alois a form like Hercules.
It is not only their courage, skill, and devotion to duty, but their
sympathy with my delights or difficulties—this is the great charm.
One night only at Zermatt and then up at 4.30 to catch the six o’clock
train from Zermatt to Visp in the Rhone Valley. This is the new line
which many climbers believe will disturb the happy hunting-grounds. The
journey was very pleasant; being allowed to stand outside, and the train
moving slowly, I enjoyed the scenery and chatted with one of the few men
who this year climbed the Matterhorn.
Four hours’ walk above Brieg in a blazing sun on one of the hottest days
known, ended in a storm of rain which wet me through; it delayed me in
a forest where I had the luck to see a fine fox at close quarters; we
watched each other quietly for some minutes. I found my wife and friends
at Rieder Furka and walked with them up and down a baby mountain called
the Riederhorn; then later, with an active fellow made the ascent and
back to the hotel in twenty-two minutes, just to dry my clothes.
The hotel is well placed above the Great Aletsch Glacier, upon which
delightful expeditions are made, especially to the Märjelen See, a
wonderful ice-bound lake with icebergs in it, which has before now
threatened Brieg with a flood from the sudden bursting of its waters upon
the valley far below.
Home again by Geneva, I visited the Cantonal Hospital there, which is
well built and planned; but in the summer the building is empty and
clean, the patients being in open-air barracks, timber-built with canvas
sides. Would that our English climate would allow of the like. On the
other side of the city, at the Rothschild’s Eye Hospital, there seemed
every comfort, but few patients to be treated.
The sight of England again always cheers us, with homely peaceful scenes;
well may we say in travelling through the Kentish hop fields:
“Let Frenchmen boast their straggling vine,
Which gives them draughts of meagre wine,
It cannot match this plant of mine
When autumn skies are blue.”
NOTE
The Birrenhorn by the south face. This good climb, which has
probably not before been done by travellers, is said to be a
hunter’s way.—_Alpine Journal_, Nov. 1895, p. 600.
To climb the Birrenhorn (2,511 metres) by the south face, go from
Kandersteg up the nearest and steepest grass slopes which lie to the
E.N.E. of the Victoria Hotel, to a couloir which is found by following
the highest shingle. Here it is well to rope in order to ascend the
couloir to a chimney. Climb through this to a shelf above, and turning
slightly to the W. continue straight up until a narrow horizontal shelf
is reached running to the W.S.W. as far as some little pine trees; thence
ascend by going up the face more to the E., until after a stiff scramble
up twelve feet of difficult rock (which may be avoided by a circuit) a
cleft is found in which lies an enormous grass-covered fallen block.
Beneath this you crawl through a “Fenster,” and soon reach a narrow
grass saddle with views into the two valleys (Kander and Oeschinen).
The final climb is then before you. Cross the grass saddle, ascend the
rocks or grass slopes beneath which the shepherd’s path is seen. The
rock arête above the highest grass has a cairn and pole on the summit,
reached in four and a half hours from Kandersteg. In descending the path
towards the Oeschinen See, the way down to the valley is difficult to
find, especially if there be any mist. The three-fingered rock (Drei
Eidgenossen) will be seen opposite the couloir, which is the last but one
before reaching a great grass promontory. After a considerable descent a
traverse is made to the right, where two iron stanchions guard an awkward
place.
The Climbing Foot
It has often been noticed in mountaineering that a guide can go face
forward and whole-footed up a slope, while the amateur following, and
coming to the steep part, cannot plant his whole foot upon the slope, but
has to go on his toes or else turn sideways.
The difficulty with the young climber seems to be to get his heel down,
and he learns to look out for little humps or embedded stones on which he
may place his heel.
Then if his calf muscles permit his foot to be correctly planted down,
this interferes with his upward step, giving him discomfort at the back
of the leg, experience very slowly enabling him to walk with the pelvic
roll characteristic of the guide’s uphill gait.
It is worth noting here that rowing men in using sliding seats cannot
always keep the heel down on to the stretcher at the beginning of their
stroke.
It seems possible, and many climbers must have considered it so, that
the angle made by the foot with the leg may be more acute in the guide
who has climbed from childhood, and that in the case of the guide’s feet
there may be some structural difference, both hereditary and acquired,
actually permitting more freedom of movement at the ankle-joint, which
neither muscular action nor power of balance could ever give to the
amateur.
The guides wear their thick leather boots loosely laced at the top during
an upward climb; so that it is difficult to judge of the play of the
ankle: but last year I was fortunate in falling in with Captain Abney,
who kindly photographed for me the naked feet of my guides in the act of
climbing a rock, and in other positions for purposes of comparison.
So leaving out of the question all lateral movements at the ankle-joint
as difficult and complicated to estimate, we will briefly consider the
question of the ordinary angle that the foot makes with the leg so far
as it is less than a right angle, and whether the trained guide has any
advantage over the amateur in this respect.
[Illustration: FOOT OF AN INFANT FIVE WEEKS OLD, SHOWING THE INSTEP
TOUCHING THE SHIN ON SLIGHT PRESSURE OF THE FINGER.
