Morteratsch Glacier, Line A.

As in all other measurements of this kind, the retarding influence of the sides of the glacier is manifest: the centre moves with the greatest velocity.

Morteratsch Glacier, Line B.

The first stake of this line was quite close to the edge of the glacier, and the ice was thin at the place, hence its slow motion. Crevasses prevented us from carrying the line sufficiently far across to render the retardation of the further side of the glacier fully evident.

Morteratsch Glacier, Line C.

Comparing the three lines together, it will be observed that the velocity diminishes as we descend the glacier. In 100 hours the maximum motion of the three lines respectively is as follows:

Maximum Motion in 100 hours.

This deportment explains an appearance which must strike every observer who looks upon the Morteratsch from the Piz Languard, or from the new Bernina Road. A medial moraine runs along the glacier, commencing as a narrow streak, but towards the end the moraine extending in width, until finally it quite covers the terminal portion of the glacier. The cause of this is revealed by the foregoing measurements, which prove that a stone on the moraine where it is crossed by the line A approaches a second stone on the moraine where it is crossed by the line C with a velocity of twenty-six inches per one hundred hours. The moraine is in a state of longitudinal compression. Its materials are more and more squeezed together, and they must consequently move laterally and render the moraine at the terminal portion of the glacier wider than above.

The motion of the Morteratsch glacier, then, diminishes as we descend. The maximum motion of the third line is thirty inches in one hundred hours, or seven inches a day—a very slow motion; and had we run a line nearer to the end of the glacier, the motion would have been slower still. At the end itself it is nearly insensible. Now I submit that this is not the place to seek for the scooping power of a glacier. The opinion appears to be prevalent that it is the snout of a glacier that must act the part of ploughshare; and it is certainly an erroneous opinion. The scooping power will exert itself most where the weight, and consequently (other things being equal) the motion, is greatest. A glacier’s snout often rests upon matter which has been scooped from the glacier’s bed higher up. I therefore do not think that the inspection of what the end of a glacier does or does not accomplish can decide this question.

The snout of a glacier is potent to remove anything against which it can fairly abut; and this power, notwithstanding the slowness of the motion, manifests itself at the end of the Morteratsch glacier. A hillock, bearing pine-trees, was in front of the glacier when Mr. Hirst and myself inspected its end; and this hillock is being bodily removed by the thrust of the ice. Several of the trees are overturned; and in a few years, if the glacier continues its reputed advance, the mound will certainly be ploughed away.

I will here record a few other measurements executed on the Rosegg glacier: the line was staked out across the trunk formed by the junction of the Rosegg proper with the Tschierva glacier, a short distance below the rocky promontory called Agaliogs.

Rosegg Glacier.

This is an extremely slowly moving glacier; the maximum hardly amounts to seven inches a day. Crevasses prevented us from continuing the line quite across the glacier.

To return to the question of Alpine conformation: it stands, I think, thus: We have, in the first place, great valleys, such as those of the Rhine and the Rhone, which we might conveniently call valleys of the first order. The mountains which flank these main valleys are also cut by lateral valleys running into the main one, and which may be called valleys of the second order. When these latter are examined, smaller valleys are found running into them, which may be called valleys of the third order. Smaller ravines and depressions, again, join the latter, which may be called valleys of the fourth order, and so on until we reach streaks and cuttings so minute as not to merit the name of valleys at all. At the bottom of every valley we have a stream, diminishing in magnitude as the order of the valley ascends, carving the earth and carrying its materials to lower levels. We find that the larger valleys have been filled for untold ages by glaciers of enormous dimensions, always moving, grinding down and tearing away the rocks over which they passed. We have, moreover, on the plains at the feet of the mountains, and in enormous quantities, the very matter derived from the sculpture of the mountains themselves.

The plains of Italy and Switzerland are cumbered by the débris of the Alps. The lower, wider, and more level valleys are also filled to unknown depths with the materials derived from the higher ones. In the vast quantities of moraine-matter which cumber many even of the higher valleys we have also suggestions as to the magnitude of the erosion which has taken place. This moraine-matter, moreover, can only in small part have been derived from the falling of rocks upon the ancient glacier; it is in great part derived from the grinding and the ploughing-out of the glacier itself. This accounts for the magnitude of many of the ancient moraines, which date from a period when almost all the mountains were covered with ice and snow, and when, consequently, the quantity of moraine-matter derived from the naked crests cannot have been considerable.

The erosion theory ascribes the formation of Alpine valleys to the agencies here briefly referred to. It invokes nothing but true causes. Its artificers are still there, though, it may be, in diminished strength; and if they are granted sufficient time, it is demonstrable that they are competent to produce the effects ascribed to them. And what does the fracture theory offer in comparison? From no possible application of this theory, pure and simple, can we obtain the slopes and forms of the mountains. Erosion must in the long run be invoked, and its power therefore conceded. The fracture theory infers from the disturbances of the Alps the existence of fissures; and this is a probable inference. But that they were of a magnitude sufficient to determine the conformation of the Alps, and that they followed, as the Alpine valleys do, the lines of natural drainage of the country, are assumptions which do not appear to me to be justified either by reason or by observation.

There is a grandeur in the secular integration of small effects implied by the theory of erosion almost superior to that involved in the idea of a cataclysm. Think of the ages which must have been consumed in the execution of this colossal sculpture. The question may, of course, be pushed to further limits. Think of the ages which the molten earth required for its consolidation. But these vaster epochs lack sublimity through our inability to grasp them. They bewilder us, but they fail to make a solemn impression. The genesis of the mountains comes more within the scope of the intellect, and the majesty of the operation is enhanced by our partial ability to conceive it. In the falling of a rock from a mountain-head, in the shoot of an avalanche, in the plunge of a cataract, we often see more impressive illustrations of the power of gravity than in the motions of the stars. When the intellect has to intervene, and calculation is necessary to the building up of the conception, the expansion of the feelings ceases to be proportional to the magnitude of the phenomena.

