At the Mattmark hotel, which stands at the foot of the Monte Moro, I was joined by a gentleman who had just liberated himself from an unpleasant guide. Bennen halted on the way to adjust his knapsack, while my companion and myself went on. We lost sight of my guide, lost the track also, and clambered over crag and snow to the summit, where we waited till Bennen arrived. The mass of Monte Rosa here grandly revealed itself from top to bottom. Dark cliffs and white snows were finely contrasted, and the longer I looked at it, the more noble and impressive did the mountain appear. We were very soon clear of the snow, and went straight down the declivity towards Macugnaga.
We put up at the Monte Moro, where a party of friends greeted me with a vociferous welcome. This was my first visit to Macugnaga, and, save as a caldron for the generation of fogs, I knew scarcely anything about it. But there were no fogs there at the time to which I refer, and the place wore quite a charmed aspect. I walked out alone in the evening, up through the meadow towards the base of Monte Rosa, and on no other occasion have I seen peace, beauty, and grandeur so harmoniously blended. Earth and air were exquisite, and I returned to the hotel brimful of content.
Monte Rosa with her peaks and spurs builds here a noble amphitheatre. From the heart of the mountain creeps the Macugnaga glacier. To the right a precipitous barrier extends to the Cima di Jazzi, and between the latter and Monte Rosa this barrier is scarred by two couloirs, one of which, or the cliff beside it, has the reputation of forming the old pass of the Weissthor. It had long been uncertain whether this so-called ‘Alter Pass’ had ever been used as such, and many superior mountaineers deemed it from inspection to be impracticable. All doubt on this point was removed this year; for Mr. Tuckett, led by Bennen, had crossed the barrier by the couloir most distant from Monte Rosa, and consequently nearest to the Cima di Jazzi. As I stood in front of the hotel in the afternoon, I said to Bennen that I should like to try the pass on the following day; in ten minutes afterwards the plan of our expedition was arranged. We were to start before the dawn, and, to leave Bennen’s hands free, a muscular young fellow named Andermatten was engaged to carry our provisions. It was also proposed to vary the proceedings by assailing the ridge by the couloir nearest to Monte Rosa.
XII.
THE OLD WEISSTHOR.
I was called by my host at a quarter before three. The firmament of Monte Rosa was almost as black as the rocks beneath it, while above in the darkness trembled the stars. At 4 A.M. we quitted the hotel. We wound along the meadows, by the slumbering houses, and the unslumbering river. The eastern heaven soon brightened, and we could look direct through the gloom of the valley at the opening of the dawn. We threaded our way amid the boulders which the torrent had scattered over the plain, and among which groups of stately pines now find anchorage. Some of the trees had exerted all their force in a vertical direction, and rose straight, tall, and mastlike, without lateral branches. We reached a great moraine, grey with years, and clothed with magnificent pines; our way lay up it, and from the top we dropped into a little dell of magical beauty. Deep hidden by the glacier-built ridges, guarded by noble trees, soft and green at the bottom, and tufted round with bilberry bushes, through which peeped here and there the lichen-covered crags, I have rarely seen a spot in which I should so like to dream away a day. Before I entered it, Monte Rosa was still in shadow, but on my emergence I noticed that her precipices were all aglow. The purple colouring of the mountains observed on looking down the valley was indescribable; out of Italy I have never seen anything like it. Oxygen and nitrogen could not produce the effect; some effluence from the earth, some foreign constituent of the atmosphere, developed in those deep valleys by the southern sun, must sift the solar beams, weaken the rays of medium refrangibility, and blend the red and violet of the spectrum to that incomparable hue. The air indeed is filled with floating matters which vary from day to day, and it is mainly to such extraneous substances that the chromatic splendours of our atmosphere are to be ascribed. The air south of the Alps is in this respect different from that on the north, but a modicum even of arsenic might be respired with satisfaction, if warmed by the bloom which suffused the air of Italy this glorious dawn.
The ancient moraines of the Macugnaga glacier rank among the finest that I have seen; long, high ridges tapering from base to edge, hoary with age, but beautified by the shrubs and blossoms of to-day. We crossed the ice and them. At the foot of the old Weissthor lay couched a small glacier, which had landed a multitude of boulders on the slope below it; and amid these we were soon threading our way. We crossed the little glacier, which at one place strove to be disagreeable, and here I learned from the deportment of his axe the kind of work to which our porter had been previously accustomed. Half a dozen strokes shook the head of the implement from its handle. We reached the rocks to the right of the couloir and climbed them for some distance. At the base the ice was cut by profound fissures, which extended quite across, and rendered a direct advance up the gulley impossible; but higher up we dropped down upon the snow.
Close to the rocks it was scarred by a furrow six or eight feet deep, and about twelve in width, evidently the track of avalanches, or of rocks let loose from the heights. Into this we descended. The bottom was firm, and roughened by stones which found a lodgment there. It seemed that we had here a very suitable roadway to the top. But a sudden crash was heard aloft. I looked upward, and right over the snow-brow which closed the view perceived a large brown boulder in the air, while a roar of unseen stones showed that the visible projectile was merely the first shot of a general cannonade. They appeared—pouring straight down upon us—the sides of the furrow preventing them from squandering their force in any other direction. ‘Schnell!’ shouted the man behind me, and there is a ring in the word, when sharply uttered in the Alps, that almost lifts a man off his feet. I sprang forward, but, urged by a sterner impulse, the man behind sprung right on to me. We cleared the furrow exactly as the first stone flew by, and once in safety we could calmly admire the energy with which the rattling boulders sped along.
Our way now lay up the couloir; the snow was steep, but knobbly, and hence but few steps were required to give the boots a hold. We crossed and recrossed obliquely, like a horse drawing a laden cart up hill. At times we paused and examined the heights. The view ended in the snow-fields above, but near the summit suddenly rose a high ice-wall. If we persisted in the couloir, this barrier would have to be surmounted, and the possibility of scaling it was very questionable. Our attention therefore was turned to the rocks at our right, and the thought of assailing them was several times mooted and discussed. They at length seduced us, and we resolved to abandon the snow. To reach the rocks, however, we had to recross the avalanche channel, which was here very deep. Bennen hewed a gap at the top of its flanking wall, and, stooping over, scooped steps out of its vertical face. He then made a deep hole, in which he anchored his left arm, let himself thus partly down, and with his right pushed the steps to the bottom. While this was going on small stones were continually flying down the gulley. Bennen reached the floor, and I followed. Our companion was still clinging to the snow-wall, when a horrible clatter was heard overhead. It was another stone avalanche, which there was hardly a hope of escaping. Happily a rock was here firmly stuck in the bed of the gulley, and I chanced to be beside it when the first huge missile appeared. This was the delinquent which had set the others loose. I was directly in the line of fire, but, ducking behind the boulder, I let the projectile shoot over my head. Behind it came a shoal of smaller fry, each of them, however, quite competent to crack a human life. ‘Schnell!’ with its metallic clang, rung from the throat of Bennen; and never before had I seen his axe so promptly and vigorously applied.