The adaptation of the foot for progression on all fours. The baby is
wrapped in a napkin and black velvet, and held by a nurse.]
To begin with the foot of an infant, we notice that the foot, like the
hand, is all adapted for climbing. Dr. Louis Robinson has shown that the
infant’s hand-grip is so strong, that the whole weight of its body can be
borne by the prehensile power of the hand. The miner in Bret Harte’s _The
Luck of Roaring Camp_ realized this strength of grip when he said after
an experience with a cradled infant, “He wrastled with my finger, the
d——d little cuss!”
The following photographs show how the child’s foot can be made by a
touch of the forefinger to approximate the instep to the leg until there
is actual contact. The toes curl round to take a great grip of the object
pressing against the sole, and generally speaking there is the most
wonderful adaptation both for climbing and for progression on all fours.
The infant chosen for the first photograph was rather an unusually thin
baby, but it had a fair amount of vitality, and illustrates better than
a chubby child the points which it is necessary to bring out. If, with
tracing paper placed over the picture, a pencil line be drawn along the
bearing surface of the sole of the foot, and another along the leg to
meet the former line below the heel, the angle made by these two lines
will measure about twenty degrees.
[Illustration: FOOT OF AN INFANT FIVE WEEKS OLD TOUCHED WITH THE FINGER
TO SHOW THE ANGLE OF THE FOOT WITH THE LEG AND THE PREHENSILE TOES.
The baby is wrapped up in a napkin and black velvet, and held by a
nurse.]
Some may claim that this wonderful function in the infantile foot is a
remnant of its former arboreal existence. “Hush-a-bye baby on the tree
top” is evidence on this point also according to other most learned
people. This remarkable function of the infantile ankle-joint is probably
an evidence of our origin, and if we have really descended from apes
we should rather be proud of our present position than ashamed of our
ancestry. We may well suppose that in the pre-natal state, the child was
continually occupied in climbing the walls of its narrow prison, like
an infantile Sisyphus, and the flexibility of the ankle-joint was an
advantage for the maternal structures.
[Illustration: FOOT OF AN INFANT FIVE WEEKS OLD. THE INSTEP IS MADE TO
TOUCH THE SHIN BY SLIGHT PRESSURE OF THE FINGER.
The foot is adapted for climbing and progression on all fours. The baby
is wrapped in a napkin and black velvet, and held by a nurse.]
In the very tiny infant then of a few weeks old, nothing stops the foot
from making the most acute angle with the leg except contact. The child
a year or so old has lost some of this freedom, and begins to be adapted
for the upright position; later on will begin to “feel its feet,” as the
nurses say, and soon to rear itself upon its hind-limbs. The infant’s
foot is plantigrade, and gradually during growth becomes adapted for the
erect posture, and loses freedom of movement as it gains in strength.
[Illustration: FOOT OF AN INFANT NEARLY A YEAR OLD.
On pressure with the finger the angle of the foot with the leg is less
acute and more adapted for the erect posture.]
In the adult, in order to measure the angle required, it is necessary
to get the long axis of the leg and the long axis of the foot, and
then take the angle both when the foot is pressed upon and also when
no pressure is permitted. To obtain this angle shadows may be tried;
photographs are good, from which diagrams may be made with tracing paper
and pencil; also mechanical plans, such as placing the back of the leg
on a plane surface (as a table) allowing for the calf by a block behind
the ankle, and then pressing a thin board against the sole of the foot,
measuring with a suitable instrument the angle the board makes with the
table at moments of extreme position, both with pressure and without.
With the sole of the foot on the floor, and the heel well down when the
leg is carried forward to the extreme position, the angle that the leg
makes with the floor will indicate sufficiently, much as is shown in the
picture of sitting down using only one limb. Whatever method is used the
result is only approximate, but they will all agree, and are sufficient
for our purpose. The measurements made when the feet are pressed gives
alike in the Swiss guides and in the adult amateur an angle of about 60
degrees; without pressure the angle is nearer 70 degrees, and I measured
two rowing men who could get no more acute angle than 70 degrees under
any conditions. Always remembering that there is a fairly considerable
“personal equation,” we may conclude that if there be any difference
between guides and amateurs it will not be enough at any rate to explain
more than a trifling part of the superiority of the guides in walking up
a slope. The height of the boot heel may be taken to be the same in all
mountain boots, but the guides tend to wear heels rather high.
[Illustration: FOOT OF AN INFANT NEARLY A YEAR OLD.
Already the angle of the foot with the leg is less acute and more
adapted for the erect posture. The child is wrapped up by a nurse in a
black velvet covering.]
At Zermatt, on a sunny afternoon, Alois Kalbermatten and Peter Perren
were good enough to allow me to pose them with their bare feet on a
well-known rock, appropriately named the Shoehorn, while Captain Abney
made admirable photographs, from which the reproductions accompanying
this chapter were selected.
The guides laughed like schoolboys over the business, or over my
solemnity at a scientific experiment. The photographs show very well
the climbing position of the foot, and, if a comparison be made of an
amateur’s foot, it does not appear that the angle made by the foot with
the leg is more acute in the case of the guide. Even with Röntgen’s rays
I do not think that any structural difference in the bones of the foot
would be discovered.