XXI.
SEARCH ON THE MATTERHORN: A PROJECT.

In July 1865 my excellent friend Hirst and myself visited Glarus, intending, if circumstances favoured us, to climb the Tödi. We had, however, some difficulty with the guides, and therefore gave the expedition up. Crossing the Klausen pass to Altdorf, we ascended the Gotthardt Strasse to Wasen, and went thence over the Susten pass to Gadmen, which we reached late at night. We halted for a moment at Stein, but the blossom of 1863[22] was no longer there, and we did not tarry. On quitting Gadmen next morning I was accosted by a guide, who asked me whether I knew Professor Tyndall. ‘He is killed, sir,’ said the man—‘killed upon the Matterhorn.’ I then listened to a somewhat detailed account of my own destruction, and soon gathered that, though the details were erroneous, something serious if not shocking had occurred. At Imhof the rumour became more consistent, and immediately afterwards the Matterhorn catastrophe was in every mouth, and in all the newspapers. My friend and myself wandered on to Mürren, whence, after an ineffectual attempt to cross the Petersgrat, we went by Kandersteg and the Gemmi to Zermatt.

Of the four sufferers on the Matterhorn one remained behind. But expressed in terms either of mental torture or physical pain, the suffering in my opinion was nil. Excitement during the first moments left no room for terror, and immediate unconsciousness prevented pain. No death has probably less of agony in it than that caused by the shock of gravity on a mountain-side. Expected, it would be terrible; but unexpected, not. I had heard, however, of other griefs and sufferings consequent on the accident, and this prompted a desire on my part to find the remaining one and bring him down.

I had seen the road-makers at work between St. Nicholas and Zermatt, and was struck by the rapidity with which they pierced the rocks for blasting. One of these fellows could drive a hole a foot deep into hard granite in less than an hour. I was therefore determined to secure in aid of my project the services of a road-maker. None of the Zermatt guides would second me, but I found one of the Lochmatters of St. Nicholas willing to do so. Him I sent to Geneva to buy 3,000 feet of rope, which duly came on heavily laden mules to Zermatt. Hammers and steel punches were prepared; a tent was put in order, and the whole was carried up to the chapel by the Schwarz See. But the weather would by no means smile upon the undertaking. I waited in Zermatt for twenty days, making excursions with pleasant friends, but they merely spanned the brief intervals which separated one rain-gush or thunderstorm from another. Bound by an engagement to my friend Professor De la Rive, of Geneva, where the Swiss naturalists had their annual assembly in 1865, I was forced to leave Zermatt. My notion was to climb to the point where the men slipped, and to fix there suitable irons in the rocks. By means of ropes attached to these I proposed to scour the mountain along the line of the glissade. There were peculiarities in the notion which need not now be dwelt upon, inasmuch as the weather rendered them all futile.

[I am not sure that the proposed search is practicable; it would certainly require unusually good weather for its execution.—April 1871.]

XXII.
THE TITLIS, FINSTERAARSCHLUCHT, PETERSGRAT, AND ITALIAN LAKES.

In the summer of 1866 I first went to Engsteln, one of the most charming spots in the Alps. It had at that time a double charm, for the handsome young widow who kept the inn supplemented by her kindness and attention within doors the pleasures extracted from the outer world. A man named Maurer, of Meyringen, was my guide for a time. We climbed the Titlis, going straight up it from the Joch Pass, in the track of a scampering chamois which showed us the way. The Titlis is a very noble mass—one of the few which, while moderate in height, bear a lordly weight of snow. The view from the summit is exceedingly fine, and on it I repeated with a hand spectroscope the observations of M. Janssen on the absorption-bands of aqueous vapour. On the day after this ascent I quitted Engsteln, being drawn towards the Wellhorn and Wetterhorn, both of which, as seen from Engsteln, came out with inexpressible nobleness. The upper dome of heaven was of the deepest blue, while only the faintest lightening of the colour towards the horizon indicated the augmented thickness of the atmosphere in that direction. The sun was very hot, but there was a clear rivulet at hand, deepening here and there into pebbled pools, into which I plunged at intervals, causing my guide surprise if not anxiety; for he shared the common superstition that plunging, when hot, into cold water is dangerous. The danger, and a very serious one it is, is to plunge into cold water when cold. The strongest alone can then bear immersion without damage.

This year I subjected the famous Finsteraarschlucht to a closer examination than ordinary. The earthquake theory already adverted to was prevalent regarding it, and I wished to see whether any evidences existed of aqueous erosion. It will be remembered that the Schlucht or gorge is cut through a great barrier of limestone rock called the Kirchet, which throws itself across the valley of Hasli, about three-quarters of an hour’s walk above Meyringen. The plain beyond the barrier, on which stands the hamlet of Imhof, is formed of the sediment of a lake of which the Kirchet constituted the dam. This dam is now cut through for the passage of the Aar, forming one of the noblest gorges in Switzerland. Near the summit of the Kirchet is a house with a signboard inviting the traveller to visit the Aarenschlucht, a narrow lateral gorge which runs down to the very bottom of the principal one. The aspect of this smaller chasm from its bottom to its top proves to demonstration that water had in former ages worked there as a navigator. It is scooped, rounded, and polished, so as to render it palpable to the common eye that it is a gorge of erosion. But it was regarding the sides of the great chasm that I needed instruction, and from its edge I could see nothing to satisfy me. I therefore stripped and waded into the river until a point was reached which commanded an excellent view of both sides of the gorge. The water was cutting, but I was repaid. Below me on the left-hand side was a jutting cliff, which bore the thrust of the river and caused the Aar to swerve from its direct course. From top to bottom this cliff was polished, rounded, and scooped. There was no room for doubt. The river which now runs so deeply down had once been above. It has been the delver of its own channel through the barrier of the Kirchet.

I went on to Rosenlaui, proposing to climb the neighbouring mountains in succession. In fact I went to Switzerland in 1866 with a particular hunger for the heights. But the weather thickened before Rosenlaui was reached, and on the night following the morning of my departure from Engsteln I lay upon my plaid under an impervious pine, and watched as wild a thunderstorm and as heavy a downpour of rain as I had ever seen. Most extraordinary was the flicker on cliffs and trees, and most tremendous was the detonation succeeding each discharge. The fine weather came thus to an end, and next day I gave up the Wetterhorn for the ignoble Faulhorn. Here the wind changed, the air became piercingly cold, and on the following morning heavy snow-drifts buttressed the doors, windows, and walls of the inn. We broke away, sinking at some places to the hips in snow. A descent of a thousand feet carried us from the bleakest winter into genial summer. My companion held on to the beaten track, while I sought a rougher and more direct one to the Scheinigeplatte, a resting-place which commands a noble view of the precipices of the Jungfrau. We were solitary visitors there, and I filled the evening with Miss Thackeray’s ‘Story of Elizabeth,’ which some benevolent traveller had left at the hotel.

