A Tramp Abroad

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> A Tramp Abroad


He had growled at everything, but I judged it would puzzle him to find
anything the matter with this majestic glacier. I intimated as much; but
he was ready, and said with surly discontent: "You ought to see them in
the Protestant cantons."

This irritated me. But I concealed the feeling, and asked:

"What is the matter with this one?"

"Matter? Why, it ain't in any kind of condition. They never take any
care of a glacier here. The moraine has been spilling gravel around it,
and got it all dirty."

"Why, man, THEY can't help that."

"THEY? You're right. That is, they WON'T. They could if they wanted to.
You never see a speck of dirt on a Protestant glacier. Look at the Rhone
glacier. It is fifteen miles long, and seven hundred feet think. If this
was a Protestant glacier you wouldn't see it looking like this, I can
tell you."

"That is nonsense. What would they do with it?"

"They would whitewash it. They always do."

I did not believe a word of this, but rather than have trouble I let it
go; for it is a waste of breath to argue with a bigot. I even doubted if
the Rhone glacier WAS in a Protestant canton; but I did not know, so I
could not make anything by contradicting a man who would probably put me
down at once with manufactured evidence.

About nine miles from St. Nicholas we crossed a bridge over the raging
torrent of the Visp, and came to a log strip of flimsy fencing which
was pretending to secure people from tumbling over a perpendicular wall
forty feet high and into the river. Three children were approaching; one
of them, a little girl, about eight years old, was running; when pretty
close to us she stumbled and fell, and her feet shot under the rail of
the fence and for a moment projected over the stream. It gave us a
sharp shock, for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground slanted
steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer impossibility; but she
managed to scramble up, and ran by us laughing.

We went forward and examined the place and saw the long tracks which her
feet had made in the dirt when they darted over the verge. If she had
finished her trip she would have struck some big rocks in the edge of
the water, and then the torrent would have snatched her downstream among
the half-covered boulders and she would have been pounded to pulp in two
minutes. We had come exceedingly near witnessing her death.

And now Harris's contrary nature and inborn selfishness were striking
manifested. He has no spirit of self-denial. He began straight off, and
continued for an hour, to express his gratitude that the child was not
destroyed. I never saw such a man. That was the kind of person he was;
just so HE was gratified, he never cared anything about anybody else. I
had noticed that trait in him, over and over again. Often, of course, it
was mere heedlessness, mere want of reflection. Doubtless this may have
been the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard to bar
on that account--and after all, its bottom, its groundwork, was
selfishness. There is no avoiding that conclusion. In the instance under
consideration, I did think the indecency of running on in that way might
occur to him; but no, the child was saved and he was glad, that was
sufficient--he cared not a straw for MY feelings, or my loss of such a
literary plum, snatched from my very mouth at the instant it was
ready to drop into it. His selfishness was sufficient to place his own
gratification in being spared suffering clear before all concern for
me, his friend. Apparently, he did not once reflect upon the valuable
details which would have fallen like a windfall to me: fishing the child
out--witnessing the surprise of the family and the stir the thing would
have made among the peasants--then a Swiss funeral--then the roadside
monument, to be paid for by us and have our names mentioned in it. And
we should have gone into Baedeker and been immortal. I was silent. I was
too much hurt to complain. If he could act so, and be so heedless and so
frivolous at such a time, and actually seem to glory in it, after all
I had done for him, I would have cut my hand off before I would let him
see that I was wounded.

We were approaching Zermatt; consequently, we were approaching the
renowned Matterhorn. A month before, this mountain had been only a name
to us, but latterly we had been moving through a steadily thickening
double row of pictures of it, done in oil, water, chromo, wood, steel,
copper, crayon, and photography, and so it had at length become a shape
to us--and a very distinct, decided, and familiar one, too. We were
expecting to recognize that mountain whenever or wherever we should run
across it. We were not deceived. The monarch was far away when we first
saw him, but there was no such thing as mistaking him. He has the rare
peculiarity of standing by himself; he is peculiarly steep, too, and is
also most oddly shaped. He towers into the sky like a colossal wedge,
with the upper third of its blade bent a little to the left. The broad
base of this monster wedge is planted upon a grand glacier-paved Alpine
platform whose elevation is ten thousand feet above sea-level; as the
wedge itself is some five thousand feet high, it follows that its apex
is about fifteen thousand feet above sea-level. So the whole bulk of
this stately piece of rock, this sky-cleaving monolith, is above the
line of eternal snow. Yet while all its giant neighbors have the look of
being built of solid snow, from their waists up, the Matterhorn stands
black and naked and forbidding, the year round, or merely powdered or
streaked with white in places, for its sides are so steep that the
snow cannot stay there. Its strange form, its august isolation, and its
majestic unkinship with its own kind, make it--so to speak--the Napoleon
of the mountain world. "Grand, gloomy, and peculiar," is a phrase which
fits it as aptly as it fitted the great captain.

