These days are now delightful memories for me, and if my remarks just written do not rise above what Scott called the “ordinary bow-wow,” at least they are “high notes” in one sense, and may find an echo in the hearts of those who love the mountains.
An Alpine Letter
1892
Saas Fée—Grimsel Pass—Mountain sickness—A tired lady on the Matterhorn—Ascent of the Matterhorn—Ascent of the Ober-Gabelhorn—The Trift Joch from Zermatt to Zinal—The Concordia Hut—The Jungfrau—The Lötschen Lücke—Mr. Nettleship’s death on Mont Blanc—Beaten by bad weather on the Dru—The disaster at St. Gervais—Neuchâtel to Bâle.
“In all my wanderings round this world of care” I have found few places so free from the black canker as the mountain tops. Let the climber carry out a burden as big as was Christian’s in the Pilgrim’s Progress, he leaves it all behind upon the high peaks. If Mr. Gladstone could only have managed to attain to the summit of Snowdon he might have seen more than the coast of Ireland.
Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man. So once again I take my holidays upon the Alps, and will hope that the following account may interest readers who travel, for these like to be reminded of beautiful places they have visited, and those who stay at home may be encouraged to try the mountains abroad.
In order to avoid the hot part of the Rhone Valley, and to reach Saas Fée, our first halting place, by an interesting route, my wife and I took the train for Lucerne—by way of Calais, Rheims, Laon, and Bâle. This journey takes less than a day. Starting from London at 11 A.M. we found ourselves the following morning in a boat on the blue Lake of Lucerne with the mountains around us. Travelling by rail over the Brünig Pass, which we had crossed on foot ten years before, we reminded each other of a long walk from Meiringen to Lauterbrunnen in one day, over the Greater and the Lesser Sheidecks when our porter over-ate himself at Grindelwald, about midway, and nearly collapsed at the end of the journey, turning very white and sick in the steep descent to Lauterbrunnen. We came to Meiringen, still chiefly in ruins from the recent fire. The hot, strong Föhn wind blowing from the south is the cause of these awful fires, it will both start and spread the flames. For miles round Meiringen there are notices forbidding smoking in the open road when this wind is blowing. From this sad spot by easy roads we came to Guttannen and here spent the night, rising early next morning for a walk over the Grimsel Pass, with a man to carry our light luggage.
The first early morning walk in Switzerland is always delicious, and wipes away the discomfort of the journey out. We stayed at Handeck to look at the finest waterfall in the country. Two converging torrents, “with a mighty uproar,” pour their waters into an unfathomable, mysterious abyss, hidden by clouds of spray, where a rainbow arches in the sun.
As we walk up the pass, which has been described as a “sepulchre unburied by the sun,” there are, on either hand, enormous, dark, smoothly rounded rocks, the evidence of glacier action in the ages gone. The Grimsel Hospice is situated in the most savage rock scenery, and is not improved by containing a piano, electric bells, and a smart waiter in dress clothes. However, I made use of their telegraph to order a mule from Saas Fée to meet us at Stalden for my wife to ride up there. All the crooked places are now being made plain by means of telegraphs and railways!