Thence we dropped down to Lauterbrunnen, went up the valley to the little inn at Trechslawinen, and crossed the Petersgrat the following day. The recent precipitation had cleared the heavens and reloaded the heights. It was, perhaps, the splendour of the weather and the purity of the snows, aided by the subjective effect due to contrast with a series of most dismal days, that made me think the Petersgrat so noble a standpoint for a view of the mountains. The horizontal extent was vast, and the grouping magnificent. The undoubted monarch of this unparagoned scene was the Weisshorn, and this may have rendered me partial in my judgment, for men like to see what they love exalted. At Platten we found shelter in the house of the curé. Next day we crossed the Lotschsattel, and swept round by the Aletsch glacier to the Æggischhorn.

Here I had the pleasure of meeting a very ardent climber, who entertains peculiar notions regarding guides. He deems them, and rightly so, very expensive, and he also feels pleasure in trying his own powers. Very likely it is my habit of going alone that causes me to sympathise with him. I would, however, admonish him that he may go too far in this direction, and probably his own experience has by this time forestalled the admonition. Still, if skill, strength, and self-reliance are things to be cultivated in the Alps, they are, within certain limits, best exercised and developed in the absence of guides. And if the real climbers are ever to be differentiated from the crowd who write and talk about the mountains, it is only to be done by dispensing with professional assistance. But no man without natural aptitude and due training would be justified in committing himself to ventures of this kind, and it is an error to suppose that the necessary knowledge can be obtained in one or two summers in the Alps. Climbing is an art, and those who wish to cultivate it on their own account ought to give themselves sufficient previous practice in the company of first-rate guides. Here, moreover, as in every other sphere of human action, whether intellectual or physical, as indeed among the guides themselves, real eminence falls only to the lot of few. Whatever be the amount of preparation, real climbers must still remain select men.

From the Bel Alp, Mr. Girdlestone and I, without any guide, made an attack upon the Aletschhorn. We failed. The weather as we started was undecided, but we hoped the turn might be in our favour. We first kept along the Alp, with the Jäggi glacier to our right, then crossed its moraine, and made the trunk glacier our highway until we reached the point of confluence of its branches. Here we turned to the right, the Aletschhorn, from base to summit, coming into view. We reached the true base of the mountain, and without halting breasted its snow. But as we climbed the atmosphere thickened more and more. About the Nesthorn the horizon deepened to pitchy darkness, and on the Aletschhorn itself hung a cloud, which we at first hoped would melt before the strengthening sun, but which instead of melting became denser. Now and then an echoing rumble of the wind warned us that we might expect rough handling above. We persisted, however, and reached a considerable height, unwilling to admit that the weather was against us, until a more savage roar and a ruder shake than ordinary caused us to halt, and look more earnestly and anxiously into the darkening atmosphere. We were forced to give in, and during our descent the air was thick and dark with falling snow. Holding on in the dimness to the medial moraine, we managed to get down the glacier, and to clear it at a practicable point, whence, guided by the cliffs which flanked our right, and which became visible only when we came almost into contact with them, we hit the proper track to the Bel Alp hotel.

Though my visits to the Alps had already numbered thirteen, I had never gone so far southward as the Italian lakes. The perfectly unmanageable weather of July 1866 caused me to cross with Mr. Girdlestone into Italy, in the hope that a respite of ten or twelve days might improve the temper of the mountains. We walked over the Simplon to the village of the same name, and took thence the diligence to Domo d’Ossola and Baveno. The atmospheric change was wonderful; and still the clear air which we enjoyed below was the self-same air that heaped clouds and snow upon the mountains. It came across the heated plains of Lombardy charged with moisture, but the moisture was in the transparent condition of true vapour, and hence invisible. Tilted by the mountains, the air rose, and as it expanded it became chilled, and as it became chilled it discharged its vapour as visible cloud, the globules of which swelled by coalescence into raindrops on the mountain-flanks, or were frozen to snow upon the mountain-heads.

We halted on the margin of the Lago Maggiore. I could hear the lisping of the waters on the shingle far into the night. My window looked eastward, and through it could be seen the first warming of the sky at the approach of dawn. I rose, and watched the growth of colour all along the east. The mountains, from mere masses of darkness projected against the heavens, became empurpled. It was not as a mere wash of colour overspreading their surfaces. They blent with the atmosphere as if they were part and parcel of the general purple of the air. Nobody was stirring at the time, and the ‘lap’ of the lake upon its shore only increased the sense of silence.

In my subsequent experience of the Italian lakes I met with nothing which affected me so deeply as this morning scene on the Lago Maggiore.

From Baveno we crossed the lake to Luino, and went thence to Lugano. At Belaggio, on the junction of the two branches of the Lake of Como, we halted a couple of days. Como itself we reached in a small sailing-boat, as a storm prevented the steamer from taking us. There we saw the statue of Volta—a prophet justly honoured in his own country. From Como we went to Milan. A climber, of course, could not forego the pleasure of looking at Monte Rosa from the cathedral roof. The distribution of the statues magnified the apparent vastness of the pile; still the impression made on me by this great edifice was one of disappointment. Its front seemed to illustrate an attempt to cover meanness of conception by profusion of adornment. The interior, however, notwithstanding the cheat of the ceiling, is exceedingly grand.

From Milan we went to Orta, where we had a plunge into the lake. We crossed it subsequently, and walked on to Varallo: thence by Fobello over a country of noble beauty to Ponte Grande in the Val Ansasca. Thence again by Macugnaga, over the deep snow of the Monte Moro, reaching Mattmark in drenching rain. The temper of the northern slopes did not appear to have improved during our absence. We returned to the Bel Alp, fitful triumphs of the sun causing us to hope that we might still have fair play upon the Aletschhorn. But the day after our arrival snow fell so heavily as to cover the pastures for 2,000 feet below the hotel. Partial famine among the herds was the consequence. They had eventually to be driven below the snow-line. Avalanches were not unfrequent on slopes which a day or two previously had been covered with grass and flowers. In this condition of things Mr. Milman, Mr. Girdlestone, and I climbed the Sparrenhorn, and found its heavy-laden Kamm almost as hard as that of Monte Rosa. Occupation out of doors was, however, insufficient to fill the mind, so I wound my plaid around my loins, and in my cold bedroom studied ‘Mozley upon Miracles.’

