The Furca Inn enjoys the distinction of having been the home of Queen Victoria for three days in August, 1868. As Americans would say, she “ran the concern.” The house was hired for her exclusive use. The royal bed, cooking-utensils, and all the domestic belongings were brought on from England. So were the doctor, the cook, the gillie, and even the humblest but still useful members of the Queen’s household. In the dining-room hangs a framed list of the names of the whole party, save the Queen, whose photograph surmounts it. Among the autographs is that of John Brown. The proprietor exhibits with pride the little room in which Her Majesty slept. Whether the charges are higher in consequence, the present writer can not say, as he came and went with a rapidity quite unpleasing to the landlord.
From the summit of the Furca Pass down to Andermatt the ride would be prodigiously interesting if one were not satiated with the sights on the western ascent.
After a night at Andermatt the journey was resumed by carriage to Fluelen and then by boat to Lucerne. Of the scenery along that part of the route—savage and tame, gloomy and bright, by turns—one could write more enthusiastically if his impressions of the Furca were not still fresh.
CHAPTER XIII. AVALANCHES ON THE JUNGFRAU—THE GUIDES OF GRINDELWALD.
The avalanche about to be described started just below the peak of the Silberhorn, a few minutes before midday. At that hour the sun was beginning to make his rays felt in the frozen bosom of the Jungfrau. The Silberhorn is the showiest ornament of that most bewitching of mountains. It is an acute pyramid, and has a surface like frosted silver. It seems so dead and cold that one does not suspect its latent capacity for motion and sound. Yet it is from this statuesque spur that some of the most terrible avalanches of the Jungfrau are let loose. The sides are so steep that the ice and snow are always about to slide off, and, when the afternoon sun shines straight and hot upon them, the watcher for avalanches is never disappointed. I had been staring at the dazzling Jungfrau through smoke-colored glasses for some time, and waiting for the show to begin. My point of observation was on a knoll or excrescence of the Wengern Alp—itself no mean mountain—from which the peerless Jungfrau can be seen at the shortest range. The day was perfect, the sky cloudless and the wind hushed. The only signs of life around me were the fluttering of butterflies and the humming of bees. The silence was awful. Far off, down in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, I could see the Staubbach Fall sparkling in the sunshine. From my exalted station its course could be tracked for a long distance before it flung itself into the abyss and kept its horse-tail form complete for nearly a thousand feet. It looked so near, through the transparent air, that sometimes I fancied I could hear its roar. But this was an illusion. The only sound that breaks the stillness of the solitary height is that of the avalanche for which I was so patiently waiting.
Suddenly there was a gleam as of particles in motion on a part of the Silberhorn at which I had often looked with keen expectations. For just there could be discerned, without a glass, a series of long, parallel scratches such as avalanches always make. These are the grooves in which, like many human institutions, they may be said to run from year to year by force of habit. The rate of the motion was so slow and indeterminate—for a reason which I afterward found out—that one might, for a moment, question if the shining atoms were not stationary, after all. But no! though the pace seemed to be that of a snail, it was real and downward, and was soon too accelerated to be mistaken. The whole breadth of one side of the Silberhorn was moving, beyond a doubt. I was witnessing the sublime spectacle of a great avalanche. More swiftly it descended, and yet it seemed to crawl. In this way it slid along for a short distance—about 2,000 feet, as I afterward learned—when the mass fell over a jutting piece of ice or rock. Then it looked something like a waterfall. Below was another steep slope scored with the furrows of old avalanches. Here the motion was more rapid, but still surprisingly slow. Then, and not before, I heard a sound as of thunder. If the sky had not been one unspotted blue, I should have supposed a storm to be bursting somewhere among the mountains. It was the noise of the avalanche, at that moment reaching my ears from a distance, which was so deceptive. Later on, studying the phenomena of avalanches more deliberately, I ascertained that the scene of action—apparently not more than half a mile off—was often seven miles and never less than three. By noting the avalanche at the instant of its birth and counting the seconds of time till the first boom reported itself, one can calculate the distance with sufficient accuracy.
The Silberhorn being many miles from my standpoint in an air-line, it follows that the terms “small” and “slow,” used in connection with its avalanches, are irrelevant. The breadth of the falling mass should be expressed in rods and not in feet. Its movement was exceedingly swift. What seemed to start as snow was, in fact, a great ice-cake, acres in extent, and perhaps fifty feet thick. This, striking against rocks in its course, broke into fragments which were indistinguishable in the distance. The apparent waterfall was composed chiefly of large lumps of ice. These were destined to be pulverized in good earnest as they continued their descent. Then I heard a sound as of hissing mingled with the deeper reverberations. A short distance—more than a thousand feet, probably—was thus traversed when the avalanche entered upon another stage of its career. It tumbled over another ridge—this time looking more like a waterfall than before. Here its volume was much contracted, and I could clearly see that this fact was due to the depth of the rock-bound channels through which it ran. Then it sprawled quite freely over a great open space or plateau, where it rested and formed a perceptible heap, thick at the center, and flattening out gradually toward the edges. Judging of its dimensions by my revised standards, I should say that it covered many acres, and was deep enough to bury an Alpine village of the average size.
Between noon and two o’clock, when I left the fascinating scene to seek for luncheon at the Hôtel des Avalanches, about three hundred feet below my mound of solitary observation, the Silberhorn had contributed nothing further to the pile at its base. But, at other points of the imposing range visible from the Wengern Alp, and especially on the main body of the Jungfrau, on a shoulder of the Monch, and on the steepest part of the Eiger, some avalanche was always in sight of the attentive observer. They usually resembled cascades from beginning to end. Rarely could one see the popular idea of an avalanche realized. Most people, I find, think of avalanches as broad tracts of snow which are transferred from the upper part of a mountain into a valley at its foot, keeping their general shape all the way. The Silberhorn specimen corresponded to this ideal for a short distance, as I have said. But all the others trickled down in a water-like way from top to bottom. The behavior of the falling ice and snow was so much like that of water that one could be convinced that he was beholding an avalanche only when he saw what took place at its terminus. For, in five cases out of six, the icy torrent ended in a white heap, which still remained far up the mountain-sides, though below the true snow-line. Except that they lacked the well-known green tint, the tracts of snow and ice thus deposited looked like glaciers. Brooks ran from the lower end of them into the valleys far beneath.