In the case of the infant, so much of the bones of the foot is in the
cartilaginous stage that nothing of the configuration could be studied
with these searching rays, because cartilage shows so little shadow.
The foot then of the infant can be flexed until it is almost parallel
with the leg; during growth it loses flexibility as it gains in strength
and becomes adapted for the erect position and for walking, which is the
natural gait of man. The angle made by the foot with the leg in adults
is fairly fixed, and a difference between guides and amateurs in this
respect is not easy to discover.
Nevertheless, there may be more power on the part of the experienced to
keep a straight knee under the conditions of a flexed foot, and as the
straight position is the strong position of the knee, the guides may well
have an advantage there.
Mr. Clinton Dent has so ably described the mechanism of the uphill walk
in the Badminton book on mountaineering, that it is only necessary to
remind sportsmen of the figure therein of “ein junger,” page 92, going
on his toes, using so much his calf muscles, and so little his greater
powers above.
[Illustration: GUIDE’S FOOT IN CLIMBING POSITION AGAINST THE SHOEHORN
ROCK AT ZERMATT.
Alois Kalbermatten photographed by Captain Abney. The angle made by the
foot with the leg is about 60 degrees.]
It is in balance that the guide has such strength. _He maintains his
equipoise under all conditions with the minimum of muscular effort_, so
that even under adverse conditions of sudden blasts of wind, pulls on the
rope or other disturbances, he can keep his feet firmly planted, and his
balance sure. At the end of a long day’s climb he is little wearied, and
at the end of a long life he has a lot of climbing left in him. Let it
not be supposed that great muscular strength is not there, because the
guide does not put it out injudiciously. That great observer, Charles
Darwin,[1] writing on balance in riding, makes the following interesting
remarks on this very important subject:
[Illustration: GUIDE’S FOOT IN CLIMBING POSITION AGAINST THE SHOEHORN
ROCK AT ZERMATT.
Peter Perren photographed by Captain Abney. The angle made by the foot
with the leg is about 60 degrees.]
[Illustration: GUIDE’S FOOT, TO SHOW THE ANGLE MADE BY THE FOOT WITH THE
LEG WITHOUT PRESSURE.]
“The Gauchos are well known to be perfect riders. The idea of being
thrown, let the horse do what it likes, never enters their heads. Their
criterion of a good rider is a man who can manage an untamed colt, or
who, if his horse falls, alights on his own feet, or can perform such
exploits. I have heard of a man betting that he would throw his horse
down twenty times, and that nineteen times he would not fall himself. I
recollect seeing a Gaucho riding a very stubborn horse, which three times
successively reared so high as to fall backwards with great violence. The
man judged with uncommon coolness the proper moment for slipping off, not
an instant before or after the right time; and as soon as the horse got
up the man jumped on his back, and at last they started at a gallop. _The
Gaucho never appears to exert any muscular force._ I was one day watching
a good rider, as we were galloping along at a rapid pace, and thought
to myself, surely if the horse starts, you appear so careless on your
seat, you must fall. At this moment a young ostrich sprang from its nest
right beneath the horse’s nose. The young colt bounded to one side like
a stag; but as for the man, all that could be said was that he started
and took fright with his horse.” And again Darwin writes in reference to
balance without apparent muscular effort, “Each morning, from not having
ridden for some time previously I was very stiff, I was surprised to hear
the Gauchos, who have from infancy almost lived on horseback, say that
under similar circumstances they always suffer. St. Jago told me that,
having been confined for three months by illness, he went out hunting
wild cattle, and, in consequence, for the next two days his thighs were
so stiff that he was obliged to lie in bed. _This shows that the Gauchos,
although they do not appear to do so, yet really must exert much muscular
effort in riding._” The guides, in the same way, do not appear to exert
much muscular effort, but great power is there both latent and manifest,
and none of it is wasted in a useless manner. There is even found in
climbing that _ars celare_ which is so pretty in figure-skating.
[Illustration: FOOT OF A SWISS GUIDE.
The angle made by the foot with the leg without pressure. From a
photograph by Captain Abney.]
For an example of strength in balance, combined with bending at the
ankle-joint, a climbing friend of mine, who is as graceful as a Greek
athlete, and has a good balance, maintaining his equilibrium with the
least possible muscular effort in mountaineering, has given me the study
of carpet athletics photographed below. It represents two positions in
the feat of standing on one foot, sitting slowly down, and then getting
up again with the same leg without touching the floor except with the
buttock. It is best not to attempt this performance often after the age
of fifty, but it is no matter to mountaineers, for on the Alps all of
them are of the same age, _i.e._ _about five and twenty_.
[Illustration: THE ACT OF SITTING DOWN, USING ONLY ONE LIMB, TO SHOW THE
BALANCE WITH THE BENT KNEE AND ANKLE.
First position.]
[Illustration: FOOT OF AN EXPERIENCED AMATEUR, TO SHOW THE ANGLE MADE BY
THE FOOT WITH THE LEG.]