XXIII.
ASCENT OF THE EIGER AND PASSAGE OF THE TRIFT.

Grindelwald was my first halting-place in the summer of 1867: I reached it, in company with a friend, on Sunday evening the 7th of July. The air of the glaciers and the excellent little dinners of the Adler rendered me rapidly fit for mountain-work. The first day we made an excursion along the lower glacier to the Kastenstein, crossing, in returning, the Strahleck branch of the glacier above the ice-fall, and coming down by the Zäsenberg. The second day was spent upon the upper glacier. The sunset covered the crest of the Eiger with indescribable glory that evening. It gave definition to a vague desire I had previously entertained to climb the mountain, and I forthwith arranged with excellent old Christian Michel, and with Peter Baumann, the preliminaries of the ascent.

At half-past one o’clock on the morning of the 11th we started from the Wengern Alp; no trace of cloud was visible in the heavens, which were sown broadcast with stars. Those low down twinkled with extraordinary vivacity, many of them flashing lights of different colours. When an opera-glass was pointed to such a star, and shaken, the line of light described by the image of the star resolved itself into a string of richly coloured beads: rubies and emeralds hung thus together on the same curve. The dark intervals between the beads corresponded to the moments of extinction of the star. Over the summit of the Wetterhorn the Pleiades hung like a diadem, while at intervals a solitary meteor shot across the sky.

We passed along the Alp, and then over the balled snow and broken ice cast down a glacier which fronted us. Here the ascent began; we passed from snow to rock and from rock to snow by turns. The steepness for a time was moderate, the only thing requiring caution being the thin crusts of ice upon the rocks over which water had trickled the previous day. The east gradually brightened, the stars become paler and disappeared, and at length the crown of the adjacent Jungfrau rose out of the twilight into the rose of the sun. The bloom crept gradually downwards over the snows. At length the whole mountain-world partook of the colour. It is not in the night nor in the day—it is not in any statical condition of the atmosphere—that the mountains look most sublime. It is during the few minutes of transition from twilight to full day through the splendours of the dawn.

Seven hours’ climbing brought us to the higher slopes, which were for the most part ice, and required deep step-cutting. The whole duty of the climber on such slopes is to cut his steps properly, and to stand in them securely. At one period of my mountain life I looked lightly on the possibility of a slip, having full faith in the resources of him who accompanied me, and very little doubt of my own. Experience has qualified this faith in the power even of the best of climbers upon a steep ice-slope. A slip under such circumstances must not occur.

The Jungfrau began her cannonade very early, five avalanches having thundered down her precipices before eight o’clock in the morning. Baumann, being the youngest man, undertook the labour of step-cutting, which the hardness of the ice rendered severe. He was glad from time to time to escape to the snow-cornice which, unsupported save by its own tenacity, overhung the Grindelwald side of the mountain, checking himself at intervals by looking over the edge of the cornice, to assure himself that its strength was sufficient to bear our weight. A wilder precipice is hardly to be seen than this wall of the Eiger, viewed from the cornice at its top. It seems to drop sheer for eight thousand feet down to Grindelwald. When the cornice became unsafe, the guide retreated, and step-cutting recommenced. We reached the summit before nine o’clock, and had from it an outlook over as glorious a scene as this world perhaps affords.

On the following day I went down to Lauterbrunnen, and afterwards crossed the Petersgrat to Platten, where, the door of the curé being closed against travellers, we were forced into dirty quarters in an adjacent house. From Platten, instead of going as before over the Lötschsattel, we struck obliquely across the ridge above the Nesthorn, and got down upon the Jäggi glacier, making thus an exceedingly fine excursion from Platten to the Bel Alp. Thence, after a day’s halt, I pushed on to Zermatt.

I have already mentioned Carrel, the bersaglier, who accompanied Bennen and myself in our attempt upon the Matterhorn in 1862, and who in 1865 reached the summit of the mountain. With him I had been in correspondence for some time, and from his letters an enthusiastic desire to be my guide up the Matterhorn might be inferred. From the Riffelberg I crossed the Theodule to Breuil, where I saw Carrel. He had naturally and deservedly grown in his own estimation. But I was discomfited by the form his self-consciousness assumed. His demands were exorbitant, and he also objected to the excellent company of Christian Michel. In fact my friend Carrel was no longer a reasonable man. I believe he afterwards felt ashamed of himself, and sent his friends Bich and Meynet to speak to me while he kept aloof. But the weather was then too bad to permit of any definite arrangement being made.

I waited at the Riffel for twelve days, making small excursions here and there. But, though the weather was not so abominable as it had been in the previous year, the frequent snow-discharges on the Matterhorn kept it unassailable. In company with Mr. Crawfurd Grove, who had engaged Carrel as his guide, Michel being mine, I made the pass of the Trift from Zermatt to Zinal. I could understand and share the enthusiasm experienced by Mr. Hinchliff in crossing this truly noble pass. It is certainly one of the finest in the whole Alps. For that one day, moreover, the weather was magnificent. Next day we crossed to Evolena, going considerably astray, and thus converting a light day into a rather heavy one. From Evolena we purposed crossing the Col d’Érin back to Zermatt, but the weather would not let us. This excursion had been made with the view of allowing the Matterhorn a little time to arrange its temper; but the temper continued sulky, and at length wearied me out. We went round by the valley of the Rhone to Zermatt, and, finding matters worse than ever, both Mr. Grove and myself returned to Visp, intending to quit Switzerland altogether. Here he changed his mind and returned to Zermatt; on the same day the weather changed also, and continued fine for a fortnight. He succeeded in getting with Carrel to the top of the Matterhorn, and I succeeded in joining the British Association at Dundee. A ramble in the Highlands, including a visit to the Parallel Roads of Glenroy, concluded my vacation in 1867.

XXIV.
THE MATTERHORN—THIRD AND LAST ASSAULT.

The oil of life burnt rather low with me in 1868. Driven from London by Dr. Bence Jones, I reached the Giessbach hotel on the Lake of Brientz early in July. No pleasanter position could be found for an invalid. My friend Hirst was with me, and we made various little excursions in the neighbourhood. The most pleasant of these was to the Hinterburger See, a small and lonely lake high up among the hills, fringed on one side by pines, and overshadowed on the other by the massive limestone buttresses of the Hinterburg. It is an exceedingly lovely spot, but rarely visited. The Giessbach hotel is an admirably organised establishment. The table is served by Swiss girls in Swiss costume, fresh, handsome, and modest, well brought up, who come there, not as servants, but to learn the mysteries of housekeeping. And among her maidens moved like a little queen the daughter of the host—noiseless, but effectual in her rule and governance. I went to the Giessbach with a prejudice against the illumination of the fall. The crowd of spectators may suggest the theatre, but the lighting up of the water is fine. I liked the colourless light best; it merely intensified the contrast revealed by ordinary daylight between the white foam of the cascades and the black surrounding pines.

