Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI by Various
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Various >> Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI
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Both sides of the crevasse were sounded, but no sure footing was
obtained; the snow was beaten and carefully trodden down as near to the
edge as possible, but it finally broke away from the foot and fell into
the chasm. One of our porters was short-legged and a bad iceman; the
other was a daring fellow, and he now threw the knapsack from his
shoulders, came to the edge of the crevasse, looked into it, but drew
back again. After a pause he repeated the act, testing the snow with
his feet and staff. I looked at the man as he stood beside the chasm
manifestly undecided as to whether he should take the step upon which
his life would hang, and thought it advisable to put a stop to such
perilous play. I accordingly interposed, the man withdrew from the
crevasse, and he and Simond descended to fetch the ladder.
While they were away Huxley sat down upon the ice, with an expression of
fatigue stamped upon his countenance; the spirit and the muscles were
evidently at war, and the resolute will mixed itself strangely with the
sense of peril and feeling of exhaustion. He had been only two days
with us, and, tho' his strength is great, he had had no opportunity of
hardening himself by previous exercise upon the ice for the task which
he had undertaken. The ladder now arrived, and we crossed the crevasse.
I was intentionally the last of the party, Huxley being immediately in
front of me. The determination of the man disguised his real condition
from everybody but himself, but I saw that the exhausting journey over
the boulders and debris had been too much for his London limbs.
Converting my waterproof haversack into a cushion, I made him sit down
upon it at intervals, and by thus breaking the steep ascent into short
stages we reached the cabin of the Grands Mulets together. Here I spread
a rug on the boards, and, placing my bag for a pillow, he lay down, and
after an hour's profound sleep he rose refreshed and well; but still he
thought it wise not to attempt the ascent farther. Our porters left us;
a baton was stretched across the room over the stove, and our wet socks
and leggings were thrown across it to dry; our boots were placed around
the fire, and we set about preparing our evening meal. A pan was placed
upon the fire, and filled with snow, which in due time melted and
boiled; I ground some chocolate and placed it in the pan, and afterward
ladled the beverage into the vessels we possest, which consisted of two
earthen dishes and the metal cases of our brandy flasks. After supper
Simond went out to inspect the glacier, and was observed by Huxley, as
twilight fell, in a state of deep contemplation beside a crevasse.
Gradually the stars appeared, but as yet no moon. Before lying down we
went out to look at the firmament, and noticed, what I supposed has been
observed to some extent by everybody, that the stars near the horizon
twinkled busily, while those near the zenith shone with a steady light.
One large star, in particular, excited our admiration; it flashed
intensely, and changed color incessantly, sometimes blushing like a
ruby, and again gleaming like an emerald. A determinate color would
sometimes remain constant for a sensible time, but usually the flashes
followed each other in very quick succession.
Three planks were now placed across the room near the stove, and upon
these, with their rugs folded round them, Huxley and Hirst stretched
themselves, while I nestled on the boards at the most distant end of the
room. We rose at eleven o'clock, renewed the fire and warmed ourselves,
after which we lay down again. I, at length, observed a patch of pale
light upon the wooden wall of the cabin, which had entered through a
hole in the end of the edifice, and rising found that it was past one
o'clock. The cloudless moon was shining over the wastes of snow, and the
scene outside was at once wild, grand, and beautiful.
Breakfast was soon prepared, tho' not without difficulty; we had no
candles, they had been forgotten; but I fortunately possest a box of
wax matches, of which Huxley took charge, patiently igniting them in
succession, and thus giving us a tolerably continuous light. We had
some tea, which had been made at the Montanvert,[56] and carried to the
Grands Mulets in a bottle. My memory of that tea is not pleasant; it had
been left a whole night in contact with its leaves, and smacked strongly
of tannin. The snow-water, moreover, with which we diluted it was not
pure, but left a black residuum at the bottom of the dishes in which the
beverage was served. The few provisions deemed necessary being placed in
Simond's knapsack, at twenty minutes past two o'clock we scrambled down
the rocks, leaving Huxley behind us.
