The Alps

Produced by Anita Hammond, Wayne Hammond and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

[Illustration:

Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge

_Editors_:

Herbert Fisher, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D.

Prof. Gilbert Murray, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A.

Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., LL.D.

PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. (Columbia University, U.S.A.)

New York

Henry Holt And Company]

[Illustration:

The Alps

By Arnold Lunn

London Williams And Norgate]

_First printed July 1914_

Preface

For the early chapters of this book I have consulted, amongst other authorities, the books mentioned in the bibliography on pp. 251-254. It would, however, be ungracious if I failed to acknowledge my indebtedness to that most readable of historians, Mr. Gribble, and to his books, _The Early Mountaineers_ (Fisher Unwin) and _The Story of Alpine Climbing_ (Nelson). Mr. Gribble and his publisher, Mr. Unwin, have kindly allowed me to quote passages translated from the works of the pioneers. Two friends, experts in the practice and history of mountaineering, have read the proofs and helped me with numerous suggestions.

Contents

Chap. Page

I The MediæVal Attitude 9

II The Pioneers 22

III The Opening Up Of The Alps 44

IV The Story Of Mont Blanc 60

V Monte Rosa And The BüNdner Oberland 82

VI Tirol And The Oberland 92

VII The Coming Of The English 111

VIII The Story Of The Matterhorn 147

IX Modern Mountaineering 185

X The Alps In Literature 208

Bibliography 251

Index 254

_Volumes bearing upon the subject, already published in the library, are_--

7. Modern Geography. By Dr. Marion Newbigin. (_Illustrated._)

36. Climate and Weather. By Prof. H. N. Dickson. (_Illustrated._)

88. The Growth of Europe. By Prof. Grenville Cole. (_Illustrated._)

The Alps

Chapter I

The MediæVal Attitude

Rousseau is usually credited with the discovery that mountains are not intrinsically hideous. Long before his day, isolated men had loved the mountains, but these men were eccentrics. They founded no school; and Rousseau was certainly the first to popularise mountains and to transform the cult of hill worship into a fashionable creed. None the less, we must guard against the error of supposing that mountain love was confined to the few men who have left behind them literary evidence of their good taste. Mountains have changed very little since man became articulate, and the retina of the human eye has changed even less. The beauty of outline that stirs us to-day was implicit in the hills “that shed their burial sheets about the march of Hannibal.” It seems reasonable to suppose that a few men in every age have derived a certain pleasure, if not from Alpine travel at least from the distant view of the snows.

The literature of the Ancient World contains little that bears upon our subject. The literature of the Jews is exceptional in this respect. This is the more to their credit, as the mountains of Judæa, south of the beautiful Lebanon range, are shapeless and uninteresting. Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Job, and Isaiah contain mountain passages of great beauty. The Old Testament is, however, far richer in mountain praise than the New Testament. Christ retired more than once to the mountains; but the authors of the four Gospels content themselves with recording the bare fact that certain spiritual crises took place on mountain-tops. There is not a single indication in all the gospels that Nazareth is set on a hill overlooking one of the fairest mountain prospects in all Judæa, not a single tribute to the beauty of Galilee girdled by the outlying hills of Hermon.

The Greeks lived in a land of mountains far lovelier than Palestine’s characterless heights. But the Jews showed genuine if spasmodic appreciation for their native ranges, whereas the Greeks, if their literature does them justice, cared little or nothing for their mountains. The note of fear and dread, pleasantly rare in Jewish literature, is never long absent from Greek references to the mountains. Of course, the Greeks gave Olympus to their gods, but as Mr. Norman Young remarks in a very able essay on _The Mountains in Greek Poetry_, it was necessary that the gods should look down on mankind; and, as they could not be strung up in mid-air, the obvious thing was to put them on a mountain-top. Perhaps we may concede that the Greeks paid a delicate compliment to Parnassus, the Home of the Muses; and certainly they chose for their temples the high ground of their cities. As one wanders through the olives and asphodels, one feels that the Greeks chose for their dwellings and temples those rising grounds which afforded the noblest prospect of the neighbouring hills. Only the cynic would contend that they did this in order to escape the atmosphere of the marshes.

The Romans were disgustingly practical. They regarded the Alps as an inconvenient barrier to conquest and commerce. Virgil shows an occasional trace of a deeper feeling, and Horace paused between draughts of Falernian wine to admire the snows on Soracte, which lent contrast to the comfort of a well-ordered life.

Mr. Freshfield has shown that the Chinese had a more genuine feeling for mountains; and Mr. Weston has explained the ancient cult of high places among the Japanese, perhaps the most consistent mountain worshippers in the world. The Japanese pilgrims, clad in white, make the ascent to the shrines which are built on the summits of their sacred mountains, and then withdraw to a secluded spot for further worship. For centuries, they have paid official tribute to the inspiration of high places.

But what of the Alps? Did the men who lived within sight of the Swiss mountains regard them with indifference and contempt? This was, perhaps, the general attitude, but there is some evidence that a love for mountains was not quite so uncommon in the Middle Ages as is usually supposed.

Before attempting to summarise this evidence, let us try to realise the Alps as they presented themselves to the first explorers. The difficulties of Alpine exploration, as that term is now understood, would have proved quite as formidable as those which now confront the Himalayan explorer. In spite of this, glacier passes were crossed in the earliest times, and even the Romans seemed to have ventured across the Théodule, judging by the coins which have been found on the top of that great glacier highway. In addition to the physical difficulties of Alpine travel, we must recognise the mental handicap of our ancestors. Danger no longer haunts the highways and road-passes of the Alps. Wild beasts and robber bands no longer threaten the visitor to Grindelwald. Of the numerous “inconveniences of travel” cited by an early visitor to the Alps, we need now only fear “the wonderful cunning of Innkeepers.” Stilled are the voices that were once supposed to speak in the thunder and the avalanche. The dragons that used to wing their way across the ravines of the central chain have joined the Dodo and “the men that eat the flesh of serpents and hiss as serpents do.” Danger, a luxury to the modern, formed part of the routine of mediæval life. Our ancestors had no need to play at peril; and, lest we lightly assume that the modern mountaineer is a braver man than those who shuddered on the St. Bernard, let us remember that our ancestors accepted with grave composure a daily portion of inevitable risks. Modern life is so secure that we are forced to the Alps in search of contrast. When our ancestors needed contrast, they joined a monastery.

Must we assume that danger blinded them to the beauty of the Alps? The mountains themselves have not changed. The modern mountaineer sees, from the windows of the Berne express, a picture whose colours have not faded in the march of Time. The bar of silver that thrusts itself above the distant foothills, as the train swings out of the wooded fortress of the Jura, casts the same challenge across the long shadows of the uplands. The peaks are a little older, but the vision that lights the world for us shone with the same steadfast radiance across the plains of long ago. Must we believe that our adventurous forefathers could find nothing but fear in the snows of the great divide? Dangers which have not yet vanished menaced their journey, but the white gleam of the distant snows was no less beautiful in the days when it shone as a beacon light to guide the adventurous through the great barrier down the warmth of Italian lowlands. An age which could face the great adventure of the Crusades for an idea, or more often for the sheer lust of romantic wandering, was not an age easily daunted by peril and discomfort. May we not hope that many a mute, inglorious mountain-lover lifted his eyes across the fields and rivers near Basle or Constance, and found some hint of elusive beauty in the vision that still remains a mystery, even for those who have explored the once trackless snows?

Those who have tried to discover the mediæval attitude have too often merely generalised from detached expressions of horror. Passages of praise have been treated as exceptional. The Monk Bremble and the Bishop Berkeley have had their say, unchallenged by equally good evidence for the defence. Let us remember that plenty of modern travellers might show an equally pronounced distaste for mountains. For the defence, we might quote the words of an old traveller borrowed in Coryat’s _Crudities_, a book which appeared in 1611: “What, I pray you, is more pleasant, more delectable, and more acceptable unto a man than to behold the height of hilles, as it were the very Atlantes of heauen? to admire Hercules his pillers? to see the mountaines Taurus and Caucasus? to view the hill Olympus, the seat of Jupiter? to pass over the Alpes that were broken by Annibals Vinegar? to climb up the Apennine promontory of Italy? from the hill Ida to behold the rising of the Sunne before the Sunne appears? to visit Parnassus and Helicon, the most celebrated seates of the Muses? Neither indeed is there any hill or hillocke, which doth not containe in it the most sweete memory of worthy matters.”

There is the genuine ring about this. It is the modern spirit without the modern affectations. Nor is this case exceptional. In the following chapter we shall sketch the story of the early Alpine explorers, and we shall quote many passages instinct with the real love for the hills.

Are we not entitled to believe that Gesner, Marti, and Petrarch are characteristic of one phase of mediæval sentiment, just as Bremble is characteristic of another? There is abundant evidence to show that the habit of visiting and admiring mountain scenery had become fashionable before the close of the sixteenth century. Simler tells us that foreigners came from all lands to marvel at the mountains, and excuses a certain lack of interest among his compatriots on the ground that they are surfeited with a too close knowledge of the Alps. Marti, of whom we shall speak at greater length, tells us that he found on the summit of the Stockhorn the Greek inscription cut in a stone which may be rendered: “The love of mountains is best.” And then there is the evidence of art. Conventional criticism of mountain art often revolves in a circle: “The mediæval man detested mountains, and when he painted a mountain he did so by way of contrast to set off the beauty of the plains.” Or again: “Mediæval man only painted mountains as types of all that is terrible in Nature. Therefore, mediæval man detested mountains.”

Let us try to approach the work of these early craftsmen with no preconceived notions as to their sentiments. The canvases still remain as they were painted. What do they teach us? It is not difficult to discriminate between those who used mountains to point a contrast, and those who lingered with devotion on the beauty of the hills. When we find a man painting mountains loosely and carelessly, we may assume that he was not over fond of his subject. Jan von Scorel’s grotesque rocks show nothing but equally grotesque fear. Hans Altdorfer’s elaborate and careful work proves that he was at least interested in mountains, and had cleared his mind of conventional terror. Roughly, we may say that, where the foreground shows good and the mountain background shows bad workmanship, the artist cared nothing for hills, and only threw them in by way of gloomy contrast. But such pictures are not the general rule.

Let us take a very early mountain painting that dates from 1444. It is something of a shock to find the Salève and Mont Blanc as the background to a New Testament scene. How is the background used? Konrad Witz, the painter, has chosen for his theme the miraculous draught of fishes. If he had borrowed a mountain background for the Temptation, the Betrayal, the Agony, or the Crucifixion, we might contend that the mountains were introduced to accentuate the gloom. But there is no suggestion of fear or sorrow in the peaceful calm that followed the storm of Calvary. The mountains in the distance are the hills as we know them. There is no reason to think that they are intended as a contrast to the restful foreground. Rather, they seem to complete and round off the happy serenity of the picture.

Let us consider the mountain work of a greater man than Witz. We may be thankful that Providence created this barrier of hills between the deep earnestness of the North and the tolerance of Italy, for to this we owe some of the best mountain-scapes of the Middle Ages. There is romance in the thought of Albrecht Dürer crossing the Brenner on his way to the Venetian lagoons that he loved so well. Did Dürer regard this journey with loathing? Were the great Alps no more than an obstacle on the road to the coast where the Adriatic breaks “in a warm bay ’mid green Illyrian hills.” Did he echo the pious cry of that old Monk who could only pray to be delivered from “this place of torment,” or did he rather linger with loving memory on the wealth of inspiring suggestion gathered in those adventurous journeys? Contrast is the essence of Art, and Dürer was too great a man to miss the rugged appeal of untamed cliffs, because he could fathom so easily the gentler charm of German fields and Italian waters. You will find in these mountain woodcuts the whole essence of the lovable German romance, that peculiar note of “snugness” due to the contrast of frowning rock and some “gemütlich” Black Forest châlet. Hans Andersen, though a Dane, caught this note; and in Dürer’s work there is the same appealing romance that makes the “Ice Maiden” the most lovable of Alpine stories. One can almost see Rudy marching gallantly up the long road in Dürer’s “Das Grosse Glück,” or returning with the eaglets stolen from their perilous nest in the cliffs that shadow the “Heimsuch.” Those who pretend that Dürer introduced mountains as a background of gloom have no sense for atmosphere nor for anything else. For Dürer, the mountains were the home of old romance.

Turn from Dürer to Da Vinci, and you will find another note. Da Vinci was, as we shall see, a climber, and this gives the dominant note to his great study of storm and thunder among the peaks, to be seen at Windsor Castle. His mountain rambles have given him that feeling of worship, tempered by awe, which even the Climbers’ Guides have not banished. But this book is not a treatise on mountain Art--a fascinating subject; and we must content ourselves with the statement that painters of all ages have found in the mountains the love which is more powerful than fear. Those who doubt this may examine at leisure the mountain work of Brueghel, Titian, or Mantegna. There are many other witnesses. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Hans Leu had looked upon the hills and found them good, and Altdorfer had shown not only a passionate enthusiasm for mountains, but a knowledge of their anatomy far ahead of his age. Wolf Huber, ten years his junior, carried on the torch, and passed it to Lautensack, who recaptured the peculiar note of German romance of which Dürer is the first and the greatest apostle. It would be easy to trace the apostolic succession to Segantini, and to prove that he is the heir to a tradition nearly six hundred years old. But enough has been said. We have adduced a few instances which bear upon the contention that, just as the mountains of the Middle Ages were much the same as the mountains of to-day, so also among the men of those times, as among the men of to-day, there were those who hated and those who loved the heights. No doubt the lovers of mountain scenery were in the minority; but they existed in far larger numbers than is sometimes supposed.

Chapter II

The Pioneers

Within the compass of this book, we cannot narrate the history of Alpine passes, though the subject is intensely interesting, but we must not omit all mention of the great classic traverse of the Alps. We should read of Hannibal’s memorable journey not in Livy, nor even in Bohn, but in that vigorous sixteenth-century translation which owes its charm and force even more to Philemon Holland the translator than to Livy.

Livy, or rather Holland, begins with Hannibal’s sentiments on “seeing near at hand the height of those hills ... the horses singed with cold ... the people with long shagd haire.” Hannibal and his army were much depressed, but, none the less, they advanced under a fierce guerilla attack from the natives, who “slipt away at night, every one to his owne harbour.” Then follows a fine description of the difficulties of the pass. The poor elephants “were ever readie and anone to run upon their noses”--a phrase which evokes a tremendous picture--“and the snow being once with the gate of so many people and beasts upon it fretted and thawed, they were fain to go upon the bare yce underneeth and in the slabberie snow-broth as it relented and melted about their heeles.” A great rock hindered the descent; Hannibal set it on fire and “powred thereon strong vinegar for to calcine and dissolve it,” a device unknown to modern mountaineers. The passage ends with a delightful picture of the army’s relief on reaching “the dales and lower grounds which have some little banks lying to the sunne, and rivers withall neere unto the woods, yea and places more meet and beseeming for men to inhabit.” Experts are divided as to what pass was actually crossed by Hannibal. Even the Col de Géant has been suggested by a romantic critic; it is certainly stimulating to picture Hannibal’s elephants in the Géant ice-fall. Probably the Little St. Bernard, or the Mont Genèvre, is the most plausible solution. So much for the great traverse.

