A Tramp Abroad

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


For more than two hours afterward I thought almost every moment that the
next would be my last; for the Taugwalders, utterly unnerved, were not
only incapable of giving assistance, but were in such a state that a
slip might have been expected from them at any moment. After a time we
were able to do that which should have been done at first, and fixed
rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together. These ropes were
cut from time to time, and were left behind. Even with their assurance
the men were afraid to proceed, and several times old Peter turned,
with ashy face and faltering limbs, and said, with terrible emphasis, "I
CANNOT!"

About 6 P.M., we arrived at the snow upon the ridge descending toward
Zermatt, and all peril was over. We frequently looked, but in vain, for
traces of our unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried
to them, but no sound returned. Convinced at last that they were neither
within sight nor hearing, we ceased from our useless efforts; and, too
cast down for speech, silently gathered up our things, and the little
effects of those who were lost, and then completed the descent.

----------

Such is Mr. Whymper's graphic and thrilling narrative. Zermatt gossip
darkly hints that the elder Taugwalder cut the rope, when the accident
occurred, in order to preserve himself from being dragged into the
abyss; but Mr. Whymper says that the ends of the rope showed no evidence
of cutting, but only of breaking. He adds that if Taugwalder had had the
disposition to cut the rope, he would not have had time to do it, the
accident was so sudden and unexpected.

Lord Douglas' body has never been found. It probably lodged upon some
inaccessible shelf in the face of the mighty precipice. Lord Douglas was
a youth of nineteen. The three other victims fell nearly four thousand
feet, and their bodies lay together upon the glacier when found by
Mr. Whymper and the other searchers the next morning. Their graves are
beside the little church in Zermatt.



CHAPTER XLII [Chillon has a Nice, Roomy Dungeon]

Switzerland is simply a large, humpy, solid rock, with a thin skin of
grass stretched over it. Consequently, they do not dig graves, they
blast them out with power and fuse. They cannot afford to have large
graveyards, the grass skin is too circumscribed and too valuable. It is
all required for the support of the living.

The graveyard in Zermatt occupies only about one-eighth of an acre.
The graves are sunk in the living rock, and are very permanent; but
occupation of them is only temporary; the occupant can only stay till
his grave is needed by a later subject, he is removed, then, for they do
not bury one body on top of another. As I understand it, a family owns
a grave, just as it owns a house. A man dies and leaves his house to his
son--and at the same time, this dead father succeeds to his own father's
grave. He moves out of the house and into the grave, and his predecessor
moves out of the grave and into the cellar of the chapel. I saw a black
box lying in the churchyard, with skull and cross-bones painted on it,
and was told that this was used in transferring remains to the cellar.

In that cellar the bones and skulls of several hundred of former
citizens were compactly corded up. They made a pile eighteen feet long,
seven feet high, and eight feet wide. I was told that in some of the
receptacles of this kind in the Swiss villages, the skulls were all
marked, and if a man wished to find the skulls of his ancestors for
several generations back, he could do it by these marks, preserved in
the family records.

An English gentleman who had lived some years in this region, said it
was the cradle of compulsory education. But he said that the English
idea that compulsory education would reduce bastardy and intemperance
was an error--it has not that effect. He said there was more seduction
in the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons, because the confessional
protected the girls. I wonder why it doesn't protect married women in
France and Spain?

This gentleman said that among the poorer peasants in the Valais, it was
common for the brothers in a family to cast lots to determine which
of them should have the coveted privilege of marrying, and his
brethren--doomed bachelors--heroically banded themselves together to
help support the new family.

We left Zermatt in a wagon--and in a rain-storm, too--for St. Nicholas
about ten o'clock one morning. Again we passed between those grass-clad
prodigious cliffs, specked with wee dwellings peeping over at us from
velvety green walls ten and twelve hundred feet high. It did not seem
possible that the imaginary chamois even could climb those precipices.
Lovers on opposite cliffs probably kiss through a spy-glass, and
correspond with a rifle.

