“Snow had commenced to fall before we reached the top, and it now thickened darkly. I boiled water, and found the temperature 184·92° Fahr. But the snow was wonderful snow. It was all flower—the most lovely that ever eye gazed upon. There, high up in the atmosphere, this symmetry of form manifested itself and built up these exquisite blossoms of the frost. There was no deviation from the six-leaved type, but any number of variations. I should hardly have exchanged this dark snowfall for the best view the mountain could afford me. Still, our position was an anxious one. We could only see a few yards in advance of us, and we feared the loss of our track. We retreated, and found the comb more awkward to descend than to ascend. However, the fact of my being here to tell all about it proves that we did our work successfully. And now I have a secret to tell regarding Monte Rosa. I had no view during the above ascent, but precisely a week afterwards the weather was glorious beyond description. I had lent my guide to a party of gentlemen, so I strapped half a bottle of tea and a ham sandwich on my back, left my coat and neckcloth behind me, and in my shirt sleeves climbed up Monte Rosa alone.” The latter act has been described as a feat of daring never heard of before.
Between 1856 and 1862 he ascended Mont Blanc three times. One ascent, made in 1859, was for the purpose of carrying into effect a proposal he had made to the Royal Society some months previously to place suitable thermometers at different stations between the top and the foot of the mountain. On that occasion he was accompanied by his friend Dr. Franklin, the notable guide Balmat, Mr. Alfred Wills, and several porters. Professor Tyndall afterwards gave a graphic account of the ascent to the British Association at Leeds, when he spoke in the highest terms of the services rendered by Balmat. Mr. Wills says he made the Leeds Town Hall ring with well-deserved applause as he recounted to the first savants in Europe the dangers Balmat had undergone, and the courage and disinterestedness he displayed. The ascent was made late in September in fearful weather, and in order to cut a hole four feet deep in the solid glacier, Balmat used his hands for shovelling out the ice and snow, till both hands were soon found to be badly frost-bitten and quite black. When the circulation began to return, after half-an-hour’s rubbing and beating, he suffered great agony; and though he was for some time in danger of losing his hands, he said he could have endured even that calamity in the cause of science.
In August, 1861, Professor Tyndall succeeded in reaching the top of the Weisshorn, a mountain 14,800 feet high, which he regarded as the noblest peak in the Alps. People at the base described him and his two guides as appearing like flies upon the summit. “I never,” he said afterwards, “witnessed a scene that affected me like this one. I opened my note-book to make a few observations, but soon relinquished the attempt. There was something incongruous, if not profane, in allowing the scientific faculty to interfere where silent worship seemed the ‘reasonable service.’” In like manner Principal Forbes, who preceded but did not equal Professor Tyndall as an Alpine traveller, said that “the seeds of a poetic temperament usually germinate amidst mountain scenery, and we envy not the man, young or old, to whom the dead silence of sequestered nature does not bring an irresistible sense of awe—an experience which a picturesque writer has thus expressed: It seems impious to laugh so near Heaven,” Hence probably the words of Byron:—
“There stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, when we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purifies from self: it is a tone,
The soul and source of music, which makes known
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm,
Like to the fabled Cytherea’s zone,