Some twenty-five glacier passes had been actually crossed before the close of the sixteenth century, a fact which bears out our contention that in the Middle Ages a good deal more was known about the craft of mountaineering than is generally supposed. There is, however, this distinctive difference between passes and peaks. A man may cross a pass because it is the most convenient route from one valley to another. He may cross it though he is thoroughly unhappy until he reaches his destination, and it would be just as plausible to argue from his journey a love of mountains as to deduce a passion for the sea in every sea-sick traveller across the Channel. But a man will not climb a mountain unless he derives some interest from the actual ascent. Passes may be crossed in the way of business. Mountains will only be climbed for the joy of the climb.

The Roche Melon, near Susa, was the first Alpine peak of any consequence to be climbed. This mountain rises to a height of 11,600 feet. It was long believed to be the highest mountain in Savoy. On one side there is a small glacier; but the climb can be effected without crossing snow. It was climbed during the Dark Ages by a knight, Rotario of Asti, who deposited a bronze tryptych on the summit where a chapel still remains. Once a year the tryptych is carried to the summit, and Mass is heard in the chapel. There is a description of an attempt on this peak in the Chronicle of Novalessa, which dates back to the first half of the eleventh century. King Romulus is said to have deposited treasure on the mountain. The whole Alpine history of this peak is vague, but it is certain that the peak was climbed at a very early period, and that a chapel was erected on the summit before Villamont’s ascent in 1588. The climb presents no difficulties, but it was found discreet to remove the statue of the Virgin, as pilgrims seem to have lost their lives in attempting to reach it. The pilgrimages did not cease even after the statue had been placed in Susa.

[Illustration:

Bartholomew, Edin ]

Another early ascent must be recorded, though the climb was a very modest achievement. Mont Ventoux, in Provence, is only some 6430 feet above the sea, and to-day there is an hôtel on the summit. None the less, it deserves a niche in Alpine history, for its ascent is coupled with the great name of the poet Petrarch. Mr. Gribble calls Petrarch the first of the sentimental mountaineers. Certainly, he was one of the first mountaineers whose recorded sentiments are very much ahead of his age. The ascent took place on April 26, 1335, and Petrarch described it in a letter written to his confessor. He confesses that he cherished for years the ambition to ascend Mont Ventoux, and seized the first chance of a companion to carry through this undertaking. He makes the customary statement as to the extreme difficulty of the ascent, and introduces a shepherd who warns him from the undertaking. There are some very human touches in the story of the climb. While his brother was seeking short cuts, Petrarch tried to advance on more level ground, an excuse for his laziness which cost him dear, for the others had made considerable progress while he was still wandering in the gullies of the mountain. He began to find, like many modern mountaineers, that “human ingenuity was not a match for the nature of things, and that it was impossible to gain heights by moving downwards.” He successfully completed the ascent, and the climb filled him with enthusiasm. The reader should study the fine translation of his letter by Mr. Reeve, quoted in _The Early Mountaineers_. Petrarch caught the romance of heights. The spirit that breathes through every line of his letter is worthy of the poet.

Petrarch is not the only great name that links the Renaissance to the birth of mountaineering. That versatile genius, Leonardo da Vinci, carried his scientific explorations into the mountains. We have already mentioned his great picture of storm and thunder among the hills, one of the few mementos that have survived from his Alpine journeys. His journey took place towards the end of the fifteenth century. Little is known of it, though the following passage from his works has provoked much comment. The translation is due to Mrs. Bell: “And this may be seen, as I saw it, by any one going up Monboso, a peak of the Alps which divide France from Italy. The base of this mountain gives birth to the four rivers which flow in four different directions through the whole of Europe. And no mountain has its base at so great a height as this, which lifts itself above almost all the clouds; and snow seldom falls there, but only hail in the summer when the clouds are highest. And this hail lies (unmelted) there, so that, if it were not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not happen more than twice in an age, an enormous mass of ice would be piled up there by the layers of hail; and in the middle of July I found it very considerable, and I saw the sky above me quite dark; and the sun as it fell on the mountain was far brighter here than in the plains below, because a smaller extent of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun.”

We need not summarise the arguments that identify Monboso either with Monte Rosa or Monte Viso. The weight of evidence inclines to the former alternative, though, of course, nobody supposes that Da Vinci actually reached the summit of Monte Rosa. There is good ground, however, for believing that he explored the lower slopes; and it is just possible that he may have got as far as the rocks above the Col d’Ollen, where, according to Mr. Freshfield, the inscription “A.T.M., 1615” has been found cut into the crags at a height of 10,000 feet. In this connection it is interesting to note that the name “Monboso” has been found in place of Monte Rosa in maps, as late as 1740.[1]

We now come to the first undisputed ascent of a mountain, still considered a difficult rock climb. The year that saw the discovery of America is a great date in the history of mountaineering. In 1492, Charles VII of France passed through Dauphiny, and was much impressed by the appearance of Mont Aiguille, a rocky peak near Grenoble that was then called Mont Inaccessible. This mountain is only some seven thousand feet in height; but it is a genuine rock climb, and is still considered difficult, so much so that the French Alpine Club have paid it the doubtful compliment of iron cables in the more sensational passages. Charles VII was struck by the appearance of the mountain, and ordered his Chamberlain de Beaupré to make the ascent. Beaupré, by the aid of “subtle means and engines,” scaled the peak, had Mass said on the top, and caused three crosses to be erected on the summit. It was a remarkable ascent, and was not repeated till 1834.

We are not concerned with exploration beyond the Alps, and we have therefore omitted Peter III’s attempt on Pic Canigou in the Pyrenees, and the attempt on the Pic du Midi in 1588; but we cannot on the ground of irrelevance pass over a remarkable ascent in 1521. Cortez is our authority. Under his order, a band of Spaniards ascended Popocatapetl, a Mexican volcano which reaches the respectable height of 17,850 feet. These daring climbers brought back quantities of sulphur which the army needed for its gunpowder.

The Stockhorn is a modest peak some seven thousand feet in height. Simler tells us that its ascent was a commonplace achievement. Marti, as we have seen in the previous chapter, found numberless inscriptions cut into the summit stones by visitors, enthusiastic in their appreciation of mountain scenery, and its ascent by Müller, a Berne professor, in 1536, is only remarkable for the joyous poem in hexameters which records his delight in all the accompaniments of a mountain expedition. Müller has the true feelings for the simpler pleasures of picnicing on the heights. Everything delights him, from the humble fare washed down with a draught from a mountain stream, to the primitive joy of hurling big rocks down a mountain side. The last confession endears him to all who have practised this simple, if dangerous, amusement.

The early history of Pilatus, another low-lying mountain, is much more eventful than the annals of the Stockhorn. It is closely bound up with the Pilate legend, which was firmly believed till a Lucerne pastor gave it the final quietus in 1585. Pontius Pilate, according to this story, was condemned by the Emperor Tiberius, who decreed that he should be put to death in the most shameful possible manner. Hearing this, Pilate very sensibly committed suicide. Tiberius concealed his chagrin, and philosophically remarked that a man whose own hand had not spared him had most certainly died the most shameful of deaths. Pilate’s body was attached to a stone and flung into the Tiber, where it caused a succession of terrible storms. The Romans decided to remove it, and the body was conveyed to Vienne as a mark of contempt for the people of that place. It was flung into the Rhone, and did its best to maintain its reputation. We need not follow this troublesome corpse through its subsequent wanderings. It was finally hurled into a little marshy lake, near the summit of Pilatus. Here Pilate’s behaviour was tolerable enough, though he resented indiscriminate stone-throwing into the lake by evoking terrible storms, and once a year he escaped from the waters, and sat clothed in a scarlet robe on a rock near by. Anybody luckless enough to see him on these occasions died within the twelve-month.

So much for the story, which was firmly believed by the good citizens of Lucerne. Access to the lake was forbidden, unless the visitor was accompanied by a respectable burgher, pledged to veto any practices that Pilate might construe as a slight. In 1307, six clergymen were imprisoned for having attempted an ascent without observing the local regulations. It is even said that climbers were occasionally put to death for breaking these stringent by-laws. None the less, ascents occasionally took place. Duke Ulrich of Württemberg climbed the mountain in 1518, and a professor of Vienna, by name Joachim von Watt, ascended the mountain in order to investigate the legend, which he seems to have believed after a show of doubt. Finally, in 1585, Pastor John Müller of Lucerne, accompanied by a few courageous sceptics, visited the lake. In their presence, he threw stones into the haunted lake, and shouted “Pilate wirf aus dein Kath.” As his taunts produced no effect, judgment was given by default, and the legend, which had sent earlier sceptics into gaol, was laughed out of existence.

Thirty years before this defiant demonstration, the mountain had been ascended by the most remarkable of the early mountaineers. Conrad Gesner was a professor at the ancient University of Zürich. Though not the first to make climbing a regular practice, he was the pioneer of mountain literature. He never encountered serious difficulties. His mountaineering was confined to those lower heights which provide the modern with a training walk. But he had the authentic outlook of the mountaineer. His love for mountains was more genuine than that of many a modern wielder of the ice-axe and rope. A letter has been preserved, in which he records his resolution “to climb mountains, or at all events to climb one mountain every year.”

We have no detailed record of his climbs, but luckily his account of an ascent of Pilatus still survives, a most sincere tribute to the simple pleasures of the heights. It is a relief to turn to it after wading through more recent Alpine literature. Gesner’s writing is subjective. It records the impress of simple emotions on an unsophisticated mind. He finds a naïve joy in all the elemental things that make up a mountain walk, the cool breezes plying on heated limbs, the sun’s genial warmth, the contrasts of outline, colour, and height, the unending variety, so that “in one day you wander through the four seasons of the year, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.” He explains that every sense is delighted, the sense of hearing is gratified by the witty conversation of friends, “by the songs of the birds, and even by the stillness of the waste.” He adds, in a very modern note, that the mountaineer is freed from the noisy tumult of the city, and that in the “profound abiding silence one catches echoes of the harmony of celestial spheres.” There is more in the same key. He anticipates the most enduring reward of the mountaineer, and his words might serve as the motto for a mountain book of to-day: “Jucundum erit postea meminisse laborum atque periculorum, juvabit hæc animo revolvere et narrare amicis.” Toil and danger are sweet to recall, every mountaineer loves “to revolve these in his mind and to tell them to his friends.” Moreover, contrast is the essence of our enjoyment and “the very delight of rest is intensified when it follows hard labour.” And then Gesner turns with a burst of scorn to his imaginary opponent. “But, say you, we lack feather beds and mattresses and pillows. Oh, frail and effeminate man! Hay shall take the place of these luxuries. It is soft, it is fragrant. It is blended from healthy grass and flower, and as you sleep respiration will be sweeter and healthier than ever. Your pillow shall be of hay. Your mattress shall be of hay. A blanket of hay shall be thrown across your body.” That is the kind of thing an enthusiastic mountaineer might have written about the club-huts in the old days before the hay gave place to mattresses. Nor does Gesner spoil his rhapsody by the inevitable joke about certain denizens of the hay.

There follows an eloquent description of the ascent and an analysis of the Pilate legend. Thirty years were to pass before Pastor Müller finally disposed of the myth, but Gesner is clearly sceptical, and concludes with the robust assertion that, even if evil spirits exist, they are “impotent to harm the faithful who worship the one heavenly light, and Christ the Sun of Justice.” A bold challenge to the superstitions of the age, a challenge worthy of the man. Conrad Gesner was born out of due season; and, though he does not seem to have crossed the snow line, he was a mountaineer in the best sense of the term. As we read his work, we seem to hear the voice of a friend. Across the years we catch the accents of a true member of our great fraternity. We leave him with regret, with a wish that we could meet him on some mountain path, and gossip for a while on mountains and mountaineers.

But Gesner was not, as is sometimes assumed, alone in this sentiment for the hills. In the first chapter we have spoken of Marti, a professor at Berne, and a close friend of Gesner. The credit for discovering him belongs, I think, to Mr. Freshfield, who quotes some fine passages from Marti’s writings. Marti looks out from the terrace at Berne on that prospect which no true mountain lover can behold without emotion, and exclaims: “These are the mountains which form our pleasure and delight when we gaze at them from the highest parts of our city, and admire their mighty peaks and broken crags that threaten to fall at any moment. Who, then, would not admire, love, willingly visit, explore, and climb places of this sort? I should assuredly call those who are not attracted by them dolts, stupid dull fishes, and slow tortoises.... I am never happier than on the mountain crests, and there are no wanderings dearer to one than those on the mountains.”

This passage tends to prove that mountain appreciation had already become a commonplace with cultured men. Had Marti’s views been exceptional, he would have assumed a certain air of defence. He would explain precisely why he found pleasure in such unexpected places. He would attempt to justify his paradoxical position. Instead, he boldly assumes that every right-minded man loves mountains; and he confounds his opponents by a vigorous choice of unpleasant alternatives.

Josias Simler was a mountaineer of a very different type. To him belongs the credit of compiling the first treatise on the art of Alpine travel. Though he introduces no personal reminiscences, his work is so free from current superstition that he must have been something of a climber; but, though a climber, he did not share Gesner’s enthusiasm for the hills. For, though he seems to have crossed glacier passes, whereas Gesner confined himself to the lower mountains, yet the note of enthusiasm is lacking. His horror of narrow paths, bordering on precipices, is typical of the age; and if he ventured across a pass he must have done so in the way of business. There is, as we have already pointed out, a marked difference between passes and mountains. A merchant with a holy horror of mountains may be forced to cross a pass in the way of business, but a man will only climb a mountain for the fun of the thing. It is clear that Simler could only see in mountains a sense of inconvenient barriers to commerce, but as a practical man he set out to codify the existing knowledge. Gesner’s mountain work is subjective; it is the literature of emotion; he is less concerned with the mountain in itself, than with the mountain as it strikes the individual observer. Simler, on the other hand, is the forerunner of the objective school. He must delight those who postulate that all Alpine literature should be the record of positive facts. The personal note is utterly lacking. Like Gesner, he was a professor at Zürich. Unlike Gesner, he was an embodiment of the academic tradition that is more concerned with fact than with emotion. None the less, his work was a very valuable contribution, as it summarised existing knowledge on the art of mountain travel. His information is singularly free from error. He seems to have understood the use of the rope, alpenstocks, crampons, dark spectacles, and the use of paper as a protection against cold. It is strange that crampons, which were used in Simler’s days, were only reintroduced into general practice within the last decades, whilst the uncanny warmth of paper is still unknown to many mountaineers. His description of glacier perils, due to concealed crevasses, is accurate, and his analysis of avalanches contains much that is true. We are left with the conviction that snow- and ice-craft is an old science, though originally applied by merchants rather than pure explorers.

We quoted Simler, in the first chapter, in support of our contention that foreigners came in great numbers to see and rejoice in the beauty of the Alps. But, though Simler proves that passes were often crossed in the way of business, and that mountains were often visited in search of beauty, he himself was no mountain lover.

