A Tramp Abroad

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


This was alarming. Half a dozen of their number set out, then early in
the afternoon, to seek and succor Sir George and his guides. The persons
remaining at the cabin saw these disappear, and then ensued another
distressing wait. Four hours passed, without tidings. Then at five
o'clock another relief, consisting of three guides, set forward from
the cabin. They carried food and cordials for the refreshment of their
predecessors; they took lanterns with them, too; night was coming on,
and to make matters worse, a fine, cold rain had begun to fall.

At the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent, the
official Guide-in-Chief of the Mont Blanc region undertook the dangerous
descent to Chamonix, all alone, to get reinforcements. However, a couple
of hours later, at 7 P.M., the anxious solicitude came to an end, and
happily. A bugle note was heard, and a cluster of black specks was
distinguishable against the snows of the upper heights. The watchers
counted these specks eagerly--fourteen--nobody was missing. An hour and
a half later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin. They had
brought the corpse with them. Sir George Young tarried there but a few
minutes, and then began the long and troublesome descent from the cabin
to Chamonix. He probably reached there about two or three o'clock in the
morning, after having been afoot among the rocks and glaciers during two
days and two nights. His endurance was equal to his daring.

The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George and the relief
parties among the heights where the disaster had happened was a thick
fog--or, partly that and partly the slow and difficult work of conveying
the dead body down the perilous steeps.

The corpse, upon being viewed at the inquest, showed no bruises, and it
was some time before the surgeons discovered that the neck was broken.
One of the surviving brothers had sustained some unimportant injuries,
but the other had suffered no hurt at all. How these men could fall two
thousand feet, almost perpendicularly, and live afterward, is a most
strange and unaccountable thing.

A great many women have made the ascent of Mont Blanc. An English girl,
Miss Stratton, conceived the daring idea, two or three years ago, of
attempting the ascent in the middle of winter. She tried it--and she
succeeded. Moreover, she froze two of her fingers on the way up, she
fell in love with her guide on the summit, and she married him when she
got to the bottom again. There is nothing in romance, in the way of a
striking "situation," which can beat this love scene in midheaven on
an isolated ice-crest with the thermometer at zero and an Artic gale
blowing.

The first woman who ascended Mont Blanc was a girl aged
twenty-two--Mlle. Maria Paradis--1809. Nobody was with her but her
sweetheart, and he was not a guide. The sex then took a rest for
about thirty years, when a Mlle. d'Angeville made the ascent--1838. In
Chamonix I picked up a rude old lithograph of that day which pictured
her "in the act."

However, I value it less as a work of art than as a fashion-plate. Miss
d'Angeville put on a pair of men's pantaloons to climb it, which was
wise; but she cramped their utility by adding her petticoat, which was
idiotic.

One of the mournfulest calamities which men's disposition to climb
dangerous mountains has resulted in, happened on Mont Blanc in September
1870. M. D'Arve tells the story briefly in his HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC.
In the next chapter I will copy its chief features.



CHAPTER XLV A Catastrophe Which Cost Eleven Lives [Perished at the Verge
of Safety]

On the 5th of September, 1870, a caravan of eleven persons departed
from Chamonix to make the ascent of Mont Blanc. Three of the party
were tourists; Messrs. Randall and Bean, Americans, and Mr. George
Corkindale, a Scotch gentleman; there were three guides and five
porters. The cabin on the Grands Mulets was reached that day; the ascent
was resumed early the next morning, September 6th. The day was fine
and clear, and the movements of the party were observed through the
telescopes of Chamonix; at two o'clock in the afternoon they were seen
to reach the summit. A few minutes later they were seen making the first
steps of the descent; then a cloud closed around them and hid them from
view.

Eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night came, no one had
returned to the Grands Mulets. Sylvain Couttet, keeper of the cabin
there, suspected a misfortune, and sent down to the valley for help. A
detachment of guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedious
trip and reached the cabin, a raging storm had set in. They had to wait;
nothing could be attempted in such a tempest.

The wild storm lasted MORE THAN A WEEK, without ceasing; but on the
17th, Couttet, with several guides, left the cabin and succeeded in
making the ascent. In the snowy wastes near the summit they came upon
five bodies, lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude which
suggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there, while exhausted
with fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold, and never knew when
death stole upon them. Couttet moved a few steps further and discovered
five more bodies. The eleventh corpse--that of a porter--was not found,
although diligent search was made for it.

