FOOTNOTES:
[A] The recent hydraulic researches of Professor Magnus furnish some beautiful illustrations of this action.
(10.)
ROUND HAILSTONES. 1857.
On the 5th we were engaged for some time in an important measurement at the Tacul. We afterwards ascended towards the séracs, and determined the inclinations of the Glacier du Géant downwards. Dense cloud-masses gathered round the points of the Aiguilles, and the thunder bellowed at intervals from the summit of Mont Blanc. As we descended the Mer de Glace the valley in front of us was filled with a cloud of pitchy darkness. Suddenly from side to side this field of gloom was riven by a bar of lightning of intolerable splendour; it was followed by a peal of commensurate grandeur, the echoes of which leaped from cliff to cliff long after the first sound had died away. The discharge seemed to unlock the clouds above us, for they showered their liquid spheres down upon us with a momentum like that of swan-shot: all the way home we were battered by this pellet-like rain. On the 6th the rain continued with scarcely any pause; on the 7th I was engaged all day upon the Glacier du Géant; on the morning of the 8th heavy hail had fallen there, the stones being perfect spheres; the rounded rain-drops had solidified during their descent without sensible change of form. When this hail was squeezed together, it exactly resembled a mass of oolitic limestone which I had picked up in 1853 near Blankenburg in the Hartz. Mr. Hirst and myself were engaged together this day taking the inclinations: he struck his theodolite at the Angle, and went home accompanied by Simond, and the evening being extremely serene, I pursued my way down the centre of the glacier towards the Echelets. The crevasses as I advanced became more deep and frequent, the ridges of ice between them becoming gradually narrower. They were very fine, their downward faces being clear cut, perfectly vertical, and in many cases beautifully veined. Vast plates of ice moreover often stood out midway between the walls of the chasms, as if cloven from the glacier and afterwards set on edge. The place was certainly one calculated to test the skill and nerve of an iceman; and as the day drooped, and the shadow in the valley deepened, a feeling approaching to awe took possession of me. My route was an exaggerated zigzag; right and left amid the chasms wherever a hope of progress opened; and here I made the experience which I have often repeated since, and laid to heart as regards intellectual work also, that enormous difficulties may be overcome when they are attacked in earnest. Sometimes I found myself so hedged in by fissures that escape seemed absolutely impossible; but close and resolute examination so often revealed a means of exit, that I felt in all its force the brave verity of the remark of Mirabeau, that the word "impossible" is a mere blockhead of a word. It finally became necessary to reach the shore, but I found this a work of extreme difficulty. At length, however, it became pretty evident that, if I could cross a certain crevasse, my retreat would be secured. A DANGEROUS LEAP. 1857. The width of the fissure seemed to be fairly within jumping distance, and if I could have calculated on a safe purchase for my foot I should have thought little of the spring; but the ice on the edge from which I was to leap was loose and insecure, and hence a kind of nervous thrill shot through me as I made the bound. The opposite side was fairly reached, but an involuntary tremor shook me all over after I felt myself secure. I reached the edge of the glacier without further serious difficulty, and soon after found myself steeped in the creature comforts of our hotel.
On Monday, August 10th, I had the great pleasure of being joined by my friend Huxley; and though the weather was very unpromising, we started together up the glacier, he being desirous to learn something of its general features, and, if possible, to reach the Jardin. We reached the Couvercle, and squeezed ourselves through the Egralets; but here the rain whizzed past us, and dense fog settled upon the cascade of the Talèfre, obscuring all its parts. We met Mr. Galton, the African traveller, returning from an attempt upon the Jardin; and learning that his guides had lost their way in the fog, we deemed it prudent to return.
The foregoing brief notes will have informed the reader that at the period of Mr. Huxley's arrival I was not without due training upon the ice; I may also remark, that on the 25th of July I reached the summit of the Col du Géant, accompanied by the boy Balmat, and returned to the Montanvert on the same day. My health was perfect, and incessant practice had taught me the art of dealing with the difficulties of the ice. From the time of my arrival at the Montanvert the thought of ascending Mont Blanc, and thus expanding my knowledge of the glaciers, had often occurred to me, and I think I was justified in feeling that the discipline which both my friend Hirst and myself had undergone ought to enable us to accomplish the journey in a much more modest way than ordinary. I thought a single guide sufficient for this purpose, and I was strengthened in this opinion by the fact that Simond, who was a man of the strictest prudence, and who at first declared four guides to be necessary, had lowered his demand first to two, and was now evidently willing to try the ascent with us alone.
