The Ascent of the Matterhorn E-Book

Edward Whymper

• Herausgeber: Gibson Square
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 590

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

'Glorious.' BILL BRYSONArmed with a pick-axe, clad in tweeds and hobnailed leather shoes, Edward Whymper was the first to climb the Matterhorn in 1865. It created a scandal, as four of his party fell to their deaths. These vivid memoirs spelled the birth of mountaineering, capturing the excitement, triumph and tragedy that would hover over the new sport. Causing over 500 deaths since, the Matterhorn has remained both a treacherous and irresistible sports adventure. Whymper was also a photography pioneer and his forgotten climbing photographs are published for the first time'[A] fresh and exciting read.' Chris Bonnington'Unapproachable in Alpine literature… you can almost hear the tinkle of bells on the Alps; you breathe the fresh fragrance of the pine trees.' THE TIMES'The vigour and power that only personal observation can give.' BIRMINGHAM POST'An exceptional book.' HERALD (GLASGOW).'A classic of… all storytelling.' DAILY TELEGRAPH

Leseprobe

Contents

FOREWORD

EDWARD WHYMPER

THE ASCENT OF THE MATTERHORN

PREFACE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

APPENDIX

Notes

INDEX

THE ASCENT OF THE MATTERHORN

SCRAMBLES IN THE ALPS

THE ASCENT OF THE MATTERHORN

Edward Whymper

gibson square

Toil and pleasure, in their natures opposite, are yet linked

together in a kind of necessary connection.

—Livy.

Editor, Martin Rynja (editor of Climbing Everest: The Collected George Mallory)

This first edition published by Gibson Square: the drawings were made on the wood by H. J. Boot, Gustave Doré, C. Johnson, J. Mahoney, J. W. North, P. Skelton, W. G. Smith, C. J. Staniland, and J. Wolf; and were Engraved by J. W. and Edward Whymper. The photographs were taken by Edward Whymper.

email: [email protected]

website: www.gibsonsquare.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library.

Copyright © Gibson Square Books © Foreword, Theresa May © Edward Whymper, Martin Rynja. All photographs © The Alpine Club, London.

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FOREWORD

Theresa May

A glance through the catalogue of the Alpine Club Library shows that Edward Whymper was about so much more than the Matterhorn. Yet it is the Matterhorn that has defined him over the years—and his first ascent of this iconic mountain that defined the relationship between Britain and the Alps and opened up Alpinism to the rest of the world. How ironic therefore that his fame came as much from the drama and tragedy of the descent of the mountain as from the victory and glory of its ascent.

Walking through Zermatt, the Matterhorn is ever present. For most of the time it is a gentle giant lending character to the village, but there is a particular spot in Zermatt where the Matterhorn appears as a dark looming presence towering over the small village below. Seeing that view, it is easy to understand the impact the mountain and the seeming inability to tame it had on the local populace, and why the first ascent by Whymper was so significant. In a single day he changed the future of Zermatt and its people, put British climbers firmly on the Alpine map and went from being a hobby mountaineer to the most famous mountaineer in the world. Yet it came at a cost including the life of Whymper’s friend, the guide Michel Croz.

We do not know the truth of what happened on the descent of the Matterhorn. Were the deaths of four of the party of seven due to the mistake of including an inexperienced climber among them? Perhaps more to the point why was a worn rope taken and then used on the descent? Perhaps we will never know the full truth. Yet the story of that first ascent will always be associated with the sorrow of the loss of life on the way down.

Just as Whymper was about more than the Matterhorn, so this book is about more than a description of the victorious ascent. Whymper whets the appetite with his various descriptions of other climbs in the region and his different attempts to tame this mountain. And of course we share with him the moment of revelation when he came to understand that there was another previously untried route up to the peak.

I have spent many summers walking around Zermatt, and toiling up some of the steep slopes have often reflected on how fit Whymper and all the climbers had to be to achieve some of the climbs and walks he describes in the times he quotes—not with the benefits of modern kit but with heavy and inflexible clothes and boots. And climbing is dangerous. Whymper does not hide from explaining the hazards of climbing but does so in a way which is at once accessible to the non-climber.

Edelweiss welcome to Zermatt, by Edward Whymper.

This book, however, is about more than climbing. It includes vignettes of life at the time. He describes the travel arrangements, dealing with customs agents, problems with porters—and mountain goats who have to be sent away with brandy. It is a social history describing a way of life in the valley that was set to change the moment he and his party reached the peak.

We can only imagine the mixed emotions of triumph and grief that Whymper felt writing about his greatest mountaineering achievement while mourning the death of his friend Croz and the loss of three other lives. He had tamed the mountain, but in its own way the mountain had tamed him. What we do know is that this important ascent was to change the course of history for Zermatt and its people, change the relationship of the British with the Alps and leave a lasting legacy for mountaineering.

EDWARD WHYMPER

27 April 1840 (Lambeth)—11 September 1911 (Chamonix)

In many ways, the 17-year-old Edward Whymper expressed the buoyancy of 19th century Britain when he wrote in 1857 that ideas were ‘floating in my head’. He dreamed of going ‘to sea’, but also that he should be a judge, or ‘one day be Prime Minister’, or that he ‘should one day turn out some great person, be the person of my day’. Charles Darwin would shortly publish On the Origin of Species (1859), revealing how little we knew ourselves. Whymper felt, like many others, so little was known about ‘our little planet’. There was a sudden expansion of knowledge, technology, and living standards, and he was swept up in his generation’s optimism that opportunities in the world at large were limitless. By the 1850s, railway lines had shrunk distances like no decade before and brought Europe within easy reach. Literacy suddenly leapt as working hours decreased and there was an enormous demand for books, magazines and other media—particularly illustrated ones that revealed the exotic aspect of the unknown natural world. Everyone could take part in the quest for knowledge and satisfy their curiosity.

