Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the years 1860-69 Part 6

Vexed at having my time thus frittered away, I was still well pleased when he volunteered to start again on the morrow if it was fine. We were to advance the tent to the foot of the Tower, to fix ropes in the most difficult parts beyond, and to make a push for the summit on the following day.

The next morning (Friday, the 25th), when I arose, good little Meynet was ready and waiting, and he said that the two Carrels had gone off some time before, and had left word that they intended marmot-hunting, as the day was favorable for that sport. My holiday had nearly expired, and these men clearly could not be relied upon; so, as a last resort, I proposed to the hunchback to accompany me alone, to see if we could not get higher than before, though of reaching the summit there was little or no hope. He did not hesitate, and in a few hours we stood-for the third time together-upon the Col du Lion, but it was the first time Meynet had seen the view unclouded. The poor little deformed peasant gazed upon it silently and reverently for a time, and then unconsciously fell on one knee in an att.i.tude of adoration, and clasped his hands, exclaiming in ecstasy, "O beautiful mountains!" His actions were as appropriate as his words were natural, and tears bore witness to the reality of his emotion.

[A CANNONADE ON THE MATTERHORN (1862.)]

A CANNONADE ON THE MATTERHORN (1862).

Our power was too limited to advance the tent, so we slept at the old station, and, starting very early the next morning, pa.s.sed the place where we had turned back on the 24th, and subsequently my highest point on the 19th. We found the crest of the ridge so treacherous that we took to the cliffs on the right, although most unwillingly. Little by little we fought our way up, but at length we were both spread-eagled on the all-but perpendicular face, unable to advance and barely able to descend. We returned to the ridge. It was almost equally difficult, and infinitely more unstable; and at length, after having pushed our attempts as far as was prudent, I determined to return to Breuil, and to have a light ladder made to a.s.sist us to overcome some of the steepest parts. I expected, too, that by this time Carrel would have had enough marmot-hunting, and would deign to accompany us again.

We came down at a great pace, for we were now so familiar with the mountain and with each other's wants that we knew immediately when to give a helping hand and when to let alone. The rocks also were in a better state than I have ever seen them, being almost entirely free from glaze of ice. Meynet was always merriest on the difficult parts, and on the most difficult kept on enunciating the sentiment, "We can only die once," which thought seemed to afford him infinite satisfaction. We arrived at the inn early in the evening, and I found my projects summarily and unexpectedly knocked on the head.

Professor Tyndall had arrived while we were absent, and he had engaged both Caesar and Jean-Antoine Carrel. Bennen was also with him, together with a powerful and active friend, a Valaisan guide named Anton Walter.

They had a ladder already prepared, provisions were being collected, and they intended to start on the following morning (Sunday). This new arrival took me by surprise. Bennen, it will be remembered, refused point-blank to take Professor Tyndall on the Matterhorn in 1861. "He was dead against any attempt on the mountain," says Tyndall. He was now eager to set out.

Professor Tyndall has not explained in what way this revolution came about in his guide. I was equally astonished at the faithlessness of Carrel, and attributed it to pique at our having presumed to do without him. It was useless to compete with the professor and his four men, who were ready to start in a few hours, so I waited to see what would come of their attempt.

Everything seemed to favor it, and they set out on a fine morning in high spirits, leaving me tormented with envy and all uncharitableness. If they succeeded, they carried off the prize for which I had been so long struggling; and if they failed, there was no time to make another attempt, for I was due in a few days more in London. When this came home clearly to me, I resolved to leave Breuil at once, but when packing up found that some necessaries had been left behind in the tent. So I went off about mid-day to recover them, caught the army of the professor before it reached the col, as they were going very slowly, left them there (stopping to take food) and went on to the tent. I was near to it when all at once I heard a noise aloft, and on looking up perceived a stone of at least a foot cube flying straight at my head. I ducked and scrambled under the lee side of a friendly rock, while the stone went by with a loud buzz. It was the advanced guard of a perfect storm of stones, which descended with infernal clatter down the very edge of the ridge, leaving a trail of dust behind, with a strong smell of sulphur that told who had sent them. The men below were on the look-out, but the stones did not come near them, and breaking away on one side went down to the glacier.