PREPARATIONS FOR A CLIMB. 1857.
On mentioning the thing to Mr. Huxley he at once resolved to accompany us. On the 11th of August the weather was exceedingly fine, though the snow which had fallen during the previous days lay thick upon the glacier. At noon we were all together at the Tacul, and the subject of attempting Mont Blanc was mooted and discussed. My opinion was that it would be better to wait until the fresh snow which loaded the mountain had disappeared; but the weather was so exquisite that my friends thought it best to take advantage of it. We accordingly entered into an agreement with our guide, and immediately descended to make preparations for commencing the expedition on the following morning.
FIRST ASCENT OF MONT BLANC, 1857.
(11.)
SCENE FROM THE CHARMOZ. 1857.
On Wednesday, the 12th of August, we rose early, after a very brief rest on my part. Simond had proposed to go down to Chamouni, and commence the ascent in the usual way, but we preferred crossing the mountains from the Montanvert, straight to the Glacier des Bossons. At eight o'clock we started, accompanied by two porters who were to carry our provisions to the Grands Mulets. Slowly and silently we climbed the hill-side towards Charmoz. We soon passed the limits of grass and rhododendrons, and reached the slabs of gneiss which overspread the summit of the ridge, lying one upon the other like coin upon the table of a money-changer. From the highest-point I turned to have a last look at the Mer de Glace; and through a pair of very dark spectacles I could see with perfect distinctness the looped dirt-bands of the glacier, which to the naked eye are scarcely discernible except by twilight. Flanking our track to the left rose a series of mighty Aiguilles—the Aiguille de Charmoz, with its bent and rifted pinnacles; the Aiguille du Grépon, the Aiguille de Blaitière, the Aiguille du Midi, all piercing the heavens with their sharp pyramidal summits. Far in front of us rose the grand snow-cone of the Dôme du Goûter, while, through a forest of dark pines which gathered like a cloud at the foot of the mountain, gleamed the white minarets of the Glacier des Bossons. Below us lay the Valley of Chamouni, beyond which were the Brévent and the chain of the Aiguilles Rouges; behind us was the granite obelisk of the Aiguille du Dru, while close at hand science found a corporeal form in a pyramid of stones used as a trigonometrical station by Professor Forbes. Sound is known to travel better up hill than down, because the pulses transmitted from a denser medium to a rarer, suffer less loss of intensity than when the transmission is in the opposite direction; and now the mellow voice of the Arve came swinging upwards from the heavier air of the valley to the lighter air of the hills in rich deep cadences.
PASSAGE TO THE PIERRE À L'ECHELLE. 1857.
The way for a time was excessively rough, our route being overspread with the fragments of peaks which had once reared themselves to our left, but which frost and lightning had shaken to pieces, and poured in granite avalanches down the mountain. We were sometimes among huge angular boulders, and sometimes amid lighter shingle, which gave way at every step, thus forcing us to shift our footing incessantly. Escaping from these, we crossed the succession of secondary glaciers which lie at the feet of the Aiguilles, and having secured firewood found ourselves after some hours of hard work at the Pierre à l'Echelle. Here we were furnished with leggings of coarse woollen cloth to keep out the snow; they were tied under the knees and quite tightly again over the insteps, so that the legs were effectually protected. We had some refreshment, possessed ourselves of the ladder, and entered upon the glacier.
LADDER LEFT BEHIND. 1857.
