From Chambers's Journal.
A NIGHT IN A GLACIER.
Nothing is more common than to hear the wish expressed among ordinary tourists "to see Switzerland in the winter;" and nothing is more disappointing than its fulfilment. To see Switzerland then is just what you cannot do; all that is visible is one vast sheet of blinding snow, unrelieved by a particle of color; and the view is not even grand—it is simply monotonous. However, in April, 1864, I made the experiment of choosing that month, instead of the conventional August, for a mountaineering ramble; and having been weather-bound at least half a dozen times, in various places, found myself in the same miserable predicament, at the hospice of the Great St. Bernard. It was terribly wearisome work. We had exhausted all our small-talk, had discussed all the celebrated passages of the Alps, from that of Hannibal with his vinegar-cruets to that of Macdonald with his dragoons; had worked the piano to death by playing derisive waltzes; had elicited fearful wheezings from the harmonium, and blundered inappropriate marches on the organ—when, early on the third morning, two momentous events occurred. In the first place, the weather had become suddenly fine; and in the second, the news had arrived that a party of Italian wood-carvers had reached St. Remy, on their passage to the Rhone valley, and that two of their number had left the main body on the previous evening, avowing their intention of making their way to a little stone hut, which is used in summer as a dairy for the supply of the hospice, and passing the night there. This hut, however, had been visited that morning, and found to be untenanted; and as the traces of the two wanderers had been obliterated by the snow during the night, the messenger had been sent forward to obtain assistance in the search for them.
Though the unusually large fall of snow in the winter of 1863-64 made mountain-climbing singularly easy in the past autumn (Mont Blanc was ascended by more than seventy tourists in the latter year), yet in the spring the passes were rendered more than usually difficult by the loose snow which the sun had not yet been powerful enough to solidify by regelation. Most travellers who cross in summer must have noticed a line of stout posts about ten or twelve feet high, which are placed on the most elevated points of the path, so that their summits, which the snow rarely reaches, may serve as landmarks in the winter; but at this time the posts were entirely covered, and it was not without great difficulty that the man who brought the news had been able to find his way to the Hospice. There was no time to be lost. Abandoning their usual costume for a dress more suited to do battle with the elements, four of the "fathers" were soon ready to start, two of them shouldering knapsacks of provisions, one bearing a stout rope, and the fourth carrying an axe, with which to cut steps, if necessary, in the ice. Just as they were leaving, it was discovered that the last-named implement had a crack in its handle, which would most probably cause it to break short off when brought into active service; and as some delay would be caused by fitting a fresh handle, Père Christophe, to whose cordial politeness few travellers are not indebted, came to ask for the loan of my axe for the day. "Perhaps, however," he said, "as monsieur is used to glacier expeditions, he would like to accompany us in our search, and so to carry his axe himself?"—a proposal [{346}] with which I eagerly closed, promising that my preparations should not delay them above five minutes.
The messenger had arrived at eight in the morning; and in less than half an hour afterward, we were making our way over the lake on the Italian side of the pass. Two of the renowned dogs were with us; but their proceedings did not confirm the idea which had long ago been produced on my childish mind by the well-known print of a St. Bernard dog, with a bottle of wine and a basket of food round its neck, scratching away the snow under which a wayfarer was supposed to lie buried. For finding lost travellers, indeed, they are, as I was assured by the monks, in no-wise adapted; their function, and a most important one it is, is to find the direct path up and down the pass, when it is covered with snow, and in this duty they are unrivalled. Fortunately, the frosts had been very severe, so that we were able to tramp cheerily over the crisp snow, instead of having to undergo the fatigue of sinking up to our knees at every step. But probably the poor fellows down below wished that the frost had been lighter, and our walk heavier. The scene was grand in its wildness. Huge clouds hung along the mountain-sides at our feet, now whirling boisterously, now creeping sullenly along; and rough gusts of wind dashed the snow with blinding coldness into our faces, and produced on ears and nose a tingling terribly suggestive of frost-bites. It was unusual, M. Christophe said, for the fathers themselves to go out in search of travellers; the latter generally waited at the house of refuge near the Cantine, or that near St. Remy, and a servant was sent down with a dog to lead them up; but in cases like the present, where search must be made in different directions, it was of advantage to have three or four people with local knowledge to join in it. Beside, the expedition was a relief to the ordinary monotony of convent life; though the kindness of English travellers had done much for the comfort of the brethren, in supplying them with musical instruments, books, and similar means of recreation. The circumstances under which the Prince of Wales sent them their piano were curious enough. He had bought one of the dogs, which, being quite young and very fat, was given into the charge of a porter to carry down. The man stupidly let it fall, and it was killed on the spot. The prince (this was some time ago) burst into tears, and was almost inconsolable; but the monks, on hearing of the loss, sent another dog, which the prince received while at Martigny; and when he reached Paris, he forwarded, as a royal acknowledgment for the gift, one of Erard's best piano-fortes, which has been the great cheerer of their winter evenings, and on which they set no small store.
