Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the years 1860-69 Part 12

More striking still is it to see the great interior Mer de Glace of Greenland almost without moraines. This vast ice-plateau, although smaller than it was in former times, is still so extensive that the whole of the glaciers of the Alps might be merged into it without its bulk being perceptibly increased. If the size of moraines bore any sort of relation to the size of glaciers, the moraines of Greenland should be far greater than those of the Alps.

This interior ice-reservoir of Greenland, enormous as it is, must be considered as but the remnant of a ma.s.s which was incalculably greater, and which is unparalleled at the present time outside the Antarctic Circle. With the exception of localities where the rocks are easy of disintegration, and the traces of glacier-action have been to a great extent destroyed, the whole country bears the marks of the grinding and polishing of ice; and, judging by the flatness of the curves of the roches moutonnees, and by the perfection of the polish which still remains upon the rocks after they have sustained (through many centuries) extreme variations of temperature, the period during which such effects were produced must have widely exceeded in duration the "glacial period" of Europe. If moraines were built from matter excavated by glaciers, the moraines of Greenland should be the greatest in the world!

The absence of moraines upon and at the termination of this great Mer de Glace is due to the want of rocks rising above the ice.(31)On two occasions in 1867 I saw, at a glance, at least six hundred square miles of it from the summits of small mountains on its outskirts. Not a single peak or ridge was to be seen rising above, nor a single rock reposing upon, the ice. The country was _completely_ covered up by glacier: all was ice as far as the eye could see.(32)

There is evidence, then, that considerable areas of exposed rock-surface are essential to the production of large moraines, and that glacial periods do not necessarily produce vast moraines-that moraines are not built up of matter which is excavated by glaciers, but simply ill.u.s.trate the powers of glaciers for transportation and arrangement.

We descended in our track to the Lac de Combal, and from thence went over the Col de la Seigne to Les Motets, where we slept: on July 13 crossed the Col du Mont Tondu to Contamines (in a sharp thunderstorm), and the Col de Voza to Chamounix. Two days only remained for excursions in this neighborhood, and we resolved to employ them in another attempt to ascend the Aiguille d'Argentiere, upon which mountain we had been cruelly defeated just eight days before.

It happened in this way: Reilly had a notion that the ascent of the aiguille could be accomplished by following the ridge leading to its summit from the Col du Chardonnet. At half-past six on the morning of the 6th we found ourselves accordingly on the top of that pa.s.s, which is about eleven thousand or eleven thousand one hundred feet above the level of the sea. The party consisted of our friend Moore and his guide Almer, Reilly and his guide Francois Couttet, myself and Michel Croz. So far, the weather had been calm and the way easy, but immediately we arrived on the summit of the pa.s.s we got into a furious wind. Five minutes earlier we were warm-now we were frozen. Fine snow, whirled up into the air, penetrated every crack in our harness, and a.s.sailed our skins as painfully as if it had been red hot instead of freezing cold. The teeth chattered involuntarily; talking was laborious; the breath froze instantaneously; eating was disagreeable; sitting was impossible.

We looked toward our mountain: its aspect was not encouraging. The ridge that led upward had a spiked arete, palisaded with miniature aiguilles, banked up at their bases by heavy snow-beds, which led down at considerable angles, on one side toward the Glacier de Saleinoz, on the other toward the Glacier du Chardonnet. Under any circ.u.mstances it would have been a stiff piece of work to clamber up that way. Prudence and comfort counseled, "Give it up." Discretion overruled valor. Moore and Almer crossed the Col du Chardonnet to go to Orsieres, and we others returned toward Chamounix.

But when we got some distance down the evil spirit which prompts men to ascend mountains tempted us to stop and to look back at the Aiguille d'Argentiere. The sky was cloudless; no wind could be felt, nor sign of it perceived; it was only eight o'clock in the morning; and here, right before us, we saw another branch of the glacier leading high up nto the mountain-far above the Col du Chardonnet-and a little couloir rising from its head almost to the top of the peak. This was clearly the right route to take. We turned back and went at it.

The glacier was steep, and the snow-gully rising out of it was steeper.

Seven hundred steps were cut. Then the couloir became _too_ steep. We took to the rocks on its left, and at last gained the ridge, at a point about fifteen hundred feet above the col. We faced about to the right and went along the ridge, keeping on some snow a little below its crest, on the Saleinoz side. Then we got the wind again, but no one thought of turning, for we were within two hundred and fifty feet of the summit.

The axes of Croz and Couttet went to work once more, for the slope was about as steep as snow could be. Its surface was covered with a loose, granular crust, dry and utterly incoherent, which slipped away in streaks directly it was meddled with. The men had to cut through this into the old beds underneath, and to pause incessantly to rake away the powdery stuff, which poured down in hissing streams over the hard substratum. Ugh! how cold it was! How the wind blew! Couttet's hat was torn from its fastenings and went on a tour in Switzerland. The flour-like snow, swept off the ridge above, was tossed spirally upward, eddying in _tourmentes,_ then, dropped in lulls or caught by other gusts, was flung far and wide to feed the Saleinoz.