It is a relief to turn to Scheuchzer, who is a living personality. Like Gesner and Simler, he was a professor at Zürich, and, like them, he was interested in mountains. There the resemblance ceases. He had none of Gesner’s fine sentiment for the hills. He did not share Simler’s passion for scientific knowledge. He was a very poor mountaineer, and, though he trudged up a few hills, he heartily disliked the toil of the ascent: “Anhelosæ quidem sunt scansiones montium”--an honest, but scarcely inspiring, comment on mountain travel. Honesty, bordering on the naïve, is, indeed, the keynote of our good professor’s confessions. Since his time, many ascents have failed for the same causes that prevented Scheuchzer reaching the summit of Pilatus, but few mountaineers are candid enough to attribute their failure to “bodily weariness and the distance still to be accomplished.” Scheuchzer must be given credit for being, in many ways, ahead of his age. He protested vigorously against the cruel punishments in force against witches. He was the first to formulate a theory of glacier motion which, though erroneous, was by no means absurd. As a scientist, he did good work in popularising Newton’s theories. He published the first map of Switzerland with any claims to accuracy. His greatest scientific work on dragons is dedicated to the English Royal Society, and though Scheuchzer’s dragons provoke a smile, we should remember that several members of that learned society subscribed to publish his researches on those fabulous creatures.

With his odd mixture of credulity and common sense, Scheuchzer often recalls another genial historian of vulgar errors. Like Sir Thomas Browne, he could never dismiss a picturesque legend without a pang. He gives the more blatant absurdities their quietus with the same gentle and reluctant touch: “That the sea is the sweat of the earth, that the serpent before the fall went erect like man ... being neither consonant unto reason nor corresponding unto experiment, are unto us no axioms.” Thus Browne, and it is with the same tearful and chastened scepticism that Scheuchzer parts with the more outrageous “axioms” in his wonderful collection. But he retained enough to make his work amusing. Like Browne, he made it a rule to believe half that he was told. But on the subject of dragons he has no mental reservations. Their existence is proved by the number of caves that are admirably suited to the needs of the domestic dragon, and by the fact that the Museum, at Lucerne, contains an undoubted dragon stone. Such stones are rare, which is not surprising owing to the extreme difficulty of obtaining a genuine unimpaired specimen. You must first catch your dragon asleep, and then cut the stone out of his head. Should the dragon awake the value of the stone will disappear. Scheuchzer refrains from discouraging collectors by hinting at even more unpleasant possibilities. But then there is no need to awaken the dragon. Scatter soporific herbs around him, and help them out by recognised incantations, and the stone should be removed without arousing the dragon. In spite of these anæsthetics, Scheuchzer admits that the process demands a courageous and skilled operator, and perhaps it is lucky that this particular stone was casually dropped by a passing dragon. It is obviously genuine, for, if the peasant who had picked it up had been dishonest, he would never have hit on so obvious and unimaginative a tale. He would have told some really striking story, such as that the stone had come from the far Indies. Besides, the stone not only cures hæmorrhages (quite commonplace stones will cure hæmorrhages), but also dysentery and plague. As to dragons, Scheuchzer is even more convincing. He has examined (on oath) scores of witnesses who had observed dragons at first hand. We need not linger to cross-examine these honest folk. Their dragons are highly coloured, and lack nothing but uniformity. Each new dragon that flies into Scheuchzer’s net is gravely classified. Some dragons have feet, others have wings. Some have scales. Scheuchzer is a little puzzled whether dragons with a crest constitute a class of their own, or whether the crest distinguished the male from the female. Each dragon is thus neatly ticketed into place and referred to the sworn deposition of some _vir quidam probus_.

But the dragons had had their day. Scheuchzer ushers in the eighteenth century. Let us take leave of him with a friendly smile. He is no abstraction, but a very human soul. We forget the scientist, though his more serious discoveries were not without value. We remember only the worthy professor, panting up his laborious hills in search of quaint knowledge, discovering with simple joy that Gemmi is derived from “gemitus” a groan, _quod non nisi crebris gemitibus superetur_. No doubt the needy fraternity soon discovered his amiable weakness. An unending procession must have found their way to his door, only too anxious to supply him with dragons of wonderful and fearful construction. Hence, the infinite variety of these creatures. When we think of Scheuchzer, we somehow picture the poor old gentleman, laboriously rearranging his data, on the sworn deposition of some _clarissimus homo_, what time the latter was bartering in the nearest tavern the price of a dragon for that good cheer in which most of Scheuchzer’s fauna first saw the light of day.

Chapter III

The Opening Up Of The Alps

The climbs, so far chronicled, have been modest achievements and do not include a genuine snow-peak, for the Roche Melon has permanent snow on one side only. We have seen that many snow passes were in regular use from the earliest times; but genuine Alpine climbing may be said to begin with the ascent of the Titlis. According to Mr. Gribble, this was climbed by a monk of Engleberg, in 1739. Mr. Coolidge, on the other hand, states that it was ascended by four peasants, in 1744. In any case, the ascent was an isolated feat which gave no direct stimulus to Alpine climbing, and Mr. Gribble is correct in dating the continuous history of Alpine climbing from the discovery of Chamounix, in 1741. This famous valley had, of course, a history of its own before that date; but its existence was only made known, to a wider world, by the visit of a group of young Englishmen, towards the middle of the eighteenth century.

In 1741, Geneva was enlivened by a vigorous colony of young Britons. Of these, William Windham was a famous athlete, known on his return to London as “Boxing Windham.” While at Geneva, he seems, despite the presence of his “respectable perceptor,” Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, the grandson of the theologian, to have amused himself pretty thoroughly. The archives record that he was fined for assault and kindred offences. When these simple joys began to pall he decided to go to Chamounix in search of adventure.

His party consisted of himself, Lord Haddington, Dr. Pococke, the Oriental traveller, and others. They visited Chamounix, and climbed the Montanvert with a large brigade of guides. The ascent to the Montanvert was not quite so simple as it is to-day, a fact which accounts for Windham’s highly coloured description. Windham published his account of the journey and his reflections on glaciers, in the _Journal Helvetique_ of Neuchâtel, and later in London. It attracted considerable attention and focussed the eyes of the curious on the unknown valley of Chamounix. Among others, Peter Martel, an engineer of Geneva, was inspired to repeat the visit. Like Windham, he climbed the Montanvert and descended on to the Mer de Glace; and, like Windham, he published an account of the journey and certain reflections on glaciers and glacier motion. His story is well worth reading, and the curious in such matters should turn either to Mr. Gribble’s _Early Mountaineers_, or to Mr. Matthews’ _The Annals of Mont Blanc_, where they will find Windham’s and Martel’s letters set forth in full.

Martel’s letter and his map of Chamounix were printed together with Windham’s narrative, and were largely responsible for popularising Chamounix. Those who wished to earn a reputation for enterprise could hardly do so without a visit to the glaciers of Chamounix. Dr. John Moore, father of Sir John Moore, who accompanied the Duke of Hamilton on the grand tour, tells us that “one could hardly mention anything curious or singular without being told by some of those travellers, with an air of cool contempt: ‘Dear Sir, that is pretty well, but take my word for it, it is nothing to the glaciers of Savoy.’” The Duc de la Rochefoucauld considered that the honour of his nation demanded that he should visit the glaciers, to prove that the English were not alone in the possession of courage.

More important, in this connection, than Dr. Moore or the duke is the great name of De Saussure. De Saussure belonged to an old French family that had been driven out of France during the Huguenot persecutions. They emigrated to Geneva, where De Saussure was born. His mother had Spartan views on education; and from his earlier years the child was taught to suffer the privations due to physical ills and the inclemency of the season. As a result of this adventurous training, De Saussure was irresistibly drawn to the mountains. He visited Chamounix in 1760, and was immediately struck by the possibility of ascending Mont Blanc. He does not seem to have cherished any ambition to make the first ascent in person. He was content to follow when once the way had been found; and he offered a reward to the pioneer, and promised to recompense any peasant who should lose a day’s work in trying to find the way to the summit of Mont Blanc. The reward was not claimed for many years, but, meanwhile, De Saussure never missed a chance of climbing a mountain. He climbed Ætna, and made a series of excursions in various parts of the Alps. When his wife complained, he indited a robust letter which every married mountaineer should keep up his sleeve for ready quotation.

“In this valley, which I had not previously visited,” he writes, “I have made observations of the greatest importance, surpassing my highest hopes; but that is not what you care about. You would sooner--God forgive me for saying so--see me growing fat like a friar, and snoring every day in the chimney corner, after a big dinner, than that I should achieve immortal fame by the most sublime discoveries at the cost of reducing my weight by a few ounces and spending a few weeks away from you. If, then, I continue to take these journeys, in spite of the annoyance they cause you, the reason is that I feel myself pledged in honour to go on with them, and that I think it necessary to extend my knowledge on this subject and make my works as nearly perfect as possible. I say to myself: ‘Just as an officer goes out to assault a fortress when the order is given, and just as a merchant goes to market on market-day, so must I go to the mountains when there are observations to be made.’”

De Saussure was partly responsible for the great renaissance of mountain travel that began at Geneva in 1760. A group of enthusiastic mountaineers instituted a series of determined assaults on the unconquered snows. Of these, one of the most remarkable was Jean-Andre de Luc.

De Luc was born at Geneva, in 1727. His father was a watchmaker, but De Luc’s life was cast on more ambitious lines. He began as a diplomatist, but gravitated insensibly to science. He invented the hygrometer, and was elected a member of the Royal Societies of London, Dublin, and Göttingen. Charlotte, the wife of George III, appointed him her reader; and he died at Windsor, having attained the ripe age of ninety. He was a scientific, rather than a sentimental, mountaineer; his principal occupation was to discover the temperature at which water would boil at various altitudes. His chief claim to notice is that he made the first ascent of the Buet.

The Buet is familiar to all who know Chamounix. It rises to the height of 10,291 feet. Its summit is a broad plateau, glacier-capped. Those who have travelled to Italy by the Simplon may, perhaps, recall the broad-topped mountain that seems to block up the western end of the Rhone valley, for the Buet is a conspicuous feature on the line, between Sion and Brigue. It is not a difficult mountain, in the modern sense of the term; but, to climbers who knew little of the nature of snow and glacier, it must have presented quite a formidable appearance. De Luc made several attempts before he was finally successful on September 22, 1770. His description of the view from the summit is a fine piece of writing. Familiarity had not staled the glory of such moments; and men might still write, as they felt, without fear that their readers would be bored by emotions that had lost their novelty.

Before leaving, De Luc observed that the party were standing on a cornice. A cornice is a crest of windblown snow overhanging a precipice. As the crest often appears perfectly continuous with the snow on solid foundation, cornices have been responsible for many fatal accidents. De Luc’s party naturally beat a hurried retreat; but “having gathered, by reflection, that the addition of our own weight to this prodigious mass which had supported itself for ages counted for absolutely nothing, and could not possibly break it loose, we laid aside our fears and went back to the terrible terrace.” A little science is a dangerous thing; and it was a mere chance that the first ascent of the Buet is not notorious for a terrible accident. It makes one’s blood run cold to read of the calm contempt with which De Luc treated the cornice. Each member of the party took it in turn to advance to the edge and look over on to the cliff below supported as to his coattails by the rest of the party.

De Luc made a second ascent of the Buet, two years later; but it was not until 1779 that a snow peak was again conquered. In that year Murith, the Prior of the St. Bernard Hospice, climbed the Velan, the broad-topped peak which is so conspicuous a feature from the St. Bernard. It is a very respectable mountain rising to a height of 12,353 feet. Murith, besides being an ecclesiastic, was something of a scientist, and his botanical handbook to the Valais is not without merit. It is to Bourrit, of whom we shall speak later, that we owe the written account of the climb, based on information which Bourrit had at first hand from M. Murith.

Murith started on August 30, 1779, with “two hardy hunters,” two thermometers, a barometer, and a spirit-level. They slept a night on the way, and proceeded to attack the mountain from the Glacier du Proz. The hardy hunters lost their nerve, and tried to dissuade M. Murith from the attempt; but the gallant Prior replied: “Fear nothing; wherever there is danger I will go in front.” They encountered numerous difficulties, amongst others a wall of ice which Murith climbed by hacking steps and hand-holds with a pointed hammer. One of the hardy huntsmen then followed; his companion had long since disappeared.

They reached the summit without further difficulty, and their impressions of the view are recorded by Bourrit in an eloquent passage which recalls De Luc on the Buet, and once more proves that the early mountaineers were fully alive to the glory of mountain tops--

“A spectacle, no less amazing than magnificent, offered itself to their gaze. The sky seemed to be a black cloth enveloping the earth at a distance from it. The sun shining in it made its darkness all the more conspicuous. Down below their outlook extended over an enormous area, bristling with rocky peaks and cut by dark valleys. Mont Blanc rose like a sloping pyramid and its lofty head appeared to dominate all the Alps as one saw it towering above them. An imposing stillness, a majestic silence, produced an indescribable impression upon the mind. The noise of the avalanches, reiterated by the echoes, seemed to be the only thing that marked the march of time. Raised, so to say, above the head of Nature, they saw the mountains split asunder, and send the fragments rolling to their feet, and the rivers rising below them in places where inactive Nature seemed upon the point of death--though in truth it is there that she gathers strength to carry life and fertility throughout the world.”

It is curious in this connection to notice the part played by the Church in the early history of mountaineering. This is not surprising. The local curé lived in the shadow of the great peaks that dominated his valley. He was more cultured than the peasants of his parish; he was more alive to the spiritual appeal of the high places, and he naturally took a leading part in the assaults on his native mountains. The Titlis and Monte Leone were first climbed by local monks. The prior of the St. Bernard made, as we have seen, a remarkable conquest of a great local peak; and five years later M. Clément, the curé of Champery, reached the summit of the Dent du Midi, that great battlement of rock which forms a background to the eastern end of Lake Geneva. Bourrit, as we shall see, was an ecclesiastic with a great love for the snows. Father Placidus à Spescha was the pioneer of the Tödi; and local priests played their part in the early attempts on the Matterhorn from Italy. “One man, one mountain” was the rule of many an early pioneer; but Murith’s love of the snows was not exhausted by this ascent of the Velan. He had already explored the Valsorey glacier with Saussure, and the Otemma glacier with Bourrit. A few years after his conquest of the Velan he turned his attention to the fine wall of cliffs that binds in the Orny glacier on the south.

Bourrit, who wrote up Murith’s notes on the Velan, was one of the most remarkable of this group of pioneers. He was a whole-hearted enthusiast, and the first man who devoted the most active years of his life to mountaineering. He wins our affection by the readiness with which he gave others due credit for their achievements, a generous characteristic which did not, however, survive the supreme test--Paccard’s triumph on Mont Blanc. Mountaineers at the end of the eighteenth century formed a close freemasonry less concerned with individual achievement than with the furthering of common knowledge. We have seen, for instance, that De Saussure cared little who made the first ascent of Mont Blanc provided that the way was opened up for future explorers. Bourrit’s actual record of achievement was small. His exploration was attended with little success. His best performance was the discovery, or rediscovery of the Col de Géant. His great ambition, the ascent of Mont Blanc, failed. Fatigue, or mountain sickness, or bad weather, spoiled his more ambitious climbs. But this matters little. He found his niche in Alpine history rather as a writer than as a mountaineer. He popularised the Alps. He was the first systematic writer of Alpine books, a fact which earned him the title, “Historian of the Alps,” a title of which he was inordinately proud. Best of all, in an age when mountain appreciation was somewhat rare, he marked himself out by an unbounded enthusiasm for the hills.