Moreover, the young Whymper found himself at the heart of this revolution. Whymper was born into a family of engravers based in South London’s Lambeth and engraving was a booming industry whose crest was to propel him (and his eight brothers—younger brother Henry’s home in Murree near Rawalpindi-Islamabad would five decades later become the official residence of the Prime Minister of Pakistan) around the world. It was a commission by publisher William Longman in the summer of 1860 that first sent the 20-year-old Whymper on his way to the Alps in order to gather illustrations for the waxing appetite for mountain books among Britain’s growing army of readers. Longman himself was a member of the Alpine Club founded three years earlier by 38 enthusiasts and he was the publisher of the members’ journal.

A dinner on 9 August 1860 in Zermatt accidentally proved a defining moment for Whymper. Unbeknownst to him, it set in motion what was to be a leading role in one of the greatest scandals of Victorian Britain. During this exuberant evening, he met Alpine Club members Leslie Stephen (Virginia Woolf’s father) and travel writer Thomas Hinchcliff. Both had him spell-bound with tales of their daring conquest that day to be the first to reach the summit of the Alphubel, north of Zermatt. Whymper’s destiny instantly projected itself on the ocean of spires suspended above Zermatt. Around the town alone 18 peaks pierced the sky, most of which had not yet been climbed (he describes 13 Alpine firsts in the three years to 1865). It included the daunting silhouette that hovered fierce over Zermatt, which some Swiss guides refused to go near—‘anywhere but the Matterhorn’. In the French Alps, it was equally a mer à boire.

Whymper’s first depiction of the Alps at Interlaken, 30 July 1860.

Like the big unfolding ideas of the age, everything about Zermatt was fresh. Its prosperity—like that of the Whympers—was newly minted and construction was buzzing around the town to keep up with demand from Brits wanting to be close to the rugged Swiss mountainside. In 1839, the town had but a plain chalet with 3 boarding rooms. But after John Ruskin’s ecstatic visit in 1844, the Matterhorn’s fame led in rapid succession to the building of two grand hotels in 1854—the Monte Rosa and the Mont Cervin, and soon many more—to house tourists who flocked to see the Swiss Alps for themselves. Zermatt’s romantic nature—both ‘savage and grand as well as peaceful and tender’ in Whymper’s words—appealed to every type of sensibility. A torrent of Matterhorn aficionados gladly walked the 25 miles up the valley from Visp, the last town connected to the outside world with proper roads.

Over the next few years, as publishers’ demand for illustrations grew exponentially, money would pour in for Whymper from his skills as a celebrity engraver. Despite being in his early twenties, plenty of funds allowed him to spend his summers abroad in tandem with the leisure classes who took to the newly-laid international railways like ducks to water. At this early moment in Alpine tourism, there were only the contours of the different types of visitors. Sightseers would stay at Zermatt’s Mont Cervin, named after its main attraction, the Matterhorn, but the more ambitious travellers, such as most Alpine Club members, would stay at the Monte Rosa, named after the mountain whose summit was first vanquished in 1855, the year prior to the hotel’s opening.

Monte Rosa’s guests were mainly made up of Cambridge alumni with a fair sprinkling of schoolboys from Rugby, Harrow and Eton, as well as the other public schools. In the convivial, wine-, beer-, champagne- and enthusiasm-filled atmosphere of these Alpinists Whymper was like a fish in water. Unlike the general run of Zermatt visitors, there was very little room for condescension in the mountain ranges. Roaming through the untrodden Alps required reliance on local experts to find one’s way safely through the forests, rocks, ice and snow, and avoiding having to stay overnight on a glacier—something considered at the time to be avoided at all costs. If close proximity for several days to a hunter or workman triggered status anxiety despite sturdy tweeds, the wilderness, crags and crannies, ice, snow and glaciers of the Alps were the wrong place to be.

Only four years into the existence of the Alpine Club, its by now 158 members were by no means all hardened climbers. They were a broad church who distinguished themselves through ‘literary contributions or mountain exploits’. The latter group themselves had not yet divided into those who walked or rambled, or those who had mountaineering skills that allowed them to take exceptional risks to conquer all of what local guides called the ‘disagreeables’ that came one’s way up in the Alpine heights. The river that ran through the various tribes was neatly expressed in 1862 by Leslie Stephen’s brother James, also an Etonian and Cambridge alumnus, as well as Alpine Club member, during a scrambling tour around Zermatt with Whymper: ‘I want very much to ascend these high mountains, but do not want to break my neck’.

Whymper viscerally felt that here was his chance to stand out from others, and make a name for himself. He was more than happy to accept its risks. Despite a lack of training in technical climbs that would today be commonplace, he had a natural gift for climbing, self-confidence, fearlessness and attentativeness. In 1862, his third year in the Alps, he climbed the Matterhorn on his own on a whim. Reaching 500 ft higher than anyone before him, he gained kudos and a reputation as a daredevil upon his safe return. During the four years before he conquered the Matterhorn’s summit in 1865, at least two previous climbs would have ended in tragedy but for sheer luck. On the way down from his solo climb he fell 200ft, narrowly coming to a halt before a yawning precipice with an 800 ft drop. In the words of The Times, he had ‘one of the most miraculous escapes from instant death’. Whymper himself wrote that he would have been ‘utterly smashed’. And, in 1864, he was part of a group of guides and Alpine Club members who tried a new mountain pass across to Zermatt. A massive tower of ice (sérac) of several storeys high crushed the group’s path moments after they had traversed it. The only lesson drawn from these years—and he was not the only one—was that a summit climb needed at least more than one climber with experience to succeed.

But it wasn’t just Alpine tourism that energised the Alpine Club, or indeed Whymper. Climbing mountains also had a scientific purpose in these early days of understanding the earth’s geology. To fuel this knowledge, academics needed rock samples and relied on the restless souls who had the money and drive to risk life and limb to go and collect them from around the world. Whymper’s Alpine Club rival for the summit of the Matterhorn was Professor John Tyndall, one of Britain’s foremost geologists. Throughout his life Whymper himself was to correspond with academic geologists and share with them the specimens he collected during his travels and expeditions. Only months before he successfully climbed the Matterhorn, Darwin’s half-cousin Francis Galton had proposed Whymper as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Whymper was also a member of the British Association, the science equivalent of the Alpine Society that gathered autodidacts like Whymper and academics alike in the developing pursuit of science. The famous 1860 debate between Bishop Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley on Darwin’s theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species was organised by this association, and Whymper himself had made the engravings for Darwin’s book.