Think of a monument a mile high, standing on a pedestal two miles high!
This is what the Matterhorn is--a monument. Its office, henceforth, for
all time, will be to keep watch and ward over the secret resting-place
of the young Lord Douglas, who, in 1865, was precipitated from the
summit over a precipice four thousand feet high, and never seen again.
No man ever had such a monument as this before; the most imposing of
the world's other monuments are but atoms compared to it; and they will
perish, and their places will pass from memory, but this will remain.
[1]

1. The accident which cost Lord Douglas his life (see
Chapter xii) also cost the lives of three other men.
These three fell four-fifths of a mile, and their bodies
were afterward found, lying side by side, upon a glacier,
whence they were borne to Zermatt and buried in the
churchyard.

The remains of Lord Douglas have never been found.
The secret of his sepulture, like that of Moses, must remain
a mystery always.

A walk from St. Nicholas to Zermatt is a wonderful experience. Nature
is built on a stupendous plan in that region. One marches continually
between walls that are piled into the skies, with their upper heights
broken into a confusion of sublime shapes that gleam white and cold
against the background of blue; and here and there one sees a big
glacier displaying its grandeurs on the top of a precipice, or a
graceful cascade leaping and flashing down the green declivities. There
is nothing tame, or cheap, or trivial--it is all magnificent. That
short valley is a picture-gallery of a notable kind, for it contains
no mediocrities; from end to end the Creator has hung it with His
masterpieces.

We made Zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine hours out from
St. Nicholas. Distance, by guide-book, twelve miles; by pedometer
seventy-two. We were in the heart and home of the mountain-climbers,
now, as all visible things testified. The snow-peaks did not hold
themselves aloof, in aristocratic reserve; they nestled close around,
in a friendly, sociable way; guides, with the ropes and axes and other
implements of their fearful calling slung about their persons, roosted
in a long line upon a stone wall in front of the hotel, and waited for
customers; sun-burnt climbers, in mountaineering costume, and followed
by their guides and porters, arrived from time to time, from breakneck
expeditions among the peaks and glaciers of the High Alps; male and
female tourists, on mules, filed by, in a continuous procession,
hotelward-bound from wild adventures which would grow in grandeur very
time they were described at the English or American fireside, and at
last outgrow the possible itself.

We were not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home of the
Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; no, for here was Mr.
Girdlestone himself, the famous Englishman who hunts his way to the most
formidable Alpine summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining
a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize him, while looking
straight at him at short range. I would rather face whole Hyde Parks of
artillery than the ghastly forms of death which he has faced among the
peaks and precipices of the mountains. There is probably no pleasure
equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure
which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it. I have
not jumped to this conclusion; I have traveled to it per gravel-train,
so to speak. I have thought the thing all out, and am quite sure I am
right. A born climber's appetite for climbing is hard to satisfy; when
it comes upon him he is like a starving man with a feast before him; he
may have other business on hand, but it must wait. Mr. Girdlestone had
had his usual summer holiday in the Alps, and had spent it in his usual
way, hunting for unique chances to break his neck; his vacation was
over, and his luggage packed for England, but all of a sudden a hunger
had come upon him to climb the tremendous Weisshorn once more, for he
had heard of a new and utterly impossible route up it. His baggage
was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend, laden with knapsacks,
ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens of milk, were just setting out.
They would spend the night high up among the snows, somewhere, and
get up at two in the morning and finish the enterprise. I had a
strong desire to go with them, but forced it down--a feat which Mr.
Girdlestone, with all his fortitude, could not do.

