A Tramp Abroad
made it necessary for us to climb many long hours before we could hope
to see the sun himself, yet the whole air soon grew warmer after the
splendid birth of the day.”
He gazed at the lofty crown of Monte Rosa and the wastes of snow that
guarded its steep approaches, and the chief guide delivered the opinion
that no man could conquer their awful heights and put his foot upon that
summit. But the adventurers moved steadily on, nevertheless.
They toiled up, and up, and still up; they passed the Grand Plateau;
then toiled up a steep shoulder of the mountain, clinging like flies to
its rugged face; and now they were confronted by a tremendous wall
from which great blocks of ice and snow were evidently in the habit of
falling. They turned aside to skirt this wall, and gradually ascended
until their way was barred by a “maze of gigantic snow crevices,”--so
they turned aside again, and “began a long climb of sufficient steepness
to make a zigzag course necessary.”
Fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a moment or two. At one
of these halts somebody called out, “Look at Mont Blanc!” and “we were
at once made aware of the very great height we had attained by actually
seeing the monarch of the Alps and his attendant satellites right over
the top of the Breithorn, itself at least 14,000 feet high!”
These people moved in single file, and were all tied to a strong rope,
at regular distances apart, so that if one of them slipped on those
giddy heights, the others could brace themselves on their alpenstocks
and save him from darting into the valley, thousands of feet below. By
and by they came to an ice-coated ridge which was tilted up at a sharp
angle, and had a precipice on one side of it. They had to climb this, so
the guide in the lead cut steps in the ice with his hatchet, and as fast
as he took his toes out of one of these slight holes, the toes of the
man behind him occupied it.
“Slowly and steadily we kept on our way over this dangerous part of the
ascent, and I dare say it was fortunate for some of us that attention
was distracted from the head by the paramount necessity of looking after
the feet; FOR, WHILE ON THE LEFT THE INCLINE OF ICE WAS SO STEEP THAT
IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO SAVE HIMSELF IN CASE OF A SLIP,
UNLESS THE OTHERS COULD HOLD HIM UP, ON THE RIGHT WE MIGHT DROP A PEBBLE
FROM THE HAND OVER PRECIPICES OF UNKNOWN EXTENT DOWN UPON THE TREMENDOUS
GLACIER BELOW.
“Great caution, therefore, was absolutely necessary, and in this exposed
situation we were attacked by all the fury of that grand enemy of
aspirants to Monte Rosa--a severe and bitterly cold wind from the north.
The fine powdery snow was driven past us in the clouds, penetrating the
interstices of our clothes, and the pieces of ice which flew from the
blows of Peter's ax were whisked into the air, and then dashed over the
precipice. We had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from being
served in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then, in the more
violent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our alpenstocks into the ice
and hold on hard.”
Having surmounted this perilous steep, they sat down and took a brief
rest with their backs against a sheltering rock and their heels dangling
over a bottomless abyss; then they climbed to the base of another
ridge--a more difficult and dangerous one still:
“The whole of the ridge was exceedingly narrow, and the fall on each
side desperately steep, but the ice in some of these intervals between
the masses of rock assumed the form of a mere sharp edge, almost like a
knife; these places, though not more than three or four short paces
in length, looked uncommonly awkward; but, like the sword leading true
believers to the gates of Paradise, they must needs be passed before
we could attain to the summit of our ambition. These were in one or two
places so narrow, that in stepping over them with toes well turned
out for greater security, ONE END OF THE FOOT PROJECTED OVER THE AWFUL
PRECIPICE ON THE RIGHT, WHILE THE OTHER WAS ON THE BEGINNING OF THE
ICE SLOPE ON THE LEFT, WHICH WAS SCARCELY LESS STEEP THAN THE ROCKS. On
these occasions Peter would take my hand, and each of us stretching as
far as we could, he was thus enabled to get a firm footing two paces
or rather more from me, whence a spring would probably bring him to the
rock on the other side; then, turning around, he called to me to come,
and, taking a couple of steps carefully, I was met at the third by his
outstretched hand ready to clasp mine, and in a moment stood by his
side. The others followed in much the same fashion. Once my right foot
slipped on the side toward the precipice, but I threw out my left arm in
a moment so that it caught the icy edge under my armpit as I fell, and
supported me considerably; at the same instant I cast my eyes down the
side on which I had slipped, and contrived to plant my right foot on
a piece of rock as large as a cricket-ball, which chanced to protrude
through the ice, on the very edge of the precipice. Being thus anchored
fore and aft, as it were, I believe I could easily have recovered
myself, even if I had been alone, though it must be confessed the
situation would have been an awful one; as it was, however, a jerk from
Peter settled the matter very soon, and I was on my legs all right in an
instant. The rope is an immense help in places of this kind.”
