Albert Smith returned to London, took up practice as a surgeon, wrote for Punch, and acquired a big reputation as an entertainer in The Overland Mail, written by himself and founded on a journey to Egypt and Constantinople. The songs and sketches made the piece popular, and insured a long run. At the close of the season he went to Chamounix again, fully determined to climb Mont Blanc. He was accompanied by William Beverley, the artist, and was lucky to fall in with some Oxford undergraduates with the same ambition as himself. They joined forces, and a party of twenty, including guides, prepared for the great expedition. Amongst other provisions, they took ninety-four bottles of wine, four legs of mutton, four shoulders of mutton, and forty-six fowls. Smith was out of training, and suffered terribly from mountain sickness. He was horrified by the Mur de la Côte, which he describes as “an all but perpendicular iceberg,” and adds that “every step was gained from the chance of a horrible death.” As a matter of fact, the Mur de la Côte is a very simple, if steep, snow slope. A good ski-runner could, under normal conditions, descend it on ski. If Smith had fallen, he would have rolled comfortably to the bottom, and stopped in soft snow. “Should the foot or the baton slip,” he assures us, “there is no chance for life. You would glide like lightning from one frozen crag to another, and finally be dashed to pieces hundreds of feet below.” It is pleasant to record that Smith reached the summit, though not without considerable difficulty, and that his party drank all the wine and devoured the forty-six fowls, etc., before their successful return to Chamounix.

Smith wrote an account of the ascent which provoked a bitter attack in The Daily News. Albert Smith was contrasted with De Saussure, greatly to Smith’s disadvantage. The sober, practical Englishman of the period could only forgive a mountain ascent if the climber brought back with him from the heights, something more substantial than a vision of remembered beauty. A few inaccurate readings of an untrustworthy barometer could, perhaps, excuse a pointless exploit. “Saussure’s observations,” said a writer in The Daily News, “live in his poetical philosophy, those of Mr. Albert Smith will be most appropriately recorded in a tissue of indifferent puns, and stale, fast witticisms with an incessant straining after smartness. The aimless scramble of the four pedestrians to the top of Mont Blanc will not go far to redeem the somewhat equivocal reputation of the herd of English to risks in Switzerland for a mindless, and rather vulgar, redundance of animal spirits.” Albert Smith did not allow the subject to drop. He turned Mont Blanc into an entertainment at the Egyptian Hall, an entertainment which became very popular, and was patronised by the Queen.

Narrow-minded critics affect to believe that Albert Smith was nothing more than a showman, and that Mont Blanc was for him nothing more than a peg on which to hang a popular entertainment. This is not true. Mr. Mathews does him full justice when he says: “He was emphatically a showman from his birth, but it is not true he ascended the mountain for the purpose of making a show of it. His well-known entertainment resulted from a lifelong interest which he had taken in the great summit, of which he never failed to speak or write with reverence and affection.” Mr. Mathews was by no means naturally prejudiced in favour of anybody who tended to popularise the Alps, and his tribute is all the more striking in consequence. Albert Smith fell in love with Mont Blanc long before he had seen a mountain. Nobody can read the story of his first journey with twelve pounds in his pocket, without realising that Albert Smith, the showman, loved the mountains with much the same passion as his more cultured successors. Mr. Mathews adds: “It is but just to his memory to record that he, too, was a pioneer. Mountaineering was not then a recognised sport for Englishmen. Hitherto, any information about Mont Blanc had to be sought for in isolated publications. Smith brought a more or less accurate knowledge of it, as it were, to the hearths and homes of educated Englishmen.... Smith’s entertainment gave an undoubted impetus to mountaineering.”

While Smith was lecturing, a group of Englishmen were quietly carrying through a series of attacks on the unconquered citadels of the Alps. In 1854 Mr. Justice Wills made that ascent of the Wetterhorn which has already been referred to. It is fully described in Mr. Justice Wills’s interesting book, Wanderings among the High Alps, and, amongst other things, it is famous as the first appearance in Alpine history of the great guide, Christian Almer. Mr. Wills left Grindelwald with Ulrich Lauener, a guide who was to play a great part in Alpine adventure, Balmat and Simond. “The landlord wrung Balmat’s hand. ‘Try,’ said he, ‘to return all of you alive.’” Lauener burdened himself with a “flagge” to plant on the summit. This “flagge” resolved itself on inspection into a very solid iron construction in the shape of a banner, which Lauener carried to the summit on the following day. They bivouacked on the Enge, and climbed next day without great difficulty, to the gap between the two summits of the Wetterhorn, now known as the Wettersattel. They made a short halt here; and, while they were resting, they noticed with surprise two men working up the rocks they had just climbed. Lauener at first supposed they were chamois hunters; but a moment’s reflection convinced the party that no hunter would seek his prey on such unlikely ground. Moreover, chamois hunters do not usually carry on their backs “a young fir-tree, branches, leaves, and all.” They lost sight of the party and continued their meal. They next saw the two strangers on the snow slopes ahead, making all haste to be the first on the summit. This provoked great wrath on the part of Mr. Wills’s guides, who believed that the Wetterhorn was a virgin peak, a view also shared by the two usurpers, who had heard of the intended ascent and resolved to plant their fir-tree side by side with the iron “flagge.” They had started very early that same morning, and hunted their quarry down. A vigorous exchange of shouts and threats resulted in a compromise. “Balmat’s anger was soon appeased when he found they owned the reasonableness of his desire that they should not steal from us the distinction of being the first to scale that awful peak; and, instead of administering the fisticuffs he had talked about, he declared they were bons enfants after all, and presented them with a cake of chocolate. Thus the pipe of peace was smoked, and tranquillity reigned between the rival forces.”