In the pocket of Mr. Bean, one of the Americans, was found a note-book
in which had been penciled some sentences which admit us, in flesh and
spirit, as it were, to the presence of these men during their last hours
of life, and to the grisly horrors which their fading vision looked upon
and their failing consciousness took cognizance of:

TUESDAY, SEPT. 6. I have made the ascent of Mont Blanc, with ten
persons--eight guides, and Mr. Corkindale and Mr. Randall. We reached
the summit at half past 2. Immediately after quitting it, we were
enveloped in clouds of snow. We passed the night in a grotto hollowed in
the snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and I was ill all night.

SEPT. 7--MORNING. The cold is excessive. The snow falls heavily and
without interruption. The guides take no rest.

EVENING. My Dear Hessie, we have been two days on Mont Blanc, in the
midst of a terrible hurricane of snow, we have lost our way, and are
in a hole scooped in the snow, at an altitude of 15,000 feet. I have no
longer any hope of descending.

They had wandered around, and around, in the blinding snow-storm,
hopelessly lost, in a space only a hundred yards square; and when cold
and fatigue vanquished them at last, they scooped their cave and lay
down there to die by inches, UNAWARE THAT FIVE STEPS MORE WOULD HAVE
BROUGHT THEM INTO THE TRUTH PATH. They were so near to life and safety
as that, and did not suspect it. The thought of this gives the sharpest
pang that the tragic story conveys.

The author of the HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC introduced the closing
sentences of Mr. Bean's pathetic record thus:

"Here the characters are large and unsteady; the hand which traces them
is become chilled and torpid; but the spirit survives, and the faith and
resignation of the dying man are expressed with a sublime simplicity."

Perhaps this note-book will be found and sent to you. We have nothing to
eat, my feet are already frozen, and I am exhausted; I have strength to
write only a few words more. I have left means for C's education; I know
you will employ them wisely. I die with faith in God, and with loving
thoughts of you. Farewell to all. We shall meet again, in Heaven. ... I
think of you always.

It is the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims with a
merciful swiftness, but here the rule failed. These men suffered
the bitterest death that has been recorded in the history of those
mountains, freighted as that history is with grisly tragedies.



CHAPTER XLVI [Meeting a Hog on a Precipice]

Mr. Harris and I took some guides and porters and ascended to the Hôtel
des Pyramides, which is perched on the high moraine which borders the
Glacier des Bossons. The road led sharply uphill, all the way, through
grass and flowers and woods, and was a pleasant walk, barring the
fatigue of the climb.

From the hotel we could view the huge glacier at very close range. After
a rest we followed down a path which had been made in the steep inner
frontage of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself. One of the
shows of the place was a tunnel-like cavern, which had been hewn in the
glacier. The proprietor of this tunnel took candles and conducted us
into it. It was three or four feet wide and about six feet high. Its
walls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich blue light that
produced a lovely effect, and suggested enchanted caves, and that sort
of thing. When we had proceeded some yards and were entering darkness,
we turned about and had a dainty sunlit picture of distant woods and
heights framed in the strong arch of the tunnel and seen through the
tender blue radiance of the tunnel's atmosphere.

The cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and when we reached its
inner limit the proprietor stepped into a branch tunnel with his candles
and left us buried in the bowels of the glacier, and in pitch-darkness.
We judged his purpose was murder and robbery; so we got out our matches
and prepared to sell our lives as dearly as possible by setting the
glacier on fire if the worst came to the worst--but we soon perceived
that this man had changed his mind; he began to sing, in a deep,
melodious voice, and woke some curious and pleasing echoes. By and by he
came back and pretended that that was what he had gone behind there for.
We believed as much of that as we wanted to.

Thus our lives had been once more in imminent peril, but by the exercise
of the swift sagacity and cool courage which had saved us so often, we
had added another escape to the long list. The tourist should visit that
ice-cavern, by all means, for it is well worth the trouble; but I would
advise him to go only with a strong and well-armed force. I do not
consider artillery necessary, yet it would not be unadvisable to take
it along, if convenient. The journey, going and coming, is about three
miles and a half, three of which are on level ground. We made it in
less than a day, but I would counsel the unpracticed--if not pressed
for time--to allow themselves two. Nothing is gained in the Alps by
over-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding two days' work into one for
the poor sake of being able to boast of the exploit afterward. It will
be found much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days, and
then subtract one of them from the narrative. This saves fatigue, and
does not injure the narrative. All the more thoughtful among the Alpine
tourists do this.