The ice was excessively fissured: we crossed crevasses and crept round slippery ridges, cutting steps in the ice wherever climbing was necessary. This rendered our progress very slow. Once, with the intention of lending a helping hand, I stepped forward upon a block of granite which happened to be poised like a rocking stone upon the ice, though I did not know it; it treacherously turned under me; I fell, but my hands were in instant requisition, and I escaped with a bruise, from which, however, the blood oozed angrily. We found the ladder necessary in crossing some of the chasms, the iron spikes at its end being firmly driven into the ice at one side, while the other end rested on the opposite side of the fissure. The middle portion of the glacier was not difficult. Mounds of ice rose beside us right and left, which were sometimes split into high towers and gaunt-looking pyramids, while the space between was unbroken. Twenty minutes' walking brought us again to a fissured portion of the glacier, and here our porter left the ladder on the ice behind him. For some time I was not aware of this, but we were soon fronted by a chasm to pass which we were in consequence compelled to make a long and dangerous circuit amid crests of crumbling ice. This accomplished, we hoped that no repetition of the process would occur, but we speedily came to a second fissure, where it was necessary to step from a projecting end of ice to a mass of soft snow which overhung the opposite side. Simond could reach this snow with his long-handled axe; he beat it down to give it rigidity, but it was exceedingly tender, and as he worked at it he continued to express his fears that it would not bear us. I was the lightest of the party, and therefore tested the passage, first; being partially lifted by Simond on the end of his axe, I crossed the fissure, obtained some anchorage at the other side, and helped the others over. DIFFICULT CREVASSES. 1857. We afterwards ascended until another chasm, deeper and wider than any we had hitherto encountered, arrested us. We walked alongside of it in search of a snow bridge, which we at length found, but the keystone of the arch had unfortunately given way, leaving projecting eaves of snow at both sides, between which we could look into the gulf, till the gloom of its deeper portions cut the vision short. Both sides of the crevasse were sounded, but no sure footing was obtained; the snow was beaten and carefully trodden down as near to the edge as possible, but it finally broke away from the foot and fell into the chasm. One of our porters was short-legged and a bad iceman; the other was a daring fellow, and he now threw the knapsack from his shoulders, came to the edge of the crevasse, looked into it, but drew back again. After a pause he repeated the act, testing the snow with his feet and staff. I looked at the man as he stood beside the chasm manifestly undecided as to whether he should take the step upon which his life would hang, and thought it advisable to put a stop to such perilous play. I accordingly interposed, the man withdrew from the crevasse, and he and Simond descended to fetch the ladder. While they were away Huxley sat down upon the ice, with an expression of fatigue stamped upon his countenance: the spirit and the muscles were evidently at war, and the resolute will mixed itself strangely with the sense of peril and feeling of exhaustion. He had been only two days with us, and, though his strength is great, he had had no opportunity of hardening himself by previous exercise upon the ice for the task which he had undertaken. The ladder now arrived, and we crossed the crevasse. I was intentionally the last of the party, Huxley being immediately in front of me. The determination of the man disguised his real condition from everybody but myself, but I saw that the exhausting journey over the boulders and débris had been too much for his London limbs. Converting my waterproof haversack into a cushion, I made him sit down upon it at intervals, and by thus breaking the steep ascent into short stages we reached the cabin of the Grands Mulets together. Here I spread a rug on the boards, and placing my bag for a pillow, he lay down, and after an hour's profound sleep he rose refreshed and well; but still he thought it wise not to attempt the ascent farther. Our porters left us: a bâton was stretched across the room over the stove, and our wet socks and leggings were thrown across it to dry; our boots were placed around the fire, and we set about preparing our evening meal. A pan was placed upon the fire, and filled with snow, which in due time melted and boiled; I ground some chocolate and placed it in the pan, and afterwards ladled the beverage into the vessels we possessed, which consisted of two earthen dishes and the metal cases of our brandy flasks. After supper Simond went out to inspect the glacier, and was observed by Huxley, as twilight fell, in a state of deep contemplation beside a crevasse.
STAR TWINKLING. 1857.
Gradually the stars appeared, but as yet no moon. Before lying down we went out to look at the firmament, and noticed, what I suppose has been observed to some extent by everybody, that the stars near the horizon twinkled busily, while those near the zenith shone with a steady light. One large star in particular excited our admiration; it flashed intensely, and changed colour incessantly, sometimes blushing like a ruby, and again gleaming like an emerald. A determinate colour would sometimes remain constant for a sensible time, but usually the flashes followed each other in very quick succession. Three planks were now placed across the room near the stove, and upon these, with their rugs folded round them, Huxley and Hirst stretched themselves, while I nestled on the boards at the most distant end of the room. We rose at eleven o'clock, renewed the fire and warmed ourselves, after which we lay down again. I at length observed a patch of pale light upon the wooden wall of the cabin, which had entered through a hole in the end of the edifice, and rising found that it was past one o'clock. The cloudless moon was shining over the wastes of snow, and the scene outside was at once wild, grand, and beautiful.
