A Tramp Abroad

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


We went into the Chief's office. There were maps of mountains on the
walls; also one or two lithographs of celebrated guides, and a portrait
of the scientist De Saussure.

In glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots and batons, and
other suggestive relics and remembrances of casualties on Mount Blanc.
In a book was a record of all the ascents which have ever been made,
beginning with Nos. 1 and 2--being those of Jacques Balmat and De
Saussure, in 1787, and ending with No. 685, which wasn't cold yet. In
fact No. 685 was standing by the official table waiting to receive the
precious official diploma which should prove to his German household and
to his descendants that he had once been indiscreet enough to climb to
the top of Mont Blanc. He looked very happy when he got his document; in
fact, he spoke up and said he WAS happy.

I tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at home who had never
traveled, and whose desire all his life has been to ascend Mont Blanc,
but the Guide-in-Chief rather insolently refused to sell me one. I was
very much offended. I said I did not propose to be discriminated against
on the account of my nationality; that he had just sold a diploma to
this German gentleman, and my money was a good as his; I would see to
it that he couldn't keep his shop for Germans and deny his produce to
Americans; I would have his license taken away from him at the dropping
of a handkerchief; if France refused to break him, I would make an
international matter of it and bring on a war; the soil should be
drenched with blood; and not only that, but I would set up an opposition
show and sell diplomas at half price.

For two cents I would have done these things, too; but nobody offered me
two cents. I tried to move that German's feelings, but it could not be
done; he would not give me his diploma, neither would he sell it to me.
I TOLD him my friend was sick and could not come himself, but he said
he did not care a VERDAMMTES PFENNIG, he wanted his diploma for
himself--did I suppose he was going to risk his neck for that thing and
then give it to a sick stranger? Indeed he wouldn't, so he wouldn't. I
resolved, then, that I would do all I could to injure Mont Blanc.

In the record-book was a list of all the fatal accidents which happened
on the mountain. It began with the one in 1820 when the Russian Dr.
Hamel's three guides were lost in a crevice of the glacier, and it
recorded the delivery of the remains in the valley by the slow-moving
glacier forty-one years later. The latest catastrophe bore the date
1877.

We stepped out and roved about the village awhile. In front of the
little church was a monument to the memory of the bold guide Jacques
Balmat, the first man who ever stood upon the summit of Mont Blanc. He
made that wild trip solitary and alone. He accomplished the ascent
a number of times afterward. A stretch of nearly half a century lay
between his first ascent and his last one. At the ripe old age of
seventy-two he was climbing around a corner of a lofty precipice of the
Pic du Midi--nobody with him--when he slipped and fell. So he died in
the harness.

He had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go off
stealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible gold among those
perilous peaks and precipices. He was on a quest of that kind when he
lost his life. There was a statue to him, and another to De Saussure, in
the hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door of a room upstairs
bore an inscription to the effect that that room had been occupied
by Albert Smith. Balmat and De Saussure discovered Mont Blanc--so to
speak--but it was Smith who made it a paying property. His articles in
BLACKWOOD and his lectures on Mont Blanc in London advertised it and
made people as anxious to see it as if it owed them money.

As we strolled along the road we looked up and saw a red signal-light
glowing in the darkness of the mountainside. It seemed but a trifling
way up--perhaps a hundred yards, a climb of ten minutes. It was a lucky
piece of sagacity in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met and
get a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb to
that lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose. The man said that
that lantern was on the Grands Mulets, some sixty-five hundred feet
above the valley! I know by our Riffelberg experience, that it would
have taken us a good part of a week to go up there. I would sooner not
smoke at all, than take all that trouble for a light.

Even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this mountain's close
proximity creates curious deceptions. For instance, one sees with the
naked eye a cabin up there beside the glacier, and a little above and
beyond he sees the spot where that red light was located; he thinks he
could throw a stone from the one place to the other. But he couldn't,
for the difference between the two altitudes is more than three thousand
feet. It looks impossible, from below, that this can be true, but it is
true, nevertheless.