The snow was hardened by the night's frost, and we were cheered by the
hope of being able to accomplish the ascent with comparatively little
labor. We were environed by an atmosphere of perfect purity; the larger
stars hung like gems above us, and the moon, about half full, shone with
wondrous radiance in the dark firmament. One star in particular, which
lay eastward from the moon, suddenly made its appearance above one of
the Aiguilles, and burned there with unspeakable splendor. We turned
once toward the Mulets, and saw Huxley's form projected against the sky
as he stood upon a pinnacle of rock; he gave us a last wave of the hand
and descended, while we receded from him into the solitudes.
The evening previous our guide had examined the glacier for some
distance, his progress having been arrested by a crevasse. Beside this
we soon halted: it was spanned at one place by a bridge of snow, which
was of too light a structure to permit of Simond's testing it alone;
we therefore paused while our guide uncoiled a rope and tied us all
together. The moment was to me a peculiarly solemn one. Our little party
seemed so lonely and so small amid the silence and the vastness of the
surrounding scene. We were about to try our strength under unknown
conditions, and as the various possibilities of the enterprise crowded
on the imagination, a sense of responsibility for a moment opprest
me. But as I looked aloft and saw the glory of the heavens, my heart
lightened, and I remarked cheerily to Hirst that Nature seemed to smile
upon our work. "Yes," he replied, in a calm and earnest voice, "and, God
willing, we shall accomplish it."
A pale light now overspread the eastern sky, which increased, as we
ascended, to a daffodil tinge; this afterward heightened to orange,
deepening at one extremity into red, and fading at the other into a
pure, ethereal hue to which it would be difficult to assign a special
name. Higher up the sky was violet, and this changed by insensible
degrees into the darkling blue of the zenith, which had to thank the
light of moon and stars alone for its existence. We wound steadily for a
time through valleys of ice, climbed white and slippery slopes, crossed
a number of crevasses, and after some time found ourselves beside a
chasm of great depth and width, which extended right and left as far
as we could see. We turned to the left, and marched along its edge in
search of a "pont"; but matters became gradually worse; other crevasses
joined on to the first one, and the further we proceeded the more riven
and dislocated the ice became.
At length we reached a place where further advance was impossible.
Simond, in his difficulty complained of the want of light, and wished us
to wait for the advancing day; I, on the contrary, thought that we had
light enough and ought to make use of it. Here the thought occurred to
me that Simond, having been only once before to the top of the mountain,
might not be quite clear about the route; the glacier, however, changes
within certain limits from year to year, so that a general knowledge was
all that could be expected, and we trusted to our own muscles to make
good any mistake in the way of guidance.
We now turned and retraced our steps along the edges of chasms where the
ice was disintegrated and insecure, and succeeded at length in finding a
bridge which bore us across the crevasse. This error caused us the loss
of an hour, and after walking for this time we could cast a stone from
the point we had attained to the place whence we had been compelled to
return.
Our way now lay along the face of a steep incline of snow, which was cut
by the fissure we had just passed, in a direction parallel to our route.
On the heights to our right, loose ice-crags seemed to totter, and we
passed two tracks over which the frozen blocks had rushed some short
time previously. We were glad to get out of the range of these terrible
projectiles, and still more so to escape the vicinity of that ugly
crevasse. To be killed in the open air would be a luxury, compared with
having the life squeezed out of one in the horrible gloom of these
chasms. The blush of the coming day became more and more intense; still
the sun himself did not appear, being hidden from us by the peaks of
the Aiguille du Midi, which were drawn clear and sharp against the
brightening sky. Right under this Aiguille were heaps of snow smoothly
rounded and constituting a portion of the sources whence the Glacier du
Geant is fed; these, as the day advanced, bloomed with a rosy light. We
reached the Petit Plateau, which we found covered with the remains of
ice avalanches; above us upon the crest of the mountain rose three
mighty bastions, divided from each other by deep, vertical rents, with
clean smooth walls, across which the lines of annual bedding were drawn
like courses of masonry. From these, which incessantly renew themselves,
and from the loose and broken ice-crags near them, the boulders amid
which we now threaded our way had been discharged. When they fall their
descent must be sublime.