In Switzerland the farmer's plow is a wide shovel, which scrapes up and
turns over the thin earthy skin of his native rock--and there the man of
the plow is a hero. Now here, by our St. Nicholas road, was a grave, and
it had a tragic story. A plowman was skinning his farm one morning--not
the steepest part of it, but still a steep part--that is, he was not
skinning the front of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves--when
he absent-mindedly let go of the plow-handles to moisten his hands, in
the usual way; he lost his balance and fell out of his farm backward;
poor fellow, he never touched anything till he struck bottom, fifteen
hundred feet below. [1] We throw a halo of heroism around the life
of the soldier and the sailor, because of the deadly dangers they are
facing all the time. But we are not used to looking upon farming as a
heroic occupation. This is because we have not lived in Switzerland.

1. This was on a Sunday.--M.T.

From St. Nicholas we struck out for Visp--or Vispach--on foot. The
rain-storms had been at work during several days, and had done a deal of
damage in Switzerland and Savoy. We came to one place where a stream had
changed its course and plunged down a mountain in a new place, sweeping
everything before it. Two poor but precious farms by the roadside were
ruined. One was washed clear away, and the bed-rock exposed; the other
was buried out of sight under a tumbled chaos of rocks, gravel, mud,
and rubbish. The resistless might of water was well exemplified. Some
saplings which had stood in the way were bent to the ground, stripped
clean of their bark, and buried under rocky debris. The road had been
swept away, too.

In another place, where the road was high up on the mountain's face, and
its outside edge protected by flimsy masonry, we frequently came across
spots where this masonry had carved off and left dangerous gaps for
mules to get over; and with still more frequency we found the masonry
slightly crumbled, and marked by mule-hoofs, thus showing that there had
been danger of an accident to somebody. When at last we came to a
badly ruptured bit of masonry, with hoof-prints evidencing a desperate
struggle to regain the lost foothold, I looked quite hopefully over the
dizzy precipice. But there was nobody down there.

They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in Switzerland and other
portions of Europe. They wall up both banks with slanting solid stone
masonry--so that from end to end of these rivers the banks look like the
wharves at St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi River.

It was during this walk from St. Nicholas, in the shadow of the majestic
Alps, that we came across some little children amusing themselves in
what seemed, at first, a most odd and original way--but it wasn't; it
was in simply a natural and characteristic way. They were roped together
with a string, they had mimic alpenstocks and ice-axes, and were
climbing a meek and lowly manure-pile with a most blood-curdling amount
of care and caution. The "guide" at the head of the line cut imaginary
steps, in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a monkey budged till
the step above was vacated. If we had waited we should have witnessed an
imaginary accident, no doubt; and we should have heard the intrepid band
hurrah when they made the summit and looked around upon the "magnificent
view," and seen them throw themselves down in exhausted attitudes for a
rest in that commanding situation.

In Nevada I used to see the children play at silver-mining. Of course,
the great thing was an accident in a mine, and there were two "star"
parts; that of the man who fell down the mimic shaft, and that of the
daring hero who was lowered into the depths to bring him up. I knew one
small chap who always insisted on playing BOTH of these parts--and he
carried his point. He would tumble into the shaft and die, and then come
to the surface and go back after his own remains.

It is the smartest boy that gets the hero part everywhere; he is head
guide in Switzerland, head miner in Nevada, head bull-fighter in Spain,
etc.; but I knew a preacher's son, seven years old, who once selected
a part for himself compared to which those just mentioned are tame
and unimpressive. Jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginary
horse-cars one Sunday--stopped him from playing captain of an imaginary
steamboat next Sunday--stopped him from leading an imaginary army to
battle the following Sunday--and so on. Finally the little fellow said:

"I've tried everything, and they won't any of them do. What CAN I play?"

"I hardly know, Jimmy; but you MUST play only things that are suitable
to the Sabbath-day."

Next Sunday the preacher stepped softly to a back-room door to see if
the children were rightly employed. He peeped in. A chair occupied the
middle of the room, and on the back of it hung Jimmy's cap; one of
his little sisters took the cap down, nibbled at it, then passed it to
another small sister and said, "Eat of this fruit, for it is good." The
Reverend took in the situation--alas, they were playing the Expulsion
from Eden! Yet he found one little crumb of comfort. He said to himself,
"For once Jimmy has yielded the chief role--I have been wronging him, I
did not believe there was so much modesty in him; I should have expected
him to be either Adam or Eve." This crumb of comfort lasted but a very
little while; he glanced around and discovered Jimmy standing in an
imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown on his face.
What that meant was very plain--HE WAS IMPERSONATING THE DEITY! Think of
the guileless sublimity of that idea.

