Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

CHAPTER IV.

“Undaunted he hies him

O’er ice-covered wild,

Where leaf never budded,

Nor spring ever smiled;

And beneath him an ocean of mist, where his eye

No longer the dwellings of man can espy.”

—Schiller.

As a traveller in search of Nature’s grandest works, Professor Tyndall occupies a foremost place for his adventures in Alpine regions previously regarded as unapproachable, as well as for his descriptions of the views presented and the sentiments inspired by those peaks of everlasting snow. The narrative of his achievements as an Alpine traveller fills a larger volume than this one. Two or three specimens must therefore suffice here. The following is the account he gave in a letter to Faraday in August, 1858, of his ascent of Monte Rosa, which was then considered much more difficult to climb than Mont Blanc:—

“I reached this mountain wild the day before yesterday. Soon after my arrival it commenced snowing, and yesterday morning the mountains were all covered by a deep layer. It heaped itself up against the windows of this room, obscuring half the light. To-day the sun shines, and I hope he will soon banish the snow, for the snow is a great traitor on the glacier, and often covers smooth chasms which it would not be at all comfortable to get into. I am here in a lonely house, the only traveller. If you cast your eye on a map of Switzerland you will find the valley of Saas not far from Visp. High up this valley, and three hours above Saas itself, is the Distil Alp, and on this Alp I now reside. Close beside the house a many-armed mountain torrent rushes, and a little way down a huge glacier, coming down one of the side valleys, throws itself across the torrent, dams it up, and forms the so-called ‘Matmark See.’ Looking out of another window I have before me an immense stone, the unshipped cargo of a glacier, and weighing at least 1,000 tons. It is the largest boulder I have ever seen; it is composed of serpentine, and measures 216,000 cubic feet. Previous to coming here I spent ten days at the Riffel Hotel, above Zermatt, and explored almost the whole of that glacier region. One morning the candle of my guide gleamed into my room at three o’clock, and he announced to me that the weather was good. I rose, and at four o’clock was on my way to the summit of Monte Rosa. My guide had never been there, but he had some general directions from a brother guide, and we hoped to be able to find our way to the top. We first reached the ridge above the Riffel, then dropped down upon the Görner glacier, crossed it, reached the base of the mountain, then up a boss of rock, over which the glacier of former days had flowed and left its mark behind. Then up a slope of ice to the base of a precipice of brown crags: round this we wormed till we found a place where we could assail it and get to the top. Then up the slopes and round the huge bosses of the mountain, avoiding the rifted portions, and going zigzag up the steeper inclinations. For some hours this was mere child’s play to a mountaineer—no more than an agreeable walk on a sunny morning round Kensington Gardens. But at length the mountain contracted her snowy shoulders to what Germans call a kamus—a comb, suggested, I should say, by the toothed edges which some mountain ridges exhibit, but now applied to any mountain edge, whether of rock or snow. Well, the mountain formed such an edge. On that side of the edge which turns toward the Lyskamm there was a very terrible precipice, leading straight down to the torn and fissured névé of the Monte Rosa glaciers. On the other side the slope was less steep, but exceedingly perilous-looking, and intersected here and there by precipices. Our way lay along the ledge, and we faced it with steady caution and deliberation. The wind had so acted upon the snow as to fold it over, forming a kind of cornice, which overhung the first precipice to which I have alluded. Our attack for some time was upon this cornice. The incessant admonition of my guide was to fix my staff securely into the snow at each step, the necessity of which I had already learned. Once, however, while doing this, my staff went right through the cornice, and I could see through the hole that I had made into the terrible gulf below. The morning was clear when we started, and we saw the first sunbeams as they lit the pinnacles of Monte Rosa, and caused the surrounding snow summits to flush up. The mountain remained clear for some hours, but I now looked upwards and saw a dense mass of cloud stuck against the summit. She dashed it gallantly away, like a mountain queen; but her triumph was short. Dusky masses again assailed her, and she could not shake them off. They stretched down towards us, and now the ice valley beneath us commenced to seethe like a boiling cauldron, and to send up vapour masses to meet those descending from the summit. We were soon in the midst of them, and the darkness thickened; sometimes, as if by magic, the clouds partially cleared away, and through the thin pale residue the sunbeams penetrated, lighting up the glacier with a supernatural glare. But these partial illuminations became rarer as we ascended. We finally reached the weathered rocks which form the crest of the mountain, and through these we now clambered up cliffs and down cliffs, walking erect along edges of granite with terrible depths at each side, squeezing ourselves through fissures, and thus jumping, swinging, squeezing, and climbing, we reached the highest peak of Monte Rosa.