A Tramp Abroad

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


H. It must be very pleasant. But it must make Boston seem a little slow
when you are at home.

G.S. Yes, of course it does. But I don't go home much. There's no life
there--little to feed a man's higher nature. Boston's very narrow, you
know. She doesn't know it, and you couldn't convince her of it--so I say
nothing when I'm there: where's the use? Yes, Boston is very narrow, but
she has such a good opinion of herself that she can't see it. A man who
has traveled as much as I have, and seen as much of the world, sees it
plain enough, but he can't cure it, you know, so the best is to leave it
and seek a sphere which is more in harmony with his tastes and culture.
I run across there, one a year, perhaps, when I have nothing important
on hand, but I'm very soon back again. I spend my time in Europe.

H. I see. You map out your plans and ...

G.S. No, excuse me. I don't map out any plans. I simply follow the
inclination of the day. I am limited by no ties, no requirements, I
am not bound in any way. I am too old a traveler to hamper myself with
deliberate purposes. I am simply a traveler--an inveterate traveler--a
man of the world, in a word--I can call myself by no other name. I do
not say, "I am going here, or I am going there"--I say nothing at all, I
only act. For instance, next week you may find me the guest of a grandee
of Spain, or you may find me off for Venice, or flitting toward Dresden.
I shall probably go to Egypt presently; friends will say to friends,
"He is at the Nile cataracts"--and at that very moment they will be
surprised to learn that I'm away off yonder in India somewhere. I am
a constant surprise to people. They are always saying, "Yes, he was
in Jerusalem when we heard of him last, but goodness knows where he is
now."

Presently the Grandson rose to leave--discovered he had an appointment
with some Emperor, perhaps. He did his graces over again: gripped me
with one talon, at arm's-length, pressed his hat against his stomach
with the other, bent his body in the middle three times, murmuring:

"Pleasure, 'm sure; great pleasure, 'm sure. Wish you much success."

Then he removed his gracious presence. It is a great and solemn thing to
have a grandfather.

I have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way, for what little
indignation he excited in me soon passed and left nothing behind it but
compassion. One cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum. I have tried
to repeat this lad's very words; if I have failed anywhere I have at
least not failed to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what he said.
He and the innocent chatterbox whom I met on the Swiss lake are the most
unique and interesting specimens of Young America I came across
during my foreign tramping. I have made honest portraits of them, not
caricatures. The Grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five
or six times as an "old traveler," and as many as three times (with a
serene complacency which was maddening) as a "man of the world."
There was something very delicious about his leaving Boston to her
"narrowness," unreproved and uninstructed.

I formed the caravan in marching order, presently, and after riding down
the line to see that it was properly roped together, gave the command to
proceed. In a little while the road carried us to open, grassy land. We
were above the troublesome forest, now, and had an uninterrupted view,
straight before us, of our summit--the summit of the Riffelberg.

We followed the mule-road, a zigzag course, now to the right, now to
the left, but always up, and always crowded and incommoded by going and
coming files of reckless tourists who were never, in a single instance,
tied together. I was obliged to exert the utmost care and caution, for
in many places the road was not two yards wide, and often the lower side
of it sloped away in slanting precipices eight and even nine feet deep.
I had to encourage the men constantly, to keep them from giving way to
their unmanly fears.

We might have made the summit before night, but for a delay caused by
the loss of an umbrella. I was allowing the umbrella to remain lost, but
the men murmured, and with reason, for in this exposed region we stood
in peculiar need of protection against avalanches; so I went into camp
and detached a strong party to go after the missing article.

The difficulties of the next morning were severe, but our courage
was high, for our goal was near. At noon we conquered the last
impediment--we stood at last upon the summit, and without the loss of a
single man except the mule that ate the glycerin. Our great achievement
was achieved--the possibility of the impossible was demonstrated, and
Harris and I walked proudly into the great dining-room of the Riffelberg
Hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner.

Yes, I had made the grand ascent; but it was a mistake to do it in
evening dress. The plug hats were battered, the swallow-tails were
fluttering rags, mud added no grace, the general effect was unpleasant
and even disreputable.

There were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel--mainly ladies and
little children--and they gave us an admiring welcome which paid us for
all our privations and sufferings. The ascent had been made, and the
names and dates now stand recorded on a stone monument there to prove it
to all future tourists.

I boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with a most curious result:
THE SUMMIT WAS NOT AS HIGH AS THE POINT ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE WHERE I
HAD TAKEN THE FIRST ALTITUDE. Suspecting that I had made an important
discovery, I prepared to verify it. There happened to be a still higher
summit (called the Gorner Grat), above the hotel, and notwithstanding
the fact that it overlooks a glacier from a dizzy height, and that the
ascent is difficult and dangerous, I resolved to venture up there and
boil a thermometer. So I sent a strong party, with some borrowed hoes,
in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig a stairway in the soil all
the way up, and this I ascended, roped to the guides. This breezy height
was the summit proper--so I accomplished even more than I had originally
purposed to do. This foolhardy exploit is recorded on another stone
monument.

I boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this spot, which purported to
be two thousand feet higher than the locality of the hotel, turned out
to be nine thousand feet LOWER. Thus the fact was clearly demonstrated
that, ABOVE A CERTAIN POINT, THE HIGHER A POINT SEEMS TO BE, THE LOWER
IT ACTUALLY IS. Our ascent itself was a great achievement, but this
contribution to science was an inconceivably greater matter.

Cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower temperature the
higher and higher you go, and hence the apparent anomaly. I answer that
I do not base my theory upon what the boiling water does, but upon what
a boiled thermometer says. You can't go behind the thermometer.

I had a magnificent view of Monte Rosa, and apparently all the rest of
the Alpine world, from that high place. All the circling horizon was
piled high with a mighty tumult of snowy crests. One might have
imagined he saw before him the tented camps of a beleaguering host of
Brobdingnagians.

But lonely, conspicuous, and superb, rose that wonderful upright wedge,
the Matterhorn. Its precipitous sides were powdered over with snow, and
the upper half hidden in thick clouds which now and then dissolved to
cobweb films and gave brief glimpses of the imposing tower as through a
veil. [2] A little later the Matterhorn took to himself the semblance of
a volcano; he was stripped naked to his apex--around this circled
vast wreaths of white cloud which strung slowly out and streamed away
slantwise toward the sun, a twenty-mile stretch of rolling and tumbling
vapor, and looking just as if it were pouring out of a crater. Later
again, one of the mountain's sides was clean and clear, and another
side densely clothed from base to summit in thick smokelike cloud which
feathered off and flew around the shaft's sharp edge like the smoke
around the corners of a burning building. The Matterhorn is always
experimenting, and always gets up fine effects, too. In the sunset, when
all the lower world is palled in gloom, it points toward heaven out of
the pervading blackness like a finger of fire. In the sunrise--well,
they say it is very fine in the sunrise.

2. NOTE.--I had the very unusual luck to catch one little
momentary glimpse of the Matterhorn wholly unencumbered
by clouds. I leveled my photographic apparatus at it
without the loss of an instant, and should have got
an elegant picture if my donkey had not interfered.
It was my purpose to draw this photograph all by myself
for my book, but was obliged to put the mountain part
of it into the hands of the professional artist because
I found I could not do landscape well.

Authorities agree that there is no such tremendous "layout" of snowy
Alpine magnitude, grandeur, and sublimity to be seen from any other
accessible point as the tourist may see from the summit of the
Riffelberg. Therefore, let the tourist rope himself up and go there; for
I have shown that with nerve, caution, and judgment, the thing can be
done.

I wish to add one remark, here--in parentheses, so to speak--suggested
by the word "snowy," which I have just used. We have all seen hills and
mountains and levels with snow on them, and so we think we know all the
aspects and effects produced by snow. But indeed we do not until we have
seen the Alps. Possibly mass and distance add something--at any rate,
something IS added. Among other noticeable things, there is a dazzling,
intense whiteness about the distant Alpine snow, when the sun is on it,
which one recognizes as peculiar, and not familiar to the eye. The snow
which one is accustomed to has a tint to it--painters usually give it a
bluish cast--but there is no perceptible tint to the distant Alpine snow
when it is trying to look its whitest. As to the unimaginable
splendor of it when the sun is blazing down on it--well, it simply IS
unimaginable.