We reached Vispach at 8 P.M., only about seven hours out from St.
Nicholas. So we must have made fully a mile and a half an hour, and it
was all downhill, too, and very muddy at that. We stayed all night at
the hôtel de Soleil; I remember it because the landlady, the portier,
the waitress, and the chambermaid were not separate persons, but were
all contained in one neat and chipper suit of spotless muslin, and she
was the prettiest young creature I saw in all that region. She was the
landlord's daughter. And I remember that the only native match to her
I saw in all Europe was the young daughter of the landlord of a village
inn in the Black Forest. Why don't more people in Europe marry and keep
hotel?

Next morning we left with a family of English friends and went by train
to Brevet, and thence by boat across the lake to Ouchy (Lausanne).

Ouchy is memorable to me, not on account of its beautiful situation and
lovely surroundings--although these would make it stick long in one's
memory--but as the place where _I_ caught the London TIMES dropping into
humor. It was NOT aware of it, though. It did not do it on purpose.
An English friend called my attention to this lapse, and cut out the
reprehensible paragraph for me. Think of encountering a grin like this
on the face of that grim journal:

ERRATUM.--We are requested by Reuter's Telegram Company to correct an
erroneous announcement made in their Brisbane telegram of the 2d inst.,
published in our impression of the 5th inst., stating that "Lady Kennedy
had given birth to twins, the eldest being a son." The Company explain
that the message they received contained the words "Governor of
Queensland, TWINS FIRST SON." Being, however, subsequently informed that
Sir Arthur Kennedy was unmarried and that there must be some mistake, a
telegraphic repetition was at once demanded. It has been received today
(11th inst.) and shows that the words really telegraphed by Reuter's
agent were "Governor Queensland TURNS FIRST SOD," alluding to the
Maryborough-Gympic Railway in course of construction. The words in
italics were mutilated by the telegraph in transmission from Australia,
and reaching the company in the form mentioned above gave rise to the
mistake.


I had always had a deep and reverent compassion for the sufferings of
the "prisoner of Chillon," whose story Byron had told in such moving
verse; so I took the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of the
Castle of Chillon, to see the place where poor Bonnivard endured his
dreary captivity three hundred years ago. I am glad I did that, for it
took away some of the pain I was feeling on the prisoner's account. His
dungeon was a nice, cool, roomy place, and I cannot see why he should
have been dissatisfied with it. If he had been imprisoned in a St.
Nicholas private dwelling, where the fertilizer prevails, and the goat
sleeps with the guest, and the chickens roost on him and the cow comes
in and bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have been another
matter altogether; but he surely could not have had a very cheerless
time of it in that pretty dungeon. It has romantic window-slits that
let in generous bars of light, and it has tall, noble columns, carved
apparently from the living rock; and what is more, they are written
all over with thousands of names; some of them--like Byron's and Victor
Hugo's--of the first celebrity. Why didn't he amuse himself reading
these names? Then there are the couriers and tourists--swarms of them
every day--what was to hinder him from having a good time with them? I
think Bonnivard's sufferings have been overrated.

Next, we took the train and went to Martigny, on the way to Mont Blanc.
Next morning we started, about eight o'clock, on foot. We had plenty of
company, in the way of wagon-loads and mule-loads of tourists--and dust.
This scattering procession of travelers was perhaps a mile long. The
road was uphill--interminable uphill--and tolerably steep. The weather
was blisteringly hot, and the man or woman who had to sit on a creeping
mule, or in a crawling wagon, and broil in the beating sun, was an
object to be pitied. We could dodge among the bushes, and have the
relief of shade, but those people could not. They paid for a conveyance,
and to get their money's worth they rode.

We went by the way of the Tête Noir, and after we reached high ground
there was no lack of fine scenery. In one place the road was tunneled
through a shoulder of the mountain; from there one looked down into a
gorge with a rushing torrent in it, and on every hand was a charming
view of rocky buttresses and wooded heights. There was a liberal
allowance of pretty waterfalls, too, on the Tête Noir route.

About half an hour before we reached the village of Argentie`re a vast
dome of snow with the sun blazing on it drifted into view and framed
itself in a strong V-shaped gateway of the mountains, and we recognized
Mont Blanc, the "monarch of the Alps." With every step, after that,
this stately dome rose higher and higher into the blue sky, and at last
seemed to occupy the zenith.