Whymper was equally fascinated by expedition technology and, dabbling, invented the blanket bag (two blankets sewn together to form a sleeping bag) as well as an inexpensive lightweight climbing tent that would remain an essential part of the mountaineer’s kit for the next century. His quirkier contributions to science included a propeller-driven kayak for arctic exploration (tested in Lambeth’s public baths) and a vacuum sealed steak in pursuit of an improved barometer.

In his own profession, Whymper was enthralled by photography—the technology that would render obsolete his skill as engraver 25 years later—when photographs could be transferred directly to book pages. As a 15 year old he had seen Roger Fenton’s sensational Crimean War pictures, the first ‘war’ reportage, and thought the technology had reached a ‘splendid degree of perfection’. Engravers like him would often buy photographs and turn them into book illustrations. This process required much skilled attention to detail. Whymper’s breakthrough as a 17-year-old engraver followed after drawing on to a wooden print block a photograph of Peterborough cathedral over a period of six weeks. The prize was a commission by John Murray for a book engraving, which involved another long period spent on engraving the hard wood by judiciously removing the drawing’s ‘white’ sections so that only the raised parts would be inked on to the book’s folios. Printing itself required further painstaking skill to achieve a consistent quality in each bound copy.

Whymper’s engraving of his propellor-driven kayak, first tested in Lambeth’s public baths.

Whymper’s self-made success allowed him to pay for guides, supplies and carriers even when Alpinist peers didn’t have the funds to pay their share. As a 27 year old, he could even afford to mount his own expedition to Greenland two years after his ascent of the Matterhorn without going through the Royal Navy to tap its bottomless resources like most British explorers did. The cost of this expedition would add up to the monumental sum of £900, on top of not working for a year.

With hindsight, his twenties proved a halcyon decade. Later in life the need for work would more often than not thwart his plans to explore other parts of the world. A planned expedition to Mount Everest was abandoned as too expensive, and an association began with Heinrich Schliemann to illustrate his sensational books on the archeaological discoveries of ancient Troy and Mycenae. Instead, an expedition to the Ecuadorian Andes was mounted in 1879, costing an immense £1700 and another year without work. A plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro was mooted in 1884 but shelved and, in 1892, the 52 year old would wistfully joke with K2 explorer Martin Conway, who was half his age, that the two of them could cover the whole of the Himalayas if only they each had £5000 a year to spare. By then Whymper had taken a day job at publisher’s Cassell’s and when he died in 1911 the value of his estate amounted to £5000—a respectable sum, but not one that had had wriggle room to repeat his previous expeditions.

It was during this interlude of unalloyed optimism that Whymper set off with three guides and three fellow Brits for the summit of the Matterhorn, which is the terminus of his memoir below.

Whymper’s portrait of Alpinism as a young man captures like no other the enthusiasm surrounding the birth of mountaineering. His warts-and-all story also vividly drew the different characters of the local population like the best travel books. There is both the mastery of the guides, their dubious hygiene, occasional stubbornness and the fact that for these poor regions the visitors were mainly a welcome source of summer income. Bad blood arose if an expedition was not accompanied by a local guide who would then be able to guide future mountaineers up in the years to come. Furthermore, the ascent of the Matterhorn was also a race against time and competitors. Whymper’s rival Tyndall would likely have reached the summit of the Matterhorn from the Breuil (Italian) side in 1862 if he had not appointed a French guide and insulted two local Breuil guides by taking them on as carriers only. As it was, he gave up after his failed attempt and advised Whymper to have nothing to do with the mountain. Even in 1865, the odds of success looked poor for Whymper. His preferred Breuil guide was secretly part of the swell of Italian nationalism after General Garibaldi’s victories and Italy’s unification in 1861, and Whymper was wrong-footed, too, by this guide, who gained a lead of three days.

In the end, it was Whymper’s application of his geological knowledge to the Matterhorn that led him to triumph nonetheless. Despite the handicap of several days’ delay, by ascending the Matterhorn from the Zermatt side, he was able to arrive at the Matterhorn’s summit first. No one had ever before climbed the Matterhorn’s daunting Swiss face as it was considered to be entirely inaccessible. Whymper reckoned, correctly as he proved, that there would be fewer ‘disagreeables’ on the Swiss side than on the Breuil side.

His impromptu party left in the morning of 13th July 1865. There was Michel Croz, Whymper’s personal guide from Chamonix with whom he had reached the Aiguille Verte in the French Alps in 1864. The euphoria of that triumph had led on their return to ‘the utmost disinclination to do anything except smoke and drink champagne or beer’ after which Whymper had ‘retired to bed with a dancing head’. The most experienced English climber of Whymper’s group was the 37-year-old reverend Charles Hudson who had led the team of eight to the peak of the Monte Rosa in 1855. In June 1865, he had just climbed the Mont Blanc with his travel companion, Douglas Hadow, an Harrovian and the son of the chair of P&O shipping, who had turned 19 in May; he keenly joined Hudson on the Matterhorn as well. An 18-year-old Scot, Lord Francis Douglas, was the fourth British member of Whymper’s team. Days before, he had been the first to summit the Gabelhorn and had had a narrow escape from death when he tumbled from its deceptive snow peak. Roped in, he had been saved by his guide who held the fall and reeled him back in. The guides of the four Brits carried the stores, tents and ropes and, up the mountain, did the hard skilled labour of carving steps in the ice faces on the way for their clients. Given the many dangers of the Matterhorn, their expert opinion weighed as much as, if not easily more than, those of their notional masters.