From the Giessbach we went to Thun, and thence up the Simmenthal to Lenk. Over the sulphur spring a large hotel has been recently erected, and here we found a number of Swiss and Germans, who thought the waters did them good. In one large room the liquid gushes from a tap into a basin, diffusing through the place the odour of rotten eggs. The patients like this smell; indeed they regard its foulness as a measure of their benefit. The director of the establishment is intelligent and obliging, sparing no pains to meet the wishes and promote the comfort of his guests. We wandered while at Lenk to the summit of the Rawyl pass, visited the Siebenbrünnen, where the river Simmen bursts full-grown from the rocks, and we should have clambered up the Wildstrubel had the weather been tolerable. From Lenk we went to Gsteig, a finely situated hamlet, but not celebrated for the peace and comfort of its inn; and from Gsteig to the Diablerets hotel. While there I clambered up the Diablerets mountain, and was amazed at the extent of the snow-field upon its tabular top. The peaks, if they ever existed, have been shorn away, and miles of flat névé, unseen from below, overspread their section.

From the Diablerets we drove down to Aigle. The Traubenkur had not commenced, and there was therefore ample space for us at the excellent hotel. We were compelled to spend a night at Martigny. I heard the trumpet of its famous mosquito, but did not feel its attacks. The following night was more pleasantly spent on the cool col of the Great St. Bernard. On Tuesday, July 21, we reached Aosta, and, in accordance with previous telegraphic arrangement, met there the Chanoine Carrel. Jean-Jacques Carrel, the old companion of Mr. Hawkins and myself, and others at Breuil, were dissatisfied with the behaviour of the bersaglier last year, and this feeling the Chanoine shared. He had written to me during the winter, stating that two new men had scaled the Matterhorn, and that they were ready to accompany me anywhere. He now drove, with Hirst and myself, to Chatillon, where at the noisy and comfortless inn we spent the night. Here Hirst quitted me, and I turned with the Chanoine up the valley to Breuil.

At Val Tournanche I saw a maiden niece of the Chanoine who had gone high up the Matterhorn, and who, had the wind not assailed her petticoats too roughly, might, it was said, have reached the top. I can believe it. Her wrist was like a weaver’s beam, and her frame seemed a mass of potential energy. The Chanoine had recommended to me as guides the brothers Joseph and Pierre Maquignaz, of Val Tournanche, his praises of Joseph as a man of unshaken coolness, courage, and capacity as a climber being particularly strong. Previous to reaching Breuil, I saw this Joseph, who seemed to divine by instinct my name and aim.

Carrel was at Breuil, looking very dark, Bich petitioned for a porter’s post, blaming Carrel bitterly for his greed in the previous year; but I left the arrangement of these matters wholly in the hands of Maquignaz. He joined me in the evening, and on the following day we ascended one of the neighbouring summits, discussing as we went our chances on the Matterhorn. In 1867 the chief precipitation took place in a low atmospheric layer, the base of the mountain being heavily laden with snow, while the summit and the higher rocks were bare. In 1868 the distribution was inverted, the top being heavily laden and the lower rocks clear. An additional element of uncertainty was thus introduced. Maquignaz could not say what obstacles the snow might oppose to us above, but he was resolute and hopeful. My desire was to finish for ever my contest with the Matterhorn by making a pass over its summit from Breuil to Zermatt. In this attempt my guide expressed his willingness to join me, his interest in the project being apparently equal to my own.

He, however, only knew the Zermatt side of the mountain through inspection from below; and he acknowledged that a dread of it had filled him the previous year. He now reasoned, however, that as Mr. Whymper and the Taugwalds had managed to descend, we ought to be able to do the same. On the Friday we climbed to the Col de la Furka, examined from it the northern face of the pyramid, and discovered the men who were engaged in building the cabin on that side. We worked afterwards along the ridge which stretches from the Matterhorn to the Theodule, crossing its gulleys and scaling all its heights. It was a pleasant piece of discipline, on new ground, to both my guide and me.

On the Thursday evening a violent thunderstorm had burst over Breuil, discharging new snow upon the heights, but also clearing the oppressive air. Though the heavens seemed clear in the early part of Friday, clouds showed a disposition to meet us from the south as we returned from the col. I enquired of my companion whether, in the event of the day being fine, he would be ready to start on Sunday. His answer was a prompt negative. In Val Tournanche, he said, they always ‘sanctified the Sunday.’ I mentioned Bennen, my pious Catholic guide, whom I permitted and encouraged to attend his mass on all possible occasions, but who, nevertheless, always yielded without a murmur to the demands of the weather. The reasoning had its effect. On Saturday Maquignaz saw his confessor, and arranged with him to have a mass at 2 A.M. on Sunday; after which, unshaded by the sense of duties unperformed, he would commence the ascent.

The claims of religion being thus met, the point of next importance, that of money, was set at rest by my immediate acceptance of the tariff published by the Chanoine Carrel. The problem being thus reduced to one of muscular physics, we pondered the question of provisions, decided on a bill of fare, and committed its execution to the industrious mistress of the hotel.

A fog, impenetrable to vision, had filled the whole of the Val Tournanche on Saturday night, and the mountains were half concealed and half revealed by this fog when we rose on Sunday morning. The east at sunrise was louring, and the light which streamed through the cloud orifices was drawn in ominous red bars across the necks of the mountains. It was one of those uncomfortable Laodicean days which engender indecision—threatening, but not sufficiently so to warrant postponement. Two guides and two porters were considered necessary for the first day’s climb. A volunteer, moreover, attached himself to our party, who carried a sheepskin as part of the furniture of the cabin. To lighten their labour, the porters took a mule with them as far as the quadruped could climb, and afterwards divided the load among themselves. While they did so I observed the weather. The sun had risen with considerable power, and had broken the cloud-plane to pieces. The severed clouds gathered into masses more or less spherical, and were rolled grandly over the ridges into Switzerland. Save for a swathe of fog which now and then wrapped its flanks, the Matterhorn itself remained clear, and strong hopes were raised that the progress of the weather was in the right direction.