Even ladies catch the climbing mania, and are unable to throw it off.
A famous climber, of that sex, had attempted the Weisshorn a few days
before our arrival, and she and her guides had lost their way in a
snow-storm high up among the peaks and glaciers and been forced to
wander around a good while before they could find a way down. When this
lady reached the bottom, she had been on her feet twenty-three hours!

Our guides, hired on the Gemmi, were already at Zermatt when we
reached there. So there was nothing to interfere with our getting up an
adventure whenever we should choose the time and the object. I resolved
to devote my first evening in Zermatt to studying up the subject of
Alpine climbing, by way of preparation.

I read several books, and here are some of the things I found out. One's
shoes must be strong and heavy, and have pointed hobnails in them. The
alpenstock must be of the best wood, for if it should break, loss of
life might be the result. One should carry an ax, to cut steps in the
ice with, on the great heights. There must be a ladder, for there are
steep bits of rock which can be surmounted with this instrument--or this
utensil--but could not be surmounted without it; such an obstruction
has compelled the tourist to waste hours hunting another route, when a
ladder would have saved him all trouble. One must have from one hundred
and fifty to five hundred feet of strong rope, to be used in lowering
the party down steep declivities which are too steep and smooth to
be traversed in any other way. One must have a steel hook, on another
rope--a very useful thing; for when one is ascending and comes to a low
bluff which is yet too high for the ladder, he swings this rope aloft
like a lasso, the hook catches at the top of the bluff, and then the
tourist climbs the rope, hand over hand--being always particular to try
and forget that if the hook gives way he will never stop falling till
he arrives in some part of Switzerland where they are not expecting him.
Another important thing--there must be a rope to tie the whole party
together with, so that if one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless
chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the rope and save him.
One must have a silk veil, to protect his face from snow, sleet, hail
and gale, and colored goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous
enemy, snow-blindness. Finally, there must be some porters, to carry
provisions, wine and scientific instruments, and also blanket bags for
the party to sleep in.

I closed my readings with a fearful adventure which Mr. Whymper once had
on the Matterhorn when he was prowling around alone, five thousand
feet above the town of Breil. He was edging his way gingerly around
the corner of a precipice where the upper edge of a sharp declivity of
ice-glazed snow joined it. This declivity swept down a couple of hundred
feet, into a gully which curved around and ended at a precipice eight
hundred feet high, overlooking a glacier. His foot slipped, and he fell.

He says:

"My knapsack brought my head down first, and I pitched into some rocks
about a dozen feet below; they caught something, and tumbled me off
the edge, head over heels, into the gully; the baton was dashed from my
hands, and I whirled downward in a series of bounds, each longer than
the last; now over ice, now into rocks, striking my head four or five
times, each time with increased force. The last bound sent me spinning
through the air in a leap of fifty or sixty feet, from one side of the
gully to the other, and I struck the rocks, luckily, with the whole of
my left side. They caught my clothes for a moment, and I fell back on to
the snow with motion arrested. My head fortunately came the right side
up, and a few frantic catches brought me to a halt, in the neck of the
gully and on the verge of the precipice. Baton, hat, and veil skimmed
by and disappeared, and the crash of the rocks--which I had started--as
they fell on to the glacier, told how narrow had been the escape from
utter destruction. As it was, I fell nearly two hundred feet in seven or
eight bounds. Ten feet more would have taken me in one gigantic leaps of
eight hundred feet on to the glacier below.

"The situation was sufficiently serious. The rocks could not be let go
for a moment, and the blood was spurting out of more than twenty cuts.
The most serious ones were in the head, and I vainly tried to close
them with one hand, while holding on with the other. It was useless;
the blood gushed out in blinding jets at each pulsation. At last, in a
moment of inspiration, I kicked out a big lump of snow and struck it
as plaster on my head. The idea was a happy one, and the flow of blood
diminished. Then, scrambling up, I got, not a moment too soon, to
a place of safety, and fainted away. The sun was setting when
consciousness returned, and it was pitch-dark before the Great Staircase
was descended; but by a combination of luck and care, the whole four
thousand seven hundred feet of descent to Breil was accomplished without
a slip, or once missing the way."