It is mountaineering lore that the calamity described in this book ended the Golden Decade of Alpinism. Whether this description is entirely accurate is a moot point, even if the disaster on the Matterhorn suddenly made Alpinism a fevered topic of horrified debate around the world. The return alive of only three of a party of seven was doubtless a tragedy, but whole groups of climbers had fallen to their deaths before in the Alps without causing much clamour, outrage or newspaper interest. What was different in 1865, however, was the fact that one of the dead, Lord Francis Douglas, was the heir apparent to the Marquess of Queensberry. The title was one of the oldest in Britain and the circumstances of his death in particular shocked its small ruling class to the core, Queen Victoria most of all. She thought that a distinguished member of her realm’s peerage had no business dangling at the end of a rope on a mountain peak and suggested her government consider a ban on climbing.

The new generation of adventurers of which Whymper was part had long ruffled feathers among conservatives as much as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Britain’s establishment was deeply suspicious of knowledge for its own sake—which sounded frivolous—and against acquiring it particularly when paired with lethal danger—which certainly was frivolous. In 1852, media mogul John Murray had still attributed ascents of mountains to ‘persons of unsound mind’ in his popular Handbook for Travellers to Switzerland (despite these words, within a few years Murray joined the mania and succumbed to the Alpine Club membership).

Darwin’s book on evolution had offended the orthodoxy of mankind as the pinnacle of god’s creation by suggesting we descended instead from an ape ancestor. By analogy, the Matterhorn train of events offended the deeply felt sanctity of the class divide. Lord Francis Douglas’s life had proved to be at the mercy of members of the lesser classes (as well as being lashed to humble foreigners, perhaps). It was a world upside down. Adapting Wilberforce’s taunt of Darwin, one might it could be said that in the mountains the monkeys appeared in charge. An outraged leader in The Times fulminated against, lest ‘the best blood of England waste itself scaling hitherto inaccessible peaks’. Moral bellwether Charles Dickens weighed in and thundered, ‘There has been too much nonsense got up, on the renown to be won by scrambling high, higher, highest… simply because nobody has been up there before.’

The odour of scandal was as strong in Zermatt where the dead had to be retrieved and buried after an inquest. The Breuil guide who had lost to Whymper tried again a few days later from the Italian side and reached the slightly lower ‘Italian peak’ of the Matterhorn. He proudly planted the new national tricolore and steadily began guiding climbers to the Matterhorn’s summit from Breuil. But on the Zermatt side, guides refused resolutely to have anything to do with the mountain. They would go anywhere but the Matterhorn, dismissing the Matterhorn’s Swiss side as too risky. It was only when the Canadian Lucy Walker retraced Whymper’s route from Zermatt in 1871 as the first woman to reach the summit that Swiss guides changed their minds and began offering their services to anyone interested. Paradoxically, the calls by conservatives for the proscription of climbing abated, too, after Walker’s achievement. (Walker and Whymper were Alpine friends and, without prejudice where contemporaries would see endless objections and caveats, he supported and lauded female explorers and climbers in print and in private throughout his life.

Whymper himself, however, remained deeply affected by the loss of those he felt responsible for. In 1866, the year after his victory, he wrote to a friend, ‘I have done with the Alps’. It would be another 9 years before he returned to climb the Matterhorn. On his first mountain conquest of Mont Pelvoux in the French Alps, he had written triumphantly in 1861 that going up a mountain made him ‘look with pleasure on the past, and forward with hope to the future’. No longer. As a 50 year old, he wrote ruefully about the Matterhorn, ‘Very seldom indeed in my life have I experienced so vividly what it is to have only a step between myself and death’.

Being the only British survivor of the dramatic ascent had made Whymper a hero. It was what he had hoped for when he was a 17-year-old, though not quite in this way, with the whiff of notoriety that never quite went away. In the years following the debacle, everyone had an opinion on what happened and who was to blame and how, some assigning any number of criminal actions to the survivors. In Zermatt his presence attracted a flock of the curious, attention that was unwelcome enough for him to make him return only sporadically for the rest of his life (though he would return briefly in the month of his death in 1911).

Whymper’s first return up the Matterhorn was in August 1874, by which time many climbers had already reached and returned from the summit safely from Zermatt and Breuil. Whymper’s sole purpose on this occasion was to make photographs for the third edition of this book which would appear in 1880 under the title, The Ascent of the Matterhorn. The only other time he returned to the mountain was in 1883, also to take photographs; he needed evocative slides for the lecture tours around the world that he was to start. A travelling camera had still been too expensive to take on his Greenland expedition in 1867, but technology had since advanced with leaps and bounds. Owning several portable cameras over the years, he sought to capture with this new medium the awe of unspoilt nature he had first felt as a twenty year old. In 1880, book printing did not yet permit inclusion of these atmospheric photographs, and he used them to create new engravings for his book. It is the Matterhorn photographs from 1874, and subsequent trips in 1892-95, that are reproduced below, illustrating for the first time Whymper’s tale—their intended purpose.

By 1883, he was generally praised as one of Britain’s notable explorers. The dramatic story of the Matterhorn deaths appealed to and inspired writers such as Alphonse Daudet, Thomas Hardy, and Mark Twain. His lecture tours and the slides that he had made to accompany them took him around Britain and the wider world, drawing in an audience of many thousands. One audience member was the young Winston Churchill when Whymper gave his slide lecture at Harrow in the early 1890s. He was enthralled with the ‘great Mr Whymper’ and the lecture ‘with wonderful pictures of guides and tourists hanging on by their eyelids or standing with their backs to precipices which even in photographs made one squirm.’ As with many others who heard it, the lecture prompted Churchill to want to become a mountaineer and he climbed the Monte Rosa in 1894. Churchill remained passionate about the Swiss Alps for his entire life, though he gave up climbing because on his sorties he experienced mountain sickness and sunburn, presumably because of not wearing face protection against the sun, as warned by his hero.

While Whymper’s own enthusiasm for ascending peaks was mitigated by the Matterhorn, the one enthusiasm of those heady early days he never lost was the bibulousness partnered with a lifelong restlessness and need for strenuous exercise and long walks. One morning, in Chamonix in the summer of 1900, he walked up to his bootmaker Casimir Giraud, ‘little nails’, who had been his first porter in 1861 and had ‘a very handsome déjeuner—Chablis, champagne, café and cognac, omelette au rhum’. Doubtless, this genial breakfast brought back happy memories of those spirited Alpine days when a banquet of as yet untouched and unexplored peaks spread before his young and eager eyes.

