Noah lighted a fire on the rocks near the dome. We sang a gipsy song. Then a memorial of our visit was placed in a bottle, and added to those records of former ascents already there. At five o’clock a.m. we commenced our descent, Ole leading, ourself next, and Noah bringing up the rear. In the same order we had ascended. With difficulty we kept our legs on the frozen snow sloping from the dome. If we had rolled with Ole and Noah to the glaciers below, our wanderings would certainly have been at an end.
The rocks were soon reached, and, descending to the glaciers below, we reached Rödsheim before ten o’clock the same morning. This gives thirteen hours from Rödsheim and return. Mr. Watson, who is a member of the Alpine Club, accomplished the ascent in 1868 in nine hours and a quarter actual walking. The Prœsten H. Halling had made the ascent, and also one of the young ladies we had met at the Prœsten Hallings. What cannot ladies accomplish when they make up their minds?
The Galdhöpiggen, we were told, was first ascended in 1851 by a schoolmaster and a farmer, who took three days to succeed. In 1864 Ole Halvorsen, or, as he is very often called from his farm, Ole Rödsheim, ascended it from Rödsheim. Captain R. J. Campbell ascended it in 1866; since then to the present time there have been several ascents from Rödsheim. The Prœsten Honoratus Halling, of Lom, Messrs. H. Smith, Wright, and G. H. Wright, from Lom Rectory, H. S. Marriot, H. W. Cuthbert, J. Dymsdale, Mr. and Mrs. Watson, and lastly, Messrs. Boyson and Harrison, to whom Ole Halvorsen had acted as guide before we engaged his services. Some tourists have ascended, we believe, from Visdal since the first ascent was made.
Esmeralda and Zachariah welcomed us at our camp at Rödsheim. They had felt quite lost. Esmeralda did not approve of our staying out all night. They had not been able to sleep. In the middle of the night they said an attempt had been made to steal the donkeys. Two men were near them, and one was actually trying to mount one of them. Esmeralda and Zachariah went up to them, and both men ran away along the mountain road with Esmeralda and Zachariah in pursuit. We can imagine Mephistophiles, the descendant of some count of Lesser Egypt, with nothing on but his shirt, swiftly pursuing two heavy peasant descendants of some Norwegian chief of ancient time, flapping the road with their heavy shoes, panting and breathless to escape the unexpected apparitions from the rocks of the Bœver Elv in the dead of night. “Norwegians stealing, ce n’est pas possible!” said we. “Curious to examine the animals near the road, they had merely ventured to inspect them closely, and you nearly frightened them to death.”[93]
A dismal revelation had also to be made, for on returning from the Galdhöpiggen it was discovered that our siphonia overcoat, secured by straps, had been lost on the arrête near the mountain’s summit. Ole would then and there have returned for it, but this we would not allow; and a look-out was to be made during the next ascent.
Then our boots, which were not new when we commenced our wanderings, were declared by Esmeralda to be a complete wreck. Before our ascent of the Galdhöpiggen, they had been severely tested by nearly all the wear and tear of the distance to Rödsheim. Even Medwin’s won’t last for ever. Then it must be remembered we never had a single blister during the journey. C’est quelque chose, thought we, as Esmeralda looked out from the wardrobe pocket, another pair of Medwin’s fishing-boots nearly new. Shall we ever forget the look Esmeralda gave us when she held up the débris of those replaced? Can we forget the tone in which she somewhat reproachfully said, “Now, look at these chockas!”
Having made rapid but unsatisfactory résumé of the results of our ascent, Esmeralda treated the whole affair in a most contemptuous spirit. Instead of receiving much laudation, our mountain expedition was looked upon as a profitless expenditure of time, and energy, and a reckless desertion of our tents. In our mind we contrasted our reception with what it might have been elsewhere. No cannons fired as at Chamounix. No “bouquet of flowers” as we remember at St. Gervais. No “vin d’honneur,” no anything. We sat down to breakfast, and felt very much as if we had done something wrong without having done it.
“NOW, LOOK AT THESE CHOCKAS”!!!
One thing is quite certain, the appetite of the two mountaineers had not lost anything by the expedition. Breakfast being completed, we adjourned with our note-book to the cool shade of some rocks just above the road. Esmeralda came to talk to us as we wrote. Two or three lines went tolerably easy, then the pencil and note-book glided from our hand, and we fell fast asleep till mid-day.