From their resting-place they could see the final summit. From this point a steep snow slope, about three to four hundred feet in height, rises to the final crest, which is usually crowned by a cornice. The little party made their way up the steep slope, till Lauener reached the final cornice. It should, perhaps, be explained, that a cornice is a projecting cave of wind-blown snow which is usually transformed by sun and frost into ice. Lauener “stood close, not facing the parapet, but turned half round, and struck out as far away from himself as he could.... Suddenly, a startling cry of surprise and triumph rang through the air. A great block of ice bounded from the top of the parapet, and before it had well lighted on the glacier, Lauener exclaimed ‘Ich schaue den Blauen Himmel’ (‘I see blue sky’). A thrill of astonishment and delight ran through our frames. Our enterprise had succeeded. We were almost upon the actual summit. That wave above us, frozen, as it seemed, in the act of falling over, into a strange and motionless magnificence, was the very peak itself. Lauener’s blows flew with redoubled energy. In a few minutes a practicable breach was made, through which he disappeared; and in a moment more the sound of his axe was heard behind the battlement under whose cover we stood. In his excitement he had forgotten us, and very soon the whole mass would have come crashing down upon our heads. A loud shout of warning from Sampson, who now occupied the gap, was echoed by five other eager voices, and he turned his energies in a safer direction. It was not long before Lauener and Sampson together had widened the opening; and then at length we crept slowly on. As I took the last step Balmat disappeared from my sight; my left shoulder grazed against the angle of the icy embrasure, while on the right the glacier fell abruptly away beneath me towards an unknown and awful abyss; a hand from an invisible person grasped mine; I stepped across, and had passed the ridge of the Wetterhorn.

“The instant before I had been face to face with a blank wall of ice. One step, and the eye took in a boundless expanse of crag and glacier, peak and precipice, mountain and valley, lake and plain. The whole world seemed to lie at my feet. The next moment, I was almost appalled by the awfulness of our position. The side we had come up was steep; but it was a gentle slope compared with that which now fell away from where I stood. A few yards of glittering ice at our feet, and then nothing between us and the green slopes of Grindelwald nine thousand feet beneath.”

The “iron flagge” and fir-tree were planted side by side, and attracted great attention in Grindelwald. The “flagge” they could understand, but the fir-tree greatly puzzled them.

Christian Almer, the hero of the fir-tree, was destined to be one of the great Alpine guides. His first ascents form a formidable list, and include the Eiger, Mönch, Fiescherhorn in the Oberland (besides the first ascent of the Jungfrau direct from the Wengern Alp), the Ecrins, monarch of the Dauphiny, the Grand Jorasses, Col Dolent, Aiguille Verte in the Mont Blanc range, the Ruinette, and Morning Pass in the Pennines. But Almer’s most affectionate recollections always centred round the Wetterhorn. The present writer remembers meeting him on his way to celebrate his golden wedding, on the summit of his first love. Almer also deserves to be remembered as a pioneer of winter mountaineering. He made with Mr. Coolidge the first winter ascents of the Jungfrau and Wetterhorn. It was on a winter ascent of the former peak that he incurred frostbite, that resulted in the amputation of his toes, and the sudden termination of his active career. Some years later he died peaceably in his bed.

A year after Mr. Wills’s famous climb, a party of Englishmen, headed by the brothers Smyth, conquered the highest point of Monte Rosa. The Alpine campaign was fairly opened. Hudson made a new route up Mont Blanc without guides, the first great guideless climb by Englishmen. Hinchcliffe, the Mathews, E. S. Kennedy, and others, had already done valuable work.

The Alpine Club was the natural result of the desire on the part of these climbers to meet together in London and compare notes. The idea was first mooted in a letter from Mr. William Mathews to the Rev. J. A. Hort.3 The first meeting was held on December 22, 1857. The office of President was left open till it was deservedly filled by John Ball; E. S. Kennedy became Vice-President, and Mr. Hinchcliffe, Honorary Secretary. It is pleasant to record that Albert Smith, the showman, was an original member. The English pioneers prided themselves, not without some show of justification, on the fact that their sport attracted men of great intellectual powers. Forbes, Tyndall, and Leslie Stephen, are great names in the record of Science and Literature. The present Master of Trinity was one of the early members, his qualification being an ascent of Monte Rosa, Sinai, and Parnassus.

There were some remarkable men in this early group of English mountaineers. Of John Ball and Albert Smith, we have already spoken. Perhaps the most distinguished mountaineer from the standpoint of the outside world was John Tyndall. Tyndall was not only a great scientist, and one of the foremost investigators of the theory of glacier motion, he was also a fine mountaineer. His finest achievement was the first ascent of the Weishorn; and he also played a great part in the long struggle for the blue ribbon of the Alps—the Matterhorn. His book, Hours of Exercise in the Alps, makes good reading when once one has resigned oneself to the use of somewhat pedantic terms for quite simple operations. Somewhere or other—I quote from memory—a guide’s legs are referred to as monstrous levers that projected his body through space with enormous velocity! Tyndall, by the way, chose to take offence at some light-hearted banter which Leslie Stephen aimed at the scientific mountaineers. The passage occurs in Stephen’s chapter on the Rothhorn. “‘And what philosophic observations did you make?’ will be the inquiry of one of those fanatics who by a process of reasoning to me utterly inscrutable have somehow irrevocably associated Alpine travelling with science. To them, I answer, that the temperature was approximately (I had no thermometer) 212 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing point. As for ozone, if any existed in the atmosphere, it was a greater fool than I take it for.” This flippancy caused a temporary breach between Stephen and Tyndall which was, however, eventually healed.