START FROM THE GRANDS MULETS. 1857.
Breakfast was soon prepared, though not without difficulty; we had no candles, they had been forgotten; but I fortunately possessed a box of wax matches, of which Huxley took charge, patiently igniting them in succession, and thus giving us a tolerably continuous light. We had some tea, which had been made at the Montanvert, and carried to the Grands Mulets in a bottle. My memory of that tea is not pleasant; it had been left a whole night in contact with its leaves, and smacked strongly of tannin. The snow-water, moreover, with which we diluted it was not pure, but left a black residuum at the bottom of the dishes in which the beverage was served. The few provisions deemed necessary being placed in Simond's knapsack, at twenty minutes past two o'clock we scrambled down the rocks, leaving Huxley behind us.
The snow was hardened by the night's frost, and we were cheered by the hope of being able to accomplish the ascent with comparatively little labour. We were environed by an atmosphere of perfect purity; the larger stars hung like gems above us, and the moon, about half full, shone with wondrous radiance in the dark firmament. One star in particular, which lay eastward from the moon, suddenly made its appearance above one of the Aiguilles, and burned there with unspeakable splendour. We turned once towards the Mulets, and saw Huxley's form projected against the sky as he stood upon a pinnacle of rock; he gave us a last wave of the hand and descended, while we receded from him into the solitudes.
The evening previous our guide had examined the glacier for some distance, his progress having been arrested by a crevasse. Beside this we soon halted: it was spanned at one place by a bridge of snow, which was of too light a structure to permit of Simond's testing it alone; we therefore paused while our guide uncoiled a rope and tied us all together. The moment was to me a peculiarly solemn one. Our little party seemed so lonely and so small amid the silence and the vastness of the surrounding scene. We were about to try our strength under unknown conditions, and as the various possibilities of the enterprise crowded on the imagination, a sense of responsibility for a moment oppressed me. But as I looked aloft and saw the glory of the heavens, my heart lightened, and I remarked cheerily to Hirst that Nature seemed to smile upon our work. "Yes," he replied, in a calm and earnest voice, "and, God willing, we shall accomplish it."
A WRONG TURN. 1857.
A pale light now overspread the eastern sky, which increased, as we ascended, to a daffodil tinge; this afterwards heightened to orange, deepening at one extremity into red, and fading at the other into a pure ethereal hue to which it would be difficult to assign a special name. Higher up the sky was violet, and this changed by insensible degrees into the darkling blue of the zenith, which had to thank the light of moon and stars alone for its existence. We wound steadily for a time through valleys of ice, climbed white and slippery slopes, crossed a number of crevasses, and after some time found ourselves beside a chasm of great depth and width, which extended right and left as far as we could see. We turned to the left, and marched along its edge in search of a pont; but matters became gradually worse: other crevasses joined on to the first one, and the further we proceeded the more riven and dislocated the ice became. At length we reached a place where further advance was impossible. Simond in his difficulty complained of the want of light, and wished us to wait for the advancing day; I, on the contrary, thought that we had light enough and ought to make use of it. Here the thought occurred to me that Simond, having been only once before to the top of the mountain, might not be quite clear about the route; the glacier, however, changes within certain limits from year to year, so that a general knowledge was all that could be expected, and we trusted to our own muscles to make good any mistake in the way of guidance. We now turned and retraced our steps along the edges of chasms where the ice was disintegrated and insecure, and succeeded at length in finding a bridge which bore us across the crevasse. This error caused us the loss of an hour, and after walking for this time we could cast a stone from the point we had attained to the place whence we had been compelled to return.
SÉRACS OF THE DÔME DU GOÛTER. 1857.