His wounds kept him abed some days. Then he got up and climbed that
mountain again. That is the way with a true Alp-climber; the more fun he
has, the more he wants.



CHAPTER XXXVII [Our Imposing Column Starts Upward]

After I had finished my readings, I was no longer myself; I was tranced,
uplifted, intoxicated, by the almost incredible perils and adventures
I had been following my authors through, and the triumphs I had been
sharing with them. I sat silent some time, then turned to Harris and
said:

"My mind is made up."

Something in my tone struck him: and when he glanced at my eye and
read what was written there, his face paled perceptibly. He hesitated a
moment, then said:

"Speak."

I answered, with perfect calmness:

"I will ascend the Riffelberg."

If I had shot my poor friend he could not have fallen from his chair
more suddenly. If I had been his father he could not have pleaded harder
to get me to give up my purpose. But I turned a deaf ear to all he said.
When he perceived at last that nothing could alter my determination, he
ceased to urge, and for a while the deep silence was broken only by his
sobs. I sat in marble resolution, with my eyes fixed upon vacancy, for
in spirit I was already wrestling with the perils of the mountains, and
my friend sat gazing at me in adoring admiration through his tears.
At last he threw himself upon me in a loving embrace and exclaimed in
broken tones:

"Your Harris will never desert you. We will die together."

I cheered the noble fellow with praises, and soon his fears were
forgotten and he was eager for the adventure. He wanted to summon the
guides at once and leave at two in the morning, as he supposed the
custom was; but I explained that nobody was looking at that hour; and
that the start in the dark was not usually made from the village but
from the first night's resting-place on the mountain side. I said we
would leave the village at 3 or 4 P.M. on the morrow; meantime he could
notify the guides, and also let the public know of the attempt which we
proposed to make.

I went to bed, but not to sleep. No man can sleep when he is about to
undertake one of these Alpine exploits. I tossed feverishly all night
long, and was glad enough when I heard the clock strike half past eleven
and knew it was time to get up for dinner. I rose, jaded and rusty, and
went to the noon meal, where I found myself the center of interest and
curiosity; for the news was already abroad. It is not easy to eat calmly
when you are a lion; but it is very pleasant, nevertheless.

As usual, at Zermatt, when a great ascent is about to be undertaken,
everybody, native and foreign, laid aside his own projects and took up
a good position to observe the start. The expedition consisted of 198
persons, including the mules; or 205, including the cows. As follows:

CHIEFS OF SERVICE SUBORDINATES

Myself
1 Veterinary Surgeon Mr. Harris
1 Butler
17 Guides
12 Waiters
4 Surgeons
1 Footman
1 Geologist
1 Barber
1 Botanist
1 Head Cook
3 Chaplains
9 Assistants
15 Barkeepers
1 Confectionery Artist
1 Latinist


TRANSPORTATION, ETC.

27 Porters
3 Coarse Washers and Ironers
1 Fine ditto
44 Mules
44 Muleteers
7 Cows
2 Milkers

Total, 154 men, 51 animals. Grand Total, 205.


RATIONS, ETC. APPARATUS

16 Cases Hams
25 Spring Mattresses
2 Hair ditto
Bedding for same
2 Barrels Flour
22 Barrels Whiskey
1 Barrel Sugar
2 Mosquito-nets
1 Keg Lemons
29 Tents
2,000 Cigars
Scientific Instruments
1 Barrel Pies
97 Ice-axes
1 Ton of Pemmican
5 Cases Dynamite
143 Pair Crutches
7 Cans Nitroglycerin
2 Barrels Arnica
22 40-foot Ladders
1 Bale of Lint
2 Miles of Rope
27 Kegs Paregoric
154 Umbrellas

It was full four o'clock in the afternoon before my cavalcade was
entirely ready. At that hour it began to move. In point of numbers and
spectacular effect, it was the most imposing expedition that had ever
marched from Zermatt.

I commanded the chief guide to arrange the men and animals in single
file, twelve feet apart, and lash them all together on a strong rope. He
objected that the first two miles was a dead level, with plenty of room,
and that the rope was never used except in very dangerous places. But
I would not listen to that. My reading had taught me that many serious
accidents had happened in the Alps simply from not having the people
tied up soon enough; I was not going to add one to the list. The guide
then obeyed my order.

