The Alps E-Book

Arnold Henry Moore Lunn

• Herausgeber: JH
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

His blend included scientific accuracy with emotional clarity. The above along with an excellent bibliography make this book an excellent starting off point for people fascinated by mountains and particularly the Swiss Alps.

His reference to Algernon Blackwood demonstrated to me the breadth of his understanding of people and these mountains. The Swiss Alps were, arguably, the life of Arnold Lunn.

Leseprobe

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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 10 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 11 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. 12

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 13 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 14 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? 15

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 16 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 17 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 18 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 19 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 20 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, 21 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. 22

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 23 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. 24 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 2526 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.

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 27 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 28 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 29 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, 30 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 31 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 32 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.