We now called upon the Guide-in-Chief, and asked for a squadron of
guides and porters for the ascent of the Montanvert. This idiot glared
at us, and said:

"You don't need guides and porters to go to the Montanvert."

"What do we need, then?"

"Such as YOU?--an ambulance!"

I was so stung by this brutal remark that I took my custom elsewhere.

Betimes, next morning, we had reached an altitude of five thousand feet
above the level of the sea. Here we camped and breakfasted. There was
a cabin there--the spot is called the Caillet--and a spring of ice-cold
water. On the door of the cabin was a sign, in French, to the effect
that "One may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes." We did not
invest; what we wanted was to see a dead one.

A little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the new hotel on
the Montanvert, and had a view of six miles, right up the great glacier,
the famous Mer de Glace. At this point it is like a sea whose deep
swales and long, rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement and
frozen solid; but further up it is broken up into wildly tossing billows
of ice.

We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine, and
invaded the glacier. There were tourists of both sexes scattered far and
wide over it, everywhere, and it had the festive look of a skating-rink.

The Empress Josephine came this far, once. She ascended the Montanvert
in 1810--but not alone; a small army of men preceded her to clear the
path--and carpet it, perhaps--and she followed, under the protection of
SIXTY-EIGHT guides.

Her successor visited Chamonix later, but in far different style.

It was seven weeks after the first fall of the Empire, and poor Marie
Louise, ex-Empress was a fugitive. She came at night, and in a storm,
with only two attendants, and stood before a peasant's hut, tired,
bedraggled, soaked with rain, "the red print of her lost crown still
girdling her brow," and implored admittance--and was refused! A few days
before, the adulations and applauses of a nation were sounding in her
ears, and now she was come to this!

We crossed the Mer de Glace in safety, but we had misgivings. The
crevices in the ice yawned deep and blue and mysterious, and it made one
nervous to traverse them. The huge round waves of ice were slippery and
difficult to climb, and the chances of tripping and sliding down them
and darting into a crevice were too many to be comfortable.

In the bottom of a deep swale between two of the biggest of the
ice-waves, we found a fraud who pretended to be cutting steps to insure
the safety of tourists. He was "soldiering" when we came upon him, but
he hopped up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough for a
cat, and charged us a franc or two for it. Then he sat down again, to
doze till the next party should come along. He had collected blackmail
from two or three hundred people already, that day, but had not chipped
out ice enough to impair the glacier perceptibly. I have heard of a good
many soft sinecures, but it seems to me that keeping toll-bridge on a
glacier is the softest one I have encountered yet.

That was a blazing hot day, and it brought a persistent and persecuting
thirst with it. What an unspeakable luxury it was to slake that thirst
with the pure and limpid ice-water of the glacier! Down the sides of
every great rib of pure ice poured limpid rills in gutters carved by
their own attrition; better still, wherever a rock had lain, there was
now a bowl-shaped hole, with smooth white sides and bottom of ice, and
this bowl was brimming with water of such absolute clearness that the
careless observer would not see it at all, but would think the bowl was
empty. These fountains had such an alluring look that I often stretched
myself out when I was not thirsty and dipped my face in and drank till
my teeth ached. Everywhere among the Swiss mountains we had at hand the
blessing--not to be found in Europe EXCEPT in the mountains--of water
capable of quenching thirst. Everywhere in the Swiss highlands brilliant
little rills of exquisitely cold water went dancing along by the
roadsides, and my comrade and I were always drinking and always
delivering our deep gratitude.

But in Europe everywhere except in the mountains, the water is flat and
insipid beyond the power of words to describe. It is served lukewarm;
but no matter, ice could not help it; it is incurably flat, incurably
insipid. It is only good to wash with; I wonder it doesn't occur to
the average inhabitant to try it for that. In Europe the people say
contemptuously, "Nobody drinks water here." Indeed, they have a sound
and sufficient reason. In many places they even have what may be called
prohibitory reasons. In Paris and Munich, for instance, they say, "Don't
drink the water, it is simply poison."