When the procession stood at ease, roped together, and ready to move, I
never saw a finer sight. It was 3,122 feet long--over half a mile; every
man and me was on foot, and had on his green veil and his blue goggles,
and his white rag around his hat, and his coil of rope over one shoulder
and under the other, and his ice-ax in his belt, and carried his
alpenstock in his left hand, his umbrella (closed) in his right, and his
crutches slung at his back. The burdens of the pack-mules and the horns
of the cows were decked with the Edelweiss and the Alpine rose.

I and my agent were the only persons mounted. We were in the post of
danger in the extreme rear, and tied securely to five guides apiece. Our
armor-bearers carried our ice-axes, alpenstocks, and other implements
for us. We were mounted upon very small donkeys, as a measure of safety;
in time of peril we could straighten our legs and stand up, and let
the donkey walk from under. Still, I cannot recommend this sort of
animal--at least for excursions of mere pleasure--because his
ears interrupt the view. I and my agent possessed the regulation
mountaineering costumes, but concluded to leave them behind. Out of
respect for the great numbers of tourists of both sexes who would be
assembled in front of the hotels to see us pass, and also out of respect
for the many tourists whom we expected to encounter on our expedition,
we decided to make the ascent in evening dress.

We watered the caravan at the cold stream which rushes down a trough
near the end of the village, and soon afterward left the haunts of
civilization behind us. About half past five o'clock we arrived at a
bridge which spans the Visp, and after throwing over a detachment to see
if it was safe, the caravan crossed without accident. The way now led,
by a gentle ascent, carpeted with fresh green grass, to the church at
Winkelmatten. Without stopping to examine this edifice, I executed
a flank movement to the right and crossed the bridge over the
Findelenbach, after first testing its strength. Here I deployed to the
right again, and presently entered an inviting stretch of meadowland
which was unoccupied save by a couple of deserted huts toward the
furthest extremity. These meadows offered an excellent camping-place.
We pitched our tents, supped, established a proper grade, recorded the
events of the day, and then went to bed.

We rose at two in the morning and dressed by candle-light. It was a
dismal and chilly business. A few stars were shining, but the general
heavens were overcast, and the great shaft of the Matterhorn was draped
in a cable pall of clouds. The chief guide advised a delay; he said he
feared it was going to rain. We waited until nine o'clock, and then got
away in tolerably clear weather.

Our course led up some terrific steeps, densely wooded with larches and
cedars, and traversed by paths which the rains had guttered and which
were obstructed by loose stones. To add to the danger and inconvenience,
we were constantly meeting returning tourists on foot and horseback, and
as constantly being crowded and battered by ascending tourists who were
in a hurry and wanted to get by.

Our troubles thickened. About the middle of the afternoon the seventeen
guides called a halt and held a consultation. After consulting an hour
they said their first suspicion remained intact--that is to say, they
believed they were lost. I asked if they did not KNOW it? No, they said,
they COULDN'T absolutely know whether they were lost or not, because
none of them had ever been in that part of the country before. They had
a strong instinct that they were lost, but they had no proofs--except
that they did not know where they were. They had met no tourists for
some time, and they considered that a suspicious sign.

Plainly we were in an ugly fix. The guides were naturally unwilling to
go alone and seek a way out of the difficulty; so we all went together.
For better security we moved slow and cautiously, for the forest was
very dense. We did not move up the mountain, but around it, hoping to
strike across the old trail. Toward nightfall, when we were about tired
out, we came up against a rock as big as a cottage. This barrier took
all the remaining spirit out of the men, and a panic of fear and despair
ensued. They moaned and wept, and said they should never see their homes
and their dear ones again. Then they began to upbraid me for bringing
them upon this fatal expedition. Some even muttered threats against me.

Clearly it was no time to show weakness. So I made a speech in which I
said that other Alp-climbers had been in as perilous a position as this,
and yet by courage and perseverance had escaped. I promised to stand
by them, I promised to rescue them. I closed by saying we had plenty
of provisions to maintain us for quite a siege--and did they suppose
Zermatt would allow half a mile of men and mules to mysteriously
disappear during any considerable time, right above their noses, and
make no inquiries? No, Zermatt would send out searching-expeditions and
we should be saved.