ICEBERGS STRANDED ON THE BED OF THE MÄRJELEN SEE AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF THE WATER.
With such a downfall, which on the high peaks would be mostly snow, it was useless to think of any Zermatt mountains at present, so we decided to go to the Eggishorn Hotel, and then try the Jungfrau, one of the Oberland giants. The storm had rather scattered me, for I had some wraps at the Trift inn, a bag at Zermatt, unpaid bills at both places, besides a wife at Saas Fée. However, this was settled so far as luggage and payment concerned me, by sending our man to arrange it, and we went off to the Eggishorn. On a Sunday afternoon, after service in the little church, we walked to the Concordia hut, and found the Märjelen See drained almost dry; instead of a great blue sheet of water with icebergs floating in it, there is nothing but a muddy pond. This is partly the result of draining operations, and makes the valley below much safer as a dwelling place, but takes away from the beauty of this part of the great Aletsch glacier.
It is interesting to note the great stones which now and then are carried about on these icebergs, or left stranded when the water is low; thus illustrating, on a small scale, the theory which best explains the position of erratic boulders—namely, that they were carried by icebergs in the glacial age.
The Concordia hut is grandly situated near the beginning of the great glacier, close to the Oberland mountains, and is a starting-point for many expeditions. A member of the Swiss Alpine Club who shared the hut with us was a most excitable little man, and signalled his arrival by letting off with a frightful explosion a large maroon, and to my horror he carried another, quite as large as my fist, ready for his departure in the morning. He actually began to light the thing inside the hut just before our start, but we got outside and out of the way, while in the darkness before the dawn, under the quiet stars, he yelled, and waved his hands about, and burst his infernal machine. It is hard to forgive these queer foreign manners. He afterwards stopped his guide that he might exchange cards with us.
After this adventure we had a quiet time and a perfect day on the Jungfrau. We took five and a half hours to make the ascent, including breakfasts and halts. There is just room to stand or sit carefully on the highest point of snow. We had a glorious view. The beautiful green valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen spread at our feet, and all the peaks around us far and near were perfectly defined. The sun was all day very powerful, and the reflection off the recent snow was dazzling in brightness; my face and ears got touched slightly in spite of anointing with lanoline, and peeled, though not painfully, during the next few days. To prevent sunburn hazeline cream is a most excellent application, combining a vegetable astringent with lanoline.
Early on the morning following we crossed the Lötschen Lücke, a beautiful pass of snow and ice, with the finest crevasses full of strange ice architecture, and came to Ried in the Lötschen Thal, where is a comfortable inn at the foot of the Bietschhorn, the mountain we were anxious to climb. Here the weather broke, great clouds came with a south-west wind, and gathered all over Italy. The peaks could not be seen in the stormy sky, while a large eagle or lämmergeyer hovered over the hotel.
We had to give up our expedition, and after a quiet day in this peaceful inn we went down to the Rhone Valley, dined at Sierre, slept at Sion—lulled to sleep by pouring rain—and next night came to Chamounix by way of the Tête Noire. A shadow was over Chamounix because of the sad death on Mont Blanc of that well-known Oxford scholar, Mr. R. L. Nettleship. I saw the newly turned sods on his grave in the little churchyard, and heard again the story of his loss, so far as it ever will be known. After a stormy night spent in a snow shelter, his guides came down and left his body on the mountain, where it was found by a search party later on. Mr. Myer’s beautiful lines seem to have been made for such an event:
“Here let us leave him; for his shroud the snow,
For funeral lamps he has the planets seven,