We halted at the base of the Tête du Lion, a bold precipice formed by the sudden cutting down of the ridge which flanks the Val Tournanche to the right. From its base to the Matterhorn stretches the Col du Lion, crossed for the first time in 1860, by Mr. Hawkins, myself, and our two guides. We were now beside a snow-gulley, which was cut by a deep furrow along its centre, and otherwise scarred by the descent of stones. Here each man arranged his bundle and himself so as to cross the gulley in the minimum of time. The passage was safely made, a few flying shingle only coming down upon us. But danger declared itself where it was not expected. Joseph Maquignaz led the way up the rocks. I was next, Pierre Maquignaz next, and last of all the porters. Suddenly a yell issued from the leader: ‘Cachez-vous!’ I crouched instinctively against the rock, which formed a by no means perfect shelter, when a boulder buzzed past me through the air, smote the rocks below me, and with a savage hum flew down to the lower glacier. Thus warned, we swerved to an arête, and when stones fell afterwards they plunged to the right or left of us.

In 1860 the great couloir which stretches from the Col du Lion downwards was filled with a névé of deep snow. But the atmospheric conditions which have caused the glaciers of Switzerland to shrink so remarkably during the last ten years[23] have swept away this névé. We had descended it in 1860 hip-deep in snow, and I was now reminded of its steepness by the inclination of its bed. Maquignaz was incredulous when I pointed out to him the line of descent to which we had been committed, in order to avoid the falling stones of the Tête du Lion. Bennen’s warnings on the occasion were very emphatic, and I could understand their wisdom now better than I did then.

When Mr. Hawkins and myself first tried the Matterhorn, a temporary danger, sufficient to quell for a time the enthusiasm even of our lion-hearted guide, was added to the permanent ones. Fresh snow had fallen two days before; it had quite over-sprinkled the Matterhorn, converting the brown of its crags into an iron-grey; this snow had been melted and refrozen, forming upon the rocks an enamelling of ice. Besides their physical front, moreover, in 1860, the rocks presented a psychological one, derived from the rumour of their savage inaccessibility. The crags, the ice, and the character of the mountain, all conspired to stir the feelings. Much of the wild mystery has now vanished, especially at those points which in 1860 were places of virgin difficulty, but down which ropes now hang to assist the climber. The intrinsic grandeur of the Matterhorn, however, cannot be effaced.

After some hours of steady climbing we halted upon a platform beside the tattered remnant of one of the tents employed by me in 1862. Here we sunned ourselves for an hour. We subsequently worked upward, scaling the crags and rounding the bases of those wild and wonderful rock-towers, into which the weather of ages has hewn the southern ridge of the Matterhorn. The work required knowledge, but with a fair amount of skill it is safe work. I can fancy nothing more fascinating to a man given by nature and habit to such things than a climb alone among these crags and precipices. He need not be theological, but, if complete, the grandeur of the place would certainly fill him with religious awe.

Looked at from Breuil, the Matterhorn presents two summits—the one, the summit proper, a square rock-tower in appearance; the other, which is really the end of a sharp ridge abutting against the rock-tower, an apparently conical peak. On this peak Bennen and myself planted our flagstaff in 1862. At some distance below it the mountain is crossed by an almost horizontal ledge, always loaded with snow, which, from its resemblance to a white necktie, has been called the Cravate. On this ledge a cabin was put together in 1867. It stands above the precipice where I quitted my rope in 1862. Up this precipice, by the aid of a thicker—I will not say a stronger—rope, we now scrambled, and, following the exact route pursued by Bennen and myself five years previously, we came to the end of the Cravate. At some places the snow upon the ledge fell steeply from its junction with the cliff; deep step-cutting was also needed where the substance had been melted and recongealed. The passage, however, was soon accomplished along the Cravate to the cabin, which was almost filled with snow.

Our first need was water. We could, of course, always melt the snow, but this would involve a wasteful expenditure of heat. The cliff at the base of which the hut was built, overhung, and from its edge the liquefied snow fell in showers beyond the cabin. Four ice-axes were fixed on the ledge, and over them was spread the residue of a second tent which I had left at Breuil in 1862. The water falling upon the canvas flowed towards its centre. Here an orifice was made, through which the liquid descended into vessels placed to receive it. Some modification of this plan might probably be employed with profit for the storing-up of water for droughty years in England.

I lay for some hours in the warm sunshine, in presence of the Italian mountains, watching the mutations of the air. But when the sun sank the air became chill, and we all retired to the cabin. We had no fire, though warmth was much needed. A lover of the mountains, and of his kind, had contributed an india-rubber mattrass, on which I lay down, a light blanket being thrown over me, while the guides and porters were rolled up in sheepskins. The mattrass was a poor defence against the cold of the subjacent rock. I bore this for two hours, unwilling to disturb the guides, but at length it became intolerable. On learning my condition, however, the good fellows were soon alert, and, folding a sheepskin round me, restored me gradually to a pleasant temperature. I fell asleep, and found the guides preparing breakfast, and the morning well advanced, when I opened my eyes.

It was past six o’clock when the two brothers and I quitted the cabin. The porters deemed their work accomplished, but they halted for a time to ascertain whether we were likely to be driven back or to push forward. We skirted the Cravate, and reached the ridge at its western extremity. This we ascended along the old route of Bennen and myself to the conical peak already referred to, which, as seen from Breuil, constitutes a kind of second summit of the Matterhorn. From this point to the base of the final precipice of the mountain stretches an arête, terribly hacked by the weather, but on the whole horizontal. When I first made the acquaintance of this savage ridge—called by Italians the Spalla—it was almost clear of snow. It was now loaded, the snow being bevelled to an edge of exceeding sharpness. The slope to the left, falling towards Zmutt, was exceedingly steep, while the precipices on the right were abysmal. No other part of the Matterhorn do I remember with greater interest than this. It was terrible, but its difficulties were fairly within the grasp of human skill, and this association is more ennobling than where the circumstances are such as to make you conscious of your own helplessness. On one of the sharpest teeth of the ridge Joseph Maquignaz halted, and, turning to me with a smile, remarked, ‘There is no room for giddiness here, sir.’ In fact, such possibilities, in such places, must be altogether excluded from the chapter of accidents of the climber.

