It was even now utterly dark. The huge bulwark of the Breithorn rose opposite to us like a great shadow. Monte Rosa was very faintly lighted by the approach of dawn. The mighty pyramid of the solitary Matterhorn had yet no touch of red fire upon it. And presently one of the guides said "Look!" and looking at the Matterhorn we presently perceived that two parties were climbing it from the Zermatt side; we saw their lanterns moving with almost intolerable slowness. And far across the great ice river of the Gorner Glacier we saw other and nearer and brighter lanterns going from the Bétemps Hut on the Untere Plattje. One party was going for Monte Rosa, another for the Lyskamm Joch. We knew that they could see us too. But these little lantern lights upon the vast expanse of snow looked very strange and lonely and very human. We seemed small ourselves, we were like glow-worms, like wounded fire-flies crawling on a plain. And still we saw these little climbing lights upon the Matterhorn. One party was close to the lower hut, another was beginning to near the old hut, twelve thousand feet high. Then and all of a sudden the lights went out. There was a strange red glow upon the Matterhorn, a glow which most people, as victims of tradition, call beautiful. As a matter of fact the colour of dawn upon the rock of the Cervin is not truly a beautiful colour. It is a hard and brick-dusty red, very different from the snow fire seen on true snow peaks. Yet the scene was fine and majestic, and cold and dreadful, solitary and non-human. This fine inhumanity of the mountains is their chief quality to me. The sea is always more human; it moves, it breathes, it seems alive. I have been alone at sea in the Channel and yet never felt quite alone. The human water lapped at the planks of my boat. I knew the sea was the pathway of the world. But on the mountains nothing moves at night. There even stones do not fall; there are no thunders of avalanches; no sudden and awful crash of an ice-fall. Even when the sun is hot and the mountains waken a little these motions seem accidents. And the perpetual motion of a glacier has something about it which is cruelly inevitable, bestial, diabolic. No, upon the mountains one is swung clear of one's fellow-creatures; one is adrift; it is another world; it gives fresh views of the warm world of man.
Now we plunged downwards towards the Gadmen, whence the Monte Rosa track branches off. We went along rock, now in daylight, till we came on ice, and went forward to the Stocknubel, a little resting-place at the base of the Stockhorn. Here the guides made us rest and eat. Swiss guides are, when they are good, the best of men, and ours were of the best. The two young Pollingers of St Niklaus, Joseph and Alois, are known now by all climbers. I am pleased to think they are my friends. I wish I was as strong as either and had as healthy an appetite. As we sat on rock and ate cold meats and other horrible and indigestible matters, washed down by wine and water, we saw another party come after us, an old and ragged guide with two strange little figures of adventurous Frenchmen, clad in knickerbockers and carrying tourist's alpenstocks, bound for the Cima di Jazzi. It must be confessed that our own party looked more workman-like. For we had our faithful ice-axes, and our lower limbs were swathed with putties, now almost universally worn by guides and climbers alike. I fancied our guides looked on the other guide with some contempt He was not one of those who do big ascents. And though we were on an easy task, the Cima di Jazzi is very easy indeed, so easy that most real climbers have never climbed its simple mound of easily rising snow.
Then we went on and soon after roped, as there might be some crevasses not well bridged, and presently I perceived that we had indeed a long snow-grind before us, and I got very gloomy at the prospect and swore and grumbled to myself. For there is no pleasure to me in being on the mountains unless there is some element of risk, apparent or real matters not. For, after all, with good guides and good weather there is little real danger. The main thing is to get a sensation out of it; the feeling of absorption in the moment which prevents one thinking of anything but the next step. A snow-grind is like a book which has to be read and which has no interest. I can imagine many reviewers must have their literary snow-grinds. And so we crawled along the surface of the snow with never a big crevasse to enliven one, and the sun rose up and peered across the vast curves of white and almost blinded us. On our left was the great chain of the Mischabel, of which I had once seen the real bones and anatomy from the Matterhorn, and then came the Rimpfischorn and Strahlhorn. I once asked a guide what had given its name to the Rimpfischorn, and he answered that it was supposed to be like a "rimf." When I asked what that was he said it was something which was like the Rimpfischorn. And to our right were the peaks of Monte Rosa, Nordend and Dufourspitze, black rock out of white snow, and the ridge of the Lyskamm, and the twin white snow peaks, Castor and Pollux. And some might say the view was very beautiful, and no doubt it was beautiful, though not so to me. For I hate the long snow-fields, the vast plains of névé with their glare and their infinite infernal monotony. Sometimes when I took off my snow-goggles the shining white world seemed a glaring and bleached moon-land, a land wholly unfit for human beings, as indeed it is. And though things seem near they are very far off. An hour's walk hardly moves one in the landscape. A man is little more than a lost moth; such a moth as we found dead and frozen as we crawled over the great snow towards the Strahlhorn. We sat down to rest, and I fought with my friend O—— about the beauty of the mountains, and horrified him by denying that there is any real loveliness above the snow-line. He took it quite seriously, forgetting that I was rebelling against so many miles of dead snow with never a thing to do but plod and plod, and plod again.