[Illustration: THE ACT OF SITTING DOWN, USING ONLY ONE LIMB, TO SHOW THE
BALANCE WITH THE BENT KNEE AND ANKLE.
Second and more extreme position.]
On Accidents
Forethought should go with courage—A life saved by the use of a
big knife—Dr. Jenner’s ride in a snowstorm—Death by lightning
on the Drym—Mr. Justice Wills’ warning—The three great dangers
of the Alps—Climbing accidents among British labourers—Our
plans of prevention far behind our methods of cure—Value of
collective investigation—Sure-footedness more important than
speed—Pace not to be hurried.
As accidents will happen in so dangerous a sport as mountaineering, it is
the duty of every climber to study the causes of these accidents, as far
as possible to prevent them, and to remember that in danger “presence of
mind,” as it is called, is generally due to careful thought beforehand,
and to the rehearsal in imagination of every possible disaster.
It is curious that men should brave more danger when most they are in the
enjoyment of life, and that loving life the most they should then fear
the least to die. “For surely the love of living is stronger in an Alpine
climber roping over a peril, or a hunter riding merrily at a stiff fence,
than in a creature who lives upon a diet, and walks a measured distance
every day in the interest of his constitution.”
Climbers must take care that the courage born of fresh air and fine
training does not develop into foolhardiness. In my notice of the ascent
of the Meije with a broken rib, this warning is conveyed.
In these pages various accidents have been mentioned without much effort
to point the moral, though in every case an attempt has been made to
suggest the cause of casualties, however slight.
In connection with the risk that a man runs who climbs alone without
a companion, or who climbs over a serious place without his axe (thus
Mr. Eyre lost his life), it is well worth giving an account of the
narrow escape related to me by an old climber, who was once travelling
over a mountainous path in the dusk. He wandered off the track, and not
having even a pointed stick with him, he slipped over the edge of a
dangerous slope, the turf and vegetation gave way at his clutches, so
that he ceased struggling, and hung in a cold sweat over a dark abyss.
Fortunately, at that moment he thought of his big knife which hung ready;
he was just able to open it, dig it in, and anchor himself safely,
until courage and strength saved his life, leaving a never-forgotten
experience, which is recorded because in some such emergency a strong
knife might prove again a good friend.
Frost-bites, and the losses of limb or life from cold, are not confined
to Alpine snows. Phenomenal weather occurs even in England, and the
account by so good an observer as Dr. Jenner, in his own words, of a
snowstorm to which he was exposed, will interest many mountaineers.
The late Dr. Edward Jenner, of Gloucestershire, gives the following
account of a ride through a snowstorm which he had to undertake in the
above-named year.[2]
“January 3rd, 1786. I was under the necessity of going hence (Berkeley),
to Kingscote. The air felt more intensely cold than I ever remember to
have experienced it. The ground was deeply covered with snow, and it blew
quite a hurricane, accompanied with continual snow. Being well clothed, I
did not find the cold make much impression upon me till I ascended the
hills, and then I began to feel myself benumbed. There was no possibility
of keeping the snow from driving under my hat, so that half my face and
my neck were for a long time wrapped in ice. There was no retreating, and
I had still two miles to go—the greatest part of the way over the highest
downs in the country. As the sense of external cold increased, the heat
about the stomach seemed to increase. I had the same sensation as if
I had drunk a considerable quantity of wine or brandy, and my spirits
rose in proportion to this sensation. I felt as if it were like one
intoxicated, and could not forbear singing, etc. _My hands at last grew
extremely painful_, and this distressed my spirits in some degree. When
I came to the house I was unable to dismount without assistance. I was
almost senseless; but I had just recollection and power enough left _to
prevent the servants bringing me to a fire_. I was carried to the stable
first, and from thence was gradually introduced to a warmer atmosphere.
I could bear no greater heat than that of the stable for some time.
_Rubbing my hands in snow_ took off the pain very quickly. The parts
which had been most benumbed felt for some time afterwards as if they
had been slightly burnt. My horse lost part of the cuticle and hair at
the upper part of the neck, and also from his ears. I had not the least
inclination to take wine or any kind of refreshment. One man perished a
few miles from Kingscote at the same time and from the same cause.
“The correspondent who sent us the above extract from a letter of Edward
Jenner, being a medical man, must feel, as we do, grateful that January,
1896, has not opened with the rigour of January, 1786. We print it
because it paints a remarkably true and vivid picture of the alteration
of sensation under the influence of extreme cold.”
The pain poor Jenner suffered, when occurring so immediately after
exposure, should rather have cheered him, as a sure sign of recovery of
frozen limbs; and he was indeed fortunate in retaining sufficient power
to prevent the servants bringing him to a fire. The rubbing with snow and
gradual introduction to warmth saved his hands, and Dr. Jenner lived to
give the world his experiments on vaccination some years later.
In the height of summer, often in extremely hot weather, weather of
the finest, there comes another risk, that of thunderstorms. A climber
soaking wet, with his iron-shod boots, his steel-pointed axe, and metal
framed goggles, makes as good a lightning conductor as could well be
found without manufacturing a lighting-rod.