The snow had been gradually getting deeper, and the ascent more
wearisome, but superadded to this at the Petit Plateau was the
uncertainty of the footing between the blocks of ice. In many places
the space was merely covered by a thin crust, which, when trod upon,
instantly yielded and we sank with a shock sometimes to the hips. Our
way next lay up a steep incline to the Grand Plateau, the depth and
tenderness of the snow augmenting as we ascended. We had not yet seen
the sun, but as we attained the brow which forms the entrance to the
Grand Plateau, he hung his disk upon a spike of rock to our left, and,
surrounded by a glory of interference spectra of the most gorgeous
colors, blazed down upon us. On the Grand Plateau we halted and had our
frugal refreshment.
At some distance to our left was the crevasse into which Dr. Hamel's
three guides were precipitated by an avalanche in 1820; they are still
entombed in the ice, and some future explorer may, perhaps, see them
disgorged lower down, fresh and undecayed. They can hardly reach the
surface until they pass the snow-line of the glacier, for above this
line the quantity of snow that annually falls being in excess of the
quantity melted, the tendency would be to make the ice-covering above
them thicker. But it is also possible that the waste of the ice
underneath may have brought the bodies to the bed of the glacier, where
their very bones may have been ground to mud by an agency which the
hardest rocks can not withstand.
As the sun poured his light upon the Plateau the little snow-facets
sparkled brilliantly, sometimes with a pure white light, and at others
with prismatic colors. Contrasted with the white spaces above and
around us were the dark mountains on the opposite side of the valley of
Chamouni, around which fantastic masses of cloud were beginning to build
themselves. Mont Buet, with its cone of snow, looked small, and the
Brevent altogether mean; the limestone bastions of the Fys, however,
still presented a front of gloom and grandeur. We traversed the Grand
Plateau, and at length reached the base of an extremely steep incline
which stretched upward toward the Corridor. Here, as if produced by a
fault, consequent upon the sinking of the ice in front, rose a vertical
precipice, from the coping of which vast stalactites of ice depended.
Previous to reaching this place I had noticed a haggard expression upon
the countenance of our guide, which was now intensified by the prospect
of the ascent before him. Hitherto he had always been in front, which
was certainly the most fatiguing position. I felt that I must now take
the lead, so I spoke cheerily to the man and placed him behind me.
Marking a number of points upon the slope as resting places, I went
swiftly from one to the other. The surface of the snow had been
partially melted by the sun and then refrozen, thus forming a
superficial crust, which bore the weight up to a certain point, and then
suddenly gave way, permitting the leg to sink to above the knee. The
shock consequent on this, and the subsequent effort necessary to
extricate the leg, were extremely fatiguing. My motion was complained of
as too quick, and my tracks as imperfect; I moderated the former, and to
render my footholes broad and sure, I stamped upon the frozen crust,
and twisted my legs in the soft mass underneath,--a terribly exhausting
process. I thus led the way to the base of the Rochers Bouges, up to
which the fault already referred to had prolonged itself as a crevasse,
which was roofed at one place by a most dangerous-looking snow-bridge.
Simond came to the front; I drew his attention to the state of the snow,
and proposed climbing the Rochers Rouges; but, with a promptness unusual
with him, he replied that this was impossible; the bridge was our only
means of passing, and we must try it. We grasped our ropes, and dug our
feet firmly into the snow to check the man's descent if the "pont" gave
way, but to our astonishment it bore him, and bore us safely after
him. The slope which we had now to ascend had the snow swept from its
surface, and was therefore firm ice. It was most dangerously steep, and,
its termination being the fretted coping of the precipice to which I
have referred, if we slid downward we should shoot over this and be
dashed to pieces upon the ice below.[57] Simond, who had come to the
front to cross the crevasse, was now engaged in cutting steps, which he
made deep and large, so that they might serve us on our return. But the
listless strokes of his ax proclaimed his exhaustion; so I took the
implement out of his hands, and changed places with him. Step after step
was hewn, but the top of the Corridor appeared ever to recede from us.
Hirst was behind, unoccupied, and could thus turn his thoughts to the
peril of our position; he "felt" the angle on which we hung, and saw the
edge of the precipice, to which less than a quarter of a minute's slide
would carry us, and for the first time during the journey he grew giddy.
A cigar which he lighted for the purpose tranquilized him.
