A Tramp Abroad
a constant surprise to people. They are always saying, “Yes, he was
in Jerusalem when we heard of him last, but goodness knows where he is
now.”
Presently the Grandson rose to leave--discovered he had an appointment
with some Emperor, perhaps. He did his graces over again: gripped me
with one talon, at arm's-length, pressed his hat against his stomach
with the other, bent his body in the middle three times, murmuring:
“Pleasure, 'm sure; great pleasure, 'm sure. Wish you much success.”
Then he removed his gracious presence. It is a great and solemn thing to
have a grandfather.
I have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way, for what little
indignation he excited in me soon passed and left nothing behind it but
compassion. One cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum. I have tried
to repeat this lad's very words; if I have failed anywhere I have at
least not failed to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what he said.
He and the innocent chatterbox whom I met on the Swiss lake are the most
unique and interesting specimens of Young America I came across
during my foreign tramping. I have made honest portraits of them, not
caricatures.
The Grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five or six times as
an “old traveler,” and as many as three times (with a serene complacency
which was maddening) as a “man of the world.” There was something very
delicious about his leaving Boston to her “narrowness,” unreproved and
uninstructed.
I formed the caravan in marching order, presently, and after riding down
the line to see that it was properly roped together, gave the command to
proceed. In a little while the road carried us to open, grassy land. We
were above the troublesome forest, now, and had an uninterrupted view,
straight before us, of our summit--the summit of the Riffelberg.
We followed the mule-road, a zigzag course, now to the right, now to
the left, but always up, and always crowded and incommoded by going and
coming files of reckless tourists who were never, in a single instance,
tied together. I was obliged to exert the utmost care and caution, for
in many places the road was not two yards wide, and often the lower side
of it sloped away in slanting precipices eight and even nine feet deep.
I had to encourage the men constantly, to keep them from giving way to
their unmanly fears.
We might have made the summit before night, but for a delay caused by
the loss of an umbrella. I was allowing the umbrella to remain lost, but
the men murmured, and with reason, for in this exposed region we stood
in peculiar need of protection against avalanches; so I went into camp
and detached a strong party to go after the missing article.
The difficulties of the next morning were severe, but our courage
was high, for our goal was near. At noon we conquered the last
impediment--we stood at last upon the summit, and without the loss of a
single man except the mule that ate the glycerin. Our great achievement
was achieved--the possibility of the impossible was demonstrated, and
Harris and I walked proudly into the great dining-room of the Riffelberg
Hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner.
Yes, I had made the grand ascent; but it was a mistake to do it in
evening dress. The plug hats were battered, the swallow-tails were
fluttering rags, mud added no grace, the general effect was unpleasant
and even disreputable.
There were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel--mainly ladies and
little children--and they gave us an admiring welcome which paid us for
all our privations and sufferings. The ascent had been made, and the
names and dates now stand recorded on a stone monument there to prove it
to all future tourists.
I boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with a most curious result:
THE SUMMIT WAS NOT AS HIGH AS THE POINT ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE WHERE I
HAD TAKEN THE FIRST ALTITUDE. Suspecting that I had made an important
discovery, I prepared to verify it. There happened to be a still higher
summit (called the Gorner Grat), above the hotel, and notwithstanding
the fact that it overlooks a glacier from a dizzy height, and that the
ascent is difficult and dangerous, I resolved to venture up there and
boil a thermometer. So I sent a strong party, with some borrowed hoes,
in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig a stairway in the soil all
the way up, and this I ascended, roped to the guides. This breezy height
was the summit proper--so I accomplished even more than I had originally
purposed to do. This foolhardy exploit is recorded on another stone
monument.
I boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this spot, which purported to
be two thousand feet higher than the locality of the hotel, turned out
to be nine thousand feet LOWER. Thus the fact was clearly demonstrated
that, ABOVE A CERTAIN POINT, THE HIGHER A POINT SEEMS TO BE, THE LOWER
IT ACTUALLY IS. Our ascent itself was a great achievement, but this
contribution to science was an inconceivably greater matter.
Cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower temperature the
higher and higher you go, and hence the apparent anomaly. I answer that
I do not base my theory upon what the boiling water does, but upon what
a boiled thermometer says. You can't go behind the thermometer.
I had a magnificent view of Monte Rosa, and apparently all the rest of
the Alpine world, from that high place. All the circling horizon was
piled high with a mighty tumult of snowy crests. One might have
imagined he saw before him the tented camps of a beleaguering host of
Brobdingnagians.
NOTE.--I had the very unusual luck to catch one little momentary glimpse
of the Matterhorn wholly unencumbered by clouds. I leveled my
photographic apparatus at it without the loss of an instant, and should
have got an elegant picture if my donkey had not interfered. It was my
purpose to draw this photograph all by myself for my book, but was
obliged to put the mountain part of it into the hands of the
professional artist because I found I could not do landscape well.