The ice-axe fizzling in the hand, and the spectacles upon the head, with
hairs of the scalp set all bristling,—these are signs which at any moment
may appal the stoutest heart that ever faced a storm.
In July last again, another country doctor, Mr. Reese, who lived at the
village of Ystradgynlais, in the Swansea Valley, made his way to an
urgent case of a poor child accidentally burnt, over a mountain called
Drym.
When at the summit he apparently entered the focus of a severe storm,
and a discharge of lightning took place through his body and that of
his horse, killing them both instantaneously. A mountain-top is a most
dangerous place in a thunderstorm; a cloud is attracted by the most
elevated point, and any one crossing is extremely likely to be struck
by lightning. The doctor was probably wet, and, being on a horse, had
a good earth connection by means of the horse’s iron shoes, so that
any discharge between the earth and the cloud would be very likely to
traverse his body. If he could only have waited on the lower slopes he
would have been safer, but his anxiety to reach the patient led him to
his most honourable death.
Mr. Reese no doubt knew his risk perfectly well, and took his chances at
the call of human need. In pointing out the warning to keep off prominent
peaks and buttresses of a mountain in such a storm, I should be sorry to
withdraw attention from this noble devotion to duty. To bear their silent
testimony, three thousand friends attended the funeral of this brave man.
To avoid being a prominent object when on a mountain may be difficult,
for self-effacement is not an easy thing. Moreover, on the plains a man
may be killed, as offering the best conductor for the lightning, and
determine the direction of the discharge, no tree or other high point
being near.
The traveller should find a hollow place or hole as soon as possible, and
stay there until the storm has abated. The sensitive aneroid may have
given warning of the approaching clouds, a warning to take, as sailors
say, “any port in a storm.”
The danger of standing under a tree is well known, but this applies
rather to trees that offer a prominent mark. In large forests it appears
that the lightning does not always single out the tallest trees, and
the trees when struck are seldom set on fire, though foresters find the
lightning a convenient excuse for their own carelessness.
In the huge forests of Russia and Norway, the pines, with their thousand
masts and millions of pointed leaves, are said to act as protectors
for themselves and to relieve tension for the whole district by their
distribution.
Mr. Justice Wills sounds a true note of caution in the introduction
to Mr. Dent’s Badminton book, when he says: “There are three things
specially to be dreaded on the mountains as beyond human control and
occasionally beyond human foresight: bad weather, falling stones, steep
grass slopes, with herbage, either short or dry, or long and wet and
frozen. I do not think it possible for any one who has not felt it to
have any idea what very bad weather means in high places, even in places
by no means of the highest; or to imagine the rapidity with which, under
unsettled atmospheric conditions, the destructive forces of nature can
be raised, and the worst assaults of the enemy delivered.
“Falling stones may come from the most unexpected places, and I have seen
from my own Alpine home a whole flake of mountain side peel off without
warning, and sweep with a cannonade of thirty hours’ duration a gully
that I and mine have used for years as a highway to the upper world.
“Slopes of grass look so easy, and are so treacherous, that it is
scarcely possible to secure for them the respect which they have a
deadly fashion of enforcing. There are few other dangers which care and
knowledge will not eliminate.”
It will be pardoned me, I trust, if, making a digression from the special
to the general, I pass from Alpine accidents to consider others connected
with climbing, which frequently occur to workmen. It was my sympathy
with climbing which first drew my attention to the number of disabling
accidents resulting to labourers from using only one hand in climbing
ladders and carrying something, however slight, which hampers the other
hand. There is no general understanding or training among workmen on this
point. The weight could nearly always be so slung or balanced as to keep
both hands free for climbing steps or ladders.
Scaffolders often run greater risks than bricklayers in attempting to
climb ladders, using one hand instead of both. Under my care lately was
a scaffolder who fell thirty feet, breaking his collar bone and several
ribs, lacerating his right lung and the liver. From the latter injury, by
an abdominal operation, I drained away several pints of bile and blood
clots. He made a good recovery and returned to his wife and six children
still able to earn a living for them. He tells me that never again will
he carry a bundle of shavings under one arm when climbing a long ladder.
On nearing the top, and in making the traverse to reach the platform, the
slip occurred which was so nearly fatal. Both the balance and the grip
were wanting at the critical point.
The slightest slip or want of balance when only one hand is at work may
lead to a fall. When an Alpine climber comes to any hair-erecting place
on rocks, he takes care to have both hands free, his ice-axe is slung
round his arm or wrist, so that his grip is secure. There is no pretence
that mountaineering is not a dangerous sport; but the dangers are reduced
by forethought, and when accidents occur it is generally from the neglect
of simple measures of precaution. Rules for avoiding dangers are made,
and it would be quite unsportsmanlike to cross névé without a rope, or
show other sign of inexperience in mountain craft.
It is significant that the members of the English Alpine Club—though the
mortality is far too heavy—do not provide the most victims of accidents,
and certainly this is not from any want of adventurous activity in the
Alpine Club.