Some of Mont Blanc's neighbors--bare, light-brown, steeplelike
rocks--were very peculiarly shaped. Some were whittled to a sharp point,
and slightly bent at the upper end, like a lady's finger; one monster
sugar-loaf resembled a bishop's hat; it was too steep to hold snow on
its sides, but had some in the division.

While we were still on very high ground, and before the descent toward
Argentie`re began, we looked up toward a neighboring mountain-top, and
saw exquisite prismatic colors playing about some white clouds which
were so delicate as to almost resemble gossamer webs. The faint pinks
and greens were peculiarly beautiful; none of the colors were deep, they
were the lightest shades. They were bewitching commingled. We sat down
to study and enjoy this singular spectacle. The tints remained during
several minutes--fitting, changing, melting into each other; paling
almost away for a moment, then reflushing--a shifting, restless,
unstable succession of soft opaline gleams, shimmering over that air
film of white cloud, and turning it into a fabric dainty enough to
clothe an angel with.

By and by we perceived what those super-delicate colors, and their
continuous play and movement, reminded us of; it is what one sees in a
soap-bubble that is drifting along, catching changes of tint from the
objects it passes. A soap-bubble is the most beautiful thing, and the
most exquisite, in nature; that lovely phantom fabric in the sky was
suggestive of a soap-bubble split open, and spread out in the sun. I
wonder how much it would take to buy a soap-bubble, if there was only
one in the world? One could buy a hatful of Koh-i-Noors with the same
money, no doubt.

We made the tramp from Martigny to Argentie`re in eight hours. We beat
all the mules and wagons; we didn't usually do that. We hired a sort of
open baggage-wagon for the trip down the valley to Chamonix, and then
devoted an hour to dining. This gave the driver time to get drunk. He
had a friend with him, and this friend also had had time to get drunk.

When we drove off, the driver said all the tourists had arrived and
gone by while we were at dinner; "but," said he, impressively, "be not
disturbed by that--remain tranquil--give yourselves no uneasiness--their
dust rises far before us--rest you tranquil, leave all to me--I am the
king of drivers. Behold!"

Down came his whip, and away we clattered. I never had such a shaking up
in my life. The recent flooding rains had washed the road clear away in
places, but we never stopped, we never slowed down for anything. We tore
right along, over rocks, rubbish, gullies, open fields--sometimes with
one or two wheels on the ground, but generally with none. Every now and
then that calm, good-natured madman would bend a majestic look over his
shoulder at us and say, "Ah, you perceive? It is as I have said--I am
the king of drivers." Every time we just missed going to destruction,
he would say, with tranquil happiness, "Enjoy it, gentlemen, it is very
rare, it is very unusual--it is given to few to ride with the king of
drivers--and observe, it is as I have said, _I_ am he."

He spoke in French, and punctuated with hiccoughs. His friend was
French, too, but spoke in German--using the same system of punctuation,
however. The friend called himself the "Captain of Mont Blanc," and
wanted us to make the ascent with him. He said he had made more ascents
than any other man--forty seven--and his brother had made thirty-seven.
His brother was the best guide in the world, except himself--but he,
yes, observe him well--he was the "Captain of Mont Blanc"--that title
belonged to none other.

The "king" was as good as his word--he overtook that long procession
of tourists and went by it like a hurricane. The result was that we got
choicer rooms at the hotel in Chamonix than we should have done if
his majesty had been a slower artist--or rather, if he hadn't most
providentially got drunk before he left Argentie`re.



CHAPTER XLIII [My Poor Sick Friend Disappointed]

Everybody was out-of-doors; everybody was in the principal street of the
village--not on the sidewalks, but all over the street; everybody was
lounging, loafing, chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested--for
it was train-time. That is to say, it was diligence-time--the
half-dozen big diligences would soon be arriving from Geneva, and the
village was interested, in many ways, in knowing how many people were
coming and what sort of folk they might be. It was altogether the
livest-looking street we had seen in any village on the continent.

The hotel was by the side of a booming torrent, whose music was loud
and strong; we could not see this torrent, for it was dark, now, but
one could locate it without a light. There was a large enclosed yard in
front of the hotel, and this was filled with groups of villagers waiting
to see the diligences arrive, or to hire themselves to excursionists for
the morrow. A telescope stood in the yard, with its huge barrel canted
up toward the lustrous evening star. The long porch of the hotel was
populous with tourists, who sat in shawls and wraps under the vast
overshadowing bulk of Mont Blanc, and gossiped or meditated.

