The Ascent of the Matterhorn

by Edward Whymper

“How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of a fleeting year!”

W. Shakespeare.

I crossed the Channel on the 29th of July 1863, embarrassed by the possession of two ladders, each twelve feet long, which joined together like those used by firemen, and shut up like parallel rulers. My luggage was highly suggestive of housebreaking, for, besides these, there were several coils of rope, and numerous tools of suspicious appearance, and it was reluctantly admitted into France, but it passed through the custom-house with less trouble than I anticipated, after a timely expenditure of a few francs.

I am not in love with the douane. It is the purgatory of travellers, where uncongenial spirits mingle together for a time, before they are separated into rich and poor. The douaniers look upon tourists as their natural enemies; see how eagerly they pounce upon the portmanteaux! One of them has discovered something! He has never seen its like before, and he holds it aloft in the face of its owner, with inquisitorial insolence. “But what is this?” The [pg 89]explanation is only half-satisfactory. “But what is this?” says he, laying hold of a little box. “Powder.” “But that it is forbidden to carry of powder on the railway.” “Bah!” says another and older hand, “pass the effects of Monsieur;” and our countryman—whose cheeks had begun to redden under the stares of his fellow-travellers—is allowed to depart with his half-worn tooth-brush, while the discomfited douanier gives a mighty shrug at the strange habits of those “whose insular position excludes them from the march of continental ideas.”

My real troubles commenced at Susa. The officials there, more honest and more obtuse than the Frenchmen, declined at one and the same time to be bribed, or to pass my baggage until a satisfactory account of it was rendered; and, as they refused to believe the true explanation, I was puzzled what to say, but was presently relieved from the dilemma by one of the men, who was cleverer than his fellows, suggesting that I was going to Turin to exhibit in the streets; that I mounted the ladder and balanced myself on the end of it, then lighted my pipe and put the point of the bâton in its bowl, and caused the bâton to gyrate around my head. The rope was to keep back the spectators, and an Englishman in my company was the agent. “Monsieur is acrobat then?” “Yes, certainly.” “Pass the effects of Monsieur the acrobat!”

These ladders were the source of endless trouble. Let us pass over the doubts of the guardians of the Hôtel d’Europe (Trombetta), whether a person in the possession of such questionable articles should be admitted to their very respectable house, and get to Chatillon, at the entrance of the Val Tournanche. A mule was chartered to carry them, and, as they were too long to sling across its back, they were arranged lengthways, and one end projected over the animal’s head, while the other extended beyond its tail. A mule when going up or down hill always moves with a jerky action, and in consequence of this the ladders hit my mule severe blows between its ears and in its flanks. The beast, not knowing what strange creature it had on its back, naturally tossed its head and threw out [pg 90]its legs, and this, of course, only made the blows that it received more severe. At last it ran away, and would have perished by rolling down a precipice, if the men had not caught hold of its tail. The end of the matter was that a man had to follow the mule, holding the end of the ladders, which obliged him to move his arms up and down incessantly, and to bow to the hind quarters of the animal in a way that afforded more amusement to his comrades than it did to him.

I was once more en route for the Matterhorn, for I had heard in the spring of 1863 the cause of the failure of Professor Tyndall, and learnt that the case was not so hopeless as it appeared to be at one time. I found that he arrived as far only as the northern end of “the shoulder.” The point at which he says,[66] they “sat down with broken hopes, the summit within a stone’s throw of us, but still defying us,” was not the notch or cleft at D (which is literally within a stone’s throw of the summit), but another and more formidable cleft that intervenes between the northern end of “the shoulder” and the commencement of the final peak. It is marked E on the outline which [faces p. 44]. Carrel and all the men who had been with me knew of the existence of this cleft, and of the pinnacle which rose between it and the final peak;[67] and we had frequently talked about the best manner of passing the place. On this we disagreed, but we were both of opinion that when we got to “the shoulder,” it would be necessary to bear down gradually to the right or to the left, to avoid coming to the top of the notch. Tyndall’s party, after arriving at “the shoulder,” was led by his guides along the crest of the ridge, and, consequently, when they got to its northern end, they came to the top of the notch, instead of the bottom—to the dismay of all but the Carrels. Dr. Tyndall’s words are, “The ridge was here split by a deep cleft which separated it from the final precipice, and the case became more hopeless as we came more near.” The Professor adds, “The mountain is 14,800 [pg 91]feet high, and 14,600 feet had been accomplished.” He greatly deceived himself; by the barometric measurements of Signor Giordano the notch is no less than 800 feet below the summit. The guide Walter (Dr. Tyndall says) said it was impossible to proceed, and the Carrels, appealed to for their opinion (this is their own account), gave as an answer, “We are porters; ask your guides.” Bennen, thus left to himself, “was finally forced to accept defeat.” Tyndall had nevertheless accomplished an advance of about 400 feet over one of the most difficult parts of the mountain.

There are material discrepancies between the published narratives of Professor Tyndall[68] and the verbal accounts of the Carrels. The former says the men had to be “urged on,” that “they pronounced flatly against the final precipice,” “they yielded so utterly,” and that Bennen said, in answer to a final appeal made to him, “ ‘What could I do, sir? not one of them would accompany me.’ It was the accurate truth.” Jean-Antoine Carrel says that when Professor Tyndall gave the order to turn he would have advanced to examine the route, as he did not think that farther progress was impossible, but he was stopped by the Professor, and was naturally obliged to follow the others.[69] These disagreements may [pg 92]well be left to be settled by those who are concerned. Tyndall, Walter, and Bennen, now disappear from this history.[70]