Now they arrived at the base of a great knob or dome veneered with ice
and powdered with snow--the utmost, summit, the last bit of solidity
between them and the hollow vault of heaven. They set to work with their
hatchets, and were soon creeping, insectlike, up its surface, with their
heels projecting over the thinnest kind of nothingness, thickened up a
little with a few wandering shreds and films of cloud moving in a lazy
procession far below. Presently, one man's toe-hold broke and he fell!
There he dangled in mid-air at the end of the rope, like a spider, till
his friends above hauled him into place again.
A little bit later, the party stood upon the wee pedestal of the very
summit, in a driving wind, and looked out upon the vast green expanses
of Italy and a shoreless ocean of billowy Alps.
When I had read thus far, Harris broke into the room in a noble
excitement and said the ropes and the guides were secured, and asked if
I was ready. I said I believed I wouldn't ascend the Altels this time. I
said Alp-climbing was a different thing from what I had supposed it was,
and so I judged we had better study its points a little more before we
went definitely into it. But I told him to retain the guides and order
them to follow us to Zermatt, because I meant to use them there. I said
I could feel the spirit of adventure beginning to stir in me, and was
sure that the fell fascination of Alp-climbing would soon be upon me. I
said he could make up his mind to it that we would do a deed before
we were a week older which would make the hair of the timid curl with
fright.
This made Harris happy, and filled him with ambitious anticipations. He
went at once to tell the guides to follow us to Zermatt and bring all
their paraphernalia with them.
CHAPTER XXXV
[Swindling the Coroner]
A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How it takes possession
of a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him! I strode onward from
the Schwarenbach hostelry a changed man, a reorganized personality. I
walked into a new world, I saw with new eyes. I had been looking
aloft at the giant show-peaks only as things to be worshiped for their
grandeur and magnitude, and their unspeakable grace of form; I looked
up at them now, as also things to be conquered and climbed. My sense of
their grandeur and their noble beauty was neither lost nor impaired; I
had gained a new interest in the mountains without losing the old ones.
I followed the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye, and noted the
possibility or impossibility of following them with my feet. When I saw
a shining helmet of ice projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagine
I saw files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a gossamer
thread.
We skirted the lonely little lake called the Daubensee, and presently
passed close by a glacier on the right--a thing like a great river
frozen solid in its flow and broken square off like a wall at its mouth.
I had never been so near a glacier before.
Here we came upon a new board shanty, and found some men engaged in
building a stone house; so the Schwarenbach was soon to have a rival. We
bought a bottle or so of beer here; at any rate they called it beer, but
I knew by the price that it was dissolved jewelry, and I perceived by
the taste that dissolved jewelry is not good stuff to drink.
We were surrounded by a hideous desolation. We stepped forward to a sort
of jumping-off place, and were confronted by a startling contrast: we
seemed to look down into fairyland. Two or three thousand feet below us
was a bright green level, with a pretty town in its midst, and a silvery
stream winding among the meadows; the charming spot was walled in on all
sides by gigantic precipices clothed with pines; and over the pines, out
of the softened distances, rose the snowy domes and peaks of the Monte
Rosa region. How exquisitely green and beautiful that little valley down
there was! The distance was not great enough to obliterate details, it
only made them little, and mellow, and dainty, like landscapes and towns
seen through the wrong end of a spy-glass.
Right under us a narrow ledge rose up out of the valley, with a green,
slanting, bench-shaped top, and grouped about upon this green-baize
bench were a lot of black and white sheep which looked merely like
oversized worms. The bench seemed lifted well up into our neighborhood,
but that was a deception--it was a long way down to it.
We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road I have ever seen.
It wound its corkscrew curves down the face of the colossal precipice--a
narrow way, with always the solid rock wall at one elbow, and
perpendicular nothingness at the other. We met an everlasting procession
of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing up this steep
and muddy path, and there was no room to spare when you had to pass a
tolerably fat mule. I always took the inside, when I heard or saw the
mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall. I preferred the
inside, of course, but I should have had to take it anyhow, because
the mule prefers the outside. A mule's preference--on a precipice--is a
thing to be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside. His life
is mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers and packages which rest
against his body--therefore he is habituated to taking the outside edge
of mountain paths, to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or
banks on the other. When he goes into the passenger business he absurdly
clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger always
dangling over the great deeps of the lower world while that passenger's
heart is in the highlands, so to speak. More than once I saw a mule's
hind foot cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into the
bottom abyss; and I noticed that upon these occasions the rider, whether
male or female, looked tolerably unwell.
There was one place where an eighteen-inch breadth of light masonry had
been added to the verge of the path, and as there was a very sharp
turn here, a panel of fencing had been set up there at some time, as
a protection. This panel was old and gray and feeble, and the light
masonry had been loosened by recent rains. A young American girl came
along on a mule, and in making the turn the mule's hind foot caved all
the loose masonry and one of the fence-posts overboard; the mule gave a