Never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed at one's very
elbow, and its majestic dome, and the lofty cluster of slender minarets
that were its neighbors, seemed to be almost over one's head. It was
night in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling everywhere; the broad
bases and shoulders of the mountains were in a deep gloom, but their
summits swam in a strange rich glow which was really daylight, and yet
had a mellow something about it which was very different from the hard
white glare of the kind of daylight I was used to. Its radiance was
strong and clear, but at the same time it was singularly soft, and
spiritual, and benignant. No, it was not our harsh, aggressive,
realistic daylight; it seemed properer to an enchanted land--or to
heaven.

I had seen moonlight and daylight together before, but I had not seen
daylight and black night elbow to elbow before. At least I had not seen
the daylight resting upon an object sufficiently close at hand, before,
to make the contrast startling and at war with nature.

The daylight passed away. Presently the moon rose up behind some of
those sky-piercing fingers or pinnacles of bare rock of which I have
spoken--they were a little to the left of the crest of Mont Blanc,
and right over our heads--but she couldn't manage to climb high enough
toward heaven to get entirely above them. She would show the glittering
arch of her upper third, occasionally, and scrape it along behind the
comblike row; sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuette
of ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed to glide out
of it by its own volition and power, and become a dim specter, while the
next pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk with
the black exclamation-point of its presence. The top of one pinnacle
took the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head, in the inkiest
silhouette, while it rested against the moon. The unillumined peaks and
minarets, hovering vague and phantom-like above us while the others
were painfully white and strong with snow and moonlight, made a peculiar
effect.


But when the moon, having passed the line of pinnacles, was hidden
behind the stupendous white swell of Mont Blanc, the masterpiece of the
evening was flung on the canvas. A rich greenish radiance sprang into
the sky from behind the mountain, and in this same airy shreds and
ribbons of vapor floated about, and being flushed with that strange
tint, went waving to and fro like pale green flames. After a while,
radiating bars--vast broadening fan-shaped shadows--grew up and
stretched away to the zenith from behind the mountain. It was a
spectacle to take one's breath, for the wonder of it, and the sublimity.

Indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and shadow streaming up
from behind that dark and prodigious form and occupying the half of the
dull and opaque heavens, was the most imposing and impressive marvel I
had ever looked upon. There is no simile for it, for nothing is like
it. If a child had asked me what it was, I should have said, "Humble
yourself, in this presence, it is the glory flowing from the hidden head
of the Creator." One falls shorter of the truth than that, sometimes, in
trying to explain mysteries to the little people. I could have found
out the cause of this awe-compelling miracle by inquiring, for it is not
infrequent at Mont Blanc,--but I did not wish to know. We have not the
reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how
it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into the matter.

We took a walk down street, a block or two, and a place where four
streets met and the principal shops were clustered, found the groups
of men in the roadway thicker than ever--for this was the Exchange of
Chamonix. These men were in the costumes of guides and porters, and were
there to be hired.

The office of that great personage, the Guide-in-Chief of the Chamonix
Guild of Guides, was near by. This guild is a close corporation, and is
governed by strict laws. There are many excursion routes, some dangerous
and some not, some that can be made safely without a guide, and some
that cannot. The bureau determines these things. Where it decides that a
guide is necessary, you are forbidden to go without one. Neither are you
allowed to be a victim of extortion: the law states what you are to pay.
The guides serve in rotation; you cannot select the man who is to take
your life into his hands, you must take the worst in the lot, if it is
his turn. A guide's fee ranges all the way up from a half-dollar (for
some trifling excursion of a few rods) to twenty dollars, according to
the distance traversed and the nature of the ground. A guide's fee
for taking a person to the summit of Mont Blanc and back, is twenty
dollars--and he earns it. The time employed is usually three days, and
there is enough early rising in it to make a man far more "healthy and
wealthy and wise" than any one man has any right to be. The porter's
fee for the same trip is ten dollars. Several fools--no, I mean several
tourists--usually go together, and divide up the expense, and thus make
it light; for if only one f--tourist, I mean--went, he would have to
have several guides and porters, and that would make the matter costly.