He was born in 1735, and in one of his memoirs he describes the moment when he first heard the call of the Alps: “It was from the summit of the Voirons that the view of the Alps kindled my desire to become acquainted with them. No one could give me any information about them except that they were the accursed mountains, frightful to look upon and uninhabited.” Bourrit began life as a miniature painter. A good many of his Alpine water colours have survived. Though they cannot challenge serious comparison with the mountain masterpieces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they are not without a certain merit. But Bourrit would not have become famous had he not deserted the brush for the pen. When the Alps claimed him, he gave up miniatures, and accepted an appointment as Precentor of Geneva Cathedral, a position which allowed him great leisure for climbing. He used to climb in the summer, and write up his journeys in the winter. He soon compiled a formidable list of books, and was hailed throughout Europe as the Historian of the Alps. There was no absurd modesty about Bourrit. He accepted the position with serene dignity. His house, he tells us, is “embellished with beautiful acacias, planned for the comfort and convenience of strangers who do not wish to leave Geneva without visiting the Historian of the Alps.” He tells us that Prince Henry of Prussia, acting on the advice of Frederick the Great, honoured him with a visit. Bourrit, in fact, received recognition in many distinguished quarters. The Princess Louise of Prussia sent him an engraving to recall “a woman whom you have to some extent taught to share your lofty sentiments.” Bourrit was always popular with the ladies, and no climber has shown a more generous appreciation for the sex. “The sex is very beautiful here,” became, as Mr. Gribble tells us, “a formula with him as soon as he began writing and continued a formula after he had passed his threescore years and ten.”

We have said that Bourrit’s actual record as a climber is rather disappointing. We may forget this, and remember only his whole-hearted devotion to the mountains. Even Gesner, Petrarch, and Marti seem balanced and cold when they set their tributes besides Bourrit’s large enthusiasm. Bourrit did not carry a barometer with him on his travels. He did not feel the need to justify his wanderings by collecting a mass of scientific data. Nor did he assume that a mountain tour should be written up as a mere guide-book record of times and route. He is supremely concerned with the ennobling effect of mountain scenery on the human mind.

“At Chamounix,” he writes, “I have seen persons of every party in the state, who imagined that they loathed each other, nevertheless treating one another with courtesy, and even walking together. Returning to Geneva, and encountering the reproaches of their various friends, they merely answered in their defence, ‘Go, as we have gone, to the Montanvert, and take our share of the pure air that is to be breathed there; look thence at the unfamiliar beauties of Nature; contemplate from that terrace the greatness of natural objects and the littleness of man; and you will no longer be astonished that Nature has enabled us to subdue our passions.’ It is, in fact, the mountains that many men have to thank for their reconciliation with their fellows, and with the human race; and it is there that the rulers of the world and the heads of the nations ought to hold their meetings. Raised thus above the arena of passions and petty interests, and placed more immediately under the influence of Divine inspiration, one would see them descend from these mountains, each like a new Moses bringing with them codes of law based upon equity and justice.”

This is fine writing with a vengeance, just as Ruskin’s greatest passages are fine writing. Before we take our leave of Bourrit, let us see the precentor of the cathedral exhorting a company of guides with sacerdotal dignity. One is irresistibly reminded of Japan, where mountaineering and sacrificial rites go hand in hand--

“The Historian of the Alps, in rendering them this justice in the presence of a great throng of people, seized the opportunity of exhorting the new guides to observe the virtues proper to their state in life. ‘Put yourselves,’ he said to them, ‘in the place of the strangers, who come from the most distant lands to admire the marvels of Nature under these wild and savage aspects; and justify the confidence which they repose in you. You have learnt the great part which these magnificent objects of our contemplation play in the organisation of the world; and, in pointing out their various phenomena to their astonished eyes, you will rejoice to see people raise their thoughts to the omnipotence of the Great Being who created them.’ The speaker was profoundly moved by the ideas with which the subject inspired him, and it was impossible for his listeners not to share in his emotion.”

Let us remember that Bourrit put his doctrine into practice. He has told us that he found men of diverse creeds reconciled beneath the shadow of Mont Blanc. Bourrit himself was a mountaineer first, and an ecclesiastic second. Perhaps he was no worse as a Protestant precentor because the mountains had taught him their eternal lessons of tolerance and serene indifference to the petty issues which loom so large beneath the shadow of the cathedral. Catholic or Protestant it was all the same to our good precentor, provided the man loved the hills. Prior Murith was his friend; and every Catholic mountaineer should be grateful to his memory, for he persuaded one of their archbishops to dispense climbers from the obligation of fasting in Lent.

Chapter IV

The Story Of Mont Blanc

The history of Mont Blanc has been made the subject of an excellent monograph, and the reader who wishes to supplement the brief sketch which is all that we can attempt should buy _The Annals of Mont Blanc_, by Mr. C. E. Mathews. We have already seen that De Saussure offered a reward in 1760 to any peasant who could find a way to the summit of Mont Blanc. In the quarter-of-a-century that followed, several attempts were made. Amongst others, Bourrit tried on two occasions to prove the accessibility of Mont Blanc. Bourrit himself never reached a greater height than 10,000 feet; but some of his companions attained the very respectable altitude of 14,300 feet. De Saussure attacked the mountain without success in 1785, leaving the stage ready for the entrance of the most theatrical of mountaineers.

Jacques Balmat, the hero of Mont Blanc, impresses himself upon the imagination as no other climber of the day. He owes his fame mainly, of course, to his great triumph, but also, not a little, to the fact that he was interviewed by Alexandre Dumas the Elder, who immortalised him in _Impressions de Voyage_. For the moment, we shall not bother to criticise its accuracy. We know that Balmat reached the summit of Mont Blanc; and that outstanding fact is about the only positive contribution to the story which has not been riddled with destructive criticism. The story should be read in the original, though Dumas’ vigorous French loses little in Mr. Gribble’s spirited translation from which I shall borrow.

[Illustration:

A Summit of Mont Blanc B ” ” Dôme du Gouter C ” ” Aiguille du Gouter D ” ” Aiguille de Bianossay E ” ” Mont Maudit E′ ” ” Mont Blanc du Tacul F ” ” Aiguille du Midi G Grand Mulets H Grand Plateau L Les Bosses du Dromadaire M Glacier des Bossons N Glacier de Taconnaz ]

Dumas visited Chamounix in 1883. Balmat was then a veteran, and, of course, the great person of the valley. Dumas lost no time in making his acquaintance. We see them sitting together over a bottle of wine, and we can picture for ourselves the subtle art with which the great interviewer drew out the old guide. But Balmat shall tell his own story--

“H’m. Let me see. It was in 1786. I was five-and-twenty; that makes me seventy-two to-day. What a fellow I was! With the devil’s own calves and hell’s own stomach. I could have gone three days without bite or sup. I had to do so once when I got lost on the Buet. I just munched a little snow, and that was all. And from time to time I looked across at Mont Blanc saying, ‘Say what you like, my beauty, and do what you like. Some day I shall climb you.’”

Balmat then tells us how he persuaded his wife that he was on his way to collect crystals. He climbed steadily throughout the day, and night found him on a great snowfield somewhere near the Grand Plateau. The situation was sufficiently serious. To be benighted on Mont Blanc is a fate which would terrify a modern climber, even if he were one of a large party. Balmat was alone, and the mental strain of a night alone on a glacier can only be understood by those who have felt the uncanny terror that often attacks the solitary wanderer even in the daytime. Fortunately, Balmat does not seem to have been bothered with nerves. His fears expressed themselves in tangible shape.

“Presently the moon rose pale and encircled by clouds, which hid it altogether at about eleven o’clock. At the same time a rascally mist came on from the Aiguille du Gouter, which had no sooner reached me than it began to spit snow in my face. Then I wrapped my head in my handkerchief, and said: ‘Fire away. You’re not hurting me.’ At every instant I heard the falling avalanches making a noise like thunder. The glaciers split, and at every split I felt the mountain move. I was neither hungry nor thirsty; and I had an extraordinary headache which took me at the crown of the skull, and worked its way down to the eyelids. All this time, the mist never lifted. My breath had frozen on my handkerchief; the snow had made my clothes wet; I felt as if I were naked. Then I redoubled the rapidity of my movements, and began to sing, in order to drive away the foolish thoughts that came into my head. My voice was lost in the snow; no echo answered me. I held my tongue, and was afraid. At two o’clock the sky paled towards the east. With the first beams of day, I felt my courage coming back to me. The sun rose, battling with the clouds which covered the mountain top; my hope was that it would scatter them; but at about four o’clock the clouds got denser, and I recognised that it would be impossible for me just then to go any further.”

He spent a second night on the mountain, which was, on the whole, more comfortable than the first, as he passed it on the rocks of the Montagne de la Côte. Before he returned home, Balmat planned a way to the summit. And now comes the most amazing part of the story. He had no sooner returned home than he met three men starting off for the mountain. A modern mountaineer, who had spent two nights, alone, high up on Mont Blanc, would consider himself lucky to reach Chamounix alive; once there, he would go straight to bed for some twenty-four hours. But Balmat was built of iron. He calmly proposed to accompany his friends; and, having changed his stockings, he started out again for the great mountain, on which he had spent the previous two nights. The party consisted of François Paccard, Joseph Carrier, and Jean Michel Tournier. They slept on the mountain; and next morning they were joined by two other guides, Pierre Balmat and Marie Couttet. They did not get very far, and soon turned back--all save Balmat. Balmat, who seems to have positively enjoyed his nights on the glacier, stayed behind.

“I laid my knapsack on the snow, drew my handkerchief over my face like a curtain, and made the best preparations that I could for passing a night like the previous one. However, as I was about two thousand feet higher, the cold was more intense; a fine powdery snow froze me; I felt a heaviness and an irresistible desire to sleep; thoughts, sad as death, came into my mind, and I knew well that these sad thoughts and this desire to sleep were a bad sign, and that if I had the misfortune to close my eyes I should never open them again. From the place where I was, I saw, ten thousand feet below me, the lights of Chamounix, where my comrades were warm and tranquil by their firesides or in their beds. I said to myself: ‘Perhaps there is not a man among them who gives a thought to me. Or, if there is one of them who thinks of Balmat, no doubt he pokes his fire into a blaze, or draws his blanket over his ears, saying, ‘That ass of a Jacques is wearing out his shoe leather. Courage, Balmat!’”

Balmat may have been a braggart, but it is sometimes forgotten by his critics that he had something to brag about. Even if he had never climbed Mont Blanc, this achievement would have gone down to history as perhaps the boldest of all Alpine adventures. To sleep one night, alone, above the snow line is a misfortune that has befallen many climbers. Some have died, and others have returned, thankful. One may safely say that no man has started out for the same peak, and willingly spent a third night under even worse conditions than the first. Three nights out of four in all. We are charitably assuming that this part of Balmat’s story is true. There is at least no evidence to the contrary.

Naturally enough, Balmat did not prosecute the attempt at once. He returned to Chamounix, and sought out the local doctor, Michel Paccard. Paccard agreed to accompany him. They left Chamounix at five in the evening, and slept on the top of the Montagne de la Côte. They started next morning at two o’clock. According to Balmat’s account, the doctor played a sorry part in the day’s climb. It was only by some violent encouragement that he was induced to proceed at all.

“After I had exhausted all my eloquence, and saw that I was only losing my time, I told him to keep moving about as best he could. He heard without understanding, and kept answering ‘Yes, yes,’ in order to get rid of me. I perceived that he must be suffering from cold. So I left him the bottle, and set off alone, telling him that I would come back and look for him. ‘Yes, yes,’ he answered. I advised him not to sit still, and started off. I had not gone thirty steps before I turned round and saw that, instead of running about and stamping his feet, he had sat down, with his back to the wind--a precaution of a sort. From that minute onwards, the track presented no great difficulty; but, as I rose higher and higher, the air became more and more unfit to breathe. Every few steps, I had to stop like a man in a consumption. It seemed to me that I had no lungs left, and that my chest was hollow. Then I folded my handkerchief like a scarf, tied it over my mouth and breathed through it; and that gave me a little relief. However, the cold gripped me more and more; it took me an hour to go a quarter of a league. I looked down as I walked; but, finding myself in a spot which I did not recognise, I raised my eyes, and saw that I had at last reached the summit of Mont Blanc.

“Then I looked around me, fearing to find that I was mistaken, and to catch sight of some aiguille or some fresh point above me; if there had been, I should not have had the strength to climb it. For it seems to me that the joints of my legs were only held in their proper place by my breeches. But no--it was not so. I had reached the end of my journey. I had come to a place where no one--where not the eagle or the chamois--had ever been before me. I had got there, alone, without any other help than that of my own strength and my own will. Everything that surrounded me seemed to be my property. I was the King of Mont Blanc--the statue of this tremendous pedestal.

“Then I turned towards Chamounix, waving my hat at the end of my stick, and saw, by the help of my glass, that my signals were being answered.”

Balmat returned, found the doctor in a dazed condition, and piloted him to the summit, which they reached shortly after six o’clock.

“It was seven o’clock in the evening; we had only two-and-a-half hours of daylight left; we had to go. I took Paccard by the arm, and once more waved my hat as a last signal to our friends in the valley; and the descent began. There was no track to guide us; the wind was so cold that even the snow on the surface had not thawed; all that we could see on the ice was the little holes made by the iron points of our stick. Paccard was no better than a child, devoid of energy and will-power, whom I had to guide in the easy places and carry in the hard ones. Night was already beginning to fall when we crossed the crevasse; it finally overtook us at the foot of the Grand Plateau. At every instant, Paccard stopped, declaring that he could go no further; at every halt, I obliged him to resume his march, not by persuasion, for he understood nothing but force. At eleven, we at last escaped from the regions of ice, and set foot upon _terra firma_; the last afterglow of the sunset had disappeared an hour before. Then I allowed Paccard to stop, and prepared to wrap him up again in the blanket, when I perceived that he was making no use whatever of his hands. I drew his attention to the fact. He answered that that was likely enough, as he no longer had any sensation in them. I drew off his gloves, and found that his hands were white and, as it were, dead; for my own part, I felt a numbness in the hand on which I wore his little glove in place of my own thick one. I told him we had three frost-bitten hands between us; but he seemed not to mind in the least, and only wanted to lie down and go to sleep. As for myself, however, he told me to rub the affected part with snow, and the remedy was not far to seek. I commenced operations upon him and concluded them upon myself. Soon the blood resumed its course, and with the blood, the heat returned, but accompanied by acute pain, as though every vein were being pricked with needles. I wrapped my baby up in his blanket, and put him to bed under the shelter of a rock. We ate a little, drank a glass of something, squeezed ourselves as close to each other as we could, and went to sleep.

