Above the Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches Between 1870 and 1880. Dent Clinton Thomas
chains, or, even as a trussed chicken, girt about with many cords. Nor was the ascent of the peak then talked about as carelessly as might be a walk along Margate pier. Alexander Burgener had never been up the peak, though he was most anxious to get an opportunity of doing so. I can remember well the advice that was given to me on the top of the Südlenzspitz to practise further on a few less formidable mountains before attacking the fascinating Mont Cervin itself. Alas for the old days and the old style of mountaineering! It may be doubted whether such discussions often take place nowadays; but then it was only my sixth season in the Alps. The following year we did hatch out the project laid on the top of the Südlenzspitz to climb the Matterhorn together. To this moment I can remember as I write every detail of the climb and every incident of the day as vividly as if it were yesterday; and what a splendid expedition it was then. The old, old fascination can never come back again in quite the same colours; better, perhaps, that it should not. Is it always true that “a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things”? Surely there is a keenness and a depth of pleasure to be found in recalling happiness, though it may never return in its old form; and the memory of pleasure just toned with a trace of sadness is one of the most profound emotions that can stir the human heart. Go on and climb the Alps ye that follow: nowhere else will you find the same pleasure. But it is changed, and in this amusement the old fascination will never be quite the same to you. It may be, it will be, equally keen, but as there is a difference between skating on virgin ice and that which, though still good, is scored by marks of predecessors, so will you fail to find a something which in the olden days of mountaineering seemed always present. Go elsewhere if you will, and seek fresh fields for mountaineering enterprise in the Caucasus, the Himalayas, the Andes. There you will find the mountains have a charm of their own: the mark is as good, but it is not the Alpine mark. That has been taken by others. Beati possidentes.
The feast is spread
Judging by the nature of these sentiments it would seem that we must have become pensive to the verge of slumber while on the summit. In descending, we followed our morning’s tracks, and scorning the seductive shelter of the hut made straight down for the hotel. On this occasion we found Franz, who was a man of varied resources and accomplishments, hanging his shirt, which apparently he had just washed, up to dry. Our unexpected arrival appeared to disconcert him a little, for the straitened nature of his wardrobe precluded him, to his great disappointment, from appearing at dinner in full costume. He conceived, however, an ingenious, though somewhat transparent subterfuge, and made believe that he had got a bad cold in the chest which compelled him to button his coat up tight round the neck. In honour of our achievements he said he would go down to the cellar and bring us up a curious old wine. The cellar consisted apparently of a packing-case in a shed. Old the wine may have been; curious it certainly was, for it possessed a strong heathery flavour and seemed to turn hot very suddenly and stick fast in the throat like champagne at a suburban charity ball. But nevertheless, with the remnants of the blackbird or some other rara avis made into a species of pie, we feasted royally.
A few days later we crossed over to Zermatt by the Alphubel Joch, a heavy fall of snow having prevented any idea of making our contemplated assault on the Dom. A Swiss gentleman of a lively nature and excessive loquacity accompanied us. He was not an adroit snow walker, and disappeared on some five or six occasions abruptly into crevasses. The moment, however, that he got his head out again, he resumed his narrative at the exact point at which it had been perforce broken off without exhibiting the least discomposure. The subject to which his remarks referred I did not succeed in ascertaining. We parted at a little chalet not far from the Riffel, leaving our friend lying flat on his back on the grass contemplating the sky with a fixed expression, with his hands folded over his waistcoat. He may have been a poet inspired with a sudden desire for composition for aught I know, or may have assumed this attitude as likely to facilitate the absorption of a prodigious quantity of milk which he took at the chalet.
As we drew nearer to the odd mixture of highly coloured huts and comfortable hotels that make up the village of Zermatt, a sense of returning home crept over the mind, a consciousness of friends at hand, of warm welcomes, mixed with the half presentiment that is always felt on such occasions, that some change would be found; but happily it was not so. The roadway was in its former state; the cobble stones a trifle more irregular and worn more smooth, but still the same. The same guides, or their prototypes, were sitting on the same wall drumming their heels. The same artist was hard at work on a sketch of the Matterhorn in a field hard by. The same party just returning from the Görner Grat. The same man looking out with sun-scorched face from the salon window and the same click from the self-willed billiard balls on the uncertain table below. Ay, and the same unmistakable heartfelt greetings and handshakings at the door of the Monte Rosa. Churlish indeed should we have been if we had sighed to think that we had met our warmest welcome at an inn.
CHAPTER II.
THE ROTHHORN (MOMING) FROM ZERMATT
The Alpine dramatis personæ – Mountaineering fact and romance – The thirst for novelty and its symptoms – The first ascent of the Moming – Preliminaries are observed – Rock v. snow mountains – The amateur and the guide on rocks and on snow – The programme is made out – Franz Andermatten – Falling stones in the gully – We smooth away the difficulties – The psychological effects of reaching mountain summits – A rock bombardment and a narrow escape – The youthful tourist and his baggage – Hotel trials – We are interviewed – The gushers.
The writer of an Alpine narrative labours under more disadvantages than most literary folk – if authors generally will permit the association, and allow that those who rush into print with their Alpine experiences have the smallest claim to be dignified with such a title. One drawback is that their accounts necessarily suffer from a paucity of characters. A five-act tragedy supported, to use a theatrical expression, by two walking gentlemen, one heavy lead and a low comedy “super,” might possibly pall upon an audience, but in Alpine literature, if I may be permitted to push the metaphor a little further, not only is this the case but the unhappy reader finds the characters like “barn stormers” playing now comedy, now tragedy, and sometimes, it may possibly be added, dramas of romance.
Fact and romance
Again, in all matters absolutely relating to mountaineering in the Alps, the narrator feels bound to stick to matters of fact. The drama of romance must be excluded from his répertoire, or, at any rate, very cautiously handled. I knew a man once, who on a single occasion went a-fishing in Norway and caught a salmon. Naturally he was proud of the achievement, and when in the company of brother sportsmen, would hold up his head, assume a knowing air, and take part in the conversation, such conversation relating, of course, to the size of the various fish those present had caught. Such unswerving and prosaic veracity did my friend possess, that, though sorely tempted as he must have been on many occasions, for ten years he never added a single ounce to the weight of his fish. A writer, an Alpine scribbler at any rate, is perhaps justified if he introduces incidents into an account of an expedition which may not have happened on that particular occasion, but which did happen on some other; and surely he may, without impropriety, romance a little on such part of his work as is not strictly geographical; for example, he may describe a chalet as being dirty, when according to the peasant’s standard of cleanliness it would have been considered spotless, or describe a view as magnificent, when as a matter of fact he paid no attention to it, but he would be acting most culpably if he asserted that he got within fifty feet of the summit, well knowing that he was not fifty feet from the base of the peak, or if he stated that rocks were impossible, or an ice-fall impracticable, when the sole reason for his failure consisted in his being possessed with a strong desire to go back home. Of course a writer can only give his own impressions, and these are much tempered by increased experience and the lapse of time, but in taking up old accounts of Alpine work one not unfrequently finds a good deal of description that requires toning down. In these sketches I have striven honestly to render all that relates intimately to the actual mountains as accurate as possible, and would sooner be considered a dull than an unreliable historian.
It is no easy matter to reproduce almost on the spot an account of a climb with absolute accuracy, however strong the desire may be to do so. Besides, a climber does not pursue his pastime with a note book perpetually open before him. If he does, his mountaineering