CHAPTER XXXIX [We Travel by Glacier]

A guide-book is a queer thing. The reader has just seen what a man who
undertakes the great ascent from Zermatt to the Riffelberg Hotel must
experience. Yet Baedeker makes these strange statements concerning this
matter:

1. Distance--3 hours.
2. The road cannot be mistaken.
3. Guide unnecessary.
4. Distance from Riffelberg Hotel to the Gorner Grat,
one hour and a half.
5. Ascent simple and easy. Guide unnecessary.
6. Elevation of Zermatt above sea-level, 5,315 feet.
7. Elevation of Riffelberg Hotel above sea-level,
8,429 feet.
8. Elevation of the Gorner Grat above sea-level, 10,289 feet.

I have pretty effectually throttled these errors by sending him the
following demonstrated facts:

1. Distance from Zermatt to Riffelberg Hotel, 7 days.
2. The road CAN be mistaken. If I am the first that did it,
I want the credit of it, too.
3. Guides ARE necessary, for none but a native can read
those finger-boards.
4. The estimate of the elevation of the several localities
above sea-level is pretty correct--for Baedeker.
He only misses it about a hundred and eighty or ninety
thousand feet.

I found my arnica invaluable. My men were suffering excruciatingly, from
the friction of sitting down so much. During two or three days, not
one of them was able to do more than lie down or walk about; yet so
effective was the arnica, that on the fourth all were able to sit up.
I consider that, more than to anything else, I owe the success of our
great undertaking to arnica and paregoric.

My men are being restored to health and strength, my main perplexity,
now, was how to get them down the mountain again. I was not willing to
expose the brave fellows to the perils, fatigues, and hardships of that
fearful route again if it could be helped. First I thought of balloons;
but, of course, I had to give that idea up, for balloons were
not procurable. I thought of several other expedients, but upon
consideration discarded them, for cause. But at last I hit it. I was
aware that the movement of glaciers is an established fact, for I had
read it in Baedeker; so I resolved to take passage for Zermatt on the
great Gorner Glacier.

Very good. The next thing was, how to get down the glacier
comfortably--for the mule-road to it was long, and winding, and
wearisome. I set my mind at work, and soon thought out a plan. One looks
straight down upon the vast frozen river called the Gorner Glacier, from
the Gorner Grat, a sheer precipice twelve hundred feet high. We had
one hundred and fifty-four umbrellas--and what is an umbrella but a
parachute?

I mentioned this noble idea to Harris, with enthusiasm, and was about to
order the Expedition to form on the Gorner Grat, with their umbrellas,
and prepare for flight by platoons, each platoon in command of a guide,
when Harris stopped me and urged me not to be too hasty. He asked me if
this method of descending the Alps had ever been tried before. I said
no, I had not heard of an instance. Then, in his opinion, it was a
matter of considerable gravity; in his opinion it would not be well to
send the whole command over the cliff at once; a better way would be to
send down a single individual, first, and see how he fared.

I saw the wisdom in this idea instantly. I said as much, and thanked
my agent cordially, and told him to take his umbrella and try the thing
right away, and wave his hat when he got down, if he struck in a soft
place, and then I would ship the rest right along.

Harris was greatly touched with this mark of confidence, and said so,
in a voice that had a perceptible tremble in it; but at the same time he
said he did not feel himself worthy of so conspicuous a favor; that it
might cause jealousy in the command, for there were plenty who would not
hesitate to say he had used underhanded means to get the appointment,
whereas his conscience would bear him witness that he had not sought it
at all, nor even, in his secret heart, desired it.

I said these words did him extreme credit, but that he must not throw
away the imperishable distinction of being the first man to descend
an Alp per parachute, simply to save the feelings of some envious
underlings. No, I said, he MUST accept the appointment--it was no longer
an invitation, it was a command.

He thanked me with effusion, and said that putting the thing in this
form removed every objection. He retired, and soon returned with his
umbrella, his eye flaming with gratitude and his cheeks pallid with joy.
Just then the head guide passed along. Harris's expression changed to
one of infinite tenderness, and he said:

"That man did me a cruel injury four days ago, and I said in my heart
he should live to perceive and confess that the only noble revenge a
man can take upon his enemy is to return good for evil. I resign in his
favor. Appoint him."