In 1893 I saw a guide who had both feet frost-bitten, all the toes were
gangrenous, and Melchior Anderegg, kindest of nurses, was applying the
dressings, muttering “schlecht, schlecht!” A climber with his two guides
had been exposed during one night in snow. Of the three, this guide
was the only one who suffered frost-bite. He wore new boots, which I
inspected, and found the tongues not sewn to the upper leathers; also
he used no gaiters or other appliance to keep the snow out of his boots.
Neither did he put his feet in the rücksack as did the others. His boots
were simply converted into bags of ice.
In the year 1894 I saw a case of frost-bitten fingers in the Dauphiné
which was due to violation of every wise law. There, too, I came across
an accident rather unusual in mountain experience. A guide was struck in
the mouth while ascending an ice-slope by the iron-shod heel of the man
above, who slipped from his step. Two caravans were together too closely,
and the leading guide of the second party suffered in consequence. His
tongue was badly torn, and I had to put in several stitches.
There is a quantity of good literature about Alpine accidents, and their
causes and prevention. What is done in this way for the scaffolder? What
training has he corresponding to that of the mountaineer? The fault did
not lie in the least with my scaffolder’s employers, who are most careful
of their people; but that there are no definite plans of prevention among
the men themselves; no general rules of their craft such as obtain among
climbers. Now, if a bricklayer, when he takes bricks up a ladder, uses
the ancient hod which balances on the shoulder, it is not gripped by the
hand, and takes nothing from the prehensile power of the man. If anything
drops, it is the bricks, not the bricklayer; but his business nowadays is
rather with small buildings, for the larger buildings, with scaffoldings,
which are quite works of art, do not require the carrying of the hod, but
take their weights up by pulleys to platforms above.
The way in which the Alpine Club have met the risks of the mountains is
interesting as showing how intelligent men deal with danger, and should
make us hopeful that in the future we shall deal with many of the risks
which workmen incur in their less dangerous avocations.
As to accidents in general, we are too military altogether; in our
attitude with regard to them, we seem to expect to give and take
injuries. Ambulance lectures are organized all over the country which
teach wise plans of first aid to the injured. This is very good and
helpful, but if, with this teaching, were combined methods, thoughtfully
planned and taught, of prevention of accidents, especially those common
or peculiar to the occupations of the districts, these lectures might be
made most valuable means of spreading useful knowledge.
Notification and collective investigation, as in infectious diseases,
would soon put a check to many common accidents in our villages,[3] and
we should reflect more on this subject because the progress of surgery
saves so many lives formerly regarded as hopelessly lost. The individuals
so saved are often mutilated, and no inquest being held on eyes or limbs,
the value of a public inquiry as to the accident is lost. Many are the
lives saved in our hospitals, many are the lives lost or maimed by our
ignorance and carelessness, for our plans of prevention have by no means
kept pace with our methods of cure.
The intelligent sportsman always leads the van, and invents new ways of
protecting himself; for example, those men who, being short-sighted, have
to shoot in spectacles, and wear shot-proof glasses, have rather gained
an advantage over the keen-sighted by this useful protection against
stray pellets.
It is obvious that forethought should extend to every sport and
occupation, especially when attended by danger, and with regard to
hunting a useful article has lately appeared on accidents in the hunting
field in reference to prevention, by Mr. Noble Smith.[4] It would be
well if this kind of formulated knowledge could extend and spread among
British workmen, especially agricultural labourers, whose awakened
intelligence has to deal with new machinery, making new accidents, into
the causes of which no methodical inquiry is ever made.
Let every young climber read Dr. Claude Wilson’s chapter on the dangers
of the mountains, as a thoughtful epitome on this important subject.
Climbing will not be less enjoyed by men possessing knowledge of the
dangers; and more successful expeditions are made by those who understand
such matters best, and look on their knowledge as an essential part of
the sport.
If, in spite of every care, an accident occurs of a minor kind, it will
often happen that an antiseptic pad and bandage ready in the rücksack
and skilfully applied will give confidence to the party, and prevent the
expedition from being a failure. Every man of the caravan in climbing
should have his little packet, there would thus be enough bandages
altogether to steady a sprain or a dislocation, or to deal even with a
broken limb.
A note should be kept of all casualties occurring in the cognizance of
the climber, so that comparing records of minor accidents may prevent
greater ones. The methodical yearly records of the _Alpine Journal_,
summed up now and then by able and experienced climbers like Mr. C. E.
Mathews, may prove of value, not only to mountaineers, but to mankind.
Twenty years ago Mr. Leslie Stephen wrote to the _Alpine Journal_, “I
hold that we can best promote Alpine Climbing by enforcing with all our
power a code of rules which will make it a reputable pursuit for sensible
men.” The pursuit needs no defence now. One man may be born a lover of
the mountains, another by climbing come to love them later; but as a
baby, boy, or man, he is always a climbing animal.