I waited at the tent to welcome the professor, and when he arrived went down to Breuil. Early next morning some one ran to me saying that a flag was seen on the summit of the Matterhorn. It was not so, however, although I saw that they had pa.s.sed the place where we had turned back on the 26th.

I had now no doubt of their final success, for they had got beyond the point which Carrel, not less than myself, had always considered to be the most questionable place on the whole mountain. Up to it there was no choice of route-I suppose that at no one point between it and the col was it possible to diverge a dozen paces to the right or left-but beyond it it was otherwise, and we had always agreed in our debates that if it could be pa.s.sed success was certain.

[Route Sketch]

The accompanying outline from a sketch taken from the door of the inn at Breuil will help to explain. The letter A indicates the position of the Great Tower; C, the "cravate" (the strongly-marked streak of snow referred to in note on page 54, and which we just failed to arrive at on the 26th); B, the place where we now saw something that looked like a flag. Behind the point B a nearly level ridge leads up to the foot of the final peak, which will be understood by a reference to the outline on page 46, on which the same letters indicate the same places. It was just now said, we considered that if the point C could be pa.s.sed, success was certain.

Tyndall was at B very early in the morning, and I did not doubt that he would reach the summit, although it yet remained problematical whether he would be able to stand on the very highest point. The summit was evidently formed of a long ridge, on which there were two points nearly equally elevated-so equally that one could not say which was the highest-and between the two there seemed to be a deep notch, marked D on the outlines, which might defeat one at the very last moment.

My knapsack was packed, and I had drunk a parting gla.s.s of wine with Favre, who was jubilant at the success which was to make the fortune of his inn, but I could not bring myself to leave until the result was heard, and lingered about, as a foolish lover hovers round the object of his affections even after he has been contemptuously rejected. The sun had set before the men were descried coming over the pastures. There was no spring in their steps: they too were defeated. The Carrels hid their heads, but the others said, as men will do when they have been beaten, that the mountain was horrible, impossible, and so forth.-Professor Tyndall told me they had arrived _within a stone's throw of the summit,_ and admonished me to have nothing more to do with the mountain. I understood him to say that he should not try again, and ran down to the village of Val Tournanche, almost inclined to believe that the mountain was inaccessible, leaving the tent, ropes and other matters in the hands of Favre, to be placed at the disposal of any person who wished to ascend it-more, I am afraid, out of irony than generosity. There may have been those who believed that the Matterhorn could be ascended, but anyhow their faith did not bring forth works. No one tried again in 1862.

PART IV.

CHAPTER VI. THE VAL TOURNANCHE-THE BREUILJOCH-ZERMATT-ASCENT OF THE GRAND TOURNALIN.

["BUT WHAT IS THIS?"]

"BUT WHAT IS THIS?"

I crossed the Channel on the of July, 1863, embarra.s.sed by the possession of two ladders, each twelve feet long, which joined together like those used by firemen, and shut up like parallel rulers. My luggage was highly suggestive of housebreaking, for, besides these, there were several coils of rope and numerous tools of suspicious appearance; and it was reluctantly admitted into France, but it pa.s.sed through the custom-house with less trouble than I antic.i.p.ated, after a timely expenditure of a few francs.

I am not in love with the douane. It is the purgatory of travelers, where uncongenial spirits mingle together for a time before they are separated into rich and poor. The douaniers look upon tourists as their natural enemies: see how eagerly they pounce upon the portmanteaus! One of them has discovered something. He has never seen its like before, and he holds it aloft in the the face of its owner with inquisitorial insolence: "But _what is_ this?" The explanation is but half satisfactory "But what is _this?_" says he, laying hold of a little box. "Powder." "But that is forbidden to carry of powder on the railway." "Bah!" says another and older hand, "pa.s.s the effects of monsieur;" and our countryman-whose cheeks had begun to redden under the stares of his fellow-travelers-is allowed to depart with his half-worn tooth-brush, while the discomfited douanier gives a mighty shrug at the strange habits of those "whose insular position excludes them from the march of continental ideas."