Our way now lay along the face of a steep incline of snow, which was cut by the fissure we had just passed, in a direction parallel to our route. On the heights to our right, loose ice-crags seemed to totter, and we passed two tracks over which the frozen blocks had rushed some short time previously. We were glad to get out of the range of these terrible projectiles, and still more so to escape the vicinity of that ugly crevasse. To be killed in the open air would be a luxury, compared with having the life squeezed out of one in the horrible gloom of these chasms. The blush of the coming day became more and more intense; still the sun himself did not appear, being hidden from us by the peaks of the Aiguille du Midi, which were drawn clear and sharp against the brightening sky. Right under this Aiguille were heaps of snow smoothly rounded and constituting a portion of the sources whence the Glacier du Géant is fed; these, as the day advanced, bloomed with a rosy light. We reached the Petit Plateau, which we found covered with the remains of ice avalanches; above us upon the crest of the mountain rose three mighty bastions, divided from each other by deep vertical rents, with clean smooth walls, across which the lines of annual bedding were drawn like courses of masonry. From these, which incessantly renew themselves, and from the loose and broken ice-crags near them, the boulders amid which we now threaded our way had been discharged. When they fall their descent must be sublime.
THE LOST GUIDES. 1857.
The snow had been gradually getting deeper, and the ascent more wearisome, but superadded to this at the Petit Plateau was the uncertainty of the footing between the blocks of ice. In many places the space was merely covered by a thin crust, which, when trod upon, instantly yielded, and we sank with a shock sometimes to the hips. Our way next lay up a steep incline to the Grand Plateau, the depth and tenderness of the snow augmenting as we ascended. We had not yet seen the sun, but, as we attained the brow which forms the entrance to the Grand Plateau, he hung his disk upon a spike of rock to our left, and, surrounded by a glory of interference spectra of the most gorgeous colours, blazed down upon us. On the Grand Plateau we halted and had our frugal refreshment. At some distance to our left was the crevasse into which Dr. Hamel's three guides were precipitated by an avalanche in 1820; they are still entombed in the ice, and some future explorer may perhaps see them disgorged lower down, fresh and undecayed. They can hardly reach the surface until they pass the snow-line of the glacier, for above this line the quantity of snow that annually falls being in excess of the quantity melted, the tendency would be to make the ice-covering above them thicker. But it is also possible that the waste of the ice underneath may have brought the bodies to the bed of the glacier, where their very bones may have been ground to mud by an agency which the hardest rocks cannot withstand.
THE GUIDE TIRED. 1857.
As the sun poured his light upon the Plateau the little snow-facets sparkled brilliantly, sometimes with a pure white light, and at others with prismatic colours. Contrasted with the white spaces above and around us were the dark mountains on the opposite side of the valley of Chamouni, around which fantastic masses of cloud were beginning to build themselves. Mont Buet, with its cone of snow, looked small, and the Brévent altogether mean; the limestone bastions of the Fys, however, still presented a front of gloom and grandeur. We traversed the Grand Plateau, and at length reached the base of an extremely steep incline which stretched upwards towards the Corridor. Here, as if produced by a fault, consequent upon the sinking of the ice in front, rose a vertical precipice, from the coping of which vast stalactites of ice depended. Previous to reaching this place I had noticed a haggard expression upon the countenance of our guide, which was now intensified by the prospect of the ascent before him. Hitherto he had always been in front, which was certainly the most fatiguing position. I felt that I must now take the lead, so I spoke cheerily to the man and placed him behind me. Marking a number of points upon the slope as resting places, I went swiftly from one to the other. The surface of the snow had been partially melted by the sun and then refrozen, thus forming a superficial crust, which bore the weight up to a certain point, and then suddenly gave way, permitting the leg to sink to above the knee. The shock consequent on this, and the subsequent effort necessary to extricate the leg, were extremely fatiguing. My motion was complained of as too quick, and my tracks as imperfect; I moderated the former, and, to render my footholes broad and sure, I stamped upon the frozen crust, and twisted my legs in the soft mass underneath,—a terribly exhausting process. I thus led the way to the base of the Rochers Rouges, up to which the fault already referred to had prolonged itself as a crevasse, which was roofed at one place by a most dangerous-looking snow-bridge. Simond came to the front; I drew his attention to the state of the snow, and proposed climbing the Rochers Rouges; but, with a promptness unusual with him, he replied that this was impossible; the bridge was our only means of passing, and we must try it. We grasped our ropes, and dug our feet firmly into the snow to check the man's descent if the pont gave way, but to our astonishment it bore him, and bore us safely after him. A PERILOUS SLOPE. 1857. The slope which we had now to ascend had the snow swept from its surface, and was therefore firm ice. It was most dangerously steep, and, its termination being the fretted coping of the precipice to which I have referred, if we slid downwards we should shoot over this and be dashed to pieces upon the ice below.[A] Simond, who had come to the front to cross the crevasse, was now engaged in cutting steps, which he made deep and large, so that they might serve us on our return. But the listless strokes of his axe proclaimed his exhaustion; so I took the implement out of his hands, and changed places with him. Step after step was hewn, but the top of the Corridor appeared ever to recede from us. Hirst was behind unoccupied, and could thus turn his thoughts to the peril of our position: he felt the angle on which we hung, and saw the edge of the precipice, to which less than a quarter of a minute's slide would carry us, and for the first time during the journey he grew giddy. A cigar which he lighted for the purpose tranquilized him.