THE ASCENT OF THE MATTERHORN

Edward Whymper in his twenties with his favoured pick-axe, before conquering the Matterhorn.

PREFACE

In the year 1860, shortly before leaving England for a long continental tour, the late Mr. William Longman requested me to make for him some sketches of the great Alpine peaks. At this time I had only a literary acquaintance with mountaineering, and had even not seen—much less set foot upon—a mountain. Amongst the peaks which were upon my list was Mont Pelvoux, in Dauphiné. The sketches that were required of it were to celebrate the triumph of some Englishmen who intended to make its ascent. They came—they saw—but they did not conquer. By a mere chance I fell in with a very agreeable Frenchman who accompanied this party, and was pressed by him to return to the assault. In 1861 we did so, with my friend Macdonald—and we conquered. This was the origin of my scrambles amongst the Alps.

The ascent of Mont Pelvoux (including the disagreeables) was a very delightful scramble. The mountain air did not act as an emetic; the sky did not look black, instead of blue; nor did I feel tempted to throw myself over precipices. I hastened to enlarge my experience, and went to the Matterhorn. I was urged towards Mont Pelvoux by those mysterious impulses which cause men to peer into the unknown. Not only was this mountain reputed to be the highest in France, and on that account was worthy of attention, but it was the dominating point of a most picturesque district of the greatest interest, which, to this day, remains almost unexplored! The Matterhorn attracted me simply by its grandeur. It was considered to be the most thoroughly inaccessible of all mountains, even by those who ought to have known better. Stimulated to make fresh exertions by one repulse after another, I returned, year after year, as I had opportunity, more and more determined to find a way up it, or to prove it to be really inaccessible.

The chief part of this volume is occupied by the history of these attacks on the Matterhorn, and the other excursions that are described have all some connection, more or less remote, with that mountain or with Mont Pelvoux. All are new excursions (that is, excursions made for the first time), unless the contrary is pointed out. Some have been passed over very briefly, and entire ascents or descents have been disposed of in a single line. Generally speaking, the salient points alone have been dwelt upon, and the rest has been left to the imagination. This treatment has spared the reader from much useless repetition.

In endeavouring to make the book of some use to those who may wish to go mountain-scrambling, whether in the Alps or elsewhere, prominence has been given to our mistakes and failures; and to some it may seem that our practice must have been bad if the principles which are laid down are sound, or that the principles must be unsound if the practice was good. The principles which are brought under the notice of the reader are, however, deduced from long experience, which experience had not been gained at the time that the blunders were perpetrated; and, if it had been acquired at an earlier date, there would have been fewer failures to record.

My scrambles amongst the Alps were a sort of apprenticeship in the art of mountaineering, and they were, for the most part, carried out in the company of men who were masters of their craft. In any art the learner, who wishes to do good work, does well to associate himself with master workmen, and I attribute much of the success which is recorded in this volume to my having been frequently under the guidance of the best mountaineers of the time. The hints and observations which are dispersed throughout the volume are not the result of personal experience only, they have been frequently derived from professional mountaineers, who have studied the art from their youth upwards.

Without being unduly discursive in the narrative, it has not been possible to include in the text all the observations which are desirable for the general reader, and a certain amount of elementary knowledge has been pre-supposed, which perhaps some do not possess; and the opportunity is now taken of making a few remarks which may serve to elucidate those which follow.

When a man who is not a born mountaineer gets upon the side of a mountain, he speedily finds out that walking is an art; and very soon wishes that he could be a quadruped or a centipede, or anything except a biped; but, as there is a difficulty in satisfying these very natural desires, he ultimately procures an alpenstock and turns himself into a tripod. This simple implement is invaluable to the mountaineer, and when he is parted from it involuntarily (and who has not been?) he is inclined to say, just as one may remark of other friends, “You were only a stick—a poor stick—but you were a true friend, and I should like to be in your company again.”Respecting the size of the alpenstock, let it be remarked that it may be nearly useless if it be too long or too short. It should always be shorter than the person who carries it, but it may be any length you like between three-fifths of your height and your extreme altitude. It should be made of ash, of the very best quality; and should support your weight upon its centre when it is suspended at its two ends. Unless shod with an iron point it can scarcely be termed an alpenstock, and the nature of the point is of some importance. The kind I prefer is shown in the annexed illustration. It has a long tang running into the wood, is supported by a rivetted collar, and its termination is extremely sharp. With a point of this description steps can be made in ice almost as readily as with an axe.

A volume might be written upon the use of the alpenstock. Its principal use is as a third leg, to extend one’s base line; and when the beginner gets this well into his head he finds the implement of extraordinary value. In these latter times the pure and simple alpenstock has gone out of fashion, and mountaineers now almost universally carry a stick with a point at one end and an axe-head at the other. A moveable axe-head is still a desideratum. There is a pick-axe made at Birmingham with a moveable head which is better than any other kind that I have seen, but the head is too clumsy to be held in the hand, and various improvements will have to be effected in it before it will be fit for use in mountaineering. Still, its principle appears to me to be capable of adaptation, and on that account I have introduced it here.