But lonely, conspicuous, and superb, rose that wonderful upright wedge,
the Matterhorn. Its precipitous sides were powdered over with snow, and
the upper half hidden in thick clouds which now and then dissolved to
cobweb films and gave brief glimpses of the imposing tower as through a
veil. A little later the Matterhorn took to himself the semblance of
a volcano; he was stripped naked to his apex--around this circled
vast wreaths of white cloud which strung slowly out and streamed away
slantwise toward the sun, a twenty-mile stretch of rolling and tumbling
vapor, and looking just as if it were pouring out of a crater. Later
again, one of the mountain's sides was clean and clear, and another
side densely clothed from base to summit in thick smokelike cloud which
feathered off and flew around the shaft's sharp edge like the smoke
around the corners of a burning building. The Matterhorn is always
experimenting, and always gets up fine effects, too. In the sunset, when
all the lower world is palled in gloom, it points toward heaven out of
the pervading blackness like a finger of fire. In the sunrise--well,
they say it is very fine in the sunrise.
Authorities agree that there is no such tremendous “layout” of snowy
Alpine magnitude, grandeur, and sublimity to be seen from any other
accessible point as the tourist may see from the summit of the
Riffelberg. Therefore, let the tourist rope himself up and go there; for
I have shown that with nerve, caution, and judgment, the thing can be
done.
I wish to add one remark, here--in parentheses, so to speak--suggested
by the word “snowy,” which I have just used. We have all seen hills and
mountains and levels with snow on them, and so we think we know all the
aspects and effects produced by snow. But indeed we do not until we have
seen the Alps. Possibly mass and distance add something--at any rate,
something IS added. Among other noticeable things, there is a dazzling,
intense whiteness about the distant Alpine snow, when the sun is on it,
which one recognizes as peculiar, and not familiar to the eye. The snow
which one is accustomed to has a tint to it--painters usually give it a
bluish cast--but there is no perceptible tint to the distant Alpine snow
when it is trying to look its whitest. As to the unimaginable
splendor of it when the sun is blazing down on it--well, it simply IS
unimaginable.
CHAPTER XXXIX
[We Travel by Glacier]
A guide-book is a queer thing. The reader has just seen what a man who
undertakes the great ascent from Zermatt to the Riffelberg Hotel must
experience. Yet Baedeker makes these strange statements concerning this
matter:
1. Distance--3 hours.
2. The road cannot be mistaken.
3. Guide unnecessary.
4. Distance from Riffelberg Hotel to the Gorner Grat, one hour and a half.
5. Ascent simple and easy. Guide unnecessary.
6. Elevation of Zermatt above sea-level, 5,315 feet.
7. Elevation of Riffelberg Hotel above sea-level, 8,429 feet.
8. Elevation of the Gorner Grat above sea-level, 10,289 feet.
I have pretty effectually throttled these errors by sending him the
following demonstrated facts:
1. Distance from Zermatt to Riffelberg Hotel, 7 days.
2. The road CAN be mistaken. If I am the first that did it, I want the credit
of it, too.
3. Guides ARE necessary, for none but a native can read those finger-boards.
4. The estimate of the elevation of the several localities above sea-level
is pretty correct--for Baedeker. He only misses it about a hundred and
eighty or ninety thousand feet.
I found my arnica invaluable. My men were suffering excruciatingly, from
the friction of sitting down so much. During two or three days, not
one of them was able to do more than lie down or walk about; yet so
effective was the arnica, that on the fourth all were able to sit up.
I consider that, more than to anything else, I owe the success of our
great undertaking to arnica and paregoric.
My men are being restored to health and strength, my main perplexity,
now, was how to get them down the mountain again. I was not willing to
expose the brave fellows to the perils, fatigues, and hardships of that
fearful route again if it could be helped. First I thought of balloons;
but, of course, I had to give that idea up, for balloons were
not procurable. I thought of several other expedients, but upon
consideration discarded them, for cause. But at last I hit it. I was
aware that the movement of glaciers is an established fact, for I had
read it in Baedeker; so I resolved to take passage for Zermatt on the
great Gorner Glacier.
Very good. The next thing was, how to get down the glacier
comfortably--for the mule-road to it was long, and winding, and
wearisome. I set my mind at work, and soon thought out a plan. One looks
straight down upon the vast frozen river called the Gorner Glacier, from
the Gorner Grat, a sheer precipice twelve hundred feet high. We had
one hundred and fifty-four umbrellas--and what is an umbrella but a
parachute?
I mentioned this noble idea to Harris, with enthusiasm, and was about to
order the Expedition to form on the Gorner Grat, with their umbrellas,
and prepare for flight by platoons, each platoon in command of a guide,
when Harris stopped me and urged me not to be too hasty. He asked me if
this method of descending the Alps had ever been tried before. I said
no, I had not heard of an instance. Then, in his opinion, it was a
matter of considerable gravity; in his opinion it would not be well to
send the whole command over the cliff at once; a better way would be to
send down a single individual, first, and see how he fared.
I saw the wisdom in this idea instantly. I said as much, and thanked