WILL AND MUSCLE. 1857.
I hewed sixty steps upon this slope, and each step had cost a minute, by Hirst's watch. The Mur de la Côte was still before us, and on this the guide-books informed us two or three hundred steps were sometimes found necessary. If sixty steps cost an hour, what would be the cost of two hundred? The question was disheartening in the extreme, for the time at which we had calculated on reaching the summit was already passed, while the chief difficulties remained unconquered. Having hewn our way along the harder ice we reached snow. I again resorted to stamping to secure a footing, and while thus engaged became, for the first time, aware of the drain of force to which I was subjecting myself. The thought of being absolutely exhausted had never occurred to me, and from first to last I had taken no care to husband my strength. I always calculated that the will would serve me even should the muscles fail, but I now found that mechanical laws rule man in the long run; that no effort of will, no power of spirit, can draw beyond a certain limit upon muscular force. The soul, it is true, can stir the body to action, but its function is to excite and apply force, and not to create it.
While stamping forward through the frozen crust I was compelled to pause at short intervals; then would set out again apparently fresh, to find, however, in a few minutes that my strength was gone, and that I required to rest once more. In this way I gained the summit of the Corridor, when Hirst came to the front, and I felt some relief in stepping slowly after him, making use of the holes into which his feet had sunk. He thus led the way to the base of the Mur de la Côte, the thought of which had so long cast a gloom upon us; here we left our rope behind us, and while pausing I asked Simond whether he did not feel a desire to go to the summit—"Bien sûr," was his reply, "mais!" Our guide's mind was so constituted that the "mais" seemed essential to its peace. I stretched my hand towards him, and said, "Simond, we must do it." One thing alone I felt could defeat us: the usual time of the ascent had been more than doubled, the day was already far spent, and if the ascent would throw our subsequent descent into night it could not be contemplated.
A DOZE ON THE CALOTTE. 1857.
We now faced the Mur, which was by no means so bad as we had expected. Driving the iron claws of our boots into the scars made by the axe, and the spikes of our bâtons into the slope above our feet, we ascended steadily until the summit was attained, and the top of the mountain rose clearly above us. We congratulated ourselves upon this; but Simond, probably fearing that our joy might become too full, remarked, "Mais le sommet est encore bien loin!" It was, alas! too true. The snow became soft again, and our weary limbs sank in it as before. Our guide went on in front, audibly muttering his doubts as to our ability to reach the top, and at length he threw himself upon the snow, and exclaimed, "Il faut y renoncer!" Hirst now undertook the task of rekindling the guide's enthusiasm, after which Simond rose, exclaiming, "Ah! comme ça me fait mal aux genoux," and went forward. Two rocks break through the snow between the summit of the Mur and the top of the mountain; the first is called the Petits Mulets, and the highest the Derniers Rochers. At the former of these we paused to rest, and finished our scanty store of wine and provisions. We had not a bit of bread nor a drop of wine left; our brandy flasks were also nearly exhausted, and thus we had to contemplate the journey to the summit, and the subsequent descent to the Grands Mulets, without the slightest prospect of physical refreshment. The almost total loss of two nights' sleep, with two days' toil superadded, made me long for a few minutes' doze, so I stretched myself upon a composite couch of snow and granite, and immediately fell asleep. My friend, however, soon aroused me. "You quite frighten me," he said; "I have listened for some minutes, and have not heard you breathe once." I had, in reality, been taking deep draughts of the mountain air, but so silently as not to be heard.