“At six the next morning Paccard awoke me. ‘It’s strange, Balmat,’ he said, ‘I hear the birds singing, and don’t see the daylight. I suppose I can’t open my eyes.’ Observe that his eyes were as wide open as the Grand Duke’s. I told him he must be mistaken, and could see quite well. Then he asked me to give him a little snow, melted it in the hollow of his hand, and rubbed his eyelids with it. When this was done, he could see no better than before; only his eyes hurt him a great deal more. ‘Come now, it seems that I am blind, Balmat. How am I to get down?’ he continued. ‘Take hold of the strap of my knapsack and walk behind me; that’s what you must do.’ And in this style we came down, and reached the village of La Côte. There, as I feared that my wife would be uneasy about me, I left the doctor, who found his way home by fumbling with his stick, and returned to my own house. Then, for the first time, I saw what I looked like. I was unrecognisable. My eyes were red; my face was black; my lips were blue. Whenever I laughed or yawned, the blood spurted from my lips and cheeks; and I could only see in a dark room.”

“‘And did Dr. Paccard continue blind?’ ‘Blind, indeed! He died eleven months ago, at the age of seventy-nine, and could still read without spectacles. Only his eyes were diabolically red.’ ‘As the consequence of his ascent?’ ‘Not a bit of it.’ ‘Why, then?’ ‘The old boy was a bit of a tippler.’ And so saying Jacques Balmat emptied his third bottle.”

The last touch is worthy of Dumas; and the whole story is told in the Ercles vein. As literature it is none the worse for that. It was a magnificent achievement; and we can pardon the vanity of the old guide looking back on the greatest moment of his life. But as history the interview is of little value. The combination of Dumas and Balmat was a trifle too strong for what Clough calls “the mere it was.” The dramatic unities tempt one to leave Balmat, emptying his third bottle, and to allow the merry epic to stand unchallenged. But the importance of this first ascent forces one to sacrifice romance for the sober facts.

The truth about that first ascent had to wait more than a hundred years. The final solution is due, in the main, to three men, Dr. Dübi (the famous Swiss mountaineer), Mr. Freshfield, and Mr. Montagnier. Dr. Dübi’s book, _Paccard wider Balmat, oder Die Entwicklung einer Legende_, gives the last word on this famous case. For a convenient summary of Dr. Dübi’s arguments, the reader should consult Mr. Freshfield’s excellent review of his book that appeared in the _Alpine Journal_ for May 1913. The essential facts are as follows. Dr. Dübi has been enabled to produce a diary of an eye-witness of the great ascent. A distinguished German traveller, Baron von Gersdorf, watched Balmat and Paccard through a telescope, made careful notes, illustrated by diagrams of the route, and, at the request of Paccard’s father, a notary of Chamounix, signed, with his friend Von Meyer, a certificate of what he had seen. This certificate is still preserved at Chamounix, and Von Gersdorf’s diary and correspondence have recently been discovered at Görlitz. Here is the vital sentence in his diary, as translated by Mr. Freshfield: “They started again [from the Petits Rochers Rouges], at 5.45 p.m., halted for a moment about every hundred yards, _changed occasionally the leadership_ [the italics are mine], at 6.12 p.m. gained two rocks protruding from the snow, and at 6.23 p.m. were on the actual summit.” The words italicised prove that Balmat did not lead throughout. The remainder of the sentence shows that Balmat was not the first to arrive on the summit, and that the whole fabric of the Dumas legend is entirely false.

But Dumas was not alone responsible for the Balmat myth. This famous fiction was, in the main, due to a well-known Alpine character, whom we have dealt with at length in our third chapter. The reader may remember that Bourrit’s enthusiasm for mountaineering was only equalled by his lack of success. We have seen that Bourrit had set his heart on the conquest of Mont Blanc, and that Bourrit failed in this ambition, both before, and after Balmat’s ascent. In many ways, Bourrit was a great man. He was fired with an undaunted enthusiasm for the Alps at a time when such enthusiasm was the hall-mark of a select circle. He justly earned his title, the Historian of the Alps; and in his earlier years he was by no means ungenerous to more fortunate climbers. But this great failing, an inordinate vanity, grew with years. He could just manage to forgive Balmat, for Balmat was a guide; but Paccard, the amateur, had committed the unforgivable offence.

It was no use pretending that Paccard had not climbed Mont Blanc, for Paccard had been seen on the summit. Bourrit took the only available course. He was determined to injure Paccard’s prospects of finding subscribers for a work which the doctor proposed to publish, dealing with his famous climb. With this in view, Bourrit wrote the notorious letter of September 20, 1786, which first appeared as a pamphlet, and was later published in several papers. We need not reproduce the letter. The main points which Bourrit endeavoured to make were that the doctor failed at the critical stage of the ascent, that Balmat left him, reached the top, and returned to insist on Paccard dragging himself somehow to the summit; that Paccard wished to exploit Balmat’s achievements, and was posing as the conqueror of Mont Blanc; that, with this in view, he was appealing for subscribers for a book, in which, presumably, Balmat would be ignored, while poor Balmat, a simple peasant, who knew nothing of Press advertisement, would lose the glory that was his just meed. It was a touching picture; and we, who know the real Balmat as a genial _blageur_, may smile gently when we hear him described as _le pauvre Balmat à qui l’on doit cette découverte reste presque ignoré, et ignore qu’il y ait des journalistes, des journaux, et que l’on puisse par le moyen de ces trompettes littéraires obtenir du Public une sorte d’admiration_. De Saussure, who from the first gave Paccard due credit for his share in the climb, seems to have warned Bourrit that he was making a fool of himself. Bourrit appears to have been impressed, for he added a postscript in which he toned down some of his remarks, and conceded grudgingly that Paccard’s share in the ascent was, perhaps, larger than he had at first imagined. But this relapse into decent behaviour did not survive an anonymous reply to his original pamphlet which appeared in the _Journal de Lausanne_, on February 24, 1787. This reply gave Paccard’s story, and stung Bourrit into a reply which was nothing better than a malicious falsehood. “Balmat’s story,” he wrote, “seems very natural ... and is further confirmed by an eye-witness, M. le Baron de Gersdorf, who watched the climbers through his glasses; and this stranger was so shocked by the indifference (to use no stronger word) shown by M. Paccard to his companion that he reprinted my letter in his own country, in order to start a subscription in favour of poor Balmat.”

Fortunately, we now know what Gersdorf saw through his glasses, and we also know that Gersdorf wrote immediately to Paccard, “disclaiming altogether the motive assigned for his action in raising a subscription.” Paccard was fortunately able to publish two very effective replies to this spiteful attack. In the _Journal de Lausanne_ for May 18 he reproduced two affidavits by Balmat, both properly attested. These ascribe to Paccard the honour of planning the expedition, and his full share of the work, and also state that Balmat had been paid for acting as guide. The first of these documents has disappeared. The second, which is entirely in Balmat’s handwriting, is still in existence. Balmat, later in life, made some ridiculous attempt to suggest that he had signed a blank piece of paper; but the fact that even Bourrit seems to have considered this statement a trifle too absurd to quote is in itself enough to render such a protest negligible. Besides, Balmat was shrewd enough not to swear before witnesses to a document which he had never seen. It is almost pleasant to record that a dispute between the doctor and Balmat, in the high street of Chamounix, resulted in Balmat receiving a well-merited blow on his nose from the doctor’s umbrella, which laid him in the dust. It is in some ways a pity that Dumas did not meet Paccard. The incident of the umbrella might then have been worked up to the proper epic proportions.

This much we may now regard as proved. Paccard took at least an equal share in the great expedition. Balmat was engaged as a guide, and was paid as such. The credit for the climb must be divided between these two men; and the discredit of causing strained relations between them must be assigned to Bourrit. Meanwhile, it is worth adding that the traditions of the De Saussure family are all in favour of Balmat. De Saussure’s grandson stated that Balmat’s sole object in climbing Mont Blanc was the hope of pecuniary gain. He even added that the main reason for his final attempt with Paccard was that Paccard, being an amateur, would not claim half the reward promised by De Saussure. As to Paccard, “everything we know of him,” writes Mr. Freshfield, “is to his credit.” His scientific attainments were undoubtedly insignificant compared to a Bonnet or a De Saussure. Yet he was a member of the Academy of Turin, he contributed articles to a scientific periodical published in Paris, he corresponded with De Saussure about his barometrical observations. He is described by a visitor to Chamounix, in 1788, in the following terms: “We also visited Dr. Paccard, who gave us a very plain and modest account of his ascent of Mont Blanc, for which bold undertaking he does not seem to assume to himself any particular merit, but asserts that any one with like physical powers could have performed the task equally well.” De Saussure’s grandson, who has been quoted against Balmat, is equally emphatic in his approval of Paccard. Finally, both Dr. Dübi and Mr. Freshfield agree that, as regards the discovery of the route: “Paccard came first into the field, and was the more enterprising of the two.”

Bourrit, by the way, had not even the decency to be consistent. He spoiled, as we have seen, poor Paccard’s chances of obtaining subscribers for his book, and, later in life, he quarrelled with Balmat. Von Gersdorf had started a collection for Balmat, and part of the money had to pass through Bourrit’s hands. A great deal of it remained there. Bourrit seems to have been temporarily inconvenienced. We need not believe that he had any intention of retaining the money permanently, but Balmat was certainly justified in complaining to Von Gersdorf. Bourrit received a sharp letter from Von Gersdorf, and never forgave Balmat. In one of his later books, he reversed his earlier judgment and pronounced in favour of Paccard.

Bourrit discredited himself by the Mont Blanc episode with the more discerning of his contemporaries. De Saussure seems to have written him down, judging by the traditions that have survived in his family. Wyttenbach, a famous Bernese savant, is even more emphatic. “All who know him realise Bourrit to be a conceited toad, a flighty fool, a bombastic swaggerer.” Mr. Freshfield, however, quotes a kinder and more discriminating criticism by the celebrated Bonnet, ending with the words: _Il faut, néanmoins, lui tenir compte de son ardeur et de son courage._ “With these words,” says Mr. Freshfield, “let us leave ‘notre Bourrit’; for by his passion for the mountains he remains one of us.”

Poor Bourrit! It is with real regret that one chronicles the old precentor’s lapses. Unfortunately, every age has its Bourrit, but it is only fair to remember that Bourrit often showed a very generous appreciation of other climbers. He could not quite forgive Paccard. Let us remember his passion for the snows. Let us forget the rest.

It is pleasant to record that De Saussure’s old ambition was gratified, and that he succeeded in reaching the summit of Mont Blanc in July 1787. Nor is this his only great expedition. He camped out for a fortnight on the Col de Géant, a remarkable performance. He visited Zermatt, then in a very uncivilised condition, and made the first ascent of the Petit Mont Cervin. He died in 1799.

As for Balmat, he became a guide, and in this capacity earned a very fair income. Having accumulated some capital, he cast about for a profitable investment. Two perfect strangers, whom he met on the high road, solved his difficulty in a manner highly satisfactory as far as they were concerned. They assured him that they were bankers, and that they would pay him five per cent. on his capital. The first of these statements may have been true, the second was false. He did not see the bankers or his capital again. Shortly after this initiation into high finance, he left Chamounix to search for a mythical gold-mine among the glaciers of the valley of Sixt. He disappeared and was never seen again. He left a family of four sons, two of whom were killed in the Napoleonic wars. His great-nephew became the favourite guide of Mr. Justice Wills, with whom he climbed the Wetterhorn.

Chapter V

Monte Rosa And The BüNdner Oberland

The conquest of Mont Blanc was the most important mountaineering achievement of the period; but good work was also being done in other parts of the Alps. Monte Rosa, as we soon shall see, had already attracted the adventurous, and the Bündner Oberland gave one great name to the story of Alpine adventure. We have already noted the important part played by priests in the conquest of the Alps; and Catholic mountaineers may well honour the memory of Placidus à Spescha as one of the greatest of the climbing priesthood.

Father Placidus was born in 1782 at Truns. As a boy he joined the Friars of Disentis, and after completing his education at Einsiedeln, where he made good use of an excellent library, returned again to Disentis. As a small boy, he had tended his father’s flocks and acquired a passionate love for the mountains of his native valley. As a monk, he resumed the hill wanderings, which he continued almost to the close of a long life.

He was an unfortunate man. The French Revolution made itself felt in Graubünden; and with the destruction of the monastery all his notes and manuscripts were burned. When the Austrians ousted the French, he was even more luckless; as a result of a sermon on the text “Put not your trust in princes” he was imprisoned in Innsbruck for eighteen months. He came back only to be persecuted afresh. Throughout his life, his wide learning and tolerant outlook invited the suspicion of the envious and narrow-minded; and on his return to Graubünden he was accused of heresy. His books and his manuscripts were confiscated, and he was forbidden to climb. After a succession of troubled years, he returned to Truns; and though he had passed his seventieth year he still continued to climb. As late as 1824, he made two attempts on the Tödi. On his last attempt, he reached a gap, now known as the Porta da Spescha, less than a thousand feet below the summit; and from this point he watched, with mixed feelings, the two chamois hunters he had sent forward reach the summit. He died at the age of eighty-two. One wishes that he had attained in person his great ambition, the conquest of the Tödi; but, even though he failed on this outstanding peak, he had several good performances to his credit, amongst others the first ascent of the Stockgron (11,411 feet) in 1788, the Rheinwaldhorn (11,148 feet) in 1789, the Piz Urlaun (11,063 feet) in 1793, and numerous other important climbs.

His list of ascents is long, and proves a constant devotion to the hills amongst which he passed the happiest hours of an unhappy life. “Placidus à Spescha”--there was little placid in his life save the cheerful resignation with which he faced the buffetings of fortune. He was a learned and broad-minded man; and the mountains, with their quiet sanity, seem to have helped him to bear constant vexation caused by small-minded persons. These suspicions of heresy must have proved very wearisome to “the mountaineer who missed his way and strayed into the Priesthood.” He must have felt that his opponents were, perhaps, justified, that the mountains had given him an interpretation of his beliefs that was, perhaps, wider than the creed of Rome, and that he himself had found a saner outlook in those temples of a larger faith to which he lifted up his eyes for help. As a relief from a hostile and unsympathetic atmosphere, let us hope that he discovered some restful anodyne among the tranquil broadness of the upper snows. The fatigue and difficulties of long mountain tramps exhaust the mind, to the exclusion of those little cares which seem so great in the artificial life of the valley. Certainly, the serene indifference of the hills found a response in the quiet philosophy of his life. Very little remains of all that he must have written, very little--only a few words, in which he summed up the convictions which life had given him. “When I carefully consider the fortune and ill-fortune that have befallen me, I have difficulty in determining which of the two has been the more profitable since a man without trials is a man without experience, and such a one is without insight--_vexatio dat intellectum_.” A brave confession of a good faith, and in his case no vain utterance, but the sincere summary of a philosophy which coloured his whole outlook on life.

The early history of Monte Rosa has an appeal even stronger than the story of Mont Blanc. It begins with the Renaissance. From the hills around Milan, Leonardo da Vinci had seen the faint flush of dawn on Monte Rosa beyond--

A thousand shadowy pencilled valleys And snowy dells in a golden air.

The elusive vision had provoked his restless, untiring spirit to search out the secrets of Monte Rosa. The results of that expedition have already been noticed.

After Da Vinci there is a long gap. Scheuchzer had heard of Monte Rosa, but contents himself with the illuminating remark that “a stiff accumulation of perpetual ice is attached to it.” De Saussure visited Macunagna in 1789, but disliked the inhabitants and complained of their inhospitality. He passed on, after climbing an unimportant snow peak, the Pizzo Bianco (10,552 feet). His story is chiefly interesting for an allusion to one of the finest of the early Alpine expeditions. In recent years, a manuscript containing a detailed account of this climb has come to light, and supplements the vague story which De Saussure had heard.