I hewed sixty steps upon this slope, and each step had cost a minute, by
Hirst's watch. The Mur de la Cote was still before us, and on this the
guide-books informed us two or three hundred steps were sometimes found
necessary. If sixty steps cost an hour, what would be the cost of two
hundred? The question was disheartening in the extreme, for the time at
which we had calculated on reaching the summit was already passed, while
the chief difficulties remained unconquered. Having hewn our way along
the harder ice we reached snow. I again resorted to stamping to secure a
footing, and while thus engaged became, for the first time, aware of the
drain of force to which I was subjecting myself. The thought of being
absolutely exhausted had never occurred to me, and from first to last I
had taken no care to husband my strength. I always calculated that the
"will" would serve me even should the muscles fail, but I now found that
mechanical laws rule man in the long run; that no effort of will, no
power of spirit, can draw beyond a certain limit upon muscular force.
The soul, it is true, can stir the body to action, but its function is
to excite and apply force, and not to create it.
While stamping forward through the frozen crust I was compelled to pause
at short intervals; then would set out again apparently fresh, to
find, however, in a few minutes, that my strength was gone, and that
I required to rest once more. In this way I gained the summit of the
Corridor, when Hirst came to the front, and I felt some relief in
stepping slowly after him, making use of the holes into which his feet
had sunk. He thus led the way to the base of the Mur de la Cote, the
thought of which had so long cast a gloom upon us; here we left our rope
behind us, and while pausing I asked Simond whether he did not feel
a desire to go to the summit. "Surely," was his reply, "but!--" Our
guide's mind was so constituted that the "but" seemed essential to its
peace. I stretched my hands toward him, and said: "Simond, we must do
it." One thing alone I felt could defeat us: the usual time of the
ascent had been more than doubled, the day was already far spent, and if
the ascent would throw our subsequent descent into night it could not be
contemplated.
We now faced the Mur, which was by no means so bad as we had expected.
Driving the iron claws of our boots into the scars made by the ax, and
the spikes of our batons into the slope above our feet, we ascended
steadily until the summit was attained, and the top of the mountain rose
clearly above us. We congratulated ourselves upon this; but Simond,
probably fearing that our joy might become too full, remarked: "But the
summit is still far off!" It was, alas! too true. The snow became soft
again, and our weary limbs sank in it as before. Our guide went on in
front, audibly muttering his doubts as to our ability to reach the top,
and at length he threw himself upon the snow, and exclaimed, "I give
up!"
Hirst now undertook the task of rekindling the guide's enthusiasm, after
which Simond rose, exclaiming: "Oh, but this makes my knees ache!" and
went forward. Two rocks break through the snow between the summit of the
Mur and the top of the mountain; the first is called the Petits Mulets,
and the highest the Derniers Rochers. At the former of these we paused
to rest, and finished our scanty store of wine and provisions. We had
not a bit of bread nor a drop of wine left; our brandy flasks were also
nearly exhausted, and thus we had to contemplate the journey to the
summit, and the subsequent descent to the Grands Mulets, with out the
slightest prospect of physical refreshment. The almost total loss of two
nights' sleep, with two days' toil superadded, made me long for a few
minutes' doze, so I stretched myself upon a composite couch of snow and
granite, and immediately fell asleep.
My friend, however, soon aroused me. "You quite frighten me," he said;
"I have listened for some minutes, and have not heard you breathe once."
I had, in reality, been taking deep draughts of the mountain air, but so
silently as not to be heard.
I now filled our empty wine-bottle with snow and placed it in the
sunshine, that we might have a little water on our return. We then
rose; it was half-past two o'clock; we had been upward of twelve hours
climbing, and I calculated that, whether we reached the summit or not,
we could at all events work "toward" it for another hour. To the sense
of fatigue previously experienced, a new phenomenon was now added--the
beating of the heart. We were incessantly pulled up by this, which
sometimes became so intense as to suggest danger. I counted the number
of paces which we were able to accomplish without resting, and found
that at the end of every twenty, sometimes at the end of fifteen, we
were compelled to pause. At each pause my heart throbbed audibly, as I
leaned upon my staff, and the subsidence of this action was always
the signal for further advance. My breathing was quick, but light and
unimpeded.