POINT OF ALPENSTOCK (left) Birmingham Pick-axe with moveable head (right)

After the alpenstock, or axe-alpenstock, it is of most importance for the mountaineer to supply himself with plenty of good rope. Enough has been said on this subject in different parts of the narrative, as well as in regard to tents. Few other articles are necessary, though many others are desirable, to carry about, and amongst the most important may be reckoned some simple means of boiling water and cooking. At considerable altitudes above the tree-line, it is frequently impossible to carry up wood enough for a camp-fire, and nothing but spirits of wine can be employed. The well-known and convenient so-called “Russian furnace” is the most compact form of spirit lamp that I know, and wonders can be effected with one that is only three inches in diameter. In conjunction with a set of tins like those figured here (which are constructed to be used either with a wood fire or over a spirit lamp), all the cooking can be done that the Alpine tourist requires. For prolonged expeditions of a serious nature a more elaborate equipage is necessary; but upon such small ones as are made in the Alps it would be unnecessarily encumbering yourself to take a whole batterie de cuisine.1

Russian Furnace (left) Cooking Tins (right)

Before passing on to speak of clothing, a word upon snow-blindness will not be out of place. Very fine language is sometimes used to express the fact that persons suffer from their eyes becoming inflamed; and there is one well-known traveller, at least, who, when referring to snow-blindness, speaks habitually of the distressing effects which are produced by “the reverberation of the snow.” Snow-blindness is a malady which touches all mountain-travellers sooner or later, for it is found impossible in practice always to protect the eyes with the goggles which are shown here. In critical situations almost every one removes them. The beginner should, however, note that at great altitudes it is not safe to leave the eyes unprotected even on rocks, when the sun is shining brightly; and upon snow or ice it is indispensable to shade them in some manner, unless you wish to be placed hors de combat on the next day. Should you unfortunately find yourself in this predicament through the intensity of the light, there is no help but in sulphate of zinc and patience. Of the former material a half-ounce will be sufficient for a prolonged campaign, as a lotion compounded with two or three grains to an ounce of water will give relief; but of patience you can hardly lay in too large a stock, as a single bad day sometimes throws a man on his back for weeks.2

arctic cap (left) Snow Spectacles (middle) the complete disguise (right)

The whole face suffers under the alternation of heat, cold, and glare, and few mountain-travellers remain long without having their visages blistered and cracked in all directions. Now, in respect to this matter, prevention is better than cure; and, though these inconveniences cannot be entirely escaped, they may, by taking trouble, be deferred for a long time. As a travelling cap for mountain expeditions, there is scarcely anything better than the kind of helmet used by Arctic travellers, and with the eyes well shaded by its projecting peak and covered with the ordinary goggles one ought not, and will not, suffer much from snow-blindness. I have found, however, that it does not sufficiently shade the face, and that it shuts out sound too much when the side-flaps are down; and I consequently adopt a woollen headpiece, which almost entirely covers or shades the face and extends well downwards on to the shoulders. One hears sufficiently distinctly through the interstices of the knitted wool, and they also permit some ventilation—which the Arctic cap does not. It is a useful rather than an ornamental article of attire, and strangely affects one’s appearance.

For the most severe weather even this is not sufficient, and a mask must be added to protect the remainder of the face. You then present the appearance of the second woodcut, and are completely disguised. Your most intimate friends—even your own mother—will disown you, and you are a fit subject for endless ridicule.

The alternations of heat and cold are rapid and severe in all high mountain ranges, and it is folly to go about too lightly clad. Woollen gloves ought always to be in the mountaineer’s pocket, for in a single hour, or less, he may experience a fall in temperature of sixty to eighty degrees. But in respect to the nature of the clothing there is little to be said beyond that it should be composed of flannels and woollens.

Upon the important subject of boots much might be written. My friends are generally surprised to find that I use elastic-side boots whilst mountaineering, and condemn them under the false impression that they will not give support to the ankles, and will be pulled off when one is traversing deep snow. I have invariably used elastic-side boots on my mountain expeditions in the Alps and elsewhere, and have found that they give sufficient support to the ankles and never draw off. My Alpine boots have always been made by Norman—a maker who knows what the requirements are, and one who will give a good boot if allowed good time.

It is fully as important to have proper nails in the boots as it is to have good boots. The quantity is frequently overdone, and when there are too many they are absolutely dangerous. Ice-nails, which may be considered a variety of crampon, are an abomination. The nails should be neither too large nor too numerous, and they should be disposed everywhere irregularly—not symmetrically. They disappear one by one, from time to time; and the prudent mountaineer continually examines his boots to see that sufficient numbers are left.3 A handkerchief tied round the foot, or even a few turns of cord, will afford a tolerable substitute when nails cannot be procured.

Nailed boots and ice-axes

If the beginner supplies himself with the articles which have been named, he will be in possession of all the gear which is necessary for ordinary mountain excursions, and if he uses his plant properly he will avoid many of the disagreeables which are looked upon by some as almost unavoidable accompaniments of the sport of mountaineering. I have not throughout the volume ignored the dangers which are real and unavoidable, and say distinctly that too great watchfulness cannot be exercised at great altitudes. But I say now, as I have frequently said before, that the great majority of accidents which occur to mountaineers, especially to mountaineering amateurs in the Alps, are not the result of unavoidable dangers; and that they are for the most part the product of ignorance and neglect. I consider that falling rocks are the greatest danger which a mountaineer is likely to encounter, and in concluding these prefatory remarks I especially warn the novice against the things which tumble about the ears of unwary travellers.

BEACHY HEAD.

CHAPTER I

On the 23d of July 1860, I started for my first tour in the Alps. As we steamed out into the Channel, Beachy Head came into view, and recalled a scramble of many years ago. With the impudence of ignorance, my brother4 and I, schoolboys both, had tried to scale that great chalk cliff. Not the head itself—where sea-birds circle, and where the flints are ranged so orderly in parallel lines—but at a place more to the east, where the pinnacle called the Devil’s Chimney had fallen down. Since that time we have been often in dangers of different kinds, but never have we more nearly broken our necks than upon that occasion.

THE DEVIL OF NOTRE DAME.

In Paris I made two ascents. The first to the seventh floor of a house in the Quartier Latin—to an artist friend, who was engaged, at the moment of my entry, in combat with a little Jew. He hurled him with great good-will, and with considerable force, into some of his crockery, and then recommended me to go up the towers of Notre Dame. Half-an-hour later I stood on the parapet of the great west front, by the side of the leering fiend which for centuries has looked down upon the great city, and then took rail to Switzerland; saw the sunlight lingering on the giants of the Oberland; heard the echoes from the cow-horns in the Lauterbrunnen valley and the avalanches rattling off the Jungfrau; and crossed the Gemmi into the Valais.