While strolling around, we kept the run of the moon all the time, and we
still kept an eye on her after we got back to the hotel portico. I had
a theory that the gravitation of refraction, being subsidiary to
atmospheric compensation, the refrangibility of the earth's surface
would emphasize this effect in regions where great mountain ranges
occur, and possibly so even-handed impact the odic and idyllic forces
together, the one upon the other, as to prevent the moon from rising
higher than 12,200 feet above sea-level. This daring theory had been
received with frantic scorn by some of my fellow-scientists, and with
an eager silence by others. Among the former I may mention Prof. H----y;
and among the latter Prof. T----l. Such is professional jealousy; a
scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not
start himself. There is no feeling of brotherhood among these people.
Indeed, they always resent it when I call them brother. To show how far
their ungenerosity can carry them, I will state that I offered to let
Prof. H----y publish my great theory as his own discovery; I even begged
him to do it; I even proposed to print it myself as his theory. Instead
of thanking me, he said that if I tried to fasten that theory on him he
would sue me for slander. I was going to offer it to Mr. Darwin, whom
I understood to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to me
that perhaps he would not be interested in it since it did not concern
heraldry.

But I am glad now, that I was forced to father my intrepid theory
myself, for, on the night of which I am writing, it was triumphantly
justified and established. Mont Blanc is nearly sixteen thousand feet
high; he hid the moon utterly; near him is a peak which is 12,216 feet
high; the moon slid along behind the pinnacles, and when she approached
that one I watched her with intense interest, for my reputation as a
scientist must stand or fall by its decision. I cannot describe the
emotions which surged like tidal waves through my breast when I saw the
moon glide behind that lofty needle and pass it by without exposing more
than two feet four inches of her upper rim above it; I was secure, then.
I knew she could rise no higher, and I was right. She sailed behind all
the peaks and never succeeded in hoisting her disk above a single one of
them.

While the moon was behind one of those sharp fingers, its shadow was
flung athwart the vacant heavens--a long, slanting, clean-cut, dark
ray--with a streaming and energetic suggestion of FORCE about it, such
as the ascending jet of water from a powerful fire-engine affords. It
was curious to see a good strong shadow of an earthly object cast upon
so intangible a field as the atmosphere.

We went to bed, at last, and went quickly to sleep, but I woke up,
after about three hours, with throbbing temples, and a head which was
physically sore, outside and in. I was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy,
unrefreshed. I recognized the occasion of all this: it was that torrent.
In the mountain villages of Switzerland, and along the roads, one has
always the roar of the torrent in his ears. He imagines it is music, and
he thinks poetic things about it; he lies in his comfortable bed and is
lulled to sleep by it. But by and by he begins to notice that his
head is very sore--he cannot account for it; in solitudes where the
profoundest silence reigns, he notices a sullen, distant, continuous
roar in his ears, which is like what he would experience if he had
sea-shells pressed against them--he cannot account for it; he is drowsy
and absent-minded; there is no tenacity to his mind, he cannot keep hold
of a thought and follow it out; if he sits down to write, his vocabulary
is empty, no suitable words will come, he forgets what he started to do,
and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes closed, listening
painfully to the muffled roar of a distant train in his ears; in his
soundest sleep the strain continues, he goes on listening, always
listening intently, anxiously, and wakes at last, harassed, irritable,
unrefreshed. He cannot manage to account for these things. Day after day
he feels as if he had spent his nights in a sleeping-car. It actually
takes him weeks to find out that it is those persecuting torrents that
have been making all the mischief. It is time for him to get out of
Switzerland, then, for as soon as he has discovered the cause, the
misery is magnified several fold. The roar of the torrent is maddening,
then, for his imagination is assisting; the physical pain it inflicts
is exquisite. When he finds he is approaching one of those streams, his
dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track and avoid the
implacable foe.