Leslie Stephen is, perhaps, best known as a writer on ethics, though his numerous works of literary criticism contain much that is brilliant and little that is unsound. It has been said that the popularity of the word “Agnostic” is due less to Huxley, who invented it, than to Leslie Stephen who popularised it in his well known Agnostic’s Apology, an important landmark in the history of English Rationalism. The present writer has read almost every line that Stephen wrote, and yet feels that it is only in The Playground of Europe that he really let himself go. Though Stephen had a brilliant record as a mountaineer, it is this book that is his best claim to the gratitude and honour of climbers. Stephen was a fine mountaineer, as well as a distinguished writer. He was the first to climb the Shreckhorn, Zinal Rothhorn, Bietschhorn, Blüemlisalp, Rimphischorn, Disgrazia, and Mont Malet. He had the true mountaineering instinct, which is always stirred by the sight of an uncrossed pass; and that great wall of rock and ice that shadows the Wengern Alp always suggests Stephen, for it falls in two places to depressions which he was the first to cross, passes immortalised in the chapters dealing with “The Jungfraujoch” and “The Eigerjoch.”

It is not easy to stop if one begins to catalogue the distinguished men who helped to build up the triumphs of this period. Professor Bonney, an early president, was a widely travelled mountaineer, and a scientist of world-wide reputation. His recent work on the geology of the Alps, is perhaps the best book of the kind in existence. The Rev. Fenton Hort had, as we have seen, a great deal to do with the formation of the Alpine Club. His life has been written by his son, Sir Arthur Hort. Of John Ball and Mr. Justice Wills, we have already spoken. Of Whymper we shall have enough to say when we summarise the great romance of the Matterhorn. He was a remarkable man, with iron determination and great intellectual gifts. His classic Scrambles in the Alps did more than any other book to make new mountaineers. He was one of the first draughtsmen who combined a mountaineer’s knowledge of rock and ice with the necessary technical ability to reproduce the grandeur of the Alps in black and white. One should compare the delightful woodcuts from his sketches with the crude, shapeless engravings that decorate Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers. His great book deserved its success. Whymper himself was a strong personality. He had many good qualities and some that laid him open to criticism. He made enemies without much difficulty. But he did a great work, and no man has a finer monument to keep alive the memory of his most enduring triumphs.

Another name which must be mentioned is that of Mr. C. E. Mathews, a distinguished pioneer whose book on Mont Blanc has been quoted in an earlier chapter. He was a most devoted lover of the great mountain, and climbed it no less than sixteen times. He was a rigid conservative in matters Alpine; and there is something rather engaging in his contempt for the humbler visitors to the Alps. “It is a scandal to the Republic,” he writes, “that a line should have been permitted between Grindelwald and Interlaken. Alas for those who hailed with delight the extension of the Rhone Valley line from Sion to Visp!” It would have been interesting to hear his comments on the Jungfrau railway. The modern mountaineer would not easily forego the convenience of the trains to Zermatt that save him many hours of tiresome, if romantic, driving.

Then there is Thomas Hinchcliffe, whose Summer Months in the Alps gave a decided impetus to the new movement. He belongs to a slightly earlier period than A. W. Moore, one of the most distinguished of the early group. Moore attained a high and honourable position in the Home Office. His book The Alps in 1864, which has recently been reprinted, is one of the sincerest tributes to the romance of mountaineering in the English language. Moore took part in a long list of first ascents. He was a member of the party that achieved the first ascent of the Ecrins which Whymper has immortalised, and he had numerous other virgin ascents to his credit. His most remarkable feat was the first ascent of Mont Blanc by the Brenva ridge, the finest ice expedition of the period. Mr. Mason has immortalised the Brenva in his popular novel, Running Water.

And so the list might be indefinitely extended, if only space permitted. There was Sir George Young, who took part in the first ascent of the Jungfrau from the Wengern Alp and who was one of the first to attempt guideless climbing. There was Hardy, who made the first English ascent of the Finsteraarhorn, and Davies who climbed the two loftiest Swiss peaks, Dom and Täschhorn.4 “What I don’t understand,” he said to a friend of the present writer, “is why you modern mountaineers always climb on a rope. Surely your pace must be that of the slowest member of the party?” One has a picture of Davies striding impatiently ahead, devouring the ground in great hungry strides, while the weaker members dwindled into small black spots on the face of the glacier. And then there is Tuckett, who died in 1913. Of Tuckett, Leslie Stephen wrote: “In the heroic cycle of Alpine adventure the irrepressible Tuckett will occupy a place similar to Ulysses. In one valley the peasant will point to some vast breach in the everlasting rocks hewn, as his fancy will declare, by the sweep of the mighty ice-axe of the hero.... The broken masses of a descending glacier will fairly represent the staircase which he built in order to scale a previously inaccessible height.... Critics will be disposed to trace in him one more example of the universal solar myth.... Tuckett, it will be announced, is no other than the sun which appears at earliest dawn above the tops of the loftiest mountains, gilds the summits of the most inaccessible peaks, penetrates remote valleys, and passes in an incredibly short time from one extremity of the Alpine chain to another.”