Long ago, in the Italian valleys of Monte Rosa, there was a legend of a happy valley, hidden away between the glaciers of the great chain. In this secret and magic vale, the flowers bloomed even in winter, and the chamois found grazing when less happy pastures were buried by the snow. So ran the tale, which the mothers of Alagna and Gressoney told to their children. The discovery of the happy valley was due to Jean Joseph Beck. Beck was a domestic servant with the soul of a pioneer, and the organising talent that makes for success. He had heard a rumour that a few men from Alagna had determined to find the valley. Beck was a Gressoney man; and he determined that Gressoney should have the honour of the discovery. Again and again, in Alpine history, we find this rivalry between adjoining valleys acting as an incentive of great ascents. Beck collected a large party, including “a man of learning,” by name Finzens (Vincent). With due secrecy, they set out on a Sunday of August 1788.

They started from their sleeping places at midnight, and roped carefully. They had furnished themselves with climbing irons and alpenstocks. They suffered from mountain sickness and loss of appetite, but pluckily determined to proceed. At the head of the glacier, they “encountered a slope of rock devoid of snow,” which they climbed. “It was twelve o’clock. Hardly had we got to the summit of the rock than we saw a grand--an amazing--spectacle. We sat down to contemplate at our leisure the lost valley, which seemed to us to be entirely covered with glaciers. We examined it carefully, but could not satisfy ourselves that it was the unknown valley, seeing that none of us had ever been in the Vallais.” The valley, in fact, was none other than the valley of Zermatt, and the pass, which these early explorers had reached, was the Lysjoch, where, to this day, the rock on which they rested bears the appropriate name that they gave it, “The Rock of Discovery.” Beck’s party thus reached a height of 14,000 feet, a record till Balmat beat them on Mont Blanc.

The whole story is alive with the undying romance that still haunts the skyline whose secrets we know too well. The Siegfried map has driven the happy valley further afield. In other ranges, still uncharted, we must search for the reward of those that cross the great divides between the known and the unknown, and gaze down from the portals of a virgin pass on to glaciers no man has trodden, and valleys that no stranger has seen. And yet, for the true mountaineer every pass is a discovery, and the happy valley beyond the hills still lives as the embodiment of the child’s dream. All exploration, it is said, is due to the two primitive instincts of childhood, the desire to look over the edge, and the desire to look round the corner. And so we can share the thrill that drove that little band up to the Rock of Discovery. We know that, through the long upward toiling, their eyes must ever have been fixed on the curve of the pass, slung between the guarding hills, the skyline which held the great secret they hoped to solve. We can realise the last moments of breathless suspense as their shoulders were thrust above the dividing wall, and the ground fell away from their feet to the valley of desire. In a sense, we all have known moments such as this; we have felt the “intense desire to see if the Happy Valley may not lie just round the corner.”

Twenty-three years after this memorable expedition, Monte Rosa was the scene of one of the most daring first ascents in Alpine history. Dr. Pietro Giordani of Alagna made a solitary ascent of the virgin summit which still bears his name. The Punta Giordani is one of the minor summits of the Monte Rosa chain, and rises to the respectable height of 13,304 feet. Giordani’s ascent is another proof, if proof were needed, that the early climbers were, in many ways, as adventurous as the modern mountaineer. We find Balmat making a series of solitary attempts on Mont Blanc, and cheerfully sleeping out, alone, on the higher snowfields. Giordani climbs, without companions, a virgin peak; and another early hero of Monte Rosa, of whom we shall speak in due course, spent a night in a cleft of ice, at a height of 14,000 feet. Giordani, by the way, indited a letter to a friend from the summit of his peak. He begins by remarking that a sloping piece of granite serves him for a table, a block of blue ice for a seat. After an eloquent description of the view, he expresses his annoyance at the lack of scientific instruments, and the lateness of the hour which alone prevented him--as he believed--from ascending Monte Rosa itself.

Giordani’s ascent closes the early history of Monte Rosa; but we cannot leave Monte Rosa without mention of some of the men who played an important part in its conquest. Monte Rosa, it should be explained, is not a single peak, but a cluster of ten summits of which the Dufour Spitze is the highest point (15,217 feet). Of these, the Punta Giordani was the first, and the Dufour Spitze the last, to be climbed. In 1817, Dr. Parrott made the first ascent of the Parrott Spitze (12,643 feet); and two years later the Vincent Pyramid (13,829) was climbed by a son of that Vincent who had been taken on Beck’s expedition because he was “a man of learning.” Dr. Parrott, it might be remarked in passing, was the first man to reach the summit of Ararat, as Noah cannot be credited with having reached a higher point than the gap between the greater and the lesser Ararat.

But of all the names associated with pioneer work on Monte Rosa that of Zumstein is the greatest. He made five attempts to reach the highest point of the group, and succeeded in climbing the Zumstein Spitze (15,004 feet) which still bears his name. He had numerous adventures on Monte Rosa, and as we have already seen, spent one night in a crevasse, at a height of 14,000 feet. He became quite a local celebrity, and is mentioned as such by Prof. Forbes and Mr. King in their respective books. His great ascent of the Zumstein Spitze was made in 1820, thirty-five years before the conquest of the highest point of Monte Rosa.

Chapter VI

Tirol And The Oberland

The story of Monte Rosa has forced us to anticipate the chronological order of events. We must now turn back, and follow the fortunes of the men whose names are linked with the great peaks of Tirol[2] and of the Oberland. Let us recapitulate the most important dates in the history of mountaineering before the opening of the nineteenth century. Such dates are 1760, which saw the beginning of serious mountaineering, with the ascent of the Titlis; 1778, which witnessed Beck’s fine expedition to the Lysjoch; 1779, the year in which the Velan, and 1786, the year in which Mont Blanc, were climbed. The last year of the century saw the conquest of the Gross Glockner, one of the giants of Tirol.

The Glockner has the distinction of being the only great mountain first climbed by a Bishop. Its conquest was the work of a jovial ecclesiastic, by name and style Franz Altgraf von Salm-Reifferscheid Krantheim, Bishop of Gurk, hereinafter termed--quite simply--Salm. Bishop Salm had no motive but the fun of a climb. He was not a scientist, and he was not interested in the temperature at which water boiled above the snow line, provided only that it boiled sufficiently quickly to provide him with hot drinks and shaving water. He was a most luxurious climber, and before starting for the Glockner he had a magnificent hut built to accommodate the party, and a _chef_ conveyed from the episcopal palace to feed them. They were weather-bound for three days in these very comfortable quarters; but the _chef_ proved equal to the demands on his talent. An enthusiastic climber compared the dinners to those which he had enjoyed when staying with the Bishop at Gurk. There were eleven amateurs and nineteen guides and porters in the party. Their first attempt was foiled by bad weather. On August 25, 1799, they reached the summit, erected a cross, and disposed of several bottles of wine. They then discovered that their triumph was a trifle premature. The Glockner consists of two summits separated by a narrow ridge. They had climbed the lower; the real summit was still 112 feet above them. Next year the mistake was rectified; but, though the Bishop was one of the party, he did not himself reach the highest point till a few years later.

Four years after the Glockner had been climbed, the giant of Tirol and the Eastern Alps was overcome. The conquest of the Ortler was due to a romantic fancy of Archduke John. Just as Charles VII of France deputed his Chamberlain to climb Mont Aiguille, so the Archduke (who, by the way, was the son of the Emperor Leopold II, and brother of Francis II, last of the Holy Roman emperors) deputed Gebhard, a member of his suite, to climb the Ortler. Gebhard made several attempts without success. Finally, a chamois hunter of the Passeierthal, by name Joseph Pichler, introduced himself to Gebhard, and made the ascent from Trafoi on September 28, 1804. Next year Gebhard himself reached the summit, and took a reading of the height by a barometer. The result showed that the Ortler was higher than the Glockner--a discovery which caused great joy. Its actual height is, as a matter of fact, 12,802 feet. But the ascent of the Ortler was long in achieving the popularity that it deserved. Whereas the Glockner was climbed about seventy times before 1860, the Ortler was only climbed twice between Gebhard’s ascent and the ascent by the Brothers Buxton and Mr. Tuckett, in 1864. Archduke John, who inspired the first ascent, made an unsuccessful attempt (this time in person) on the Gross Venediger, another great Tyrolese peak. He was defeated, and the mountain was not finally vanquished till 1841.

The scene now changes to the Oberland. Nothing much had been accomplished in the Oberland before the opening years of the nineteenth century. A few passes, the Petersgrat, Oberaarjoch, Tschingel, and Gauli, had been crossed; but the only snow peaks whose ascent was undoubtedly accomplished were the Handgendgletscherhorn (10,806 feet) and a peak whose identification is difficult. These were climbed in 1788 by a man called Müller, who was engaged in surveying for Weiss. His map was a very brilliant achievement, considering the date at which it appeared. The expenses had been defrayed by a rich merchant of Aarau, Johann Rudolph Meyer, whose sons were destined to play an important part in Alpine exploration. J. R. Meyer had climbed the Titlis, and one of his sons made one of the first glacier pass expeditions in the Oberland, crossing the Tschingel in 1790.

J. R. Meyer’s two sons, Johann Rudolph the second and Hieronymus, were responsible for some of the finest pioneer work in the story of mountaineering. In 1811 they made the first crossing of the Beich pass, the Lötschenlücke, and the first ascent of the Jungfrau. As was inevitable, their story was disbelieved. To dispel all doubt, another expedition was undertaken in the following year. On this expedition the leaders were Rudolph and Gottlieb Meyer, sons of J. R. Meyer the second (the conqueror of the Jungfrau), and grandsons of J. R. Meyer the first. The two Meyers separated after crossing the Oberaarjoch. Gottlieb crossed the Grünhornlücke, and bivouacked near the site of the present Concordia Inn. Rudolph made his classical attempt on the Finsteraarhorn, and rejoined Gottlieb. Next day Gottlieb made the second ascent of the Jungfrau and Rudolph forced the first indisputable crossing of the Strahlegg pass from the Unteraar glacier to Grindelwald.

To return to Rudolph’s famous attempt on the Finsteraarhorn. Rudolph, as we have seen, separated from his brother Gottlieb near the Oberaarjoch. Rudolph, who was only twenty-one at the time, took with him two Valaisian hunters, by name Alois Volker and Joseph Bortis, a Melchthal “porter,” Arnold Abbühl, and a Hasle man. Abbühl was not a porter as we understand the word, but a _knecht_, or servant, of a small inn. He played the leading part in this climb. The party bivouacked on the depression known as the Rothhornsattel, and left it next morning when the sun had already struck the higher summits, probably about 5 a.m. They descended to the Studerfirn, and shortly before reaching the Ober Studerjoch started to climb the great eastern face of the Finsteraarhorn. After six hours, they reached the crest of the ridge. Meyer could go no further, and remained where he was; while the guides proceeded and, according to the accounts which have come down to us, reached the summit.

Captain Farrar has summed up all the available evidence in _The Alpine Journal_ for August 1913. The first climber who attempted to repeat the ascent was the well-known scientist Hugi. He was led by the same Arnold Abbühl, who, as already stated, took a prominent part in Meyer’s expedition. Abbühl, however, not only failed to identify the highest peak from the Rothhornsattel, but, on being pressed, admitted that he had never reached the summit at all. In 1830, Hugi published these facts and Meyer, indignant at the implied challenge to his veracity, promised to produce further testimony. But there the matter dropped. Captain Farrar summarises the situation with convincing thoroughness.

“What was the situation in 1812? We have an enthusiastic ingenuous youth attempting an ascent the like of which in point of difficulty had at that time never been, nor was for nearly fifty years after, attempted. He reaches a point on the arête without any great difficulty; and there he remains, too tired to proceed. About this portion of the ascent, there is, save as to the precise point gained, no question; and it is of this portion alone Meyer is a first-hand witness. Three of his guides go on, and return to him after many hours with the statement that they had reached the summit, or that is what he understands. I shall examine later this point. But is it not perfectly natural that Meyer should accept their statement, that he should swallow with avidity their claim to have reached the goal of all his labours? He had, as I shall show later, no reason to doubt them; and, doubtless, he remained firm in his belief until Hugi’s book appeared many years after. At once, he is up in arms at Hugi’s questioning, as he thinks, his own statements and his guides’ claims. He pens his reply quoted above, promises to publish his MS. and hopes to produce testimony in support. Then comes Hugi’s reply, and Meyer realises that his own personal share in the expedition is not questioned; but he sees that he may after all have been misled by, or have misunderstood, his guides, and he is faced with the reported emphatic denial of his leading guide, who was at that time still living, and could have been referred to. It may be said that he wrote to Abbühl for the ‘testimony,’ and failed to elicit a satisfactory reply. Thrown into hopeless doubt, all the stronger because his belief in his guide’s statement had been firmly implanted in his mind all these nineteen years, is it to be wondered at that he lets the matter drop? He finds himself unable to get any testimony, and realises that the publication of his MS. will not supply any more reliable evidence. One can easily picture the disenchanted man putting the whole matter aside in sheer despair of ever arriving at the truth.”

We have no space to follow Captain Farrar’s arguments. They do not seem to leave a shadow of doubt. At the same time, Captain Farrar acquits the party of any deliberate intention to deceive, and admits that their ascent of the secondary summit of the Finsteraarhorn was a very fine performance. It is noteworthy that many of the great peaks have been attempted, and some actually climbed for the first time, by an unnecessarily difficult route. The Matterhorn was assailed for years by the difficult Italian arête, before the easy Swiss route was discovered. The south-east route, which Meyer’s party attempted, still remains under certain conditions, a difficult rock climb, which may not unfitly be compared in part with the Italian ridge of the Matterhorn. The ordinary west ridge presents no real difficulties.

The first complete ascent of the Finsteraarhorn was made on August 10, 1829, by Hugi’s two guides, Jakob Leuthold and Joh. Wahren. Hugi remained behind, 200 feet below the summit. The Hugisattel still commemorates a pioneer of this great peak.

So much for the Meyers. They deserve a high place in the history of exploration. “It has often seemed to me,” writes Captain Farrar, “that the craft of mountaineering, and even more the art of mountaineering description, distinctly retrograded for over fifty years after these great expeditions of the Meyers. It is not until the early ’sixties that rocks of equal difficulty are again attacked. Even then--witness Almer’s opinion as to the inaccessibility of the Matterhorn--men had not yet learned the axiom, which Alexander Burgener was the first, certainly by practice rather than by explicit enunciation, to lay down, viz. that the practicability of rocks is only decided by actual contact. Meyer’s guides had a glimmering of this. It is again not until the ’sixties that Meyer’s calm yet vivid descriptions of actualities are surpassed by those brilliant articles of Stephen, of Moore, of Tuckett, and by Whymper’s great ‘Scrambles’ that are the glory of English mountaineering.”