I threw my arms around the generous fellow and said:

"Harris, you are the noblest soul that lives. You shall not regret this
sublime act, neither shall the world fail to know of it. You shall have
opportunity far transcending this one, too, if I live--remember that."

I called the head guide to me and appointed him on the spot. But the
thing aroused no enthusiasm in him. He did not take to the idea at all.

He said:

"Tie myself to an umbrella and jump over the Gorner Grat! Excuse me,
there are a great many pleasanter roads to the devil than that."

Upon a discussion of the subject with him, it appeared that he
considered the project distinctly and decidedly dangerous. I was not
convinced, yet I was not willing to try the experiment in any risky
way--that is, in a way that might cripple the strength and efficiency
of the Expedition. I was about at my wits' end when it occurred to me to
try it on the Latinist.

He was called in. But he declined, on the plea of inexperience,
diffidence in public, lack of curiosity, and I didn't know what all.
Another man declined on account of a cold in the head; thought he
ought to avoid exposure. Another could not jump well--never COULD jump
well--did not believe he could jump so far without long and patient
practice. Another was afraid it was going to rain, and his umbrella had
a hole in it. Everybody had an excuse. The result was what the reader
has by this time guessed: the most magnificent idea that was ever
conceived had to be abandoned, from sheer lack of a person with
enterprise enough to carry it out. Yes, I actually had to give that
thing up--while doubtless I should live to see somebody use it and take
all the credit from me.

Well, I had to go overland--there was no other way. I marched the
Expedition down the steep and tedious mule-path and took up as good a
position as I could upon the middle of the glacier--because Baedeker
said the middle part travels the fastest. As a measure of economy,
however, I put some of the heavier baggage on the shoreward parts, to go
as slow freight.

I waited and waited, but the glacier did not move. Night was coming on,
the darkness began to gather--still we did not budge. It occurred to me
then, that there might be a time-table in Baedeker; it would be well to
find out the hours of starting. I called for the book--it could not be
found. Bradshaw would certainly contain a time-table; but no Bradshaw
could be found.

Very well, I must make the best of the situation. So I pitched the
tents, picketed the animals, milked the cows, had supper, paregoricked
the men, established the watch, and went to bed--with orders to call me
as soon as we came in sight of Zermatt.

I awoke about half past ten next morning, and looked around. We hadn't
budged a peg! At first I could not understand it; then it occurred to me
that the old thing must be aground. So I cut down some trees and rigged
a spar on the starboard and another on the port side, and fooled away
upward of three hours trying to spar her off. But it was no use. She
was half a mile wide and fifteen or twenty miles long, and there was
no telling just whereabouts she WAS aground. The men began to show
uneasiness, too, and presently they came flying to me with ashy faces,
saying she had sprung a leak.

Nothing but my cool behavior at this critical time saved us from another
panic. I order them to show me the place. They led me to a spot where
a huge boulder lay in a deep pool of clear and brilliant water. It did
look like a pretty bad leak, but I kept that to myself. I made a pump
and set the men to work to pump out the glacier. We made a success of
it. I perceived, then, that it was not a leak at all. This boulder had
descended from a precipice and stopped on the ice in the middle of the
glacier, and the sun had warmed it up, every day, and consequently it
had melted its way deeper and deeper into the ice, until at last it
reposed, as we had found it, in a deep pool of the clearest and coldest
water.

Presently Baedeker was found again, and I hunted eagerly for the
time-table. There was none. The book simply said the glacier was moving
all the time. This was satisfactory, so I shut up the book and chose a
good position to view the scenery as we passed along. I stood there some
time enjoying the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did
not seem to be gaining any on the scenery. I said to myself, "This
confounded old thing's aground again, sure,"--and opened Baedeker to
see if I could run across any remedy for these annoying interruptions.
I soon found a sentence which threw a dazzling light upon the matter.
It said, "The Gorner Glacier travels at an average rate of a little less
than an inch a day." I have seldom felt so outraged. I have seldom had
my confidence so wantonly betrayed. I made a small calculation: One inch
a day, say thirty feet a year; estimated distance to Zermatt, three and
one-eighteenth miles. Time required to go by glacier, A LITTLE OVER FIVE
HUNDRED YEARS! I said to myself, "I can WALK it quicker--and before I
will patronize such a fraud as this, I will do it."