It was at the end of this ridge, where it abuts against the last precipice of the Matterhorn, that my second flagstaff was left in 1862. I think there must have been something in the light falling upon this precipice that gave it an aspect of greater verticality when I first saw it than it seemed to possess on the present occasion. We had, however, been struggling for many hours previously, and may have been dazed by our exertion. I cannot otherwise account for three of my party declining flatly to make any attempt upon the precipice. It looks very bad, but no real climber with his strength unimpaired would pronounce it, without trial, insuperable. Fears of this rock-wall, however, had been excited long before we reached it. It was probably the addition of the psychological element to the physical—the reluctance to encounter new dangers on a mountain which had hitherto inspired a superstitious fear—that quelled further exertion.

Seven hundred feet, if the barometric measurement can be trusted, of very difficult rock-work now lay above us. In 1862 this height had been underestimated by both Bennen and myself. Of the 14,800 feet of the Matterhorn, we then thought we had accomplished 14,600. If the barometer speaks truly, we had only cleared 14,200.

Descending the end of the ridge, we crossed a narrow cleft, and grappled with the rocks at the other side of it. Our ascent was oblique, bearing to the right. The obliquity at one place fell to horizontality, and we had to work on the level round a difficult protuberance of rock. We cleared the difficulty without haste, and then rose straight against the precipice. Above us a rope hung down the cliff, left there by Maquignaz on the occasion of his first ascent. We reached the end of this rope, and some time was lost by my guide in assuring himself that it was not too much frayed by friction. Care in testing it was doubly necessary, for the rocks, bad in themselves, were here crusted with ice. The rope was in some places a mere hempen core surrounded by a casing of ice, over which the hands slid helplessly. Even with the aid of the rope in this condition it required an effort to get to the top of the precipice, and we willingly halted there to take a minute’s breath. The ascent was virtually accomplished, and a few minutes more of rapid climbing placed us on the lightning-smitten top. Thus ended the long contest between me and the Matterhorn.

The day thus far had swung through alternations of fog and sunshine. While we were on the ridge below, the air at times was blank and chill with mist; then with rapid solution the cloud would vanish, and open up the abysses right and left of us. On our attaining the summit a fog from Italy rolled over us, and for some minutes we were clasped by a cold and clammy atmosphere. But this passed rapidly away, leaving above us a blue heaven, and far below us the sunny meadows of Zermatt. The mountains were almost wholly unclouded, and such clouds as lingered amongst them only added to their magnificence. The Dent d’Érin, the Dent Blanche, the Gabelhorn, the Mischabel, the range of heights between it and Monte Rosa, the Lyskamm, and the Breithorn were all at hand, and clear; while the Weisshorn, noblest and most beautiful of all, shook out a banner towards the north, formed by the humid southern air as it grazed the crest of the mountain.

The world of peaks and glaciers surrounding this immediate circlet of giants was also open to us up to the horizon. Our glance over it was brief, for it was eleven o’clock, and the work before us soon claimed all our attention. I found the débris of my former expedition everywhere—below, the fragments of my tents, and on the top a piece of my ladder fixed in the snow as a flagstaff. The summit of the Matterhorn is a sharp horizontal arête, and along this we now moved eastward. On our left was the roof-like slope of snow seen from the Riffel and Zermatt; on our right were the savage precipices which fall into Italy. Looking to the further end of the ridge, the snow there seemed to be trodden down, and I drew my companions’ attention to the apparent footmarks. As we approached the place it became evident that human feet had been there two or three days previously. I think it was Mr. Elliot of Brighton[24] who had made this ascent—the first accomplished from Zermatt since 1865. On the eastern end of the ridge we halted to take a little food—not that I seemed to need it: it was the remonstrance of reason rather than the consciousness of physical want that caused me to do so.

We took our ounce of nutriment and gulp of wine (my only sustenance during the entire day), and stood for a moment silently and earnestly looking down towards Zermatt. There was a certain official formality in the manner in which the guides turned to me and asked, ‘Êtes-vous content d’essayer?’ A sharp responsive ‘Oui!’ set us immediately in motion. It was nearly half-past eleven when we quitted the summit. The descent of the roof-like slope already referred to offered no difficulty; but the gradient very soon became more formidable.

One of the two faces of the Matterhorn pyramid, seen from Zermatt, falls towards the Zmutt glacier, and has a well-known snow-plateau at its base. The other face falls towards the Furgge glacier. We were on the former. For some time, however, we kept close to the arête formed by the intersection of the two faces of the pyramid, because nodules of rock jutted from it which offered a kind of footing. These rock protuberances helped us in another way: round them an extra rope which we carried was frequently doubled, and we let ourselves down by the rope as far as it could reach, liberating it afterwards (sometimes with difficulty) by a succession of jerks. In the choice and use of these protuberances the guides showed both judgment and skill. The rocks became gradually larger and more precipitous, a good deal of time being consumed in dropping down and doubling round them. Still we preferred them to the snow-slope at our left as long as they continued practicable.

This they at length ceased to be, and we had to commit ourselves to the slope. It was in the worst possible condition. When snow first falls at these great heights it is usually dry, and has no coherence. It resembles, to some extent, flour, or sand, or sawdust. Shone upon by a strong sun it partly melts, shrinks, and becomes more consolidated, and when subsequently frozen it may be safely trusted. Even though the melting of the snow and its subsequent freezing may be only very partial, the cementing of the granules adds immensely to the safety of the footing. Hence the advantage of descending such a slope before the sun has had time to unlock the rigidity of the night’s frost. But we were on the steepest Matterhorn slope during the two hottest hours of the day, and the sun had done his work effectually. The layer of snow was about fifteen inches thick. In treading it we came immediately upon the rock, which in most cases was too smooth to furnish either prop or purchase. It was on this slope that the Matterhorn catastrophe occurred: it is on this slope that other catastrophes will occur, if this mountain should ever become fashionable.

Joseph Maquignaz was the leader of our little party, and a brave, cool, and competent leader he proved himself to be. He was silent, save when he answered his brother’s anxious and oft-repeated question, ‘Es-tu bien placé, Joseph?’ Along with being perfectly cool and brave, he seemed to be perfectly truthful. He did not pretend to be ‘bien placé’ when he was not, nor avow a power of holding which he knew he did not possess. Pierre Maquignaz is, I believe, under ordinary circumstances, an excellent guide, and he enjoys the reputation of being never tired. But in such circumstances as we encountered on the Matterhorn he is not the equal of his brother. Joseph, if I may use the term, is a man of high boiling point, his constitutional sangfroid resisting the ebullition of fear. Pierre, on the contrary, shows a strong tendency to boil over in perilous places.