After forty, a climber is in the old age of his youth, and must not be
so reckless as to pace; his endurance and sure-footedness may be better,
but his elasticity is less, though there may be nothing to remind him
that “changeful time with hand severe” will make him soon those sports
forego which he still pursues with the enthusiasm of his youth. In the
most active party there is usually some one rather slower than the rest,
to remind us of that famous jest of Calverley, when toiling up a slope
with an eminent novelist,—“the labour we delight in physics Payn.” We can
scarcely compute how much the toils add to the pleasures, only of this
we may be assured, of what also is often found in life, that “to travel
hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to
labour.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] _Naturalist’s Voyage round the World._
[2] “A Country Doctor’s Ride,” from the _Lancet_, January, 1896.
[3] See _Preventive Surgery_. Deighton, Bell and Co.
[4] _Clinical Sketches_, 1895.
INDEX.
A
Abney, Captain, 13, 132.
Accidents, 145.
Acute angle in foot, 125, 127.
Adder, 3, 21.
Addenbrooke’s Hospital, 92.
Aiguille des Charmoz, 15.
Aiguille du Dru, 59, 86.
Aiguille du Géant, 13.
Aiguille Grise, 55.
Aiguille Blanche de Péteret, 54.
Aiguille Noire, 65.
Aletsch Glacier, 81, 82, 115.
_Alpine Journal_, 116, 166.
Alphubel Mountain, 105.
Amateurs, 119.
Ambulance lectures, 162.
Ankle joints, 120.
Andes, The Great, 73.
Andenmatten’s boots, 10.
Anderegg, Melchior, 3.
Aosta, 54, 99.
Arolla, 5, 91.
Avalanches, 88, 155.
Axe, 147, 152.
B
Badminton book, 133, 155.
Balance, 141.
Bâle, 92.
Balfour, Professor, 55.
Balloon, 74, 75.
Bayard statue, 25.
Beagle, Voyage of, 14, 135.
Bernese Oberland, 1, 21, 43, 81.
Bert, Paul, 74.
Bietschhorn, 8, 84.
Biner, 12, 53.
Bionnay, 89.
Birrenhorn, 3, 21, 116.
Blümlis-Alphorn, 23.
Boots, 10, 62, 159.
Bourcet, 41.
Bourg St. Pierre, 98.
Bouveret, 95.
Breuil, 99.
Bricklayer, 161.
Brieg, 71, 114.
Brocs, 25.
Brünig Pass, 68.
Byron, 111.
C
Calverley, 167.
_Cambridge Chronicle_, vii.
Canons at Hospice, 96.
Cantonal Hospital, 115.
Cast of snake, 3, 21.
Chamounix, 14, 61.
Challeret Hut, 27.
Châtillon, 54.
Cheval rouge, 39.
Chillon, 95.
Chimborazo, 73.
Coolidge, Mr., 41.
Col Durand, 47.
Col des Ecrins, 29.
Col du Lion, 10.
Col des Avalanches, 28.
Concordia Hut, 81, 82.
Constantia Hut, 47.
Conway, Sir Martin, 90.
Courmayeur, 54.
Couttet’s Hotel, 16.
Couvercle, 60.
Coxwell, 76.
Cretins, 99.
Crystalline rocks, 7.
D
Darwin, 14, 135.
Dauphiné, 19.
Deciduous trees, 5.
Dent Blanche, 48.
Dent, Mr. Clinton, 133.
Dogs of St. Bernard, 96.
Doldenhorn, 7.
Dom, 110.
Dru, Aiguille du, 86.
Drym, 152.
Durand, Col, 47.
E
Eagle, 29, 84.
Earthquake, 9.
Egger, 44.
Eggishorn, 81.
Emile Rey, 12, 55.
Erasmus, 92.
Eyre, Mr., 17, 113, 147.
Erratic boulders, 82.
Everest, Mt., 56.
F
Fatigue, 2, 167.
Fée, 53, 72, 112.
Fellows, Sir Charles, 74.
Ferpècle, 50.
Finsteraarhorn, 72.
Fly fishing, 22.
Föhn wind, 58, 69.
Frost-bite, 33, 62, 149, 159, 160.
Fry, Sir Edward, 89.
Furggen Joch, 10, 54.
G
Gabelhorn, 78.
Gangrene, 62.
Gaspard, 27.
Gauchos, 135.
Geneva, 87, 95.
Gemmi, 44.
Gendarme, 111.
Glacier, Gt. Aletsch, 81, 82, 111.
Glacier des Bossons, 59.
Glacier Blanc, 26.
Glacier de la Bonne Pierre, 29.
Glacier, Mer de Glace, 59.
Glacier de Talèfre, 60.
Glacier, Zinal, 44.
Goggles, 52, 152.
Gorner Glacier, 9, 45.
Grande Aiguille, 30.
Grand Plateau, 58.
Grands Mulets, 59.
Grenoble, 19, 25.
Grépon, 15.
Grimsel, 69.
Grindelwald, 83, 91.
Grund, Saas, 106.
Güssfeldt, Dr., 55.
Guttannen, 69.
H
Handeck Falls, 70.
Hari, Guide, 7, 24.
Hawes, Mr., 74.
Hazeline cream, 84.
Helix, 4.
Hod, Bricklayer’s, 161.
Holbein, 92.
Hospice, 96.
Hut, Concordia, 81.
Hut, Challeret, 27.