My real troubles commenced at Susa. The officials there, more honest and more obtuse than the Frenchmen, declined at one and the same time to be bribed or to pa.s.s my baggage until a satisfactory account of it was rendered; and as they refused to believe the true explanation, I was puzzled what to say, but was presently relieved from the dilemma by one of the men, who was cleverer than his fellows, suggesting that I was going to Turin to exhibit in the streets-that I mounted the ladder and balanced myself on the end of it, then lighted my pipe and put the point of the baton in its bowl, and caused the baton to gyrate around my head. The rope was to keep back the spectators, and an Englishman in my company was the agent. "Monsieur is acrobat, then?" "Yes, certainly." "Pa.s.s the effects of monsieur the acrobat!"

These ladders were the source of endless trouble. Let us pa.s.s over the doubts of the guardians of the Hotel d'Europe (Trombetta) whether a person in the possession of such questionable articles should be admitted to their very respectable house, and get to Chatillon, at the entrance of the Val Tournanche. A mule was chartered to carry them, and as they were too long to sling across its back, they were arranged lengthways, and one end projected over the animal's head, while the other extended beyond its tail. A mule when going up or down hill always moves with a jerky action, and in consequence of this the ladders. .h.i.t my mule severe blows between its ears and its flanks. The beast, not knowing what strange creature it had on its back, naturally tossed its head and threw out its legs, and this, of course, only made the blows that it received more severe. At last it ran away, and would have perished by rolling down a precipice if the men had not caught hold of its tail. The end of the matter was, that a man had to follow the mule, holding the end of the ladders, which obliged him to move his arms up and down incessantly, and to bow to the hind quarters of the animal in a way that afforded more amus.e.m.e.nt to his comrades than it did to him.

I was once more en route for the Matterhorn, for I had heard in the spring of 1863 the cause of the failure of Professor Tyndall, and learned that the case was not so hopeless as it appeared to be at one time. I found that he arrived as far only as the northern end of "the shoulder." Carrel and all the men who had been with me knew of the existence of the cleft at this point, and of the pinnacle which rose between it and the final peak, and we had frequently talked about the best manner of pa.s.sing the place. On this we disagreed, but we were both of opinion that when we got to "the shoulder" it would be necessary to bear gradually to the right or to the left, to avoid coming to the top of the notch. But Tyndall's party, after arriving at "the shoulder," were led by his guides along the crest of the ridge, and consequently when they got to its northern end they came to the top of the notch, instead of the bottom-to the dismay of all but the Carrels. Dr. Tyndall's words are: "The ridge was here split by a deep cleft which separated it from the final precipice, and the case became more hopeless as we came more near."

The professor adds: "The mountain is 14,800 feet high, and 14,600 feet had been acomplished." He greatly deceived himself: by the barometric measurements of Signer Giordano the notch is no less than 800 feet below the summit. The guide Walter (Dr. Tyndall says) said it was impossible to proceed, and the Carrels, appealed to for their opinion (this is their own account), gave as an answer, "We are porters-ask your guides." Bennen, thus left to himself, "was finally forced to accept defeat." Tyndall had nevertheless accomplished an advance of about four hundred feet over one of the most difficult parts of the mountain.

The Val Tournanche is one of the most charming valleys in the Italian Alps: it is a paradise to an artist, and if the s.p.a.ce at my command were greater, I would willingly linger over its groves of chestnuts, its bright trickling rills and its roaring torrents, its upland unsuspected valleys and its n.o.ble cliffs. The path rises steeply from Chatillon, but it is well shaded, and the heat of the summer sun is tempered by cool air and spray which comes off the ice-cold streams. One sees from the path, at several places on the right bank of the valley, groups of arches which have been built high up against the faces of the cliffs. Guide-books repeat-on whose authority I know not-that they are the remains of a Roman aqueduct. They have the Roman boldness of conception, but the work has not the usual Roman solidity. The arches have always seemed to me to be the remains of an _unfinished_ work, and I learn from Jean-Antoine Carrel that there are other groups of arches, which are not seen from the path, all having the same appearance. It may be questioned whether those seen near the village of Antey are Roman. Some of them are semicircular, whilst others are pointed. Here is one of the latter, which might pa.s.s for fourteenth-century work or later-a two-centred arch, with mean voussoirs and the masonry in rough courses. These arches are well worth the attention of an archaeologist, but some difficulty will be found in approaching them closely.