Our progress was exceedingly slow, but it was steady and continued. At every step our leader trod the snow cautiously, seeking some rugosity on the rock beneath it. This however was rarely found, and in most cases he had to establish a mechanical attachment between the snow and the slope which bore it. No semblance of a slip occurred in the case of any one of us, and had it occurred I do not think the worst consequences could have been avoided. I wish to stamp this slope of the Matterhorn with the character that really belonged to it when I descended it, and I do not hesitate to say that the giving way of any one of our party would have carried the whole of us to ruin. Why, then, it may be asked employ the rope? The rope, I reply, notwithstanding all its possible drawbacks under such circumstances, is the safeguard of the climber. Not to speak of the moral effect of its presence, an amount of help upon a dangerous slope that might be measured by the gravity of a few pounds is often of incalculable importance; and thus, though the rope may be not only useless but disastrous if the footing be clearly lost, and the glissade fairly begun, it lessens immensely the chance of this occurrence.

With steady perseverance, difficulties upon a mountain, as elsewhere, come to an end. We were finally able to pass from the face of the pyramid to its rugged edge, where it was a great relief to feel that honest strength and fair skill, which might have gone for little on the slope, were masters of the situation.

Standing on the arête, at the foot of a remarkable cliff-gable seen from Zermatt, and permitting the vision to range over the Matterhorn, its appearance is exceedingly wild and impressive. Hardly two things can be more different than the two aspects of the mountain from above and below. Seen from the Riffel, or Zermatt, it presents itself as a compact pyramid, smooth and steep, and defiant of the weathering air. From above, it seems torn to pieces by the frosts of ages, while its vast facettes are so foreshortened as to stretch out into the distance like plains. But this underestimate of the steepness of the mountain is checked by the deportment of its stones. Their discharge along the side of the pyramid to-day was incessant, and at any moment, by detaching a single boulder, we could let loose a cataract of them, which flew with wild rapidity and with a thunderous clatter down the mountain. We once wandered too far from the arête, and were warned back to it by a train of these missiles sweeping past us.

As long as our planet yields less heat to space than she receives from the bodies of space, so long will the forms upon her surface undergo mutation, and as soon as equilibrium, in regard to heat, has been established we shall have, as Thomson has pointed out, not peace, but death. Life is the product and accompaniment of change, and the self-same power that tears the flanks of the hills to pieces is the mainspring of the animal and vegetable worlds. Still, there is something chilling in the contemplation of the irresistible and remorseless character of those infinitesimal forces, whose integration through the ages pulls down even the Matterhorn. Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect of the mountain from its higher crags saddened me. Hitherto the impression that it made was that of savage strength, but here we had inexorable decay.

This notion of decay, however, implied a reference to a period when the Matterhorn was in the full strength of mountainhood. My thoughts naturally ran back to its possible growth and origin. Nor did they halt there, but wandered on through molten worlds to that nebulous haze which philosophers have regarded, and with good reason, as the proximate source of all material things. I tried to look at this universal cloud, containing within itself the prediction of all that has since occurred; I tried to imagine it as the seat of those forces whose action was to issue in solar and stellar systems, and all that they involve. Did that formless fog contain potentially the sadness with which I regarded the Matterhorn? Did the thought which now ran back to it simply return to its primeval home? If so, had we not better recast our definitions of matter and force? for if life and thought be the very flower of both, any definition which omits life and thought must be inadequate, if not untrue.

Questions like these, useless as they seem, may still have a practical outcome. For if the final goal of man has not been yet attained, if his development has not been yet arrested, who can say that such yearnings and questionings are not necessary to the opening of a finer vision, to the budding and the growth of diviner powers? Without this upward force could man have risen to his present height? When I look at the heavens and the earth, at my own body, at my strength and weakness of mind, even at these ponderings, and ask myself, Is there no being or thing in the universe that knows more about these matters than I do?—what is my answer? Supposing our theologic schemes of creation, condemnation, and redemption to be dissipated; and the warmth of denial which they excite, and which, as a motive force, can match the warmth of affirmation, dissipated at the same time; would the undeflected human mind return to the meridian of absolute neutrality as regards these ultra-physical questions? Is such a position one of stable equilibrium? Such are the questions, without replies, which could run through consciousness during a ten minutes’ halt upon the weathered spire of the Matterhorn.

We shook the rope away from us, and went rapidly down the rocks. The day was well advanced when we reached the cabin, and between it and the base of the pyramid we missed our way. It was late when we regained it, and by the time we reached the ridge of the Hörnli we were unable to distinguish rock from ice. We should have fared better than we did if we had kept along the ridge and felt our way to the Schwarz See, whence there would have been no difficulty in reaching Zermatt, but we left the Hörnli to our right, and found ourselves incessantly checked in the darkness by ledges and precipices, possible and actual. We were afterwards entangled in the woods of Zmutt, carving our way wearily through bush and bramble, and creeping at times along dry and precipitous stream-beds. But we finally struck the path and followed it to Zermatt, which we reached between one and two o’clock in the morning.

Having work to do for the Norwich meeting of the British Association, I remained several days at the Riffel, taking occasional breathings with pleasant companions upon the Riffelhorn. I subsequently crossed the Weissthor with Mr. Paris to Mattmark, and immediately afterwards returned to England.

On the 4th of September, Signor Giordano, to whom we are indebted for a very complete geological section of the Matterhorn, with Joseph Maquignaz and Carrel as guides, followed my route over the mountain. In a letter dated Florence, December 31, 1868, he writes to me thus:

‘Quant à moi, je dirai que vraiment, j’ai trouvé cette fois le pic assez difficile.... J’ai surtout trouvé difficile la traversée de l’arête qui suit le pic Tyndall du côté de l’Italie. Quant au versant suisse, je l’ai trouvé moins difficile que je ne croyais, parce que la neige y était un peu consolidée par la chaleur. En descendant le pic du côté de Zermatt j’ai encouru un véritable danger par les avalanches de pierres.... Un de mes deux guides a eu le havresac coupé en deux par un bloc, et moi-même j’ai été un peu contusionné.’