Hut, Mountet, 47.
Hut, Quintino Sella, 55.
Hut, Stockje, 49.
Hunting, 164.
I
Icebergs, 80.
Imseng, Xaver, 113.
Inquest, 163.
Italy, 54, 99.
J
Jardin, 60.
Jenner, Dr., 148.
Joch, Furggen, 10, 54.
Joch, Lys, 9.
Joch, Trift, 14, 79.
Jungfrau, 81.
Jura, 92.
K
Kalbermatten, Alois, 9, 76, 113, 131.
Kander, 4.
Kandersteg, 1, 19.
Karakoram, 90.
Knife, Use of, 147.
King, Sir Seymour, 55.
L
La Bérarde, 25, 30.
La Meije, 30, 35, 36.
La Grave, 30.
Lady Climber, 105.
Lantern, Lines to, 18.
Laquinhorn, 112.
Larches, 5.
Lämmergeyer, 29, 84.
Lange Fluh, 107.
Lauterbrunnen, 69, 83.
Liddes, 96.
Lightning, 152.
Limestone rocks, 7.
Lizards, 2.
Lötschen Thal, 8, 84.
Lötschen Lücke, 84.
Lucas, Mr., 53.
Lucerne, 68.
Lys Pass, 9.
M
Mahsir Fish, 22.
Maquignaz, 62.
Martigny, 96.
Märjelen See, 81, 115.
Marmot, 29.
Mathews, Mr. C. E., 166.
Matterhorn, 10, 76, 102.
Mattmark, 107.
Meije, 30, 35.
Meiringen, 69.
Mer de Glace, 59.
Mischabeljoch, 105.
Mischabel Hörner, 110.
Mont Blanc, 43, 54.
Monte Rosa, 9.
Mt. Everest, 56.
Montenvers, 59, 86.
Mummery, Mr., 10.
Myers, Mr. F. W. H., 85.
Mountet, 44, 47, 79.
N
Nadelhorn, 112.
Nettleship, Mr., 85.
Neuchâtel, 91.
O
Obergestelen, 71.
Ober Gabelhorn, 78.
Ober Oeschinen Alp, 23.
Observatory, 57.
Oubliette, 25.
Oeschinen See, 4.
Oeschinen Valley, 117.
P
Pasteur, 34.
Paracelsus, 92.
Perren, Peter, 131.
Petersgrat, 7.
Phœnix balloon, 75.
Pic Bourcet, 41.
Pic central, 33.
Pines, 5.
Plantigrade foot, 127.
Portjengrat, 109.
Pointe des Ecrins, 27.
Prehensile hand, 123.
Q
Quinbus Flestrin, 76.
Quintino Sella, 55.
R
Rats, 46.
Randa, 51.
Reese, Dr., 152.
Rey, Emile, 12.
Rhone Valley, 68.
Riding, balance, 137.
Ried, 8, 84.
Rieder Furka, 104.
Riederhorn, 114.
Riffel, 63.
Robinson, Dr. L., 121.
Rodier, Hippolyte, 27.
Rothhorn, 113.
Rowing, 120.
S
Saas, 106, 107.
Sallanches, 90.
Sampson, Miss, 14.
Scaffolders, 157.
Schönbühl rock, 48.
Schwarzsee, 54.
Schalliberg, 51.
Sheideck, 69.
Seiler, Mr. Alex., 53, 101.
Selden, 7.
Sella, 55.
Shot-proof glasses, 163.
Shoehorn rock, 131.
Sickness on mountains, 72.
Sierre, 85.
Sion, 85.
Smith, Albert, 42.
Snake’s slough, 3, 21.
Sowerby’s forest cantons, 5.
Sparrenhorn, 113.
Spikes in boots, 40.
Staffel Alp, 51, 103.
Stalden, 70.
St. Bernard, Gt., 96.
St. Gervais, 87, 89.
St. Theodule, 99.
St. Rémy, 98.
Stephen, Mr. Leslie, 166.
Stiffness after riding, 139.
Stockje hut, 49.
Südlenzspitze, 109, 110.
Sunburn, 84.
T
Tabaketti, 106.
Täsch Alp, 104.
Täschhorn, 52.
Tête Noire, 63, 85.
Tête Rousses, 89.
Tongue, Injury to, 25.
Trees, 5, 154.
Triftjoch, 14, 79.
Truffer, Joseph, 23.
Tschingellochtighorn, 2.
Turc, Joseph, 33.
Tyndall, 102.
Tyndallgrat, 12.
V
Val d’Aosta, 54, 99.
Val d’Anniviers, 44.
Valtournanche, 54, 99.
Vallot’s observatory, 57.
Viper, 3, 21.
Visp, 72, 114.
Vizille, 25.
Vomiting, 72.
W
Weisshorn, 51.
White, Gilbert, 4.
Whymper, 16, 73.
Wills, Mr. Justice, 155.
Wind, 58, 65, 69.
X
Xaver Imseng, 113.
Y
Ystradgynlais, 152.
Z
Zermatt, 104.
Zinal, 44, 79.
Zmutt Valley, 78.
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