I now filled our empty wine-bottle with snow and placed it in the sunshine, that we might have a little water on our return. We then rose; it was half-past two o'clock; we had been upwards of twelve hours climbing, and I calculated that, whether we reached the summit or not, we could at all events work towards it for another hour. To the sense of fatigue previously experienced, a new phenomenon was now added—the beating of the heart. We were incessantly pulled up by this, which sometimes became so intense as to suggest danger. I counted the number of paces which we were able to accomplish without resting, and found that at the end of every twenty, sometimes at the end of fifteen, we were compelled to pause. At each pause my heart throbbed audibly, as I leaned upon my staff, and the subsidence of this action was always the signal for further advance. My breathing was quick, but light and unimpeded. I endeavoured to ascertain whether the hip-joint, on account of the diminished atmospheric pressure, became loosened, so as to throw the weight of the leg upon the surrounding ligaments, but could not be certain about it. I also sought a little aid and encouragement from philosophy, endeavouring to remember what great things had been done by the accumulation of small quantities, and I urged upon myself that the present was a case in point, and that the summation of distances twenty paces each must finally place us at the top. Still the question of time left the matter long in doubt, and until we had passed the Derniers Rochers we worked on with the stern indifference of men who were doing their duty, and did not look to consequences. Here, however, a gleam of hope began to brighten our souls; the summit became visibly nearer, Simond showed more alacrity; at length success became certain, and at half-past three p.m. my friend and I clasped hands upon the top.
THE SUMMIT ATTAINED. 1857.
The summit of the mountain is an elongated ridge, which has been compared to the back of an ass. It was perfectly manifest that we were dominant over all other mountains; as far as the eye could range Mont Blanc had no competitor. The summits which had looked down upon us in the morning were now far beneath us. The Dôme du Goûter, which had held its threatening séracs above us so long, was now at our feet. The Aiguille du Midi, Mont Blanc du Tacul, and the Monts Maudits, the Talèfre with its surrounding peaks, the Grand Jorasse, Mont Mallet, and the Aiguille du Géant, with our own familiar glaciers, were all below us. And as our eye ranged over the broad shoulders of the mountain, over ice hills and valleys, plateaux and far-stretching slopes of snow, the conception of its magnitude grew upon us, and impressed us more and more.
CLOUDS FROM THE SUMMIT. 1857.
The clouds were very grand—grander indeed than anything I had ever before seen. Some of them seemed to hold thunder in their breasts, they were so dense and dark; others, with their faces turned sunward, shone with the dazzling whiteness of the mountain snow; while others again built themselves into forms resembling gigantic elm trees, loaded with foliage. Towards the horizon the luxury of colour added itself to the magnificent alternations of light and shade. Clear spaces of amber and ethereal green embraced the red and purple cumuli, and seemed to form the cradle in which they swung. Closer at hand squally mists, suddenly engendered, were driven hither and thither by local winds; while the clouds at a distance lay "like angels sleeping on the wing," with scarcely visible motion. Mingling with the clouds, and sometimes rising above them, were the highest mountain heads, and as our eyes wandered from peak to peak, onwards to the remote horizon, space itself seemed more vast from the manner in which the objects which it held were distributed.
INTENSITY OF SOUND. 1857.
I wished to repeat the remarkable experiment of De Saussure upon sound, and for this purpose had requested Simond to bring a pistol from Chamouni; but in the multitude of his cares he forgot it, and in lieu of it my host at the Montanvert had placed in two tin tubes, of the same size and shape, the same amount of gunpowder, securely closing the tubes afterwards, and furnishing each of them with a small lateral aperture. We now planted one of them upon the snow, and bringing a strip of amadou into communication with the touchhole, ignited its most distant end: it failed; we tried again, and were successful, the explosion tearing asunder the little case which contained the powder. The sound was certainly not so great as I should have expected from an equal quantity of powder at the sea level.[B]
The snow upon the summit was indurated, but of an exceedingly fine grain, and the beautiful effect already referred to as noticed upon the Stelvio was strikingly manifest. The hole made by driving the bâton into the snow was filled with a delicate blue light; and, by management, its complementary pinky yellow could also be produced. Even the iron spike at the end of the bâton made a hole sufficiently deep to exhibit the blue colour, which certainly depends on the size and arrangement of the snow crystals. The firmament above us was without a cloud, and of a darkness almost equal to that which surrounded the moon at 2 a.m. Still, though the sun was shining, a breeze, whose tooth had been sharpened by its passage over the snow-fields, searched us through and through. The day was also waning, and, urged by the warnings of our ever prudent guide, we at length began the descent.
