idea of what the perilous pastime of Alp-climbing
is. This was Mr. Whymper s ninth attempt during
a series of years, to vanquish that steep and stub
born pillar of rock; it succeeded, the other eight
were failures. No man had ever accomplished the
ascent before, though the attempts had been
numerous.
MR. WHYMPER S NARRATIVE
We started from Zermatt on the I3th of July, at
half-past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless
morning. We were eight in number Croz (guide) ,
old Peter Taugwalder (guide) and his two sons;
Lord F. Douglas, Mr. Hadow, Rev. Mr. Hudson,
(165)
166 A Tramp Abroad
and I. To ensure steady motion, one tourist and
one native walked together. The youngest Taug-
walder fell to my share. The wine-bags also fell to
my lot to carry, and throughout the day, after each
drink, I replenished them secretly with water, so
that at the next halt they were found fuller than
before ! This was considered a good omen, and
little short of miraculous.
On the first day we did not intend to ascend to
any great height, and we mounted, accordingly,
very leisurely. Before twelve o clock we had found
a good position for the tent, at a height of 1 1 ,000
feet. We passed the remaining hours of daylight
some basking in the sunshine, some sketching, some
collecting; Hudson made tea, I coffee, and at length
we retired, each one to his blanket-bag.
We assembled together before dawn on the 1 4th
and started directly it was light enough to move.
One of the young Taugwalders returned to Zermatt.
In a few minutes we turned the rib which had inter
cepted the view of the Eastern face from our tent
platform. The whole of this great slope was now
revealed, rising for 3,000 feet like a huge natural
staircase. Some parts were more, and others were
less easy, but we were not once brought to a halt by
any serious impediment, for when an obstruction
was met in front it could always be turned to the
right or to the left. For the greater part of the
way there was no occasion, indeed, for the rope,
and sometimes Hudson led, sometimes myself.
A Tramp Abroad 167
At 6.20 we had attained a height of 12,800
feet, and halted for half an hour; we then con
tinued the ascent without a break until 9.5 5, when
we stopped for fifty minutes, at a height of 14,000
feet.
We had now arrived at the foot of that part
which, seen from the Riffelberg, seems perpendicular
or overhanging. We could no longer continue on
the eastern side. For a little distance we ascended
by snow upon the arete that is, the ridge then
turned over to the right, or northern side. The
work became difficult, and required caution. In
some places there was little to hold ; the general slope
of the mountain was less than 40 degrees, and snow
had accumulated in, and had filled up, the interstices
of the rock-face, leaving only occasional fragments
projecting here and there. These were at times
covered with a thin film of ice. It was a place
which any fair mountaineer might pass in safety.
We bore away nearly horizontally for about 400
feet, then ascended directly toward the summit for
about sixty feet, then doubled back to the ridge
which descends toward Zermatt. A long stride
round a rather awkward corner brought us to snow
once more. The last doubt vanished ! The Matter-
horn was ours ! Nothing but 200 feet of easy snow
remained to be surmounted.
The higher we rose, the more intense became the
excitement. The slope eased off, at length we could
be detached, and Croz and I, dashing away, ran a
168 A Tramp Abroad
neck-and-neck race, which ended in a dead heat.
At 1.40 P. M., the world was at our feet, and the
Matterhorn was conquered !
The others arrived. Croz now took the tent-pole,
and planted it in the highest snow. Yes," we
said, " there is the flag-staff, but where is the
flag?" " Here it is," he answered, pulling off his
blouse and fixing it to the stick. It made a poor
flag, and there was no wind to float it out, yet it
was seen all around. They saw it at Zermatt at
the Riffel in the Val Tournanche.
We remained on the summit for one hour
"One crowded hour of glorious life."
It passed away too quickly, and we began to
prepare for the descent.
Hudson and I consulted as to the best and safest
arrangement of the party. We agreed that it was
best for Croz to go first, and Hadow second ; Hud
son, who was almost equal to a guide in sureness of
foot, wished to be third ; Lord Douglas was placed
next, and old Peter, the strongest of the remainder,
after him. I suggested to Hudson that we should
attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival at the
difficult bit, and hold it as we descended, as an
additional protection. He approved the idea, but it
was not definitely decided that it should be done.
The party was being arranged in the above order
whilst I was sketching the summit, and they had
finished, and were waiting for me to be tied in line,
when some one remembered that our names had not
A Tramp Abroad 169
been left in a bottle. They requested me to write
them down, and moved off while it was being done.
A few minutes afterward I tied myself to young
Peter, ran down after the others, and caught them
just as they were commencing the descent of the
difficult part. Great care was being taken. Only
one man was moving at a time ; when he was firmly
planted the next advanced, and so on. They had
not, however, attached the additional rope to rocks,
and nothing was said about it. The suggestion was
not made for my own sake, and I am not sure that
it even occurred to me again. For some little dis
tance we two followed the others, detached from
them, and should have continued so had not Lord
Douglas asked me, about 3 P.M., to tie on to old
Peter, as he feared, he said, that Taugwalder would
not be able to hold his ground if a slip occurred.