"My feet are getting suspiciously numbed," cried Reilly: "how about frost-bites?" "Kick hard, sir," shouted the men: "it's the only way."

_Their_ fingers were kept alive by their work, but it was cold for their feet, and they kicked and hewed simultaneously. I followed their example, but was too violent, and made a hole clean through my footing. A clatter followed as if crockery had been thrown down a well.

I went down a step or two, and discovered in a second that all were standing over a cavern (not a creva.s.se, speaking properly) that was bridged over by a thin vault of ice, from which great icicles hung in grooves. Almost in the same minute Reilly pushed one of his hands right through the roof. The whole party might have tumbled through at any moment. "Go ahead, Croz: we are over a chasm!" "We know it," he answered, "and we can't find a firm place."

In the blandest manner my comrade inquired if to persevere would not be to do that which is called "tempting Providence." My reply being in the affirmative, he further observed, "Suppose we go down?" "Very willingly."

"Ask the guides." They had not the least objection; so we went down, and slept that night at the Montanvert.

Off the ridge we were out of the wind. In fact, a hundred feet down _to windward,_ on the slope fronting the Glacier du Chardonnet, we were broiling hot: there was not a suspicion of a breeze. Upon that side there was nothing to tell that a hurricane was raging a hundred feet higher; the cloudless sky looked tranquillity itself; whilst to leeward the only sign of a disturbed atmosphere was the friskiness of the snow upon the crests of the ridges.

We set out on the 14th, with Croz, Payot and Charlet, to finish off the work which had been cut short so abruptly, and slept, as before, at the Chalets de Lognan. On the 15th, about midday, we arrived upon the summit of the aiguille, and found that we had actually been within one hundred feet of it when we turned back upon the first attempt.

It was a triumph to Reilly. In this neighborhood he had performed the feat (in 1863) of joining together "two mountains, each about thirteen thousand feet high, standing on the map about a mile and a half apart." Long before we made the ascent he had procured evidence which could not be impugned that the Pointe des Plines, a fict.i.tious summit which had figured on other maps as a distinct mountain, could be no other than the Aiguille d'Argentiere, and he had accordingly obliterated it from the preliminary draft of his map. We saw that it was right to do so. The Pointe des Plines did not exist. We had ocular demonstration of the accuracy of his previous observations.

I do not know which to admire most, the fidelity of Mr. Reilly's map or the indefatigable industry by which the materials were acc.u.mulated from which it, was constructed. To men who are sound in limb it may be amusing to arrive on a summit (as we did upon the top of Mont Dolent), sitting astride a ridge too narrow to stand upon, or to do battle with a ferocious wind (as we did on the top of the Aiguille de Trelatete), or to feel half frozen in midsummer (as we did on the Aiguille d'Argentiere).

But there is extremely little amus.e.m.e.nt in making sketches and notes under such conditions. Yet upon all these expeditions, under the most adverse circ.u.mstances and in the most trying situations, Mr. Reilly's brain and fingers were always at work. Throughout all he was ever alike-the same genial, equable-tempered companion, whether victorious or whether defeated; always ready to sacrifice his own desires to suit our comfort and convenience. By a most happy union of audacity and prudence, combined with untiring perseverance, he eventually completed his self-imposed task-a work which would have been intolerable except as a labor of love, and which, for a single individual, may wellnigh be termed herculean.

We separated upon the level part of the Glacier d'Argentiere, Reilly going with Payot and Charlet via the chalets of Lognan and de la Pendant, whilst I, with Croz, followed the right bank of the glacier to the village of Argentiere. At 7 P. M. we entered the humble inn, and ten minutes afterward heard the echoes of the cannon which were fired upon the arrival of our comrades at Chamounix.

[Decoration]

PART VII.

CHAPTER XII. THE MOMING Pa.s.s-ZERMATT.

On July 10, Croz and I went to Sierre, in the Valais, via the Col de Balme, the Col de la Forclaz and Martigny. The Swiss side of the Forclaz is not creditable to Switzerland. The path from Martigny to the summit has undergone successive improvements in these latter years, but mendicants permanently disfigure it.