Either America is healthier than Europe, notwithstanding her "deadly"
indulgence in ice-water, or she does not keep the run of her death-rate
as sharply as Europe does. I think we do keep up the death statistics
accurately; and if we do, our cities are healthier than the cities of
Europe. Every month the German government tabulates the death-rate of
the world and publishes it. I scrap-booked these reports during several
months, and it was curious to see how regular and persistently each city
repeated its same death-rate month after month. The tables might as well
have been stereotyped, they varied so little. These tables were
based upon weekly reports showing the average of deaths in each 1,000
population for a year. Munich was always present with her 33 deaths in
each 1,000 of her population (yearly average), Chicago was as constant
with her 15 or 17, Dublin with her 48--and so on.

Only a few American cities appear in these tables, but they are
scattered so widely over the country that they furnish a good general
average of CITY health in the United States; and I think it will be
granted that our towns and villages are healthier than our cities.

Here is the average of the only American cities reported in the German
tables:

Chicago, deaths in 1,000 population annually, 16; Philadelphia, 18; St.
Louis, 18; San Francisco, 19; New York (the Dublin of America), 23.

See how the figures jump up, as soon as one arrives at the transatlantic
list:

Paris, 27; Glasgow, 27; London, 28; Vienna, 28; Augsburg, 28;
Braunschweig, 28; Königsberg, 29; Cologne, 29; Dresden, 29; Hamburg,
29; Berlin, 30; Bombay, 30; Warsaw, 31; Breslau, 31; Odessa, 32; Munich,
33; Strasburg, 33, Pesth, 35; Cassel, 35; Lisbon, 36; Liverpool, 36;
Prague, 37; Madras, 37; Bucharest, 39; St. Petersburg, 40; Trieste, 40;
Alexandria (Egypt), 43; Dublin, 48; Calcutta, 55.

Edinburgh is as healthy as New York--23; but there is no CITY in the
entire list which is healthier, except Frankfort-on-the-Main--20. But
Frankfort is not as healthy as Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, or
Philadelphia.


Perhaps a strict average of the world might develop the fact that where
one in 1,000 of America's population dies, two in 1,000 of the other
populations of the earth succumb.

I do not like to make insinuations, but I do think the above statistics
darkly suggest that these people over here drink this detestable water
"on the sly."

We climbed the moraine on the opposite side of the glacier, and then
crept along its sharp ridge a hundred yards or so, in pretty constant
danger of a tumble to the glacier below. The fall would have been only
one hundred feet, but it would have closed me out as effectually as one
thousand, therefore I respected the distance accordingly, and was
glad when the trip was done. A moraine is an ugly thing to assault
head-first. At a distance it looks like an endless grave of fine sand,
accurately shaped and nicely smoothed; but close by, it is found to be
made mainly of rough boulders of all sizes, from that of a man's head to
that of a cottage.

By and by we came to the Mauvais Pas, or the Villainous Road, to
translate it feelingly. It was a breakneck path around the face of a
precipice forty or fifty feet high, and nothing to hang on to but some
iron railings. I got along, slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, and
finally reached the middle. My hopes began to rise a little, but they
were quickly blighted; for there I met a hog--a long-nosed, bristly
fellow, that held up his snout and worked his nostrils at me
inquiringly. A hog on a pleasure excursion in Switzerland--think of it!
It is striking and unusual; a body might write a poem about it. He
could not retreat, if he had been disposed to do it. It would have been
foolish to stand upon our dignity in a place where there was hardly room
to stand upon our feet, so we did nothing of the sort. There were twenty
or thirty ladies and gentlemen behind us; we all turned about and went
back, and the hog followed behind. The creature did not seem set up by
what he had done; he had probably done it before.

We reached the restaurant on the height called the Chapeau at four in
the afternoon. It was a memento-factory, and the stock was large, cheap,
and varied. I bought the usual paper-cutter to remember the place by,
and had Mont Blanc, the Mauvais Pas, and the rest of the region branded
on my alpenstock; then we descended to the valley and walked home
without being tied together. This was not dangerous, for the valley was
five miles wide, and quite level.