Pleasantly chatting after this fashion, my friend beguiled the way to the house of refuge, which we reached before ten o'clock, and where we found collected about five-and-twenty people, waiting to be led up to the hospice. Leaving them in charge of one of the monks, we proceeded along the valley where the vacherie of the hospice is situated, toward the Col de la Fenêtre, in search of the man and woman who were missing. It appeared that they were natives of the Val de Lys, which descends from Monte Rosa toward Italy, and the inhabitants of which have, from time immemorial, held themselves aloof from all communication with their neighbors, and have formed of their little community a sort of nation within a nation, to which a native of Alagna or St. Martin would have no more chance of being admitted by marriage, than a reformer of the franchise would of being elected a member of the Carlton Club. So we discovered that the two lost sheep, presuming on their fortunate accident of birth, had been sneering at the others as having been "raised" in the country of cretins and lean pigs, and had excited such a storm of abuse about their ears, that, finding themselves only two to twenty, they [{347}] had beaten a retreat, and decided to sleep at the cow-hut. At this we arrived in about half an hour; but it was evident that it had not been tenanted for some weeks by anything but marmots, of which we saw a couple scudding along with that awkward mixture of scratch and shuffle which is their ordinary mode of locomotion. From here we each made casts, to use the hunting phrase, in different directions, especially trying places which lay on the leeward side of rocks, and on which, therefore, any tracks might not have been effaced by the night's snow. A diabolical yell, which was the result of an attempt to imitate the jödel of the Oberland guides, met with no human response, but was taken up, as it seemed, by a chorus of imps in the depths of the mountain; and by the multiplying echoes so common in Switzerland was carried on from crag to crag, till it appeared to be lost only at the top of the valley. We fixed on a point about a mile off at which to reunite, as what was snow in the lower part of the valley would be ice higher up, and would probably be crossed by crevasses, among which it would be dangerous to go singly, and without the protection of the rope. Presently there came a shout from the extreme left of our quartett, and we saw the young marronnier (that is, a half-fledged monk or deacon) standing on the top of some rocks, and indulging in various contortions and gesticulations, which we interpreted as a summons for our help; and when we reached him, he wanted it badly enough, for right before him were the objects of our search; but how to get at them was a problem which required all our skill and all our strength for its solution.
He had come to where the glacier joined the rocks over which our course had hitherto been, when his progress was stopped by a bergschrund or deep chasm between a nearly perpendicular wall of rock on one side, and a wall of ice on the other, inclined at an angle of probably sixty-five degrees. On reaching this, we could see the fugitives about fifty feet below us, and were relieved by the assurance that they were neither of them seriously injured, except by the cold, which had made them unable to do anything to extricate themselves. It was evident that nothing could be done from the side of the rocks, so we made our way as quickly-as-possible along the side of the bergschrund, to cross on to the glacier. This involved a long detour; but the bergschrund was too wide to be jumped, and far too steep to be scaled, while the insecurity of the snow-bridges over it was apparent. At last we found one that seemed solid, and M. Christophe led the way upon it boldly, but had scarcely reached the middle, when it suddenly broke down; and but for the rope—that great protection of mountaineers—he would have had very little chance of seeing the hospice again. As it was, I was the chief sufferer, for I happened to be second in line, and had my waist (round which the rope was tied in a slip-knot) reduced to wasp-like proportions by the jerk of a man of fourteen stone falling in front, and the counteracting strain which my rear-rank man forthwith put on behind. At last we crossed, and hastily made our way to the scene of action. I have estimated the angle of the ice-wall at sixty-five degrees, and tremendous as that inclination is, I believe I have rather understated it, though, as my clinometer was left behind, I could only compare it mentally with the well-known ice-wall on the Strahleck, which seemed about fifteen degrees less. Our rope was about ten feet too short to reach the bottom, so the axe was brought into requisition to cut steps for that distance, and to carve out a ledge which should give us secure hand-hold as well. This done, we let down the rope; but the man's fingers were so benumbed with the night's exposure, that he was unable to tie it round his wife; and though she offered to attach it to him first, he refused to be drawn up until after her. This punctilio seemed rather misplaced, as it involved [{348}] the descent of one of our number; but you cannot argue with a man who has spent the night in the heart of a glacier; so the lightest of our party lost no time in descending, which was only difficult from the piercing cold that was beginning to get the better of us, and which was so benumbing, that cutting the five-and-fifty steps for the descent was a rather formidable task.