When I revealed to Harris the fact that the passenger part of this
glacier--the central part--the lightning-express part, so to speak--was
not due in Zermatt till the summer of 2378, and that the baggage, coming
along the slow edge, would not arrive until some generations later, he
burst out with:

"That is European management, all over! An inch a day--think of that!
Five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles! But I am not a bit
surprised. It's a Catholic glacier. You can tell by the look of it. And
the management."

I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it was in a
Catholic canton.

"Well, then, it's a government glacier," said Harris. "It's all the
same. Over here the government runs everything--so everything's slow;
slow, and ill-managed. But with us, everything's done by private
enterprise--and then there ain't much lolling around, you can depend
on it. I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab
once--you'd see it take a different gait from this."

I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there was trade enough
to justify it.

"He'd MAKE trade," said Harris. "That's the difference between
governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do. Tom
Scott would take all the trade; in two years Gorner stock would go to
two hundred, and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers
under the hammer for taxes." After a reflective pause, Harris added, "A
little less than an inch a day; a little less than an INCH, mind you.
Well, I'm losing my reverence for glaciers."

I was feeling much the same way myself. I have traveled by canal-boat,
ox-wagon, raft, and by the Ephesus and Smyrna railway; but when it comes
down to good solid honest slow motion, I bet my money on the glacier. As
a means of passenger transportation, I consider the glacier a failure;
but as a vehicle of slow freight, I think she fills the bill. In the
matter of putting the fine shades on that line of business, I judge she
could teach the Germans something.

I ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land journey to
Zermatt. At this moment a most interesting find was made; a dark object,
bedded in the glacial ice, was cut out with the ice-axes, and it proved
to be a piece of the undressed skin of some animal--a hair trunk,
perhaps; but a close inspection disabled the hair-trunk theory, and
further discussion and examination exploded it entirely--that is, in the
opinion of all the scientists except the one who had advanced it. This
one clung to his theory with affectionate fidelity characteristic of
originators of scientific theories, and afterward won many of the first
scientists of the age to his view, by a very able pamphlet which he
wrote, entitled, "Evidences going to show that the hair trunk, in a wild
state, belonged to the early glacial period, and roamed the wastes of
chaos in the company with the cave-bear, primeval man, and the other
Ooelitics of the Old Silurian family."

Each of our scientists had a theory of his own, and put forward
an animal of his own as a candidate for the skin. I sided with the
geologist of the Expedition in the belief that this patch of skin had
once helped to cover a Siberian elephant, in some old forgotten age--but
we divided there, the geologist believing that this discovery proved
that Siberia had formerly been located where Switzerland is now, whereas
I held the opinion that it merely proved that the primeval Swiss was not
the dull savage he is represented to have been, but was a being of high
intellectual development, who liked to go to the menagerie.

We arrived that evening, after many hardships and adventures, in some
fields close to the great ice-arch where the mad Visp boils and surges
out from under the foot of the great Gorner Glacier, and here we camped,
our perils over and our magnificent undertaking successfully completed.
We marched into Zermatt the next day, and were received with the
most lavish honors and applause. A document, signed and sealed by the
authorities, was given to me which established and endorsed the fact
that I had made the ascent of the Riffelberg. This I wear around my
neck, and it will be buried with me when I am no more.



CHAPTER XL [Piteous Relics at Chamonix]

I am not so ignorant about glacial movement, now, as I was when I took
passage on the Gorner Glacier. I have "read up" since. I am aware that
these vast bodies of ice do not travel at the same rate of speed; while
the Gorner Glacier makes less than an inch a day, the Unter-Aar Glacier
makes as much as eight; and still other glaciers are said to go twelve,
sixteen, and even twenty inches a day. One writer says that the slowest
glacier travels twenty-give feet a year, and the fastest four hundred.

What is a glacier? It is easy to say it looks like a frozen river which
occupies the bed of a winding gorge or gully between mountains. But that
gives no notion of its vastness. For it is sometimes six hundred feet
thick, and we are not accustomed to rivers six hundred feet deep; no,
our rivers are six feet, twenty feet, and sometimes fifty feet deep; we
are not quite able to grasp so large a fact as an ice-river six hundred
feet deep.