AN UNEXPECTED GLISSADE. 1857.
Gravity was now in our favour, but gravity could not entirely spare our wearied limbs, and where we sank in the snow we found our downward progress very trying. I suffered from thirst, but after we had divided the liquefied snow at the Petits Mulets amongst us we had nothing to drink. I crammed the clean snow into my mouth, but the process of melting was slow and tantalizing to a parched throat, while the chill was painful to the teeth. We marched along the Corridor, and crossed cautiously the perilous slope on which we had cut steps in the morning, breathing more freely after we had cleared the ice-precipice before described. Along the base of this precipice we now wound, diverging from our morning's track, in order to get surer footing in the snow; it was like flour, and while descending to the Grand Plateau we sometimes sank in it nearly to the waist. When I endeavoured to squeeze it, so as to fill my flask, it at first refused to cling together, behaving like so much salt; the heat of the hand, however, soon rendered it a little moist, and capable of being pressed into compact masses. The sun met us here with extraordinary power; the heat relaxed my muscles, but when fairly immersed in the shadow of the Dôme du Goûter, the coolness restored my strength, which augmented as the evening advanced. Simond insisted on the necessity of haste, to save us from the perils of darkness. "On peut périr" was his repeated admonition, and he was quite right. We reached the region of ponts, more weary, but, in compensation, more callous, than we had been in the morning, and moved over the soft snow of the bridges as if we had been walking upon eggs. The valley of Chamouni was filled with brown-red clouds, which crept towards us up the mountain; the air around and above us was, however, clear, and the chastened light told us that day was departing. Once as we hung upon a steep slope, where the snow was exceedingly soft, Hirst omitted to make his footing sure; the soft mass gave way, and he fell, uttering a startled shout as he went down the declivity. I was attached to him, and, fixing my feet suddenly in the snow, endeavoured to check his fall, but I seemed a mere feather in opposition to the force with which he descended.[C] I fell, and went down after him; and we carried quite an avalanche of snow along with us, in which we were almost completely hidden at the bottom of the slope. All further dangers, however, were soon past, and we went at a headlong speed to the base of the Grands Mulets; the sound of our bâtons against the rocks calling Huxley forth. A position more desolate than his had been can hardly be imagined. For seventeen hours he had been there. He had expected us at two o'clock in the afternoon; the hours came and passed, and till seven in the evening he had looked for us. "To the end of my life," he said, "I shall never forget the sound of those bâtons." It was his turn now to nurse me, which he did, repaying my previous care of him with high interest. We were all soon stretched, and, in spite of cold and hard boards, I slept at intervals; but the night, on the whole, was a weary one, and we rose next morning with muscles more tired than when we lay down.
BLIND AMID THE CREVASSES. 1857.
Friday, 14th August.—Hirst was almost blind this morning; and our guide's eyes were also greatly inflamed. We gathered our things together, and bade the Grands Mulets farewell. It had frozen hard during the night, and this, on the steeper slopes, rendered the footing very insecure. Simond, moreover, appeared to be a little bewildered, and I sometimes preceded him in cutting the steps, while Hirst moved among the crevasses like a blind man; one of us keeping near him, so that he might feel for the actual places where our feet had rested, and place his own in the same position. It cost us three hours to cross from the Grands Mulets to the Pierre a l'Echelle, where we discarded our leggings, had a mouthful of food, and a brief rest. Once upon the safe earth Simond's powers seemed to be restored, and he led us swiftly downwards to the little auberge beside the Cascade du Tard, where we had some excellent lemonade, equally choice cognac, fresh strawberries and cream. How sweet they were, and how beautiful we thought the peasant girl who served them! Our guide kept a little hotel, at which we halted, and found it clean and comfortable. We were, in fact, totally unfit to go elsewhere. My coat was torn, holes were kicked through my boots, and I was altogether ragged and shabby. A warm bath before dinner refreshed all mightily. Dense clouds now lowered upon Mont Blanc, and we had not been an hour at Chamouni when the breaking up of the weather was announced by a thunder-peal. We had accomplished our journey just in time.