The period which closes with the ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 has been called the Golden Age of Mountaineering; and the mountaineers whom we have mentioned were responsible for the greater portion of this glorious harvest. By 1865 the Matterhorn was the only remaining Zermat giant that still defied the invaders; and beyond Zermat only one great group of mountains, the Dolomites, still remained almost unconquered. It was the age of the guided climber. The pioneers did excellent work in giving the chamois hunter the opportunity to become a guide. And many of these amateurs were really the moral leaders of their parties. It was sometimes, though not often, the amateur who planned the line of ascent, and decided when the attack should be pressed and when it should be abandoned. It was only when the guide had made repeated ascents of fashionable peaks that the part played by the amateur became less and less important. Mountaineering in the ’fifties and ’sixties was in many ways far more arduous than it is to-day. Club-huts are now scattered through the Alps. It is no longer necessary to carry firewood and sleeping-bags to some lonely bivouac beside the banks of great glaciers. A sudden gust of bad weather at night no longer means that the climber starts at dawn with drenched clothes. The excellent series of Climbers’ Guides give minute instructions describing every step in the ascent. The maps are reliable. In those days, guide-books had still to be written, the maps were romantic and misleading, and the discoverer of a new pass had not only to get to the top, he had also to get down the other side. What precisely lay beyond the pass, he did not know. It might be an impassable glacier, or a rock face that could not be descended. Almost every new pass involved the possibility of a forced bivouac.

None the less, it must be admitted that the art of mountaineering has advanced more since 1865 than it did in the preceding half century. There is a greater difference between the ascent of the Grepon by the Mer de Glace Face, or the Brouillard Ridge of Mont Blanc, than between the Matterhorn and the Gross Glockner, or between the Weishorn and Mont Blanc.

The art of mountaineering is half physical and half mental. He who can justly claim the name of mountaineer must possess the power to lead up rocks and snow, and to cut steps in ice. This is the physical side of the business. It is important; but the charm of mountaineering is largely intellectual. The mental equipment of the mountaineer involves an exhaustive knowledge of one of the most ruthless aspects of Nature. The mountaineer must know the hills in all their changing moods and tenses. He must possess the power to make instant use of trivial clues, a power which the uninitiated mistake for an instinctive sense of direction. Such a sense is undoubtedly possessed by a small minority, but path-finding is often usually only the subconscious analysis of small clues. The mountaineer must understand the secrets of snow, rock, and ice. He must be able to tell at a glance whether a snow slope is dangerous, or a snow-bridge likely to collapse. He must be able to move with certainty and safety on a rock face, whether it is composed of reliable, or brittle and dangerous rock. All this involves knowledge which is born of experience and the power to apply experience. Every new peak is a problem for the intellect. Mountaineering, however, differs radically in one respect from many other sports. Most men can get up a mountain somehow, and thereby share at least one experience of the expert. Of every hundred boys that are dragooned into compulsory cricket at school, only ten could ever by any possible chance qualify to play in first-class cricket. Almost all of them could reach the summit of a first class peak if properly guided.

But this is not mountaineering. You cannot pay a professional to take your place at Lords’ and then claim the benefit of the century he knocks up. But some men with great Alpine reputations owe everything to the professional they have hired. They have good wind and strong legs. With a stout rope above, they could follow a good leader up any peak in the Alps. The guide was not only paid to lead up the rocks and assist them from above. He was paid to do all the thinking that was necessary. He was the brain as well as the muscle of the expedition. He solved all the problems that Nature sets the climber, and mountaineering for his client was only a very safe form of exercise in agreeable surroundings.

Leslie Stephen admitted this, and he had less cause to admit it than most. “I utterly repudiate the doctrine that Alpine travellers are, or ought to be, the heroes of Alpine adventure. The true way, at least, to describe all my Alpine adventures is to say that Michael Anderegg, or Lauener, succeeded in performing a feat requiring skill, strength, and courage, the difficulty of which was much increased by the difficulty of taking with him his knapsack and his employer.” Now, this does less than justice to Leslie Stephen, and to many of the early mountaineers. Often they supplied the brain of the party, and the directing energy. They were pioneers. Yet mountaineering as a fine art owes almost as much to the men who first dispensed with professional assistance. A man who climbs habitually with guides may be, and often is, a fine mountaineer. He need be nothing more than a good walker, with a steady head, to achieve a desperate reputation among laymen.

Many of the early pioneers were by no means great athletes, though their mountaineering achievements deceived the public into crediting them with superhuman nerve and strength. Many of them were middle-aged gentlemen, who could have taken no part in active sports which demand a swift alliance of nerve and muscle; but who were quite capable of plugging up the average mixture of easy rock and snow that one meets on the average first-class Alpine peak. They had average endurance, and more than average pluck, for the prestige of the unvanquished peaks still daunted all but the courageous.

They were lucky in that the great bulk of Alpine peaks were unconquered, and were only too ready to be conquered by the first climber who could hire two trusty Swiss guides to cut the steps, carry the knapsack, and lead up the rocks. It is usually said of these men: “They could not, perhaps, have tackled the pretty rock problems in which the modern cragsman delights. They were something better than gymnasts. They were all-round mountaineers.” This seems rather special pleading. Some one said that mountaineering seemed to be walking up easy snow mountains between guides, and mere cragsmanship consisted in leading up difficult rock-peaks without guides. It does not follow that a man who can lead up the Chamounix aiguilles knows less of the broader principles of mountaineering than the gentleman who is piloted up Mont Blanc by sturdy Swiss peasants. The issue is not between those who confine their energies to gymnastic feats on Welsh crags and the wider school who understand snow and ice as well as rock. The issue is between those who can take their proper share in a rock-climb like the Grepon, or a difficult ice expedition like the Brenva Mont Blanc, and those who would be completely at a loss if their guides broke down on an easy peak like the Wetterhorn. The pioneers did not owe everything to their guides. A few did, but most of them were good mountaineers whose opinion was often asked by the professionals, and sometimes taken. Yet the guided climber, then and now, missed the real inwardness of the sport. Mountaineering, in the modern sense, is a sport unrivalled in its appeal to mind and body. The man who can lead on a series of really first-class climbs must possess great nerve, and a specialised knowledge of mountains that is almost a sixth sense. Mountaineering between guides need not involve anything more than a good wind and a steady head. Anybody can get up a first-class peak. Only one amateur in ten can complete ascent and descent with safety if called on to lead.