[Antey Arch]

We sauntered up the valley, and got to Breuil when all were asleep. A halo round the moon promised watery weather, and we were not disappointed, for on the next day (August 1) rain fell heavily, and when the clouds lifted for a time we saw that new snow lay thickly over everything higher than nine thousand feet. J.-A. Carrel was ready and waiting (as I had determined to give the bold cragsman another chance); and he did not need to say that the Matterhorn would be impracticable for several days after all this new snow, even if the weather were to arrange itself at once. Our first day together was accordingly spent upon a neighboring summit, the Cimes Blanches-a degraded mountain well known for its fine panoramic view. It was little that we saw, for in every direction except to the south writhing ma.s.ses of heavy clouds obscured everything; and to the south our view was intercepted by a peak higher than the Cimes Blanches, named the Grand Tournalin. But we got some innocent pleasure out of watching the gambolings of a number of goats, who became fast friends after we had given them some salt-in fact, too fast, and caused us no little annoyance when we were descending. "Carrel," I said, as a number of stones whizzed by which they had dislodged, "this must be put a stop to." "Diable!" he grunted, "it is very well to talk, but how will you do it?" I said that I would try; and sitting down poured a little brandy into the hollow of my hand, and allured the nearest goat with deceitful gestures. It was one who had gobbled up the paper in which the salt had been carried-an animal of enterprising character-and it advanced fearlessly and licked up the brandy. I shall not easily forget its surprise. It stopped short and coughed, and looked at me as much as to say, "Oh, you cheat!" and spat and ran away, stopping now and then, to cough and spit again. We were not troubled any more by those goats.

More snow fell during the night, and our attempt on the Matterhorn was postponed indefinitely. Carrel and I wandered out again in the afternoon, and went, first of all, to a favorite spot with tourists near the end of the Gorner glacier (or, properly speaking, the Boden glacier), to a little verdant flat studded with Euphrasia officinalis, the delight of swarms of bees, who gather there the honey which afterward appears at the _table d'hte._

[WATER-WORN ROCKS IN THE GORGE BELOW THE GoRNER GLACIER]

WATER-WORN ROCKS IN THE GORGE BELOW THE GoRNER GLACIER

On our right the glacier torrent thundered down the valley through a gorge with precipitous sides, not easily approached, for the turf at the top was slippery, and the rocks had everywhere been rounded by the glacier, which formerly extended far away. This gorge seems to have been made chiefly by the torrent, and to have been excavated subsequently to the retreat of the glacier. It seems so, because not merely upon its walls are there the marks of running water, but even upon the rounded rocks at the top of its walls, at a height of seventy or eighty feet above the present level of the torrent, there are some of those queer concavities which rapid streams alone are known to produce on rocks.

A little bridge, apparently frail, spans the torrent just above the entrance to this gorge, and from it one perceives being fashioned in the rocks below concavities similar to those to which reference has just been made. The torrent is seen hurrying forward. Not everywhere. In some places the water strikes projecting angles, and, thrown back by them, remains almost stationary, eddying round and round: in others, obstructions fling it up in fountains, which play perpetually on the _under_ surfaces of overhanging ma.s.ses; and sometimes do so in such a way that the water not only works upon the under surfaces, but round the corner; that is to say, upon the surfaces which are _not_ opposed to the general direction of the current. In all cases _concavities_ are being produced. Projecting angles are rounded, it is true, and are more or less convex, but they are overlooked on account of the prevalence of concave forms.

Cause and effect help each other here. The inequalities of the torrent bed and walls cause its eddyings, and the eddies fashion the concavities. The more profound the latter become, the more disturbance is caused in the water. The destruction of the rocks proceeds at an ever-increasing rate, for the larger the amount of surface that is exposed, the greater are the opportunities for the a.s.saults of heat and cold.