I endeavored to ascertain whether the hip-joint, on account of the
diminished atmospheric pressure, became loosened, so as to throw the
weight of the leg upon the surrounding ligaments, but could not be
certain about it. I also sought a little aid and encouragement from
philosophy, endeavoring to remember what great things had been done by
the accumulation of small quantities, and I urged upon myself that the
present was a case in point, and that the summation of distances twenty
paces each must finally place us at the top. Still the question of time
left the matter long in doubt, and until we had passed the Derniers
Rochers we worked on with the stern indifference of men who were doing
their duty, and did not look to consequences. Here, however, a gleam
of hope began to brighten our souls: the summit became visible nearer,
Simond showed more alacrity; at length success became certain, and at
half-past three P.M. my friend and I clasped hands upon the top.
The summit of the mountain is an elongated ridge, which has been
compared to the back of an ass. It was perfectly manifest that we were
dominant over all other mountains; as far as the eye could range Mont
Blanc had no competitor. The summits which had looked down upon us in
the morning were now far beneath us. The Dome du Goute, which had held
its threatening "seracs" above us so long, was now at our feet. The
Aiguille du Midi, Mont Blanc du Tacul, and the Monts Maudits, the
Talefre, with its surrounding peaks, the Grand Jorasse, Mont Mallet, and
the Aiguille du Geant, with our own familiar glaciers, were all below
us. And as our eye ranged over the broad shoulders of the mountain, over
ice hills and valleys, plateaux and far-stretching slopes of snow, the
conception of its magnitude grew upon us, and imprest us more and more.
The clouds were very grand--grander, indeed, than anything I had ever
before seen. Some of them seemed to hold thunder in their breasts, they
were so dense and dark; others, with their faces turned sunward, shone
with the dazzling whiteness of the mountain snow; while others again
built themselves into forms resembling gigantic elm trees, loaded with
foliage. Toward the horizon the luxury of color added itself to the
magnificent alternation of light and shade. Clear spaces of amber and
ethereal green embraced the red and purple cumuli, and seemed to form
the cradle in which they swung. Closer at hand squally mists, suddenly
engendered, were driven hither and thither by local winds; while the
clouds at a distance lay "like angels sleeping on the wing," with
scarcely visibly motion. Mingling with the clouds, and sometimes rising
above them, were the highest mountain heads, and as our eyes wandered
from peak to peak, onward to the remote horizon, space itself seemed
more vast from the manner in which the objects which it held were
distributed....
The day was waning, and, urged by the warnings of our ever-prudent
guide, we at length began the descent. Gravity was in our favor, but
gravity could not entirely spare our wearied limbs, and where we sank
in the snow we found our downward progress very trying. I suffered from
thirst, but after we had divided the liquefied snow at the Petits Mulets
among us we had nothing to drink. I crammed the clean snow into my
mouth, but the process of melting was slow and tantalizing to a parched
throat, while the chill was painful to the teeth.
THE JUNGFRAU-JOCH[58]
BY SIR LESLIE STEPHEN
I was once more standing upon the Wengern Alp, and gazing longingly at
the Jungfrau-Joch. Surely the Wengern Alp must be precisely the loveliest
place in this world. To hurry past it, and listen to the roar of the
avalanches, is a very unsatisfactory mode of enjoyment; it reminds one
too much of letting off crackers in a cathedral. The mountains seem to
be accomplices of the people who charge fifty centimes for an echo. But
it does one's moral nature good to linger there at sunset or in the
early morning, when tourists have ceased from traveling; and the jaded
cockney may enjoy a kind of spiritual bath in the soothing calmness of
scenery....
We, that is a little party of six Englishmen with six Oberland guides,
who left the inn at 3 A.M. on July 20, 1862, were not, perhaps, in a
specially poetical mood. Yet as the sun rose while we were climbing the
huge buttress of the Moench, the dullest of us--I refer, of course,
to myself--felt something of the spirit of the scenery. The day was
cloudless, and a vast inverted cone of dazzling rays suddenly struck
upward into the sky through the gap between the Moench and the Eiger,
which, as some effect of perspective shifted its apparent position,
looked like a glory streaming from the very summit of the Eiger. It was
a good omen, if not in any more remote sense, yet as promising a fine
day. After a short climb we descended upon the Gugg, glacier, most
lamentably unpoetical of names, and mounted by it to the great plateau
which lies below the cliffs immediately under the col. We reached this
at about seven, and, after a short meal, carefully examined the route
above us. Half way between us and the col lay a small and apparently
level plateau of snow. Once upon it we felt confident that we could get
to the top....
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