In trying to form a just estimate of our debt to the early English pioneers, we have to avoid two extremes. We must remember the parable of the dwarf standing on the giant’s shoulders. It ill becomes those who owe Climbers’ Guides, and to some extent good maps, to the labours of the pioneers to discount their achievements. But the other extreme is also a danger. We need not pretend that every man who climbed a virgin peak in the days when nearly every big peak was virgin was necessarily a fine mountaineer. All praise is due to the earliest explorers, men like Balmat, Joseph Beck, Bourrit, De Saussure, and the Meyers, for in those days the country above the snow-line was not only unknown, it was full of imagined terrors. These men did a magnificent work in robbing the High Alps of their chief defence—superstition. But in the late ’fifties and early ’sixties this atmosphere had largely vanished. Mr. X came to the A valley, and discovered that the B, C, or D horn had not been climbed. The B, C, and D horn were average peaks with a certain amount of straightforward snow and ice work, and a certain amount of straightforward rock work. Mr. X enjoys a fortnight of good weather, and the services of two good guides. He does what any man with like opportunities would accomplish, what an undergraduate fresh to the Alps could accomplish to-day if these peaks had been obligingly left virgin for his disposal. Many of the pioneers with a long list of virgin peaks to their credit would have made a poor show if they had been asked to lead one of the easy buttresses of Tryfan.

Rock-climbing as a fine art was really undreamt of till long after the Matterhorn had been conquered. The layman is apt to conceive all Alpine climbs as a succession of dizzy precipices. To a man brought up on Alpine classics, there are few things more disappointing than the ease of his first big peak. The rock work on the average Oberland or Zermat peaks by the ordinary route is simple, straightforward scrambling up slopes whose average inclination is nearer thirty than sixty degrees. It is the sort of thing that the ordinary man can do by the light of Nature. Rock-climbing, in the sense in which the Dolomite or lake climber uses the term, is an art which calls for high qualities of nerve and physique. Such rock climbing was almost unknown till some time after the close of this period. No modern cragsman would consider the Matterhorn, even if robbed of its fixed ropes, as anything but a straightforward piece of interesting rock work, unless he was unlucky enough to find it in bad condition. All this we may frankly admit. Mountaineering as an art was only in its infancy when the Matterhorn was climbed. And yet the Englishmen whom we have mentioned in this chapter did more for mountaineering than any of their successors or predecessors. Bourrit, De Saussure, Beck, Placidus à Spescha, and the other pioneers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, deserve the greatest credit. But their spirited example gave no general impetus to the sport. They were single-handed mountaineers; and somehow they never managed to fire the world with their own enthusiasm. The Englishmen arrived late on the scene. The great giants of more than one district had been climbed. And yet mountaineering was still the pursuit of a few isolated men who knew little or nothing of their brother climbers, who came and struggled and passed away uncheered by the inspiring freemasonry of a band of workers aiming at the same end. It was left to the English to transform mountaineering into a popular sport. Judged even by modern standards some of these men were fine mountaineers, none the less independent because the fashion of the day decreed that guides should be taken on difficult expeditions. But even those who owed the greater part of their success to their guides were inspired by the same enthusiasm which, unlike the lonely watchfires of the earlier pioneers, kindled a general conflagration.

CHAPTER VIII
THE STORY OF THE MATTERHORN

The history of mountaineering contains nothing more dramatic than the epic of the Matterhorn. There is no mountain which appeals so readily to the imagination. Its unique form has drawn poetic rhapsodies from the most prosaic. “Men,” says Mr. Whymper, “who ordinarily spoke or wrote like rational beings when they came under its power seemed to quit their senses, and ranted, and rhapsodied, losing for a time all common forms of speech. Even the sober De Saussure was moved to enthusiasm.”

If the Matterhorn could thus inspire men before the most famous siege in Alpine history had clothed its cliffs in romance, how much more must it move those for whom the final tragedy has become historical? The first view of the Matterhorn, and the moment when the last step is taken on to the final crest, are two moments which the mountaineer never forgets. Those who knew the old Zermat are unpleasantly fond of reminding us that the railway train and the monster hôtels have robbed Zermat of its charm; while the fixed ropes and sardine tins—[Those dear old sardine tins! Our Alpine writers would run short of satire if they could not invoke their aid]—have finally humiliated the unvanquished Titan. It may be so; but it is easy enough to recover the old atmosphere. You have only to visit Zermat in winter when the train is not running. A long trudge up twenty miles of shadowed, frosty valley, a little bluff near Randa, and the Matterhorn soars once more into a stainless sky. There are no clouds, and probably not another stranger in the valley. The hôtels are closed, the sardine tins are buried, and the Matterhorn renews like the immortals an undying youth.

The great mountain remained unconquered mainly because it inspired in the hearts of the bravest guides a despairing belief in its inaccessibility. “There seemed,” writes Mr. Whymper, “to be a cordon drawn round it up to which one might go, but no further. Within that line gins and efreets were supposed to exist—the wandering Jew and the spirits of the damned. The superstitious natives in the surrounding valleys (many of whom firmly believed it to be not only the highest mountain in the Alps, but in the world) spoke of a ruined city on the summit wherein the spirits dwelt; and if you laughed they gravely shook their heads, told you to look yourself to see the castle and walls, and warned one against a rash approach, lest the infuriated demons from their impregnable heights might hurl down vengeance for one’s derision.”