We pa.s.sed many tired pedestrians toiling up this oven, persecuted by trains of parasitic children. These children swarm there like maggots in a rotten cheese. They carry baskets of fruit with which to plague the weary tourist. They flit around him like flies; they thrust the fruit in his face; they pester him with their pertinacity. Beware of them!-taste, touch not their fruit. In the eyes of these children each peach, each grape, is worth a prince's r ansom. It is of no use to be angry: it is like flapping wasps-they only buzz the more. Whatever you do or whatever you say, the end will be the same. "Give me something" is the alpha and omega of all their addresses. They learn the phrase, it is said, before they are taught the alphabet. It is in all their mouths. From the tiny toddler up to the maiden of sixteen, there is nothing heard but one universal chorus of "Give me something: will you have the goodness to give me something?"

From Sierre we went up the Val d'Anniviers to Zinal, to join our former companions, Moore and Almer. Moore was ambitious to discover a shorter way from Zinal to Zermatt than the two pa.s.ses which were known.(33) He had shown to me, upon Dufour's map, that a direct line connecting the two places pa.s.sed exactly over the depression between the Zinal-Rothhorn and the Schallhorn. He was confident that a pa.s.sage could be effected over this depression, and was sanguine that it would (in consequence of its directness) prove to be a quicker route than the circuitous ones over the Triftjoch and the Col Durand.

He was awaiting us, and we immediately proceeded up the valley and across the foot of the Zinal glacier to the Arpitetta Alp, where a chalet was supposed to exist in which we might pa.s.s the night. We found it at length(34), but it was not equal to our expectations. It was not one of those fine timbered chalets with huge overhanging eaves, covered with pious sentences carved in unintelligible characters. It was a hovel, growing, as it were, out of the hillside, roofed with rough slabs of slaty stone, without door or window, surrounded by quagmires of ordure and dirt of every description.

A foul native invited us to enter. The interior was dark, but when our eyes became accustomed to the gloom we saw that our palace was in plan about fifteen by twenty feet: on one side it was scarcely five feet high, but on the other was nearly seven. On this side there was a raised platform about six feet wide, littered with dirty straw and still dirtier sheepskins. This was the bed-room. The remainder of the width of the apartment was the parlor. The rest was the factory. Cheese was the article which was being fabricated, and the foul native was engaged in its manufacture. He was garnished behind with a regular cowherd's one-legged stool, which gave him a queer, uncanny look when it was elevated in the air as he bent over into his tub, for the making of his cheese required him to blow into a tub for ten minutes at a time. He then squatted on his stool to gain breath, and took a few whiffs at a short pipe, after which he blew away more vigorously than before. We were told that this procedure was necessary: it appeared to us to be nasty. It accounts, perhaps, for the flavor possessed by certain Swiss cheeses.

Big black and leaden-colored clouds rolled up from Zinal, and met in combat on the Morning glacier with others which descended from the Rothhorn. Down came the rain in torrents and crash went the thunder. The herd-boys hurried under shelter, for the frightened cattle needed no driving, and tore spontaneously down the Alp as if running a steeple-chase: Men, cows, pigs, sheep and goats forgot their mutual animosities, and rushed to the only refuge on the mountain. The spell was broken which had bound the elements for some weeks past, and the cirque from the Weisshorn to Lo Besso was the theatre in which they spent their fury.

A sullen morning succeeded an angry night. We were undecided in our council whether to advance or to return down the valley. Good seemed likely to overpower bad; so, at 5.40, we left the chalet en route for our pa.s.s [amidst the most encouraging a.s.surances from all the people on the Alp that we need not distress ourselves about the weather, as it was not possible to get to the point at which we were aiming](35).

Our course led us at first over ordinary mountain-slopes, and then over a flat expanse of glacier. Before this was quitted it was needful to determine the exact line which was to be taken. We were divided betwixt two opinions. I advocated that a course should be steered due south, and that the upper plateau of the Moming glacier should be attained by making a great detour to our right. This was negatived without a division. Almer declared in favor of making for some rocks to the south-west of the Schallhorn, and attaining the upper plateau of the glacier by mounting them. Croz advised a middle course, up some very steep and broken glacier.

Croz's route seemed likely to turn out to be impracticable, because much step-cutting would be required upon it. Almer's rocks did not look good: they were, possibly, una.s.sailable. I thought both routes were bad, and declined to vote for either of them. Moore hesitated, Almer gave way, and Croz's route was adopted.

He did not go very far, however, before he found that he had undertaken too much, and after [glancing occasionally round at us, to see what we thought about it, suggested that it might, after all, be wiser to take to the rocks of the Schallhorn]. That is to say, he suggested the abandonment of his own and the adoption of Almer's route. No one opposed the change of plan, and in the absence of instructions to the contrary he proceeded to cut steps across an ice-slope toward the rocks.

