Lunn likes to speak of the Swiss parties he meets as being “guideless.” I do not know to what extent this epithet may convey a clear meaning to others. It hardly does to me. What is a guideless party? Unless it means a party who undertakes, without the assistance of a professional guide, one of the ascents for which such a guide is authorised by a binding tariff to claim payment, the expression is wanting in point. There is nothing particularly noteworthy in this, that the natives of Switzerland should explore and climb the mountains of their country without the assistance of professional fellow-citizens. These form a class which has been instituted to serve two purposes: (1) To provide them with an additional economic asset; (2) to give strangers confidence in exploring the Alps.
Guides seek from their employers certificates of good conduct and utility. Many of the latter have acquired a taste, in those documents, for sitting, as it were, at the feet of their guides as though the positions were reversed. Indeed, it would be more natural that the guides should give certificates of ability, daring, and endurance to the amateur mountaineers whom they have in their charge. Under such altered circumstances a guideless party would be a party in possession of a certificate to the effect that they had gained sufficient proficiency in mountaineering to hold a licence as guideless parties. Till things are so arranged, the epithet is bootless.
Many young Swiss solve the difficulty by going through the official course of training laid down for professional guides, in the persuasion that should they, or the party they are with, meet with an accident, it would not be possible for either the guiding corporation or public opinion to fairly lay any blame at their door. There was assuredly no reason why the young men whom we saw on that day should have been expected to meet with an accident because they had no paid bystander.
“Luxuries had long been devoured, but even soup has a delightful flavour in a club hut. And no one can really understand the charms of tobacco who has never smoked in a club hut at the end of a good day’s work. The mountain pipe has a flavour undreamt of in the plains. Even some horrible hay-like production purchased in Adolf’s inn seemed inspired with ambrosial flavour.”
On this 6th day of January it was to be our turn to ascend the Finsteraarhorn. For the first time in our trip this verb is an apposite term. It meant work, and our Socialist undertook to prove it. He first of all swallowed up on the sly the last contents of our pot of honey. If I wished to be nasty, I should say that he got himself tied at the end of the rope because he had calculated selfishly that he would be dragged up and, being first and lowest on the rope when descending, he would be held up by us.
This little piece of reckoning did not miscarry. Wise Ulysses was too good natured to let it be seen that he “saw through” this little plot; fiery Achilles was of too powerful a build to mind a little extra weight, and the other two Bernese guides were such excellent fellows that they gave no sign of how much they suffered in their pride on account of their colleague.
“For once in a way,” says Lunn, “the guides were punctual. I think Professor Roget was the only one in the party who did justice to the breakfast. A seasoned mountaineer of thirty years’ standing, he can eat stale bread and tinned meat at 6.30 in the morning with the calm persistency of the man who realises that food is a sound insurance against cold and fatigue. But we were all glad to turn out of the hut, which we left at 7.15 a.m. The first signs of dawn appeared before the moon had set, a somewhat unusual phenomenon. Such a sunrise—though one misses the more dramatic change from the darkest night to the day—is accompanied by an almost unique depth of colouring. Two hours above the hut the sun shot out from behind the Oberaarhorn, I should like to add, like a stone flung out of a sling.”
BREAKFAST ON THE FINSTERAARHORN.
To face p. 163.