Those who have a sense for the dramatic unities will feel that, for once in a way, Life lived up to the conventions of Art, and that even a great dramatist could scarcely have bettered the materials afforded by the history of the Matterhorn. As the story unfolds itself one can scarcely help attributing some fatal personality to the inanimate cliffs. In the Italian valley of Breuil, the Becca, as the Matterhorn used to be called, was for centuries the embodiment of supernatural terror. Mothers would frighten their children by threats that the wild man of the Becca would carry them away. And if the children asked how the Matterhorn was born, they would reply that in bygone years there dwelt a giant in Aosta named Gargantua, who was once seized with a longing for the country beyond the range of peaks that divide Italy from Switzerland. Now, in those far off times, the mountains of the great barrier formed one uniform ridge instead of (as now) a series of peaks. The giant strode over this range with one step. As he stood with one foot in Switzerland and the other in Italy, the surrounding rocks fell away, and the pyramid of cliffs caught between his legs alone remained. And thus was the Matterhorn formed. There were many such legends; the reader may find them in Whymper and Guido Rey. They were enough to daunt all but the boldest.

The drama of the Matterhorn opens appropriately enough with the three men who first showed a contempt for the superstitions that surrounded the Becca. The story of that first attempt is told in Guido Rey’s excellent monograph on the Matterhorn, a monograph which has been translated by Mr. Eaton into English as spirited as the original Italian. This opening bout with the Becca took place in 1858. Three natives of Breuil, the little Italian valley at the foot of the Matterhorn, met before dawn at the châlet of Avouil. Of these, Jean Jacques Carrel was in command. He was a mighty hunter, and a fine mountaineer. The second, Jean Antoine Carrel, “il Bersaglier,” was destined to play a leading part in the conflict that was to close seven years later. Jean Antoine was something more than a great guide. He was a ragged, independent mountaineer, difficult to control, a great leader, but a poor follower. He was an old soldier, and had fought at Novara. The third of these young climbers was Aimé Gorret, a young boy of twenty destined for the Church. His solitary rambles among the hills had filled him with a passionate worship of the Matterhorn.

Without proper provisions or gear, these three light-hearted knights set forth gaily on their quest. They mistook the way; and, reaching a spot that pleased them, they wasted hours in hurling rocks down a cliff—a fascinating pursuit. When they reached the point now known as the Tête du Lion (12,215 feet) they contemplated the Matterhorn which rose definitely beyond an intervening gap. They looked at their great foe with quiet assurance. The Becca would not run away. Nobody else was likely to try a throw with the local giant. One day they would come back and settle the issue. There was no immediate hurry.

In 1860 a daring attempt was made by Messrs. Alfred, Charles, and Sanbach Parker of Liverpool. These bold climbers dispensed with guides, and had the wisdom to attack the east face that rises above Zermat. All the other early explorers attacked the Italian ridge; and, as will be seen, the first serious assault on the eastern face succeeded. Lack of time prevented the Parkers from reaching a greater height than 12,000 feet; nor were they more successful in the following year, but they had made a gallant attempt, for which they deserve credit. In 1860 another party had assailed the mountain from Italy, and reached a height of about 13,000 feet. The party consisted of Vaughan Hawkins and Prof. Tyndall, whom he had invited to join the party, with the guides J. J. Carrel and Bennen.

In 1861 Edward Whymper, who had opened his Alpine career in the previous year, returned to the Alps determined to conquer two virgin summits of the Alps, the Matterhorn and the Weishorn. On arriving at Chatillon, he learned that the Weishorn had been climbed by Tyndall, and that Tyndall was at Breuil intending to add the Matterhorn to his conquests. Whymper determined to anticipate him. He arrived at Breuil on August 28, with an Oberland guide, and inquired for the best man in the valley. The knowing ones with a voice recommended Jean Antoine Carrel, a member of the first party to set foot on the Matterhorn. “We sought, of course, for Carrel, and found him a well-made, resolute looking fellow, with a certain defiant air which was rather taking. Yes, he would go. Twenty francs a day, whatever the result, was his price. I assented. But I must take his comrade. As he said this, an evil countenance came forth out of the darkness, and proclaimed itself the comrade. I demurred, and negotiations were broken off.”

At Breuil, they tried to get another man to accompany them but without success. The men they approached either would not go or asked a prohibitive price. “This, it may be said once and for all, was the reason why so many futile attempts were made on the Matterhorn. One guide after another was brought up to the mountain and patted on the back, but all declined the business. The men who went had no heart in the matter, and took the first opportunity to turn back. For they were, with the exception of the man to whom reference will be made [J. A. Carrel] universally impressed with the belief that the summit was entirely inaccessible.”

Whymper and his guide bivouacked in a cowshed; and as night approached they saw J. A. Carrel and his companion stealing up the hillside. Whymper asked them if they had repented, and would join his party. They replied that they had contemplated an independent assault. “Oh, then, it is not necessary to have more than three.” “Not for us.” “I admired their pluck and had a strong inclination to engage the pair, but finally decided against it. The companion turned out to be J. J. Carrel. Both were bold mountaineers; but Jean Antoine was incomparably the better of the two, and was the finest rock climber I have ever seen. He was the only man who persistently refused to accept defeat, and who continued to believe, in spite of all discouragements, that the great mountain was not inaccessible, and that it could be ascended from the side of his native valley.”