And then we came to the top of the pass where rocks jutted out of the snow, and a few minutes' climb let us look over into Italy, and down the steep south side of Monte Rosa, under whose white clouds lay Macugnaga. We sat upon the summit for an hour and ate once more, and argued as to the beauty of things, and the wonder and foolishness of climbing, and I own that I was very hard to satisfy. The snow-grind had entered into my soul as it always does. It is duller than a walk through any flat agricultural country before the corn begins to grow.
And yet below us was the other side of our pass, which certainly looked more interesting. Right under our feet was a little snow arête with slopes like a high pitched roof. It was quite possible to be killed there if one was foolish or reckless, and the prospect cheered me up. It is at anyrate not dull to be on an arête with a snow slope leading to nothing beneath me. And I cannot help insisting on the fact that much mountaineering is essentially dull. Often enough a long day may be without more than one dramatic moment. There is really only five minutes of interest on the Schwartzberg-Weissthor. We came to that in the arête, for after following it for a few minutes we turned off it to the left and came to the bergschrund, the big crevasse which separates the highest snows or ice from the glacier. By now I was quite anxious that the guides should find the schrund difficult. I had been bored to death and yearned for some little excitement. I even declared sulkily (it is odd, but true, that one does often become reckless and sulky under such circumstances) that I was ready to jump "any beastly bergschrund." My offer was no doubt made with the comfortable consciousness that the guides were not likely to let me do anything quite idiotic. But there was no necessity for any such gymnastics. The schrund's lower lip was only six feet lower than the upper lip, and the whole crevasse was barely three feet across, though doubtless deep enough to swallow a thousand parties like ours. Somewhat to my disappointment we got over quite easily, and struck down across the glacier, passing one or two rather dangerous crevasses by crawling on our stomachs. The only satisfaction I had was that both the guides and O—— declared that the way I wished to descend was impossible, whereas it finally turned out to have been easy and direct. I said I had told them so, of course, and then we got on the lower glacier and on an accursed moraine. It was now about noon. We had been going since two in the morning. We came at last into a grassy valley, and presently stood on the steep débris slope above Mattmark. It was a steep run down the zigzag path to the flat, which is partly occupied by the Mattmark Lake, and at last we got to the inn. There we changed our things and had lunch, and I and O—— once more fought over the glacier of the upper snows, and the question as to whether we should climb on æsthetic or gymnastic grounds. And though we did not reach the hotel at Saas-Fée till the evening, that argument lasted all the way. But when he and I get together, as we usually do when climbing comes on, we always quarrel in the most friendly way upon that subject. But for my own part I declare that I will never again do another pure snow-grind such as the Schwartzberg-Weissthor for any other purpose than to fetch a doctor, or to do something equally useful in a case of emergency. If climbing does not try one's faculties as well as one's physique it is a waste of labour.
ACROSS THE BIDASSOA
I came out of London's mirk and mist and the clouds of the Channel and the rollers of the Bay to find sunshine in the Gironde, though the east wind was cool in Bordeaux's big river. And then even in Bordeaux I discovered that fog was over-common; brief sunshine yielded to thick mist, and the city of wine was little less depressing than English Manchester. But though I spent a night there I was bound south and hoped for better things close by the border of Spain. And truly I found them, though the way there through the Landes is as melancholy as any great city of sad inhabitants.