When we quitted the slopes of the Arpitetta Alp we took a south-easterly course over the Morning glacier. We halted to settle the plan of attack shortly after we got upon the ice. The rocks of the Schallhorn, whose ascent Almer recommended, were then to our southeast. Croz's proposed route was to the south-west of the rocks, and led up the southern side of a very steep and broken glacier.(36) The part he intended to traverse was, in a sense, undoubtedly practicable. He gave it up because it would have involved too much step-cutting. But the part of this glacier which intervened between his route and Almer's rocks was, in the most complete sense of the word, impracticable. It pa.s.sed over a continuation of the rocks, and was broken in half by them. The upper portion was separated from the lower portion by a long slope of ice that had been built up from the debris of the glacier which had fallen from above. The foot of this slope was surrounded by immense quant.i.ties of the larger avalanche blocks. These we cautiously skirted, and when Croz halted they had been left far below, and we were halfway up the side of the great slope which led to the base of the ice-wall above.

Across this ice-slope Croz now proceeded to cut. It was executing a flank movement in the face of an enemy by whom we might be attacked at any moment. The peril was obvious. It was a monstrous folly. It was foolhardiness. A retreat should have been sounded.(37)

"I am not ashamed to confess," wrote Moore in his Journal, "that during the whole time we were crossing this slope my heart was in my mouth, and I never felt relieved from such a load of care as when, after, I suppose, a pa.s.sage of about twenty minutes, we got on to the rocks and were in safety...I have never heard a positive oath come from Almer's mouth, but the language in which he kept up a running commentary, more to himself than to me, as we went along, was stronger than I should have given him credit for using. His prominent feeling seemed to be one of _indignation_ that we should be in such a position, and self-reproach at being a party to the proceeding; while the emphatic way in which, at intervals, he exclaimed, 'Quick! be quick!' sufficiently betokened his alarm."

It was not necessary to admonish Croz to be quick. He was as fully alive to the risk as any of the others. He told me afterward that this place was not only the most dangerous he had ever crossed, but that no consideration whatever would tempt him to cross it again. Manfully did he exert himself to escape from the impending destruction. His head, bent down to his work, never turned to the right or to the left. One, two, three, went his axe, and then he stepped on to the spot where he had been cutting. How painfully insecure should we have considered those steps at any other time! But now we thought of nothing but the rocks in front, and of the hideous _seracs,_ lurching over above us, apparently in the act of falling.

We got to the rocks in safety, and if they had been doubly as difficult as they were, we should still have been well content. We sat down and refreshed the inner man, keeping our eyes on the towering pinnacles of ice under which we had pa.s.sed, but which now were almost beneath us. Without a preliminary warning sound one of the largest-as high as the Monument at London Bridge-fell upon the slope below. The stately ma.s.s heeled over as if upon a hinge (holding together until it bent thirty degrees forward), then it crushed out its base, and, rent into a thousand fragments, plunged vertically down upon the slope that we had crossed!

Every atom of our track that was in its course was obliterated: all the new snow was swept away, and a broad sheet of smooth, gla.s.sy ice showed the resistless force with which it had fallen.

It was inexcusable to follow such a perilous path, but it is easy to understand why it was taken. To have retreated from the place where Croz suggested a change of plan, to have descended below the reach of danger, and to have mounted again by the route which Almer suggested, would have been equivalent to abandoning the excursion, for no one would have pa.s.sed another night in the chalet on the Arpitetta Alp. "Many," says Thucydides, "though seeing well the perils ahead, are forced along by fear of dishonor, as the world calls it, so that, vanquished by a mere word, they fall into irremediable calamities." Such was nearly the case here. No one could say a word in justification of the course which was adopted; all were alive to the danger that was being encountered; yet a grave risk was deliberately, although unwillingly incurred, in preference to admitting, by withdrawal from an untenable position, that an error of judgment had been committed.

[ICE-AVALANCHE ON THE MOMING Pa.s.s.]

ICE-AVALANCHE ON THE MOMING Pa.s.s.

After a laborious trudge over many species of snow, and through many varieties of vapor-from the quality of a Scotch mist to that of a London fog-we at length stood on the depression between the Rothhorn and the Schallhorn.(38) A steep wall of snow was upon the Zinal side of the summit, but what the descent was like on the other side we could not tell, for a billow of snow tossed over its crest by the western winds, suspended over Zermatt with motion arrested, resembling an ocean wave frozen in the act of breaking, cut off the view.(39) Croz, held hard in by the others, who kept down the Zinal side, opened his shoulders, flogged down the foam, and cut away the cornice to its junction with the summit; then boldly leaped down, and called on us to follow him.

[THE SUMMIT OF THE MOMING Pa.s.s IN 1861.]

THE SUMMIT OF THE MOMING Pa.s.s IN 1861.

It was well for us now that we had such a man as leader. An inferior or less daring guide would have hesitated to enter upon the descent in a dense mist, and Croz himself would have done right to pause had he been less magnificent in physique. He acted rather than said, "Where snow lies fast, there man can go; where ice exists, a way may be cut; it is a question of power: I have the power-all you have to do is to follow me."