But perhaps the greatest name associated with this period is that of the great scientist, Agassiz. Agassiz is a striking example of the possibilities of courage and a lively faith. He never had any money; and yet he invariably lived as if he possessed a comfortable competence. “I have no time for making money,” is one of his sayings that have become famous. He was a native of Orbe, a beautiful town in the Jura. His father was a pastor, and the young Agassiz was intended for the medical profession. He took the medical degree, but remained steadfast in his determination to become, as he told his father, “the first naturalist of his time.” Humboldt and Cuvier soon discovered his powers; in due time he became a professor at Neuchâtel. He married on eighty louis a year; but money difficulties never depressed him. As a boy of twenty, earning the princely sum of fifty pounds a year, he maintained a secretary in his employment, a luxury which he never denied himself. Usually he maintained two or three. At Neuchâtel, his income eventually increased to £125 a year. On this, he kept up an academy of natural history, a museum, a staff of secretaries and assistants, a lithographic and printing plant, and a wife. His wife, by the way, was a German lady; and it is not surprising that her chief quarrel with life was a lack of money for household expenses. The naturalist, who had no time for making money, spent what little he had on the necessities of his existence, such as printing presses and secretaries, and left the luxuries of the larder to take care of themselves. His family helped him with loans, “at first,” we are told, “with pleasure, but afterwards with some reluctance.” Humboldt also advanced small sums. “I was pleased to remain a debtor to Humboldt,” writes Agassiz, a sentiment which probably awakens more sympathy in the heart of the average undergraduate than it did in the bosom of Humboldt.

A holiday which Agassiz spent with another great naturalist, Charpentier, was indirectly responsible for the beginnings of the glacial theory. Throughout Switzerland, you may find huge boulders known as erratic blocks. These blocks have a different geological ancestry from the rocks in the immediate neighbourhood. They did not grow like mushrooms, and they must therefore have been carried to their present position by some outside agency. In the eighteenth century, naturalists solved all these questions by _a priori_ theories, proved by quotations from the book of Genesis. The Flood was a favourite solution, and the Flood was, therefore, invoked to solve the riddle of erratic blocks. By the time that Agassiz had begun his great work, the Flood was, however, becoming discredited, and its reputed operations were being driven further afield.

The discovery of the true solution was due, not to a scientist, but to a simple chamois hunter, named Perrandier. He knew no geology, but he could draw obvious conclusions from straightforward data without invoking the Flood. He had seen these blocks on glaciers, and he had seen them many miles away from glaciers. He made the only possible deduction--that glaciers must, at some time, have covered the whole of Switzerland. Perrandier expounded his views to a civil engineer, by name Venetz. Venetz passed it on to Charpentier, and Charpentier converted Agassiz. Agassiz made prompt use of the information, so prompt that Charpentier accused him of stealing his ideas. He read a paper before the Helvetic Society, in which he announced his conviction that the earth had once been covered with a sheet of ice that extended from the North Pole to Central Asia. The scepticism with which this was met incited Agassiz to search for more evidence in support of his theory. His best work was done in “The Hôtel des Neuchâtelois.” This hôtel at first consisted of an overhanging boulder, the entrance of which was screened by a blanket. The hôtel was built near the Grimsel on the medial moraine of the lower Aar glacier. To satisfy Mrs. Agassiz, her husband eventually moved into even more palatial quarters to wit, a rough cabin covered with canvas. “The outer apartment,” complains Mrs. Agassiz, a lady hard to please, “boasted a table and one or two benches; even a couple of chairs were kept as seats of honour for occasional guests. A shelf against the wall accommodated books, instruments, coats, etc.; and a plank floor on which to spread their blankets at night was a good exchange for the frozen surface of the glacier.” But the picture of this strange _ménage_ would be incomplete without mention of Agassiz’s companions. “Agassiz and his companions” is a phrase that meets us at every turn of his history. He needed companions, partly because he was of a friendly and companionable nature, partly, no doubt, to vary the monotony of Mrs. Agassiz’s constant complaints, but mainly because his ambitious schemes were impossible without assistance. His work involved great expenditure, which he could only recoup in part from the scanty grants allowed him by scientific societies, and the patronage of occasional wealthy amateurs. The first qualification necessary in a “companion” was a certain indifference as to salary, and the usual arrangement was that Agassiz should provide board and lodging in the hôtel, and that, if his assistant were in need of money, Agassiz should provide some if he had any lying loose at the time. This at least was the substance of the contract between Agassiz, on the one hand, and Edouard Desor of Heidelberg University, on the other hand.

Desor is perhaps the most famous of the little band. He was a political refugee, “without visible means of subsistence.” He was a talented young gentleman with a keen interest in scientific disputes, and an eye for what is vulgarly known as personal advertisement. In other words he shared the very human weakness of enjoying the sight of his name in honoured print. Another companion was Karl Vogt. Mrs. Agassiz had two great quarrels with life. The first was a shortage of funds, and the second was the impropriety of the stories exchanged between Vogt and Desors. Another companion was a certain Gressly, a gentleman whose main charm for Agassiz consisted in the fact that, “though he never had any money, he never wanted any.” He lived with Agassiz in the winter as secretary. In summer he tramped the Jura in search of geological data. He never bothered about money, but was always prepared to exchange some good anecdotes for a night’s lodging. Eventually, he went mad and ended his days in an asylum. Yet another famous name, associated with Agassiz, is that of Dollfus-Ausset, an Alsatian of Mülhausen, who was born in 1797. His great works were two books, the first entitled _Materials for the Study of Glaciers_, and the second _Materials for the Dyeing of Stuffs_. On the whole, he seems to have been more interested in glaciers than in velvet. He made, with Desor, the first ascent of the Galenstock, and also of the most southern peak of the Wetterhorn, namely the Rosenhorn (12,110 feet). He built many observatories on the Aar glacier and the Theodule, and he was usually known as “Papa Gletscher Dollfus.”

Such, then, were Agassiz’s companions. Humour and romance are blended in the picture of the strange little company that gathered every evening beneath the rough shelter of the hôtel. We see Mrs. Agassiz bearing with admirable resignation those inconveniences that must have proved a very real sorrow to her orderly German mind. We see Desor and Vogt exchanging broad anecdotes to the indignation of the good lady; and we can figure the abstracted naturalist, utterly indifferent to his environment, and only occupied with the deductions that may be drawn from the movement of stakes driven into a glacier. Let me quote in conclusion a few words from a sympathetic appreciation by the late William James (_Memories and Studies_)--

“Agassiz was a splendid example of the temperament that looks forward and not backwards, and never wastes a moment in regrets for the irrevocable. I had the privilege of admission to his society during the Thayer expedition to Brazil. I well remember, at night, as we all swung in our hammocks, in the fairy like moonlight, on the deck of the steamer that throbbed its way up the Amazon between the forests guarding the stream on either side, how he turned and whispered, ‘James, are you awake?’ and continued, ‘I cannot sleep; I am too happy; I keep thinking of these glorious plans.’...

“Agassiz’s influence on methods of teaching in our community was prompt and decisive--all the more so that it struck people’s imagination by its very excess. The good old way of committing printed abstractions to memory seems never to have received such a shock as it encountered at his hands. There is probably no public school teacher who will not tell you how Agassiz used to lock a student up in a room full of turtle shells or lobster shells or oyster shells, without a book or word to help him, and not let him out till he had discovered all the truths which the objects contained. Some found the truths after weeks and months of lonely sorrow; others never found them. Those who found them were already made into naturalists thereby; the failures were blotted from the book of honour and of life. ‘Go to Nature; take the facts into your own hands; look and see for yourself’--these were the maxims which Agassiz preached wherever he went, and their effect on pedagogy was electric....

“The only man he really loved and had use for was the man who could bring him facts. To see facts, not to argue or _raisonniren_ was what life meant for him; and I think he often positively loathed the ratiocinating type of mind. ‘Mr. Blank, you are totally uneducated,’ I heard him say once to a student, who had propounded to him some glittering theoretic generality. And on a similar occasion, he gave an admonition that must have sunk deep into the heart of him to whom it was addressed. ‘Mr. X, some people perhaps now consider you are a bright young man; but when you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of you then, what they will say will be this: “That Mr. X--oh yes, I know him; he used to be a very bright young man.”’ Happy is the conceited youth who at the proper moment receives such salutary cold-water therapeutics as this, from one who in other respects is a kind friend.”

So much for Agassiz. It only remains to add that his companions were responsible for some fine mountaineering. During these years the three peaks of the Wetterhorn were climbed, and Desor was concerned in two of these successful expeditions. A far finer expedition was his ascent of the Lauteraarhorn, by Desor in 1842. This peak is connected with the Schreckhorn by a difficult ridge, and is a worthy rival to that well-known summit. There were a few other virgin climbs in this period, but the great age of Alpine conquest had scarcely begun.

The connecting link between Agassiz and modern mountaineering is supplied by Gottlieb Studer, who was born in 1804, and died in 1890. His serious climbing began in 1823, and continued for sixty years. He made a number of new ascents, and reopened scores of passes, only known to natives. Most mountaineers know the careful and beautiful panoramas which are the work of his pencil. He drew no less than seven hundred of these. His great work, _Ueber Eis und Schnee_, a history of Swiss climbing, is an invaluable authority to which most of his successors in this field are indebted.

The careful reader will notice the comparative absence of the English in the climbs which we have so far described. The coming of the English deserves a chapter to itself.

Chapter VII

The Coming Of The English

Mountaineering, as a sport, is so often treated as an invention of Englishmen, that the real facts of its origin are unconsciously disguised. A commonplace error of the textbooks is to date sporting mountaineering from Mr. Justice Wills’s famous ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854. The Wetterhorn has three peaks, and Mr. Justice Wills made the ascent of the summit which is usually climbed from Grindelwald. This peak, the Hasle Jungfrau, is the most difficult of the group but it is not the highest. In those early days, first ascents were not recorded with the punctuality and thoroughness that prevails to-day; and a large circle of mountaineers gave Mr. Justice Wills the credit of making the first ascent of the Hasle Jungfrau, or at least the first ascent from Grindelwald. Curiously enough, the climb, which is supposed to herald sporting mountaineering, was only the second ascent of the Grindelwald route to the summit of a peak which had already been climbed four times. The facts are as follows: Desor’s guides climbed the Hasle Jungfrau in 1844, and Desor himself followed a few days after. Three months before Wills’s ascent, the peak was twice climbed by an early English pioneer, Mr. Blackwell. Blackwell’s first ascent was by the Rosenlaui route, which Desor had followed, and his second, by the Grindelwald route, chosen by Mr. Wills. On the last occasion, he was beaten by a storm within about ten feet of the top, ten feet which he had climbed on the previous occasion. He planted a flag just under the final cornice; and we must give him the credit of the pioneer ascent from Grindelwald. Mr. Wills never heard of these four ascents, and believed that the peak was still virgin when he ascended it.

It would appear, then, that the so-called first sporting climb has little claim to that distinction. What, precisely, is meant by “sporting” in this connection? The distinction seems to be drawn between those who climb a mountain for the sheer joy of adventure, and those who were primarily concerned with the increase of scientific knowledge. The distinction is important; but it is often forgotten that scientists, like De Saussure, Forbes, Agassiz and Desor, were none the less mountaineers because they had an intelligent interest in the geological history of mountains. All these men were inspired by a very genuine mountaineering enthusiasm. Moreover, before Mr. Wills’s climb there had been a number of quite genuine sporting climbs. A few Englishmen had been up Mont Blanc; and, though most of them had been content with Mont Blanc, they could scarcely be accused of scientific inspiration. They, however, belonged to the “One man, one mountain, school,” and as such can scarcely claim to be considered as anything but mountaineers by accident. Yet Englishmen like Hill, Blackwell, and Forbes, had climbed mountains with some regularity long before Mr. Wills made his great ascent; and foreign mountaineers had already achieved a series of genuine sporting ascents. Bourrit was utterly indifferent to science; and Bourrit was, perhaps, the first man who made a regular practice of climbing a snow mountain every year. The fact that he was not often successful must not be allowed to discount his sincere enthusiasm. Before 1840, no Englishman had entered the ranks of regular mountaineers; and by that date many of the great Alpine monarchs had fallen. Mont Blanc, the outer fortresses of Monte Rosa, the Finsteraarhorn, King of the Oberland, the Ortler, and the Glockner, the great rivals of the Eastern Alps, had all been conquered. The reigning oligarchies of the Alps had bowed their heads to man.

Let us concede what must be conceded; even so, we need not fear that our share in Alpine history will be unduly diminished. Mr. Wills’s ascent was none the less epoch-making because it was the fourth ascent of a second-class peak. The real value of that climb is this: It was one of the first climbs that were directly responsible for the systematic and brilliant campaign which was in the main conducted by Englishmen. Isolated foreign mountaineers had already done brilliant work, but their example did not give the same direct impetus. It was not till the English arrived that mountaineering became a fashionable sport; and the wide group of English pioneers that carried off almost all the great prizes of the Alps between 1854 and the conquest of the Matterhorn in 1865 may fairly date their invasion from Mr. Justice Wills’s ascent, a climb which, though not even a virgin ascent and by no means the first great climb by an Englishman, was none the less a landmark. Mr. Justice Wills’s vigorous example caught on as no achievement had caught on. His book, which is full of spirited writing, made many converts to the new sport.

There had, of course, been many enthusiasts who had preached the sport before Mr. Justice Wills climbed the Wetterhorn. The earliest of all Alpine Journals is the _Alpina_, which first expressed the impetus of the great Alpine campaign. It appeared in 1806, and survived for four years, though the name was later attached to a magazine which has still a large circulation in Switzerland. It was edited by Ulysses von Salis; and it contained articles on chamois-hunting, the ascent of the Ortler, etc., besides reviews of the mountain literature of the period, such books, for instance, as those of Bourrit and Ebel. “The Glockner and the Ortler,” writes the editor, “may serve as striking instances of our ignorance, until a few years ago, of the highest peaks in the Alpine ranges. Excluding the Gotthard and Mont Blanc, and their surrounding eminences, there still remain more than a few marvellous and colossal peaks which are no less worthy of becoming better known.”

From 1840, the number of Englishmen taking part in high ascents increases rapidly; and between 1854 and 1865 the great bulk of virgin ascents stand to their credit, though it must always be remembered that these ascents were led by Swiss, French and Italian guides, who did not, however, do them till the English arrived. Before 1840 a few Englishmen climbed Mont Blanc; Mrs. and Miss Campbell crossed the Col de Géant, which had previously been reopened by Mr. Hill; and Mr. Malkin crossed a few glacier passes. But J. D. Forbes was really the first English mountaineer to carry out a series of systematic attacks on the upper snows. Incidentally, his book, _Travels through the Alps of Savoy_, published in 1843, was the first book in the English language dealing with the High Alps. A few pamphlets had been published by the adventurers of Mont Blanc, but no really serious work. Forbes is, therefore, the true pioneer not only of British mountaineering, but of the Alpine literature in our tongue. He was a worthy successor to De Saussure, and his interest in the mountains was very largely scientific. He investigated the theories of glacier motion, and visited Agassiz at the “Hôtel des Neuchâtelois.” On that occasion, if Agassiz is to be believed, the canny Scotsman managed to extract more than he gave from the genial and expansive Switzer. When Forbes published his theories, Agassiz accused him of stealing his ideas. Desor, whose genius for a row was only excelled by the joy he took in getting up his case, did not improve matters; and a bitter quarrel was the result. Whatever may have been the rights of the matter, Forbes certainly mastered the theory of glacier motion, and proved his thorough grasp of the matter in a rather remarkable way. In 1820, a large party of guides and amateurs were overwhelmed by an avalanche on the Grand Plateau, and three of the guides disappeared into a crevasse. Their bodies were not recovered. Dr. Hamel, who had organised the party, survived. He knew something of glacier motion, and ventured a guess that the bodies of the guides would reappear at the bottom of the glacier in about a thousand years. He was just nine hundred and thirty-nine years wrong in his calculation. Forbes, having ascertained by experiment the rate at which the glacier moved, predicted that the bodies would reappear in forty years. This forecast proved amazingly accurate. Various remains reappeared near the lower end of the Glacier des Bossons in 1861, a fragment of a human body, and a few relics came to light two years later, and a skull, ropes, hat, etc., in 1865. Strangely enough, this accident was repeated in almost all its details in the famous Arkwright disaster of 1866.