A few minutes later, a sharp-eyed lad ran into the
Monte Rosa Hotel, at Zermatt, saying that he had
seen an avalanche fall from the summit of the Mat-
terhorn on to the Matterhorn glacier. The boy was
reproved for telling idle stories ; he was right, never
theless, and this was what he saw.
Michel Croz had laid aside his axe, and in order
to give Mr. Hadow greater security, was absolutely
taking hold of his legs, and putting his feet, one by
one, into their proper positions. As far as I know,
no one was actually descending. I cannot speak
with certainty, because the two leading men were
partially hidden from my sight by an intervening
170 A Tramp Abroad
mass of rock, but it is my belief, from the move
ments of their shoulders, that Croz, having done as
I have said, was in the act of turning round to go
down a step or two himself; at this moment Mr.
Hadow slipped, fell against him, and knocked him
over. I heard one startled exclamation from Croz,
then saw him and Mr. Hadow flying downwards ; in
another moment Hudson was dragged from his
steps, and Lord Douglas immediately after him.
All this was the work of a moment. Immediately
we heard Croz s exclamation, old Peter and I
planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks would per
mit; the rope was taut between us, and the jerk
came on us both as on one man. We held; but
the rope broke midway between Taugwalder and
Lord Francis Douglas. For a few seconds we saw
our unfortunate companions sliding downwards on
their backs, and spreading out their hands, endeavor
ing to save themselves. They passed from our
sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell
from precipice to precipice on to the Matterhorn
glacier below, a distance of nearly 4,000 feet in
height. From the moment the rope broke it was
impossible to help them. So perished our comrades !
For more than two hours afterwards I thought
almost every moment that the next would be my
last; for the Taugwalders, utterly unnerved, were
not only incapable of giving assistance, but were in
such a state that a slip might have been expected
A Tramp Abroad 171
from them at any moment. After a time we were
able to do that which should have been done at first,
and fixed rope to firm rocks, in addition to being
tied together. These ropes were cut from time to
time, and were left behind. Even with their assur
ance the men were afraid to proceed, and several
times old Peter turned, with ashy face and faltering
limbs, and said, with terrible emphasis, " I cannot /"
About 6 P. M., we arrived at the snow upon the
ridge descending towards Zermatt, and all peril
was over. We frequently looked , but in vain, for
traces of our unfortunate companions ; we bent over
the ridge and cried to them, but no sound returned.
Convinced at last that they were neither within sight
nor hearing, we ceased from our useless efforts;
and, too cast down for speech, silently gathered up
our things, and the little effects of those who were
lost, and then completed the descent.
Such is Mr. Whymper s graphic and thrilling
narrative. Zermatt gossip darkly hints that the
elder Taugwalder cut the rope, when the accident
occurred, in order to preserve himself from being
dragged into the abyss ; but Mr. Whymper says that
the ends of the rope showed no evidence of cutting,
but only of breaking. He adds that if Taugwalder
had had the disposition to cut the rope, he would
not have had time to do it, the accident was so
sudden and unexpected.
Lord Douglas body has never been found. It
172 A Tramp Abroad
probably lodged upon some inaccessible shelf in the
face of the mighty precipice. Lord Douglas was a
youth of nineteen. The three other victims fell
nearly 4,000 feet, and their bodies lay together upon
the glacier when found by Mr. Whymper and
the other searchers the next morning. Their graves
are beside the little church in Zermatt.
CHAPTER XIII.
C WITZERLAND is simply a large, humpy, solid
<-^ rock, with a thin skin of grass stretched over
it. Consequently, they do not dig graves, they
blast them out with powder and fuse. They cannot
afford to have large graveyards, the grass skin is too
circumscribed and too valuable. It is all required
for the support of the living.
The graveyard in Zermatt occupies only about
one-eighth of an acre. The graves are sunk in the
living rock, and are very permanent; but occupation
of them is only temporary ; the occupant can only
stay till his grave is needed by a later subject, he
is removed, then, for they do not bury one body on
top of another. As I understand it, a family owns
a grave, just as it owns a house. A man dies and
leaves his house to his son, and at the same time,
this dead father succeeds to his own father s grave.
He moves out of the house and into the grave, and
his predecessor moves out of the grave and into the
cellar of the chapel. I saw a black box lying in the
churchyard, with skull and cross-bones painted on
12** ( I73 )
174 A Tramp Abroad
it, and was told that this was used in transferring
remains to the cellar.
In that cellar the bones and skulls of several
hundreds of former citizens were compactly corded
up. They made a pile 18 feet long, 7 feet high,
and 8 feet wide. I was told that in some of the
receptacles of this kind in the Swiss villages, the
skulls were all marked, and if a man wished to find
the skulls of his ancestors for several generations
back, he could do it by these marks, preserved in
the family records.
An English gentleman who had lived some years
in this region, said it was the cradle of compulsory
education. But he said that the English idea that
compulsory education would reduce bastardy and in
temperance was an error it has not that effect.