We reached the hotel before nine o'clock. Next morning we left for
Geneva on top of the diligence, under shelter of a gay awning. If I
remember rightly, there were more than twenty people up there. It was
so high that the ascent was made by ladder. The huge vehicle was full
everywhere, inside and out. Five other diligences left at the same time,
all full. We had engaged our seats two days beforehand, to make sure,
and paid the regulation price, five dollars each; but the rest of the
company were wiser; they had trusted Baedeker, and waited; consequently
some of them got their seats for one or two dollars. Baedeker knows
all about hotels, railway and diligence companies, and speaks his mind
freely. He is a trustworthy friend of the traveler.

We never saw Mont Blanc at his best until we were many miles away; then
he lifted his majestic proportions high into the heavens, all white
and cold and solemn, and made the rest of the world seem little and
plebeian, and cheap and trivial.

As he passed out of sight at last, an old Englishman settled himself in
his seat and said:

"Well, I am satisfied, I have seen the principal features of Swiss
scenery--Mont Blanc and the goiter--now for home!"



CHAPTER XLVII [Queer European Manners]

We spent a few pleasant restful days at Geneva, that delightful city
where accurate time-pieces are made for all the rest of the world, but
whose own clocks never give the correct time of day by any accident.

Geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are filled with the
most enticing gimacrackery, but if one enters one of these places he is
at once pounced upon, and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this,
that, and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get out again,
and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment. The shopkeepers of the
smaller sort, in Geneva, are as troublesome and persistent as are
the salesmen of that monster hive in Paris, the Grands Magasins du
Louvre--an establishment where ill-mannered pestering, pursuing, and
insistence have been reduced to a science.

In Geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very elastic--that is
another bad feature. I was looking in at a window at a very pretty
string of beads, suitable for a child. I was only admiring them; I had
no use for them; I hardly ever wear beads. The shopwoman came out and
offered them to me for thirty-five francs. I said it was cheap, but I
did not need them.

"Ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful!"

I confessed it, but said they were not suitable for one of my age and
simplicity of character. She darted in and brought them out and tried to
force them into my hands, saying:

"Ah, but only see how lovely they are! Surely monsieur will take them;
monsieur shall have them for thirty francs. There, I have said it--it is
a loss, but one must live."

I dropped my hands, and tried to move her to respect my unprotected
situation. But no, she dangled the beads in the sun before my face,
exclaiming, "Ah, monsieur CANNOT resist them!" She hung them on my coat
button, folded her hand resignedly, and said: "Gone,--and for thirty
francs, the lovely things--it is incredible!--but the good God will
sanctify the sacrifice to me."

I removed them gently, returned them, and walked away, shaking my head
and smiling a smile of silly embarrassment while the passers-by halted
to observe. The woman leaned out of her door, shook the beads, and
screamed after me:

"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-eight!"

I shook my head.

"Twenty-seven! It is a cruel loss, it is ruin--but take them, only take
them."

I still retreated, still wagging my head.

"MON DIEU, they shall even go for twenty-six! There, I have said it.
Come!"

I wagged another negative. A nurse and a little English girl had been
near me, and were following me, now. The shopwoman ran to the nurse,
thrust the beads into her hands, and said:

"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-five! Take them to the hotel--he
shall send me the money tomorrow--next day--when he likes." Then to the
child: "When thy father sends me the money, come thou also, my angel,
and thou shall have something oh so pretty!"

I was thus providentially saved. The nurse refused the beads squarely
and firmly, and that ended the matter.

The "sights" of Geneva are not numerous. I made one attempt to hunt up
the houses once inhabited by those two disagreeable people, Rousseau and
Calvin, but I had no success. Then I concluded to go home. I found
it was easier to propose to do that than to do it; for that town is a
bewildering place. I got lost in a tangle of narrow and crooked streets,
and stayed lost for an hour or two. Finally I found a street which
looked somewhat familiar, and said to myself, "Now I am at home, I
judge." But I was wrong; this was "HELL street." Presently I found
another place which had a familiar look, and said to myself, "Now I am
at home, sure." It was another error. This was "PURGATORY street." After
a little I said, "NOW I've got the right place, anyway ... no, this is
'PARADISE street'; I'm further from home than I was in the beginning."
Those were queer names--Calvin was the author of them, likely.
"Hell" and "Purgatory" fitted those two streets like a glove, but the
"Paradise" appeared to be sarcastic.