Eight or nine months after the distress of the torrents had departed
from me, the roar and thunder of the streets of Paris brought it all
back again. I moved to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for peace.
About midnight the noises dulled away, and I was sinking to sleep,
when I heard a new and curious sound; I listened: evidently some joyous
lunatic was softly dancing a "double shuffle" in the room over my head.
I had to wait for him to get through, of course. Five long, long minutes
he smoothly shuffled away--a pause followed, then something fell with a
thump on the floor. I said to myself "There--he is pulling off his boots
--thank heavens he is done." Another slight pause--he went to shuffling
again! I said to myself, "Is he trying to see what he can do with only
one boot on?" Presently came another pause and another thump on the
floor. I said "Good, he has pulled off his other boot--NOW he is done."
But he wasn't. The next moment he was shuffling again. I said, "Confound
him, he is at it in his slippers!" After a little came that same old
pause, and right after it that thump on the floor once more. I said,
"Hang him, he had on TWO pair of boots!" For an hour that magician
went on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed as many as
twenty-five pair, and I was hovering on the verge of lunacy. I got
my gun and stole up there. The fellow was in the midst of an acre of
sprawling boots, and he had a boot in his hand, shuffling it--no, I mean
POLISHING it. The mystery was explained. He hadn't been dancing. He was
the "Boots" of the hotel, and was attending to business.



CHAPTER XLIV [I Scale Mont Blanc--by Telescope]

After breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix, we went out in the yard
and watched the gangs of excursioning tourists arriving and departing
with their mules and guides and porters; then we took a look through
the telescope at the snowy hump of Mont Blanc. It was brilliant with
sunshine, and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly five hundred yards
away. With the naked eye we could dimly make out the house at the Pierre
Pointue, which is located by the side of the great glacier, and is more
than three thousand feet above the level of the valley; but with the
telescope we could see all its details. While I looked, a woman rode by
the house on a mule, and I saw her with sharp distinctness; I could have
described her dress. I saw her nod to the people of the house, and rein
up her mule, and put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. I was
not used to telescopes; in fact, I had never looked through a good one
before; it seemed incredible to me that this woman could be so far away.
I was satisfied that I could see all these details with my naked
eye; but when I tried it, that mule and those vivid people had wholly
vanished, and the house itself was become small and vague. I tried
the telescope again, and again everything was vivid. The strong black
shadows of the mule and the woman were flung against the side of the
house, and I saw the mule's silhouette wave its ears.

The telescopulist--or the telescopulariat--I do not know which is
right--said a party were making a grand ascent, and would come in sight
on the remote upper heights, presently; so we waited to observe this
performance. Presently I had a superb idea. I wanted to stand with a
party on the summit of Mont Blanc, merely to be able to say I had done
it, and I believed the telescope could set me within seven feet of the
uppermost man. The telescoper assured me that it could. I then asked him
how much I owed him for as far as I had got? He said, one franc. I asked
him how much it would cost to make the entire ascent? Three francs. I at
once determined to make the entire ascent. But first I inquired if there
was any danger? He said no--not by telescope; said he had taken a great
many parties to the summit, and never lost a man. I asked what he would
charge to let my agent go with me, together with such guides and porters
as might be necessary. He said he would let Harris go for two francs;
and that unless we were unusually timid, he should consider guides and
porters unnecessary; it was not customary to take them, when going by
telescope, for they were rather an encumbrance than a help. He said that
the party now on the mountain were approaching the most difficult part,
and if we hurried we should overtake them within ten minutes, and could
then join them and have the benefit of their guides and porters without
their knowledge, and without expense to us.

I then said we would start immediately. I believe I said it calmly,
though I was conscious of a shudder and of a paling cheek, in view of
the nature of the exploit I was so unreflectingly engaged in. But the
old daredevil spirit was upon me, and I said that as I had committed
myself I would not back down; I would ascend Mont Blanc if it cost me
my life. I told the man to slant his machine in the proper direction and
let us be off.

Harris was afraid and did not want to go, but I heartened him up and
said I would hold his hand all the way; so he gave his consent, though
he trembled a little at first. I took a last pathetic look upon the
pleasant summer scene about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass and
prepared to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows.