Carrel was something more than a great guide. He remained a soldier long after he had laid down his sword. He was, above all, an Italian, determined to climb the Matterhorn by the great Italian ridge, to climb it for the honour of Italy, and for the honour of his native valley. The two great moments of his life were those in which he heard the shouts of victory at Colle di Santiarno, and the cries of triumph on the summit of the Italian ridge. Whymper, and later Tyndall, found him an awkward man to deal with. He had the rough, undisciplined nature of the mountain he loved. He looked on the Matterhorn as a kind of preserve, and was determined that he and no other should lead on the final and successful ascent. Whymper’s first attempt failed owing to the poor qualities of his guide; and the Carrels were not more successful.

During the three years that followed, Whymper made no less than six attempts to climb the Matterhorn. On one occasion he climbed alone and unaided higher than any of his predecessors. Without guides or companions, he reached a height of 13,500 feet. There is little to be said for solitary climbing, but this feat stands out as one of the boldest achievements of the period. The critics of solitary scrambling need, however, look no further than its sequel for their moral. In attempting to negotiate a corner on the Tête du Lion, Whymper slipped and fell. He shot down an ice slope, slid and bounded through a vertical height of about 200 feet, and was eventually thrown against the side of a gully where it narrowed. Another ten feet would have taken him in one terrific bound of 800 feet on to the glacier below. The blood was pulsing out of numerous cuts. He plastered up the wounds in his head with a lump of snow before scrambling up into a place of safety, where he promptly fainted away. He managed, however, to reach Breuil without further adventure. Within a week he had returned to the attack.

He made two further attempts that year which failed for various reasons; but he had the satisfaction of seeing Tyndall fail when success seemed assured. Tyndall had brought with him the great Swiss guide Bennen, and a Valaisian guide named Walter Anton. He engaged Jean Antoine and Cæsar Carrel. They proposed to attack the mountain by the Italian ridge. Next morning, somebody ran in to tell Whymper that a flag had been seen on the summit. This proved a false alarm. Whymper waited through the long day to greet the party on their return. “I could not bring myself to leave, but lingered about as a foolish lover hovers round the object of his affections even after he has been rejected. The sun had set before the men were discerned coming over the pastures. There was no spring in their steps—they, too, were defeated.”

Prof. Tyndall told Whymper that he had arrived “within a stone’s-throw of the summit”—the mountain is 14,800 feet high, 14,600 feet had been climbed. “He greatly deceived himself,” said Whymper, “for the point which he reached is no less than 800 feet below the summit. The failure was due to the fact that the Carrels had been engaged in a subordinate capacity.” When they were appealed to for their opinion, they replied: “We are porters, ask your guides.” Carrel always determined that the Matterhorn should be climbed from Italy, and that the leader of the climb should be an Italian. Bennen was a Swiss and Carrel had been engaged as a second guide. Tyndall and Whymper found it necessary to champion their respective guides, Carrel and Bennen; and a more or less heated controversy was carried on in the pages of The Alpine Journal.

The Matterhorn was left in peace till the next year, but, meanwhile, a conspiracy for its downfall was hatched in Italy. The story is told in Guido Rey’s classic book on the Matterhorn, a book which should be read side by side with Whymper’s Scrambles, as it gives the Italian version of the final stages in which Italy and England fought for the great prize. In 1863, some leading Italian mountaineers gathered together at Turin to found an Italian Alpine Club. Amongst these were two well-known scientists, Felice Giordano and Quintino Sella. They vowed that, as English climbers had robbed them of Monte Viso, prince of Piedmontese peaks, Italy should have the honour of conquering the Matterhorn, and that Italians should climb it from Italy by the Italian ridge. The task was offered to Giordano, who accepted it.

In 1863 Whymper and Carrel made another attempt on the Matterhorn, which was foiled by bad weather. In the next year, the mountain was left alone; but the plot for its downfall began to mature. Giordano and Sella had met Carrel, and had extracted from him promises of support. Carrel was, above all, an Italian, and, other things being equal, he would naturally prefer to lead an Italian, rather than an English, party to the summit.

And now we come to the closing scenes. In 1865 Whymper returned to the attack, heartily tired of the Italian ridge. With the great guides Michel Croz and Christian Almer, Whymper attempted to reach the summit by a rock couloir that starts from near the Breuiljoch, and terminates high up on the Furggen arête. This was a mad scheme; and the route they chose was the most impracticable of all the routes that had ever been attempted on the Matterhorn. Even to-day, the great couloir has not been climbed, and the top half of the Furggen ridge has only been once ascended (or rather outflanked on the Italian side), an expedition of great danger and difficulty. Foiled in this attempt, Whymper turned his attention to the Swiss face. The eastern face is a fraud. From the Riffel and from Zermat, it appears almost perpendicular; but when seen in profile from the Zmutt glacier it presents a very different appearance. The average angle of the slope as far as “the shoulder,” about 13,925 feet, is about thirty degrees. From here to the summit the angle steepens considerably but is never more than fifty degrees. The wonder is that Whymper, who had studied the mountain more than once from the Zmutt glacier, still continued his attempts on the difficult Italian ridge.

On the 8th of June 1865, Whymper arrived in Breuil, and explained to Carrel his change of plan. He engaged Carrel, and made plans for his attack on the Swiss face, promising Carrel that, if that failed, they should return to the Italian ridge. Jean Antoine told Whymper that he would not be able to serve him after the 11th, as he was engaged to travel “with a family of distinction in the valley of Aosta.” Whymper asked him why he had not told him this before; and he replied that the engagement had been a long-standing one, but that the actual day had not been fixed. Whymper was annoyed; but he could find no fault with the answer, and parted on friendly terms with Carrel. But the family of distinction was no other than Giordano. “You are going to leave me,” Whymper had said to Carrel, “to travel with a party of ladies. The work is not fit for you.” Carrel had smiled; and Whymper had taken the smile as a recognition of the implied compliment. Carrel smiled because he knew that the work he had in hand was more fitted for him than for any other man.