The appearance of the girl's face—she was scarcely more than a girl— was one to fix itself in the memory. It was white—almost as white as the snow which had so nearly formed her cold winding-sheet; stains of blood were on the blue lips, which she had involuntarily bitten through in that night's agony. Her large Italian eyes seemed fascinated by the wall of snow at which she glared; and even now, when rescue was certain, she could only burst into a flood of tears, and repeatedly ejaculate "gerettet!" (saved!) having again sunk into the crouching position from which the question as to the rope had roused her. The tears indeed gave relief to the heart over which a shadow of a terrible death had for long hours been brooding. The shortness of our rope caused the only difficulty in the ascent; but we managed to hew out a sort of stage on the ice at which we could rest with her, while the two younger monks carried the rope to the top, and then completed her restoration to the upper day. The husband's ascent was rather harder of achievement, as his chilled limbs made him as helpless as a child in arms, without reducing his weight in the same proportion; but after some awkward slips, it was managed; and having refreshed the inner man, we made our way painfully toward the hospice, obliging the husband to walk, in spite of the agony which it caused him, as the only means of saving his limbs. We then learned that on the previous evening they had started for the chalet, the situation of which was well known to them, but had been completely enveloped in a cloud of thick mist which had risen from the valley, and had obscured their way; that after numerous turnings, they had decided, just before darkness came on, to make their way up the St. Bernard valley, knowing that in time they must come to the hospice, but that they had actually mistaken for it the valley leading up to the Col de la Fenêtre, which is nearly at right angles to the other, and had come upon the bergschrund at a point where there was fortunately a huge cornice of snow. On this they must have unwittingly walked, as they believed, for many yards, when it suddenly gave way with that terrible rushing sound at which most explorers of the great ice-world have shuddered once or twice in their lives. Fortunately, an immense mass of snow gave way, and its bulk broke their fall, and saved them from being dashed with fatal violence against the rocks. They were warmly clad, and had the courage to keep in motion during nearly the whole night, performing an evolution corresponding to the goose-step of the volunteers, as they dared not change their ground in the darkness.
When the gray morning showed that there was no possibility of their extricating themselves, and the snow fell, which they knew would hide their track, the husband sank down in despair, saying: "Nun bedeckt mich mien Grabtuch" (Now my shroud is covering me)—and two hours of inaction were sufficient to allow the cold to seize his hands and feet. It was curious to observe how, as we gleaned the story from husband and wife, each praised the other's endurance, and depreciated his or her own. They had only been married at Gressonnay St. Giacomo four days before, and were on their way to the celebrated wood-carving manufactory at Freyburg. We had nearly reached the hospice, having had hard work in helping our friend to walk, and in beating his fingers smartly to restore circulation, when the girl, who had refused our aid en route, suddenly gave a shriek and fainted away. The cause of this had not to be sought for long. Our path had led [{349}] us close by the Morgue, in which, as is well known, the rarity of the air preserves the corpses so thoroughly that they retain for years the appearance of only recent death. There, placed upright against the wall, is the ghastly row; and one figure—that of a woman with a child in her arms— is especially noticeable for having preserved not only the features, but even the expression which marked the last agony of despair. To see these, you must generally wait some moments before your eyes get accustomed to the dim light in which they are; but on this occasion, the glare reflected from the snow threw the whole interior of the charnel-house into full view, and the revulsion of feeling was too much for the poor girl, who had so narrowly escaped a similar fate. She was borne into the hospice, and soon recovered; and on the following morning, both were able to resume their journey, though it was feared by the monks, who had had large experience of frostbites, that one of the man's fingers would be sacrificed. They were profuse in their gratitude, and left, determined that the superiority of the inhabitants of the Val de Lys over all other Piedmontese, Italians, and Savoyards, was not best maintained by spending a night in a bergschrund.