Forbes carried through a number of fine expeditions. He climbed the Jungfrau with Agassiz and Desor--before the little trouble referred to above. He made the first passage by an amateur of the Col d’Hérens, and the first ascents of the Stockhorn (11,796 feet) and the Wasenhorn (10,661 feet). Besides his Alpine wanderings, he explored some of the glaciers of Savoy. His most famous book, _The Tour of Mont Blanc_, is well worth reading, and contains one fine passage, a simile between the motion of a glacier and the life of man.

Forbes was the first British mountaineer; but John Ball played an even more important part in directing the activity of the English climbers. He was a Colonial Under-Secretary in Lord Palmerston’s administration; but he gave up politics for the more exciting field of Alpine adventure. His main interest in the Alps was, perhaps, botanical; and his list of first ascents is not very striking, considering the host of virgin peaks that awaited an enterprising pioneer. His great achievement was the conquest of the first great dolomite peak that yielded its secrets to man, the Pelmo. He also climbed the virgin Cima Tosa in the Brenta dolomites, and made the first traverse of the Schwartztor. He was the first to edit guidebooks for the use of mountaineers, and his knowledge of the Alps was surprisingly thorough. He played a great part in the formation of the Alpine Club, and in the direction of their literary activity. He edited the classical series of _Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers_, and a series of excellent Alpine guides.

But the event which above all others attracted the attention of Englishmen to the Alps was Albert Smith’s ascent of Mont Blanc. Albert Smith is the most picturesque of the British mountaineers. He was something of a _blagueur_, but behind all his vulgarity lay a very deep feeling for the Alps. His little book on Mont Blanc makes good reading. The pictures are delightfully inaccurate in their presentation of the terrors of Alpine climbing; and the thoroughly sincere fashion in which the whole business of climbing is written up proves that the great white mountain had not yet lost its prestige. But we can forgive Albert Smith a great deal, for he felt the glamour of the Alps long before he had seen a hill higher than St. Anne’s, near Chertsey. As a child, he had been given _The Peasants of Chamouni_, a book which rivalled _Pilgrim’s Progress_ in his affections. This mountain book fired him to anticipate his subsequent success as a showman. “Finally, I got up a small moving panorama of the horrors pertaining to Mont Blanc ... and this I so painted up and exaggerated in my enthusiasm, that my little sister--who was my only audience, but an admirable one, for she cared not how often I exhibited--would become quite pale with fright.” Time passed, and Albert Smith became a student in Paris. He discovered that his enthusiasm for Mont Blanc was shared by a medical student; and together they determined to visit the Mecca of their dreams. They collected twelve pounds apiece, and vowed that it should last them for five weeks. They carried it about with them entirely in five-franc pieces, chiefly stuffed into a leathern belt round their waists. Buying “two old soldiers’ knapsacks at three francs each, and two pairs of hobnailed shoes at five francs and a half,” they started off on their great adventure. Smith wisely adds that, “if there is anything more delightful than travelling with plenty of money, it is certainly making a journey of pleasure with very little.”

They made the journey to Geneva in seventy-eight hours by _diligence_. At Melun they bought a brick of bread more than two feet long. “The passengers paid three francs each for their _déjeuner_, ours did not cost ten sous.” At night, they slept in the empty _diligence_. They meant to make that twelve pounds apiece carry them some distance. From Geneva they walked to Chamounix, helped by an occasional friendly lift. Smith was delighted with the realisation of childish dreams. “Every step was like a journey in fairyland.” In fact, the only disillusion was the contrast between the Swiss peasant of romance and the reality. “The Alpine maidens we encountered put us more in mind of poor law unions than ballads; indeed, the Swiss villagers may be classed with troubadours, minstrel pages, shepherdesses, and other fabulous pets of small poets and vocalists.” After leaving Chamounix, Smith crossed the St. Bernard, visited Milan, and returned with a small margin still left out of the magic twelve pounds.

Albert Smith returned to London, took up practice as a surgeon, wrote for _Punch_, and acquired a big reputation as an entertainer in _The Overland Mail_, written by himself and founded on a journey to Egypt and Constantinople. The songs and sketches made the piece popular, and insured a long run. At the close of the season he went to Chamounix again, fully determined to climb Mont Blanc. He was accompanied by William Beverley, the artist, and was lucky to fall in with some Oxford undergraduates with the same ambition as himself. They joined forces, and a party of twenty, including guides, prepared for the great expedition. Amongst other provisions, they took ninety-four bottles of wine, four legs of mutton, four shoulders of mutton, and forty-six fowls. Smith was out of training, and suffered terribly from mountain sickness. He was horrified by the Mur de la Côte, which he describes as “an all but perpendicular iceberg,” and adds that “every step was gained from the chance of a horrible death.” As a matter of fact, the Mur de la Côte is a very simple, if steep, snow slope. A good ski-runner could, under normal conditions, descend it on ski. If Smith had fallen, he would have rolled comfortably to the bottom, and stopped in soft snow. “Should the foot or the baton slip,” he assures us, “there is no chance for life. You would glide like lightning from one frozen crag to another, and finally be dashed to pieces hundreds of feet below.” It is pleasant to record that Smith reached the summit, though not without considerable difficulty, and that his party drank all the wine and devoured the forty-six fowls, etc., before their successful return to Chamounix.

Smith wrote an account of the ascent which provoked a bitter attack in _The Daily News_. Albert Smith was contrasted with De Saussure, greatly to Smith’s disadvantage. The sober, practical Englishman of the period could only forgive a mountain ascent if the climber brought back with him from the heights, something more substantial than a vision of remembered beauty. A few inaccurate readings of an untrustworthy barometer could, perhaps, excuse a pointless exploit. “Saussure’s observations,” said a writer in _The Daily News_, “live in his poetical philosophy, those of Mr. Albert Smith will be most appropriately recorded in a tissue of indifferent puns, and stale, fast witticisms with an incessant straining after smartness. The aimless scramble of the four pedestrians to the top of Mont Blanc will not go far to redeem the somewhat equivocal reputation of the herd of English to risks in Switzerland for a mindless, and rather vulgar, redundance of animal spirits.” Albert Smith did not allow the subject to drop. He turned Mont Blanc into an entertainment at the Egyptian Hall, an entertainment which became very popular, and was patronised by the Queen.

Narrow-minded critics affect to believe that Albert Smith was nothing more than a showman, and that Mont Blanc was for him nothing more than a peg on which to hang a popular entertainment. This is not true. Mr. Mathews does him full justice when he says: “He was emphatically a showman from his birth, but it is not true he ascended the mountain for the purpose of making a show of it. His well-known entertainment resulted from a lifelong interest which he had taken in the great summit, of which he never failed to speak or write with reverence and affection.” Mr. Mathews was by no means naturally prejudiced in favour of anybody who tended to popularise the Alps, and his tribute is all the more striking in consequence. Albert Smith fell in love with Mont Blanc long before he had seen a mountain. Nobody can read the story of his first journey with twelve pounds in his pocket, without realising that Albert Smith, the showman, loved the mountains with much the same passion as his more cultured successors. Mr. Mathews adds: “It is but just to his memory to record that he, too, was a pioneer. Mountaineering was not then a recognised sport for Englishmen. Hitherto, any information about Mont Blanc had to be sought for in isolated publications. Smith brought a more or less accurate knowledge of it, as it were, to the hearths and homes of educated Englishmen.... Smith’s entertainment gave an undoubted impetus to mountaineering.”

While Smith was lecturing, a group of Englishmen were quietly carrying through a series of attacks on the unconquered citadels of the Alps. In 1854 Mr. Justice Wills made that ascent of the Wetterhorn which has already been referred to. It is fully described in Mr. Justice Wills’s interesting book, _Wanderings among the High Alps_, and, amongst other things, it is famous as the first appearance in Alpine history of the great guide, Christian Almer. Mr. Wills left Grindelwald with Ulrich Lauener, a guide who was to play a great part in Alpine adventure, Balmat and Simond. “The landlord wrung Balmat’s hand. ‘Try,’ said he, ‘to return all of you alive.’” Lauener burdened himself with a “flagge” to plant on the summit. This “flagge” resolved itself on inspection into a very solid iron construction in the shape of a banner, which Lauener carried to the summit on the following day. They bivouacked on the Enge, and climbed next day without great difficulty, to the gap between the two summits of the Wetterhorn, now known as the Wettersattel. They made a short halt here; and, while they were resting, they noticed with surprise two men working up the rocks they had just climbed. Lauener at first supposed they were chamois hunters; but a moment’s reflection convinced the party that no hunter would seek his prey on such unlikely ground. Moreover, chamois hunters do not usually carry on their backs “a young fir-tree, branches, leaves, and all.” They lost sight of the party and continued their meal. They next saw the two strangers on the snow slopes ahead, making all haste to be the first on the summit. This provoked great wrath on the part of Mr. Wills’s guides, who believed that the Wetterhorn was a virgin peak, a view also shared by the two usurpers, who had heard of the intended ascent and resolved to plant their fir-tree side by side with the iron “flagge.” They had started very early that same morning, and hunted their quarry down. A vigorous exchange of shouts and threats resulted in a compromise. “Balmat’s anger was soon appeased when he found they owned the reasonableness of his desire that they should not steal from us the distinction of being the first to scale that awful peak; and, instead of administering the fisticuffs he had talked about, he declared they were _bons enfants_ after all, and presented them with a cake of chocolate. Thus the pipe of peace was smoked, and tranquillity reigned between the rival forces.”

From their resting-place they could see the final summit. From this point a steep snow slope, about three to four hundred feet in height, rises to the final crest, which is usually crowned by a cornice. The little party made their way up the steep slope, till Lauener reached the final cornice. It should, perhaps, be explained, that a cornice is a projecting cave of wind-blown snow which is usually transformed by sun and frost into ice. Lauener “stood close, not facing the parapet, but turned half round, and struck out as far away from himself as he could.... Suddenly, a startling cry of surprise and triumph rang through the air. A great block of ice bounded from the top of the parapet, and before it had well lighted on the glacier, Lauener exclaimed ‘Ich schaue den Blauen Himmel’ (‘I see blue sky’). A thrill of astonishment and delight ran through our frames. Our enterprise had succeeded. We were almost upon the actual summit. That wave above us, frozen, as it seemed, in the act of falling over, into a strange and motionless magnificence, was the very peak itself. Lauener’s blows flew with redoubled energy. In a few minutes a practicable breach was made, through which he disappeared; and in a moment more the sound of his axe was heard behind the battlement under whose cover we stood. In his excitement he had forgotten us, and very soon the whole mass would have come crashing down upon our heads. A loud shout of warning from Sampson, who now occupied the gap, was echoed by five other eager voices, and he turned his energies in a safer direction. It was not long before Lauener and Sampson together had widened the opening; and then at length we crept slowly on. As I took the last step Balmat disappeared from my sight; my left shoulder grazed against the angle of the icy embrasure, while on the right the glacier fell abruptly away beneath me towards an unknown and awful abyss; a hand from an invisible person grasped mine; I stepped across, and had passed the ridge of the Wetterhorn.

“The instant before I had been face to face with a blank wall of ice. One step, and the eye took in a boundless expanse of crag and glacier, peak and precipice, mountain and valley, lake and plain. The whole world seemed to lie at my feet. The next moment, I was almost appalled by the awfulness of our position. The side we had come up was steep; but it was a gentle slope compared with that which now fell away from where I stood. A few yards of glittering ice at our feet, and then nothing between us and the green slopes of Grindelwald nine thousand feet beneath.”

The “iron flagge” and fir-tree were planted side by side, and attracted great attention in Grindelwald. The “flagge” they could understand, but the fir-tree greatly puzzled them.

Christian Almer, the hero of the fir-tree, was destined to be one of the great Alpine guides. His first ascents form a formidable list, and include the Eiger, Mönch, Fiescherhorn in the Oberland (besides the first ascent of the Jungfrau direct from the Wengern Alp), the Ecrins, monarch of the Dauphiny, the Grand Jorasses, Col Dolent, Aiguille Verte in the Mont Blanc range, the Ruinette, and Morning Pass in the Pennines. But Almer’s most affectionate recollections always centred round the Wetterhorn. The present writer remembers meeting him on his way to celebrate his golden wedding, on the summit of his first love. Almer also deserves to be remembered as a pioneer of winter mountaineering. He made with Mr. Coolidge the first winter ascents of the Jungfrau and Wetterhorn. It was on a winter ascent of the former peak that he incurred frostbite, that resulted in the amputation of his toes, and the sudden termination of his active career. Some years later he died peaceably in his bed.

A year after Mr. Wills’s famous climb, a party of Englishmen, headed by the brothers Smyth, conquered the highest point of Monte Rosa. The Alpine campaign was fairly opened. Hudson made a new route up Mont Blanc without guides, the first great guideless climb by Englishmen. Hinchcliffe, the Mathews, E. S. Kennedy, and others, had already done valuable work.

The Alpine Club was the natural result of the desire on the part of these climbers to meet together in London and compare notes. The idea was first mooted in a letter from Mr. William Mathews to the Rev. J. A. Hort.[3] The first meeting was held on December 22, 1857. The office of President was left open till it was deservedly filled by John Ball; E. S. Kennedy became Vice-President, and Mr. Hinchcliffe, Honorary Secretary. It is pleasant to record that Albert Smith, the showman, was an original member. The English pioneers prided themselves, not without some show of justification, on the fact that their sport attracted men of great intellectual powers. Forbes, Tyndall, and Leslie Stephen, are great names in the record of Science and Literature. The present Master of Trinity was one of the early members, his qualification being an ascent of Monte Rosa, Sinai, and Parnassus.

There were some remarkable men in this early group of English mountaineers. Of John Ball and Albert Smith, we have already spoken. Perhaps the most distinguished mountaineer from the standpoint of the outside world was John Tyndall. Tyndall was not only a great scientist, and one of the foremost investigators of the theory of glacier motion, he was also a fine mountaineer. His finest achievement was the first ascent of the Weishorn; and he also played a great part in the long struggle for the blue ribbon of the Alps--the Matterhorn. His book, _Hours of Exercise in the Alps_, makes good reading when once one has resigned oneself to the use of somewhat pedantic terms for quite simple operations. Somewhere or other--I quote from memory--a guide’s legs are referred to as monstrous levers that projected his body through space with enormous velocity! Tyndall, by the way, chose to ta