When water is in the form of glacier it has not the power of making concavities such as these in rocks, and of working upon surfaces which are not opposed to the direction of the current. Its nature is changed: it operates in a different way, and it leaves marks which are readily distinguished from those produced by torrent action.

The prevailing forms which result from glacier action are more or less _convex._ Ultimately, all angles and almost all curves are obliterated, and large areas of flat surfaces are produced. This perfection of abrasion is rarely found except in such localities as have sustained a grinding much more severe than that which has occurred in the Alps. Not merely can the operations of extinct glaciers be traced in detail by means of the bosses of rock popularly termed _roches moutonnees,_ but their effects in the aggregate, on a range of mountains or an entire country, can be recognized sometimes at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, from the incessant repet.i.tion of these convex forms.

We finished up the 3d of August with a walk over the Findelen glacier, and returned to Zermatt at a later hour than we intended, both very sleepy. This is noteworthy only on account of that which followed. We had to cross the Col de Valpelline on the next day, and an early start was desirable. Monsieur Seller, excellent man! knowing this, called us himself, and when he came to my door I answered, "All right, Seller, I will get up," and immediately turned over to the other side, saying to myself, "First of all, ten minutes' more sleep."

But Seller waited and listened, and, suspecting the case, knocked again: "Herr Whymper, have you got a light?" Without thinking what the consequences might be, I answered, "No;" and then the worthy man actually forced the lock off his own door to give me one. By similar and equally friendly and disinterested acts Monsieur Seller has acquired his enviable reputation.

At four A.M. we left his Monte Rosa hotel, and were soon pushing our way through the thickets of gray alder that skirt the path up the exquisite little valley which leads to the Z'muttgletscher.

[STRIATIONS PRODUCED BY GLACIER ACTION (AT GRINDELWALD) ]

STRIATIONS PRODUCED BY GLACIER ACTION (AT GRINDELWALD)

Nothing can seem or be more inaccessible than the Matterhorn upon this side, and even in cold blood one holds his breath when looking at its stupendous cliffs. There are but few equal to them in size in the Alps, and there are none which can more truly be termed _precipices._ Greatest of them all is the immense north cliff, that which bends over toward the Z'muttgletscher. Stones which drop from the top of that amazing wall fall for about fifteen hundred feet before they touch anything, and those which roll down from above and bound over it fall to a much greater depth, and leap wellnigh one thousand feet beyond its base. This side of the mountain has always seemed sombre, sad, terrible: it is painfully suggestive of decay, ruin and death; and it is now, alas! more than terrible by its a.s.sociations.

"There is no aspect of destruction about the Matterhorn cliffs," says Professor Ruskin. Granted-when they are seen from afar. But approach and sit down by the side of the Z'muttgletscher, and you will hear that their piecemeal destruction is proceeding ceaselessly, incessantly. You will _hear,_ but probably you will not _see;_ for even when the descending ma.s.ses thunder as loudly as heavy guns, and the echoes roll back from the Ebihorn opposite, they will still be as pin-points against this grand old face, so vast is its scale.

If you would see the "aspects of destruction," you must come still closer and climb its cliffs and ridges, or mount to the plateau of the Matterhorngletscher, which is cut up and ploughed up by these missiles, and strewn on the surface with their smaller fragments: the larger ma.s.ses, falling with tremendous velocity, plunge into the snow and are lost to sight.

The Matterhorngletscher, too, sends down _its_ avalanches, as if in rivalry with the rocks behind. Round the whole of its northern side it does not terminate in the usual manner by gentle slopes, but comes to a sudden end at the top of the steep rocks which lie betwixt it and the Z'muttgletscher; and seldom does an hour pa.s.s without a huge slice breaking away and falling with dreadful uproar on to the slopes below, where it is re-compacted.

The desolate, outside pines of the Z'mutt forests, stripped of their bark and blanched by the weather, are a fit foreground to a scene that can hardly be surpa.s.sed in solemn grandeur. It is a subject worthy of the pencil of a great painter, and one which would tax the powers of the very greatest.