Mr Hudson ends his wonderfully interesting narrative with an account of a visit he paid later in the season to the place where the accident happened. He says "The result of our observations is as follows: 'The height of the Col de Miage is 11,095. The height of the point at which Birkbeck finally came to a standstill is 9328 feet; so the distance he fell is, in perpendicular height, 1767 feet." As part of the slope would be at a gentle angle, one may believe that the slip was over something like a mile of surface! Mr Hudson continues:—"During the intervening three weeks, vast changes had taken place in the glacier. The snowy coating had left the couloir in parts, thus exposing ice in the line of Birkbeck's course, as well as a rock mid-way in the slope, against which our poor friend would most likely have struck, had the accident happened later.
"This is one of that long chain of providential arrangements, by the combination of which we were enabled to save Birkbeck's life.
- (1) The recent snow, and favourable state of the glacier, enabled us to take an easier and much quicker route, if not the only one possible for a wounded man.
- (2) We had a singularly strong party of guides, without which we could not have got him down in time to afford any chance of his recovery.
- (3) If we had not had real efficient men as travellers in the party we should not have got the telegram sent to Geneva; and a few hours' delay in the arrival of Dr Metcalfe would probably have been fatal.
- (4) The day was perfectly calm and cloudless; had there been wind or absence of sun, the cold might have been too much for such a shaken system to bear.
- (5) We had with us the very unusual addition of a sledge, without which it would have been scarcely possible to have carried him down.
"One thing there was which greatly lessened the mental trial to those engaged in bringing Birkbeck down to St Gervais, and afterwards in attending upon him, and that was, his perfect calmness and patience—and of these I cannot speak too highly. No doubt it contributed greatly to his recovery."
CHAPTER XI
AN ADVENTURE ON THE TRIFT PASS
Few passes leading out of the Valley of Zermatt are oftener crossed than the Trift. It is not considered a difficult pass, but the rocks on the Zinal side are loose and broken and the risk of falling stones is great at certain hours in the day. The Zinal side of the Trift is in shadow in the early morning, and therefore most climbers will either make so early a start from the Zermatt side that they can be sure of descending the dangerous part before the sun has thawed the icy fetters which hold the stones together during the night, or else they will set out from the Zinal side, and sleep at a little inn on a patch of rocks which jut out from the glacier at the foot of the pass, from which the top of the Trift can be reached long before there is any risk from a cannonade.
One of the earliest explorers of this pass, however, Mr Thomas W. Hinchliff, neglected the precaution of a sufficiently early start, and his party very nearly came to grief in consequence.
He has given us an excellent description in Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers of what befell after they had got over the great difficulties, as they seemed in those days, of descending the steep wall of rock on the Zinal side. I will now begin to quote from his article:
"Being thoroughly tired of the rocks, we resolved as soon as possible to get upon the ice where it swept the base of the precipices. The surface, however, was furrowed by parallel channels of various magnitudes; some several feet in depth, formed originally by the descent of stones and avalanches from the heights; and we found one of these troughlike furrows skirting the base of the rocks we stood upon. One by one we entered, flattering ourselves that the covering of snow would afford us pretty good footing, but this soon failed; the hard blue ice showed on the surface, and we found ourselves rather in a difficulty, for the sides of our furrow were higher here than at the point where we entered it, and so overhanging that it was impossible to get out.
"Delay was dangerous, for the débris far below warned us that at any moment a shower of stones might come flying down our channel; a glissade was equally dangerous; for, though we might have shot down safely at an immense speed for some hundreds of feet, we should finally have been dashed into a sea of crevasses. Cachat in front solved the puzzle, and showed us how, by straddling with the feet as far apart as possible, the heel of each foot could find pretty firm hold in a mixture of half snow and half ice, his broad back, like a solid rock, being ready to check any slip of those behind him.