I was bound for the valley of Saas, and my work took me high up the Alps on either side; far beyond the limit of trees and the tracks of tourists. The view from the slopes of the Weissmies, on the eastern side of the valley, 5000 or 6000 feet above the village of Saas, is perhaps the finest of its kind in the Alps. The full height of the three-peaked Mischabel (the highest mountain in Switzerland) is seen at one glance; 11,000 feet of dense forests, green alps, rocky pinnacles, and glittering glaciers. The peaks seemed to me then to be hopelessly inaccessible from this direction.

Visp.

I next descended the valley to the village of Stalden, and went up the Visp Thal to Zermatt, and stopped there several days. Numerous traces of the formidable earthquake-shocks of five years before still remained; particularly at St. Nicholas, where the inhabitants had been terrified beyond measure at the destruction of their churches and houses. At this place, as well as at Visp, a large part of the population was obliged to live under canvas for several months. It is remarkable that there was hardly a life lost on this occasion, although there were about fifty shocks, some of which were very severe.

Stalden.

At Zermatt I wandered in many directions, but the weather was bad, and my work was much retarded. One day, after spending a long time in attempts to sketch near the Hörnli, and in futile endeavours to seize the forms of the peaks as they for a few seconds peered out from above the dense banks of woolly clouds, I determined not to return to Zermatt by the usual path, and to cross the Gorner glacier to the Riffel hotel. After a rapid scramble over the polished rocks and snowbeds which skirt the base of the Théodule glacier, and wading through some of the streams which flow from it, at that time much swollen by the late rains, the first difficulty was arrived at, in the shape of a precipice about three hundred feet high. It seemed that it would be easy enough to cross the glacier if the cliff could be descended; but higher up, and lower down, the ice appeared, to my inexperienced eyes, to be impassable for a single person. The general contour of the cliff was nearly perpendicular, but it was a good deal broken up, and there was little difficulty in descending by zigzagging from one mass to another. At length there was a long slab, nearly smooth, fixed at an angle of about forty degrees between two wall-sided pieces of rock. Nothing, except the glacier, could be seen below. It was an awkward place, but I passed it at length by lying across the slab, putting the shoulders stiffly against one side, and the feet against the other, and gradually wriggling down, by first moving the legs and then the back. When the bottom of the slab was gained a friendly crack was seen, into which the point of the baton could be stuck, and I dropped down to the next piece. It took a long time coming down that little bit of cliff, and for a few seconds it was satisfactory to see the ice close at hand. In another moment a second difficulty presented itself. The glacier swept round an angle of the cliff, and as the ice was not of the nature of treacle or thin putty, it kept away from the little bay, on the edge of which I stood. We were not widely separated, but the edge of the ice was higher than the opposite edge of rock; and worse, the rock was covered with loose earth and stones which had fallen from above. All along the side of the cliff, as far as could be seen in both directions, the ice did not touch it, but there was this marginal crevasse, seven feet wide, and of unknown depth.

Zermatt, a 25 mile walk from Visp.

All this was seen at a glance, and almost at once I concluded that I could not jump the crevasse, and began to try along the cliff lower down; but without success, for the ice rose higher and higher, until at last further progress was stopped by the cliffs becoming perfectly smooth. With an axe it would have been possible to cut up the side of the ice; without one I saw there was no alternative but to return and face the jump.

Night was approaching, and the solemn stillness of the High Alps was broken only by the sound of rushing water or of falling rocks. If the jump should be successful—well; if not, I fell into that horrible chasm, to be frozen in, or drowned in that gurgling, rushing water. Everything depended on that jump. Again I asked myself, “Can it be done?” It must be. So, finding my stick was useless, I threw it and the sketch-book to the ice, and first retreating as far as possible, ran forward with all my might, took the leap, barely reached the other side, and fell awkwardly on my knees.

Standing on a glacier’s edge.

The glacier was crossed without further trouble, but the Riffel,5 which was then a very small building, was crammed with tourists, and could not take me in. As the way down was unknown to me, some of the people obligingly suggested getting a man at the chalets, otherwise the path would be certainly lost in the forest. On arriving at the chalets no man could be found, and the lights of Zermatt, shining through the trees, seemed to say, “Never mind a guide, but come along down, I’ll show you the way;” so off I went through the forest, going straight towards them. The path was lost in a moment, and was never recovered. I was tripped up by pine-roots, tumbled over rhododendron bushes, fell over rocks. The night was pitch dark, and after a time the lights of Zermatt became obscure, or went out altogether. By a series of slides, or falls, or evolutions more or less disagreeable, the descent through the forest was at length accomplished; but torrents of formidable character had still to be passed before one could arrive at Zermatt. I felt my way about for hours, almost hopelessly; by an exhaustive process at last discovering a bridge, and about midnight, covered with dirt and scratches, re-entered the inn which I had quit in the morning.

Old houses in Zermatt, the Mont Cervin hotel in the background.

Others besides tourists get into difficulties. A day or two afterwards, when on the way to my old station, near the Hörnli, I met a stout curé who had essayed to cross the Théodule pass. His strength or his wind had failed, and he was being carried down, a helpless bundle and a ridiculous spectacle, on the back of a lanky guide; while the peasants stood by, with folded hands, their reverence for the church almost overcome by their sense of the ludicrous.

I descended the valley, diverging from the path at Randa to mount the slopes of the Dom,6 in order to see the Weisshorn face to face. The latter mountain is the noblest in Switzerland, and from this direction it looks especially magnificent. On its north there is a large snowy plateau that feeds the glacier of which a portion is seen from Randa, and which on more than one occasion has destroyed that village. From the direction of the Dom (that is, immediately opposite) this Bies glacier seems to descend nearly vertically. It does not do so, although it is very steep. Its size is much less than formerly, and the lower portion, now divided into three tails, clings in a strange, weird-like manner to the cliffs, to which it seems scarcely possible that it can remain attached.

The Church in Difficulties (left) At the St. Bernard (right)

Arriving once more in the Rhone valley, I proceeded to Viesch, and from thence ascended the Eggischorn; on which unpleasant eminence I lost my way in a fog, and my temper shortly afterwards. Then, after crossing the Grimsel in a severe thunderstorm, passed on to Brienz, Interlachen, and Bern; and thence to Fribourg and Morat, Neuchâtel, Martigny, and the St. Bernard. The massive walls of the convent were a welcome sight as I waded through the snow-beds near the summit of the pass, and pleasant also was the courteous salutation of the brother who bade me enter. He wondered at the weight of my knapsack, and I at the hardness of his bread. The saying that the monks make the toast in the winter that they give to tourists in the following season is not founded on truth; the winter is their most busy time of the year. But it is true they have exercised so much hospitality, that at times they have not possessed the means to furnish the fuel for heating their chapel in the winter.7

Instead of descending to Aosta, I turned aside into the Val Pelline, in order to obtain views of the Dent d’Erin. The night had come on before Biona was gained, and I had to knock long and loud upon the door of the curé’s house before it was opened. An old woman, with querulous voice, and with a large goître, answered the summons, and demanded rather sharply what was wanted; but became pacific—almost good-natured—when a five-franc piece was held in her face, and she heard that lodging and supper were requested in exchange.

My directions asserted that a passage existed from Prerayen, at the head of this valley, to Breuil,8 in the Val Tournenche, and the old woman, now convinced of my respectability, busied herself to find a guide. Presently she introduced a native, picturesquely attired in high-peaked hat, braided jacket, scarlet waistcoat, and indigo pantaloons, who agreed to take me to the village of Val Tournenche. We set off early on the next morning, and got to the summit of the pass without difficulty. It gave me my first experience of considerable slopes of hard steep snow, and, like all beginners, I endeavoured to prop myself up with my stick, and kept it outside, instead of holding it between myself and the slope, and leaning upon it, as should have been done. The man enlightened me; but he had, properly, a very small opinion of his employer, and it is probably on that account that, a few minutes after we had passed the summit, he said he would not go any further and would return to Biona. All argument was useless; he stood still, and to everything that was said answered nothing but that he would go back. Being rather nervous about descending some long snow-slopes, which still intervened between us and the head of the valley, I offered more pay, and he went on a little way. Presently there were some cliffs down which we had to scramble. He called to me to stop, then shouted that he would go back, and beckoned to me to come up. On the contrary, I waited for him to come down; but instead of doing so, in a second or two he turned round, clambered deliberately up the cliff, and vanished. I supposed it was only a ruse to extort offers of more money, and waited for half-an-hour, but he did not appear again. This was rather embarrassing, for he carried off my knapsack. The choice of action lay between chasing him and going on to Breuil, risking the loss of my knapsack. I chose the latter course, and got to Breuil the same evening. The landlord of the inn, suspicious of a person entirely innocent of luggage, was doubtful if he could admit me, and eventually thrust me into a kind of loft, which was already occupied by guides and by hay. In later years we became good friends, and he did not hesitate to give credit and even to advance considerable sums.

The Village of Biona

My sketches from Breuil were made under difficulties, for my materials had been carried off. Nothing better than fine sugar-paper could be obtained, and the pencils seemed to contain more silica than plumbago. However, they were made, and the pass9 was again crossed, this time alone. By the following evening the old woman of Biona again produced the faithless guide. The knapsack was recovered after the lapse of several hours, and then I poured forth all the terms of abuse and reproach of which I was master. The man smiled when called a liar, and shrugged his shoulders when referred to as a thief, but drew his knife when spoken of as a pig.

CROSSING MONT CENIS.

The following night was spent at Courmayeur, and the day after I crossed the Col Ferret to Orsières, and on the next the Tête Noire to Chamonix. The Emperor Napoleon arrived on the same day, and access to the Mer de Glace was refused to tourists; but, by scrambling along the Plan des Aiguilles, I managed to outwit the guards, and to arrive at the Montanvert as the Imperial party was leaving: the same afternoon failing to get to the Jardin, but very nearly succeeding in breaking a leg by dislodging great rocks on the moraine of the glacier.

From Chamonix I went to Geneva, and thence by the Mont Cenis to Turin and to the Vaudois valleys. A long and weary day had ended when Paesana was reached. The inn was full, and I was tired, and about to go to bed, when some village stragglers entered and began to sing. They sang to Garibaldi! The tenor, a ragged fellow, whose clothes were not worth a shilling, took the lead with wonderful expression and feeling. The others kept their places, and sang in admirable time. For hours I sat enchanted; and, long after I retired, the sound of their melody could be heard, relieved at times by the treble of the girl who belonged to the inn.

The next morning I passed the little lakes, which are the sources of the Po, on my way into France. The weather was stormy, and misinterpreting the patois of some natives—who in reality pointed out the right way—I missed the track, and found myself under the cliffs of Monte Viso. A gap that was occasionally seen, in the ridge connecting it with the mountains to the east, tempted me up; and, after a battle with a snow-slope of excessive steepness, I reached the summit. The scene was extraordinary, and, in my experience, unique. To the north there was not a particle of mist, and the violent wind coming from that direction blew one back staggering. But on the side of Italy, the valleys were completely filled with dense masses of cloud to a certain level; and there—where they felt the influence of the wind—they were cut off as level as the top of a table, the ridges appearing above them.

“GARIBALDI!”

I raced down to Abries, and went on through the gorge of the Guil to Mont Dauphin. The next day found me at La Bessée, at the junction of the Val Louise with the valley of the Durance, in full view of Mont Pelvoux; and by chance I walked into a cabaret where a Frenchman was breakfasting, who, a few days before, had made an unsuccessful attempt to ascend that mountain with three Englishmen and the guide Michel Croz of Chamonix;10 a right good fellow, by name Jean Reynaud.

The same night I slept at Briançon, intending to take the courier on the following day to Grenoble; but all places had been secured several days beforehand, so I set out at two p.m. on the next day for a seventy-mile walk. The weather was again bad; and on the summit of the Col de Lautaret I was forced to seek shelter in the wretched little hospice. It was filled with workmen who were employed on the road, and with noxious vapours which proceeded from them. The inclemency of the weather was preferable to the inhospitality of the interior. Outside, it was disagreeable, but grand; inside, it was disagreeable and mean.11