On the 7th, Giordano had written to Sella:

“Let us, then, set out to attack this Devil’s mountain; and let us see that we succeed, if only Whymper has not been beforehand with us.” On the 11th, he wrote again: “Dear Quintino, It is high time for me to send you news from here. I reached Valtournanche on Saturday at midday. There I found Carrel, who had just returned from a reconnoitring expedition on the Matterhorn, which had proved a failure owing to bad weather. Whymper had arrived two or three days before; as usual, he wished to make the ascent, and had engaged Carrel, who, not having had my letters, had agreed, but for a few days only. Fortunately, the weather turned bad, Whymper was unable to make his fresh attempt; and Carrel left him, and came with me together with five other picked men who are the best guides in the valley. We immediately sent off our advance guard with Carrel at its head. In order not to excite remark, we took the rope and other materials to Avouil, a hamlet which is very remote and close to the Matterhorn; and this is to be our lower base.... I have tried to keep everything secret; but that fellow, whose life seems to depend on the Matterhorn, is here suspiciously prying into everything. I have taken all the competent men away from him; and yet he is so enamoured of the mountain that he may go with others and make a scene. He is here in this hôtel, and I try to avoid speaking to him.”

Whymper discovered on the 10th the identity of the “family of distinction.” He was furious. He considered, with some show of justification, that he had been “bamboozled and humbugged.”

The Italian party had already started for the Matterhorn, with a large store of provisions. They were an advance party designed to find and facilitate the way. They would take their time. Whymper took courage. On the 11th, a party arrived from Zermat across the Théodule. One of these proved to be Lord Francis Douglas, who, a few days previously, had made the second ascent of the Gabelhorn, and the first from Zinal. Lord Francis was a young and ambitious climber; and he was only too glad to join Whymper in an attack on the Swiss face of the Matterhorn. They crossed to Zermat together on the 12th, and there discovered Mr. Hudson, a great mountaineer, accompanied by the famous guide Michel Croz, who had arrived at Zermat with the Matterhorn in view. They agreed to join forces; and Hudson’s friend Hadow was admitted to the party. Hadow was a young man of nineteen who had just left Harrow. Whymper seemed doubtful of his ability; but Hudson reassured him by remarking that Mr. Hadow had done Mont Blanc in less time than most men. Peter Taugwalder, Lord Francis’s guide, and Peter’s two sons completed the party. On the 13th of July they left Zermat.

On the 14th of July Giordano wrote a short letter every line of which is alive with grave triumph. “At 2 p.m. to-day I saw Carrel & Co., on the top of the Matterhorn.” Poor Giordano! The morrow was to bring a sad disappointment; and his letter dated the 15th of July contains a pregnant sentence: “Although every man did his duty, it is a lost battle, and I am in great grief.”

This is what had happened. Whymper and his companions had left Zermat on the 13th at half-past five. The day was cloudless. They mounted leisurely, and arrived at the base of the actual peak about half-past eleven. Once fairly on the great eastern face, they were astonished to find that places which looked entirely impracticable from the Riffel “were so easy that they could run about.” By mid-day they had found a suitable place for the tent at a height of about 11,000 feet. Croz and young Peter Taugwalder went on to explore. They returned at about 3 p.m. in a great state of excitement. There was no difficulty. They could have gone to the top that day and returned.... “Long after dusk, the cliffs above echoed with our laughter, and with the songs of the guides, for we were happy that night in camp, and feared no evil.”

Whymper’s story is told with simplicity and restraint. He was too good a craftsman to spoil a great subject by unnecessary strokes. They started next day before dawn. They had left Zermat on the 13th, and they left their camp on a Friday (the superstitious noted these facts when the whole disastrous story was known). The whole of the great eastern slope “was now revealed, rising for 3000 feet like a huge natural staircase. Some parts were more and others were less easy; but we were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment.... For the greater part of the way there was no need for the rope, and sometimes Hudson led, and sometimes myself.” When they arrived at the snow ridge now known as “The Shoulder,” which is some 500 feet below the summit, they turned over on to the northern face. This proved more difficult; but the general angle of the slope was nowhere more than forty degrees. Hadow’s want of experience began to tell, and he required a certain amount of assistance. “The solitary difficult part was of no great extent.... A long stride round a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more. The last doubt had vanished. The Matterhorn was ours. Nothing but 200 feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted.”

But they were not yet certain that they had not been beaten. The Italians had left Breuil four days before. All through the climb, false alarms had been raised of men on the top. The excitement became intense. “The slope eased off; at length we could be detached; and Croz and I, dashing away, ran a neck-and-neck race which ended in a dead heat. At 1.40 p.m. the world was at our feet, and the Matterhorn was conquered.”

No footsteps could be seen; but the summit of the Matterhorn consists of a rudely level ridge about 350 feet in length, and the Italians might have been at the further end. Whymper hastened to the Italian summit, and again found the snow untrodden. They peered over the ridge, and far below on the right caught sight of the Italian party. “Up went my arms and hat. ‘Croz, Croz, come here!’ ‘Where are they, monsieur?’ ‘There, don’t you see them, down there.’ ‘Ah, the coquins, they are low down.’ ‘Croz, we must make those fellows hear us.’ They yelled until they were hoarse. ‘Croz, we must make them hear us, they shall hear us.’” Whymper seized a block of rock and hurled it down, and called on his companion to do the same. They drove their sticks in, and soon a whole torrent was pouring down. “There was no mistake about it this time. The Italians turned and fled.”