I cannot, without a couple of sections and a plan, give an exact idea to the reader of this remarkable place. It corresponds in some of its features to the gorge figured upon, but it exhibits in a much more notable manner the characteristic action and power of running water. The length of the chasm or gouffre, is about three hundred and twenty feet, and from the top of its walls to the surface of the water is about one hundred and ten feet. At no part can the entire length or depth be seen at a glance, for, although the width at some places is fifteen feet or more, the view is limited by the sinuosities of the walls. These are everywhere polished to a smooth, vitreous-in-appearance surface. In some places the torrent has wormed into the rock, and has left natural bridges. The most extraordinary features of the Gouffre des Busserailles, however, are the caverns (or marmites, as they are termed) which the water has hollowed out of the heart of the rock. Carrel’s plank path leads into one of the greatest—a grotto that is about twenty-eight feet across at its largest diameter, and fifteen or sixteen feet high, roofed above by the living rock, and with the torrent roaring fifty feet or thereabouts below, at the bottom of a fissure. This cavern is lighted by candles, and talking in it can only be managed by signs.
I visited the interior of the gouffre in 1869, and my wonder at its caverns was increased by observing the hardness of the hornblende out of which they have been hollowed. Carrel chiseled off a large piece, which is now lying before me. It has a highly polished, glassy surface, and might be mistaken, for a moment, for ice-polished rock. But the water has found out the atoms which were least hard, and it is dotted all over with minute depressions, much as the face of one is who has suffered from smallpox. The edges of these little hollows are rounded, and all the surfaces of the depressions are polished nearly or quite as highly as the general surface of the fragment. The water has drilled more deeply into some veins of steatite than in other places, and the presence of the steatite may possibly have had something to do with the formation of the gouffre.
I arrived at Breuil again after an absence of six days, well satisfied with my tour of the Matterhorn, which had been rendered very pleasant by the willingness of my guides and by the kindliness of the natives. But it must be admitted that the inhabitants of the Val Tournanche are behind the times. Their paths are as bad as, or worse than, they were in the time of De Saussure, and their inns are much inferior to those on the Swiss side. If it were otherwise there would be nothing to prevent the valley becoming one of the most popular and frequented of all the valleys in the Alps; but as it is, tourists who enter it seem to think only about how soon they can get out of it, and hence it is much less known than it deserves to be on account of its natural attractions.
CHAPTER VII.
OUR SIXTH ATTEMPT TO ASCEND THE MATTERHORN.
Carrel had carte blanche in the matter of guides, and his choice fell upon his relative Cæsar, Luc Meynet and two others whose names I do not know. These men were now brought together, and our preparations were completed, as the weather was clearing up.
We rested on Sunday, August 9, eagerly watching the lessening of the mists around the great peak, and started just before dawn upon the 10th, on a still and cloudless morning, which seemed to promise a happy termination to our enterprise.
By going always, but gently, we arrived upon the Col du Lion before nine o’clock. Changes were apparent. Familiar ledges had vanished; the platform whereon my tent had stood looked very forlorn; its stones had been scattered by wind and frost, and had half disappeared; and the summit of the col itself, which in 1862 had always been respectably broad and covered by snow, was now sharper than the ridge of any church roof, and was hard ice. Already we had found that the bad weather of the past week had done its work. The rocks for several hundred feet below the col were varnished with ice. Loose, incoherent snow covered the older and harder beds below, and we nearly lost our leader through its treacherousness. He stepped on some snow which seemed firm, and raised his axe to deliver a swinging blow, but just as it was highest the crust of the slope upon which he stood broke away, and poured down in serpentine streams, leaving long bare strips, which glittered in the sun, for they were glassy ice. Carrel, with admirable readiness, flung himself back on to the rock off which he had stepped, and was at once secured. He simply remarked, “It is time we were tied up,” and after we had been tied up he went to work again as if nothing had happened.
We had abundant illustrations during the next two hours of the value of a rope to climbers. We were tied up rather widely apart, and advanced generally in pairs. Carrel, who led, was followed closely by another man, who lent him a shoulder or placed an axe-head under his feet when there was need; and when this couple were well placed, the second pair advanced in similar fashion, the rope being drawn in by those above and paid out gradually by those below. The leading men advanced, or the third pair, and so on. This manner of progression was slow but sure. One man only moved at a time, and if he slipped (and we frequently did slip), he could slide scarcely a foot without being checked by the others. The certainty and safety of the method gave confidence to the one who was moving, and not only nerved him to put out his powers to the utmost, but sustained nerve in really difficult situations. For these rocks (which, it has been already said, were easy enough under ordinary circumstances) were now difficult in a high degree. The snow-water, which had trickled down for many days past in little streams, had taken, naturally, the very route by which we wished to ascend; and, re-frozen in the night, had glazed the slabs over which we had to pass—sometimes with a fine film of ice as thin as a sheet of paper, and sometimes so thickly that we could almost cut footsteps in it. The weather was superb, the men made light of the toil, and shouted to rouse the echoes from the Dent d’Hérens.
We went on gayly, passed the second tent-platform, the Chimney and the other well-remembered points, and reckoned confidently on sleeping that night upon the top of “the shoulder;” but before we had well arrived at the foot of the Great Tower, a sudden rush of cold air warned us to look out.
It was difficult to say where this air came from: it did not blow as a wind, but descended rather as the water in a shower-bath. All was tranquil again: the atmosphere showed no signs of disturbance: there was a dead calm, and not a speck of cloud to be seen anywhere. But we did not remain very long in this state. The cold air came again, and this time it was difficult to say where it did not come from. We jammed down our hats as it beat against the ridge and screamed amongst the crags. Before we had got to the foot of the Tower mists had been formed above and below. They appeared at first in small, isolated patches (in several places at the same time), which danced and jerked and were torn into shreds by the wind, but grew larger under the process. They were united together and rent again, showing us the blue sky for a moment, and blotting it out the next, and augmented incessantly until the whole heavens were filled with whirling, boiling clouds. Before we could take off our packs and get under any kind of shelter a hurricane of snow burst upon us from the east. It fell so thickly that in a few minutes the ridge was covered by it. “What shall we do?” I shouted to Carrel. “Monsieur,” said he, “the wind is bad, the weather has changed, we are heavily laden. Here is a fine gîte; let us stop. If we go on we shall be half frozen. That is my opinion.” No one differed from him; so we fell to work to make a place for the tent, and in a couple of hours completed the platform which we had commenced in 1862. The clouds had blackened during that time, and we had hardly finished our task before a thunder-storm broke upon us with appalling fury. Forked lightning shot out at the turrets above and at the crags below. It was so close that we quailed at its darts. It seemed to scorch us: we were in the very focus of the storm. The thunder was simultaneous with the flashes, short and sharp, and more like the noise of a door violently slammed, multiplied a thousand-fold, than any noise to which I can compare it.