“Presently Charbonnet slipped. He was held up by his wife and Botto; but a few minutes later he disappeared into a hidden crevasse. The others could see him far below, but as he neither moved nor answered their call, they rightly assumed that he was beyond the reach of any human help, and proceeded downwards.
“With infinite difficulty, owing to their utter ignorance of the country, and after another night spent in the open air, they found a path which brought them to the hut under the Rocca Venoni. Thence a shepherd guided them to the Cantina della Mussa, where they were at first taken for deserters or spies; the lady, it should be said, had been obliged to put on a suit of her husband’s clothes, her own having been torn to pieces.
“The sight of her hair and bracelets convinced the inhabitants of the true state of the case; a telegram was sent to Turin, and a message to Balme, and a search party came up from the latter place in the afternoon. Captain Charbonnet’s body was recovered the next day. It was found at the bottom of a crevasse more than 60 feet deep, and completely doubled up; but medical examination showed that his death was primarily due to the injury received when the balloon first struck.”
The first passage of the Alps by balloon was made in September 1903, by Captain Spelterini, of Zürich, accompanied by Dr Hermann Seiler and another friend. They started from Zermatt, crossed the Mischabel group, passed over the valley of Saas, then rose above the Weissmies range, and approached the Lago Maggiore so closely that they were able to converse with the passengers of a steamer. They then rose again and spent the night above the mountains not far from the Gotthard. The next day it would have been possible to clear the Bernese Alps and descend somewhere near Lucerne, but though Dr Seiler, who is a climber and was fully equipped for a descent above the snow line, urged the attempt being made to cross the chain, Captain Spelterini and his friend, unused to the aspect of the higher peaks, considered it more prudent to descend, and so the expedition came to an end after twenty hours aloft, during which no discomfort from cold was experienced.
When an accident happens in the Alps involving loss of life, it is not difficult to learn whatever facts may be known with regard to it, but when climbers have a narrow escape from death the occurrence is often hushed up and nothing said or written about the matter. And yet it is just the narrow escapes that furnish the most interesting Alpine narratives. Amongst them are few more exciting than a mishap on the Matterhorn which happened in 1895, and is admirably described by an onlooker, Mr Ernest Elliot Stock, in the pages of one of Messrs Newnes’ periodicals, from which I am courteously permitted to quote a portion of the tale.
Mr Stock’s party consisted of himself, his sister, Mr Grogan (the well-known traveller who first crossed Africa from South to North), Mr Broadbent, and the guides, P. A. and Alois Biner, Peter Perrin, and Zurmatter. An American of no climbing experience, with Joseph Biner and Felix Julen, was on the mountain at the same time, and both parties having made the ascent by the ordinary route, were coming down the same way, and had descended in safety to just below “Moseley’s Platte” when the incident which so nearly cost them their lives took place. They were on a steep slope, and the American party was slightly in advance. Mr Stock writes:
