It was in those days long ago, that I remember, how on one perfect evening at the beginning of August, we camped high up by the side of the Brenva glacier, having been well prepared for struggling with the tremendous southern face of Mont Blanc by the delightful dinners of M. Bertolini. The sun went down behind the Pétéret ridge—a ridge which always seems to me to be unsurpassed in the Alps—and we hoped that in another twenty-four hours we should be on the other side of the great mountain. But one of the great charms of mountaineering is its uncertainty, and instead of twenty-four it was forty-eight hours before we arrived at the Grands-Mulets. It would be distinctly perverting the truth to say that, at the time, we enjoyed the whole of our expedition, but often have I during winter evenings recalled that climb. I cannot now reproduce the unpleasant sensations, but the satisfaction and recollection of success becomes more pleasing as lapse of years adds enchantment to the memory of that fierce battle with Mont Blanc. I shall never forget how, hour after hour, Mummery, following a wrong direction of E. Rey's (who, as it turned out afterwards, had never been up Mont Blanc by this Brenva route), persistently kept towards the left; how at last the hard blue ice became so steep that it was almost impossible to cut steps in it; and how the ice also had a sticky feel when touched with the fingers, for we were in the shadow of the mountain.
Unfortunately we were 1500 feet from the summit; and as the daylight was only good for a few more hours, we had reluctantly to turn and make our way down that icy staircase. At one place where Hastings had thrown a portion of his breakfast into a small crevasse, we carefully recovered the discarded provisions, coming at last, just before darkness enveloped everything, to a small rock jutting out of that almost vertical face. The Brenva glacier was thousands of feet below us. One of the penalties of guideless climbing is that when prolonged step-cutting has to be undertaken, no amateur can compete with a first-class guide. Naturally, therefore, nights out on the mountains are often the price paid. Our penance on this particular expedition was to sit on that rock all night. The cold was intense, and it was not till the sun had risen next day that we were capable of moving. Once started, the blood began again to circulate, and keeping this time more to the right, a passage was forced with very great difficulty indeed through the almost overhanging edge of the great snow cap of Mont Blanc. In more than one place we had to use the axes forced home to their heads as a staircase for the first man. It was a magnificent climb, in fact the finest I have ever had. That ice world on the south side of Mont Blanc is on a larger scale than anything I know of outside the Himalaya. On the afternoon of the third day out from Courmayeur I arrived on the summit by crawling up on my hands and knees. But although the ascent had taken so long, the descent was accomplished much more expeditiously. In two hours we reached the Grands-Mulets. There, being supplied with omelette after omelette, I basely refused to roam any further; but Hastings and Mummery, unsatisfied, rushed down the remainder of the mountain, to lose themselves in the pine woods below in the darkness, reaching Couttet's and luxury late that night. If I was to recount all the splendid expeditions that we were taken by Mummery—how we sometimes failed, but much more often succeeded—this chapter could be made into a dozen; and yet, in spite of all these ascents, my knowledge of the Alps is extremely limited.
Curiously, however, I have found that sometimes those who most loudly complain of the Alps being played out are quite unacquainted with, or at least have never attempted, most of those ascents which it was my good fortune to make with Mummery. Certainly they were mostly made in the Mont Blanc range, a part which does not seem to commend itself so much to mountaineers of the present day as the eastern portion of the Alps. Yet where can be found anywhere else, in the whole range, rock pinnacles that are finer than the Aiguille Noire de Pétéret. Few people know that its west face is a sheer precipice of several thousand feet. In 1899 I was camping for a couple of days with Major Bruce and Harkabir Thapa, just opposite to it on the ridge between the Brouillard and Fresnay glaciers. It was then I watched a slab of rock fall from about twenty feet below the summit. It was a mass weighing perhaps fifty or a hundred tons. For over 1000 feet it touched nothing, then striking on a ledge it burst into a thousand fragments with a noise like thunder, and hardly one of the fragments touched rock again, but descended straight to the snows of the Fresnay glacier beneath.
We were investigating the south-west corner of Mont Blanc, intending if possible to make the ascent by the continuation of the Brouillard ridge. With this prospect in view, we ascended the Brouillard glacier to near the top of the Aiguille l'Innominata, but went no further. The Brouillard is a glacier that to try and descend on a hot summer afternoon would be foolish, to say the least of it. For, set at a very high angle, and broken up in the wildest fashion, although presenting a magnificent spectacle, it does not lend itself to safe mountaineering. Harkabir was much disappointed that we refused to go on, for he thought he could see his way up the rock escarpment at the head of the glacier, and, were that possible, probably no more difficulty would be met with from there to the summit. But in spite of the climber of the party being confident we could proceed, I as conductor insisted on turning back, being only a 'mere mountaineer.' One thing at least I was certain of: Bertolini lived at Courmayeur, not Chamonix, and forty-year old Barolo, together with countless other delicacies, was to be obtained from him alone. To return, however, from the excellences of the cuisine at Bertolini's to those of the range of Mont Blanc, should the jaded climber of 'degraded' mountains want more rock peaks, the ascent of the lesser Dru, in my opinion, can be repeated profitably. Not even amongst the Dolomites can one get the sensation of dizzy height and appalling depth to the same extent as on this mountain; moreover, there is a most sporting though small glacier to cross before one begins the rock ascent. Then the Charmoz and the Grépon are not to be despised. For a most varied climb, requiring every kind of mountain craft, the traverse of the Aiguille du Plan is to be recommended, from the Glacier des Pèlerins over the summit, down the Glacier du Plan, and back by the Glacier du Géant. Again, without doubt, the finest snow and ice climb in the Alps, surrounded the whole time by superb scenery, is from the Montanvert to the hut behind the Aiguille du Midi, thence over Mont Blanc du Tacul and the Mont Maudit to the summit of Mont Blanc, and down to the Grands-Mulets. Of course, I know that to recommend any one to climb Mont Blanc will certainly be regarded as a bold suggestion by those who have noticed a taint of staleness in the great mountains. For of all the peaks that have been overwhelmed by the waters of oblivion, surely Mont Blanc outrivals both the Jungfraus and the Finsteraarhorns of the happy childhood of the Alps. Personally, however, I am a staunch adherent of the 'ancient monarch of the mountains.' But as Leslie Stephen says, the 'coarse flattery of the guide-books has done much to surround him with vulgarising associations.' Surely, though, Mont Blanc is far too magnificent, far too splendid to be much affected by such associations, and as if to shake them off every now and then, after he has been patted on the back by those of every nationality who swarm over his sides, he arises in his anger, hangs out his danger signal above his summit, and sweeps his glaciers and snows clear of the invading crowd. The Föhn wind and the angry clouds envelop him, his snow-fields glare with a ghastly dead white colour, and whirlwinds of clouds, snow, and gloom descend. But the storm passes, and once more he emerges clean and glistening in all his beauty.
But at Chamonix the Föhn wind of vulgarity seems to blow perpetually, enveloping always the great mountain in pale and dim eclipse, and obscuring the romance, the charm, and all honest appreciation of the old monarch. Fortunately one can easily run away, leaving this depressing atmosphere behind, and can bask once more in the sunshine, and camp amidst the unspoiled valleys near the snows. Why there are not more mountaineers who take small tents to the Alps is always to me a mystery. For long ago most of the huts have become abominations, whilst the free life that is afforded by camp life adds a very great charm to mountain expeditions. Having tried it so often in the Himalaya, in Skye, in Norway, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and Switzerland, perhaps I may be biassed, but even if I never again had a chance of climbing a first-class peak in the Alps, I would return there to live the lazy, delightful, disreputable life in a tent, near the ice and the snows and the pine woods, to smell the camp fire, lie on my back all day amidst the grass and the flowers, listening to the wind, and looking at the sky and the great silent peaks. On the other hand, the idea of spending a month at Swiss hotels, arising in the darkness to wander forth in a bad temper, chilled to the bone, in order merely to finish off the remaining peaks of some district, so that I might say I had been up them all, and therefore never be bothered to return again—rather than perpetrate such a hideous waste of time I would go to some secluded spot on the western coast of these islands where the waves were for ever rolling in with that long, lazy, monotonous sweep that is only seen on the shores of the Atlantic, and there I would lie day after day on my back on the sands watching the ever-changing colours of the sea.
These things, however, can be done in their proper season, but until there are restaurants all over Mont Blanc, and railways up most of the peaks, illuminations of the Matterhorn every night by means of electricity and coloured fires, and all the avalanches are timed to be let loose only twice a day, namely at a morning and an afternoon performance—until that time arrives mountaineering in the Alps will still be worth while indulging in occasionally. Till then there will be plenty of space for the enthusiast who likes to wander amidst the snow-and ice-covered mountains. The ledges of rock high up, with the grey lichen on them, will still afford a resting-place from which the long glaciers far down below can be seen as they descend to the green-hued woods and the hazy valleys filled with sunshine. The overhanging cornices high above, for ever on the point of breaking off, will still hang poised in unstable equilibrium. The storms will sweep as frequently as of old across that mountain land, hiding for a brief space all in gloom; the lightning flashes, the roar of the thunder, the driving snow, and the keen biting wind will hunt the too presumptuous climber back to lower altitudes, as they have done often before; and afterwards the sun will again shine, dissolving the clouds, drying the lower slopes, and showing how the old mountains have once more put on a clean garment, which in magnificence, in glittering splendour, is as unmatched or unequalled as the deep, glowing colour of that 'solitary handmaid of eternity,' the open ocean, or the glories of the heavens at dawn or at sunset. Those who have learned to understand the language of the hills can appreciate the many-voiced calls of the mountains, and, I am sure, are not in the least afraid that, for the present, the Alps will be wholly ruined or degraded. For my own part, they will always possess an attraction which I care neither to analyse nor to destroy. I shall go back there just as the swallow at the end of summer goes south; and if by an unfortunate combination of circumstances anything should happen to prevent me ever returning from that world of snow, my ghost, could it walk, would then at any rate be surrounded by nothing common nor unclean, which might perhaps not be so should it be compelled to wander amongst the tombstones of a London cemetery.
THE LOFOTEN ISLANDS
'Near the outer lands of the silent mist, The waves moan wearilie; Yet hidden there lie the Isles of the Blest, The lonely Isles of the Sea.' Olav's Quest.
Many years ago I remember the first time I read that marvellous description of the Maelström by Edgar Allan Poe, where he tells how a fisherman from the Lofoten Islands, driven by a hurricane, was caught in the Maelström's grip, and descended 'into the mouth of that terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice—half-shriek, half-roar—such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven'; and I remember how I used to picture to myself precipitous, polished cliffs of terrific height and grandeur encircling a writhing pool of dusky waters; above, the rocks glowing red and golden in the light of a stormy sunset; below, stray flakes of foam ever and again flashing back the fiery glories of the angry sky, as they glided with a stealthy, increasing haste for ever nearer and nearer and yet nearer to the awful abyss of the devouring whirlpool. This, like so many tales of one's youth, although told by that consummate artist Poe, must be relegated to the realms of fiction.