We took our way carefully and cautiously across the great Glacier des
Bossons, over yawning and terrific crevices and among imposing crags
and buttresses of ice which were fringed with icicles of gigantic
proportions. The desert of ice that stretched far and wide about us was
wild and desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us were
so great that at times I was minded to turn back. But I pulled my pluck
together and pushed on.

We passed the glacier safely and began to mount the steeps beyond, with
great alacrity. When we were seven minutes out from the starting-point,
we reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect; an apparently
limitless continent of gleaming snow was tilted heavenward before our
faces. As my eye followed that awful acclivity far away up into the
remote skies, it seemed to me that all I had ever seen before of
sublimity and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this.

We rested a moment, and then began to mount with speed. Within three
minutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us, and stopped to observe
them. They were toiling up a long, slanting ridge of snow--twelve
persons, roped together some fifteen feet apart, marching in single
file, and strongly marked against the clear blue sky. One was a woman.
We could see them lift their feet and put them down; we saw them swing
their alpenstocks forward in unison, like so many pendulums, and then
bear their weight upon them; we saw the lady wave her handkerchief. They
dragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way, for they had been
climbing steadily from the Grand Mulets, on the Glacier des Dossons,
since three in the morning, and it was eleven, now. We saw them sink
down in the snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle. After a
while they moved on, and as they approached the final short dash of the
home-stretch we closed up on them and joined them.

Presently we all stood together on the summit! What a view was spread
out below! Away off under the northwestern horizon rolled the silent
billows of the Farnese Oberland, their snowy crests glinting softly in
the subdued lights of distance; in the north rose the giant form of the
Wobblehorn, draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds; beyond
him, to the right, stretched the grand processional summits of the
Cisalpine Cordillera, drowned in a sensuous haze; to the east loomed the
colossal masses of the Yodelhorn, the Fuddelhorn, and the Dinnerhorn,
their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun; beyond
them shimmered the faint far line of the Ghauts of Jubbelpore and the
Aigulles des Alleghenies; in the south towered the smoking peak
of Popocatapetl and the unapproachable altitudes of the peerless
Scrabblehorn; in the west-south the stately range of the Himalayas lay
dreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all around the curving horizon
the eye roved over a troubled sea of sun-kissed Alps, and noted,
here and there, the noble proportions and the soaring domes of the
Bottlehorn, and the Saddlehorn, and the Shovelhorn, and the Powderhorn,
all bathed in the glory of noon and mottled with softly gliding blots,
the shadows flung from drifting clouds.

Overcome by the scene, we all raised a triumphant, tremendous shout, in
unison. A startled man at my elbow said:

"Confound you, what do you yell like that for, right here in the
street?"

That brought me down to Chamonix, like a flirt. I gave that man some
spiritual advice and disposed of him, and then paid the telescope man
his full fee, and said that we were charmed with the trip and would
remain down, and not reascend and require him to fetch us down by
telescope. This pleased him very much, for of course we could have
stepped back to the summit and put him to the trouble of bringing us
home if we wanted to.

I judged we could get diplomas, now, anyhow; so we went after them, but
the Chief Guide put us off, with one pretext or another, during all the
time we stayed in Chamonix, and we ended by never getting them at all.
So much for his prejudice against people's nationality. However, we
worried him enough to make him remember us and our ascent for some
time. He even said, once, that he wished there was a lunatic asylum
in Chamonix. This shows that he really had fears that we were going to
drive him mad. It was what we intended to do, but lack of time defeated
it.

I cannot venture to advise the reader one way or the other, as to
ascending Mont Blanc. I say only this: if he is at all timid, the
enjoyments of the trip will hardly make up for the hardships and
sufferings he will have to endure. But, if he has good nerve, youth,
health, and a bold, firm will, and could leave his family comfortably
provided for in case the worst happened, he would find the ascent a
wonderful experience, and the view from the top a vision to dream about,
and tell about, and recall with exultation all the days of his life.

While I do not advise such a person to attempt the ascent, I do not
advise him against it. But if he elects to attempt it, let him be warily
careful of two things: chose a calm, clear day; and do not pay the
telescope man in advance. There are dark stories of his getting advance
payers on the summit and then leaving them there to rot.

A frightful tragedy was once witnessed through the Chamonix telescopes.
Think of questions and answers like these, on an inquest:

CORONER. You saw deceased lose his life?

WITNESS. I did.

C. Where was he, at the time?

W. Close to the summit of Mont Blanc.

C. Where were you?

W. In the main street of Chamonix.

C. What was the distance between you?

W. A LITTLE OVER FIVE MILES, as the bird flies.

This accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the disaster
on the Matterhorn. Three adventurous English gentlemen, [1] of great
experience in mountain-climbing, made up their minds to ascend Mont
Blanc without guides or porters. All endeavors to dissuade them from
their project failed. Powerful telescopes are numerous in Chamonix.
These huge brass tubes, mounted on their scaffoldings and pointed
skyward from every choice vantage-ground, have the formidable look of
artillery, and give the town the general aspect of getting ready
to repel a charge of angels. The reader may easily believe that the
telescopes had plenty of custom on that August morning in 1866, for
everybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was on foot, and
all had fears that misfortune would result. All the morning the tubes
remained directed toward the mountain heights, each with its anxious
group around it; but the white deserts were vacant.

1. Sir George Young and his brothers James and Albert.

At last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who were looking through the
telescopes cried out "There they are!"--and sure enough, far up, on
the loftiest terraces of the Grand Plateau, the three pygmies appeared,
climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit. They disappeared in the
"Corridor," and were lost to sight during an hour. Then they reappeared,
and were presently seen standing together upon the extreme summit
of Mont Blanc. So, all was well. They remained a few minutes on that
highest point of land in Europe, a target for all the telescopes, and
were then seen to begin descent. Suddenly all three vanished. An instant
after, they appeared again, TWO THOUSAND FEET BELOW!

Evidently, they had tripped and been shot down an almost perpendicular
slope of ice to a point where it joined the border of the upper glacier.
Naturally, the distant witness supposed they were now looking upon three
corpses; so they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently saw
two of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third. During
two hours and a half they watched the two busying themselves over the
extended form of their brother, who seemed entirely inert. Chamonix's
affairs stood still; everybody was in the street, all interest was
centered upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stage
five miles away. Finally the two--one of them walking with great
difficulty--were seen to begin descent, abandoning the third, who was no
doubt lifeless. Their movements were followed, step by step, until they
reached the "Corridor" and disappeared behind its ridge. Before they had
had time to traverse the "Corridor" and reappear, twilight was come, and
the power of the telescope was at an end.

The survivors had a most perilous journey before them in the gathering
darkness, for they must get down to the Grands Mulets before they would
find a safe stopping-place--a long and tedious descent, and perilous
enough even in good daylight. The oldest guides expressed the opinion
that they could not succeed; that all the chances were that they would
lose their lives.

Yet those brave men did succeed. They reached the Grands Mulets in
safety. Even the fearful shock which their nerves had sustained was not
sufficient to overcome their coolness and courage. It would appear from
the official account that they were threading their way down through
those dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o'clock in the
morning, or later, because the rescuing party from Chamonix reached
the Grand Mulets about three in the morning and moved thence toward the
scene of the disaster under the leadership of Sir George Young, "who had
only just arrived."

After having been on his feet twenty-four hours, in the exhausting work
of mountain-climbing, Sir George began the reascent at the head of the
relief party of six guides, to recover the corpse of his brother. This
was considered a new imprudence, as the number was too few for the
service required. Another relief party presently arrived at the cabin
on the Grands Mulets and quartered themselves there to await events. Ten
hours after Sir George's departure toward the summit, this new relief
were still scanning the snowy altitudes above them from their own high
perch among the ice deserts ten thousand feet above the level of the
sea, but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any living
thing appearing up there.