He said there was more seJ action in the Protestant
than in the Catholic cantons, because the confes
sional protected the girls. I wonder why it doesn t
protect married women in France and Spain?
This gentleman said that among the poorer
peasants in the Valais, it was common for the
brothers in a family to cast lots to determine which
of them should have the coveted privilege of marry
ing. Then the lucky one got married, and his
brethren doomed bachelors, heroically banded
themselves together to help support the new family.
We left Zermatt in a wagon and in a rain
storm, too, for St. Nicholas about ten o clock one
morning. Again we passed between those grass-
A Tramp Abroad 175
clad, prodigious cliffs, specked with wee dwellings
peeping over at us from velvety green walls ten and
twelve hundred feet high. It did not seem possible
that the imaginary chamois even could climb those
precipices. Lovers on opposite cliffs probably kiss
through a spy-glass, and correspond with a rifle.
In Switzerland the farmer s plow is a wide
shovel, which scrapes up and turns over the thin
earthy skin of his native rock and there the man
of the plow is a hero. NQJ# "here, by our St.
Nicholas road, was a grave, and it had a tragic
story. A plowman was skinning his farm one
morning, not the steepest part of it, but still a
steep part that is, he was not skinning the front
of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves,
when he absent-mindedly let go of the plow-handles
to moisten his hands, in the usual way; he lost his
balance and fell out of his farm backwards; poor
fellow, he never touched anything till he struck
bottom, 1,500 feet below.* We throw a halo of
heroism around the life of the soldier and the sailor,
because of the deadly dangers they are facing all the
time. But we are not used to looking upon farming
as a heroic occupation. This is because we have
not lived in Switzerland.
From St. Nicholas we struck out for Visp, or
Vispach on foot. The rain-storms had been at
work during several days, and had done a deal of
damage in Switzerland and Savoy. We came to
*This was on a Sunday. M. T.
176 A Tramp Abroad
one place where a stream had changed its course
and plunged down the mountain in a new place,
sweeping everything before it. Two poor but
precious farms by the roadside were ruined. One
was washed clear away, and the bed-rock exposed ; the
other was buried out of sight under a tumbled chaos
of rocks, gravel, mud, and rubbish. The resistless
might of water was well exemplified. Some sap
lings which had stood in the way were bent to the
ground, stripped clean of their bark, and buried under
rocky debris. The road had been swept away, too.
In another place, where the road was high up on
the mountain s face, and its outside edge protected
by flimsy masonry, we frequently came across spots
where this masonry had caved off and left dangerous
gaps for mules to get over ; and with still more fre
quency we found the masonry slightly crumbled,
and marked by mule-hoofs, thus showing that there
had been danger of an accident to somebody. When
at last we came to a badly ruptured bit of masonry,
with hoof-prints evidencing a desperate struggle to
regain the lost foothold, I looked quite hopefully
over the dizzy precipice. But there was nobody
down there.
They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in
Switzerland and other portions of Europe. They
wall up both banks with slanting solid stone masonry
so that from end to end of these rivers the banks
look like the wharves at St. Louis and other towns
on the Mississippi river.
A Tramp Abroad 177
It was during this walk from St. Nicholas, in the
shadow of the majestic Alps, that we came across
some little children amusing themselves in what
seemed, at first, a most odd and original way but
it wasn t; it was in simply a natural and character
istic way. They were roped together with a string,
they had mimic alpenstocks and ice-axes, and were
climbing a meek and lowly manure pile with a most
blood-curdling amount of care and caution. The
* guide at the head of the line cut imaginary
steps, in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a
monkey budged till the step above him was vacated.
If we had waited we should have witnessed an
imaginary accident, no doubt; and we should have
heard the intrepid band hurrah when they made the
summit and looked around upon the "magnificent
view," and seen them throw themselves down in
exhausted attitudes for a rest in that commanding
situation.
In Nevada I used to see the children play at silver
mining. Of course, the great thing was an accident
in a mine, and there were two "star" parts; that
of the man who fell down the mimic shaft, and that
of the daring hero who was lowered into the depths
to bring him up. I knew one small chap v/ho
always insisted on playing both of these parts, and
he carried his point. Fie would tumble into the
shaft and die, and then come to the surface and go
back after his own remains.
It is the smartest boy that gets the hero-part
178 A Tramp Abroad
everywhere; he is head guide in Switzerland, b<
miner in Nevada, head bull-fighter in Spain, e
but I knew a preacher s son, seven years old, w
once selected a part for himself compared to whi<
those just mentioned are tame and unimpressive
Jimmy s father stopped him from driving imaginar>
horse-cars one Sunday stopped him from playing
captain of an imaginary steamboat next Sunday
stopped him from leading an imaginary army to
battle the following Sunday and so on. Finally
the little fellow said :
"I ve tried everything, and they won t any of
them do. What can I play?"
I hardly know, Jimmy ; but you must play
only things that are suitable to the Sabbath day."
Next Sunday the preacher stepped softly to a
back-room door to see if the children were rightly
employed. He peeped in. A chair occupied the
middle of the room, and on the back of it hung
Jimmy s cap; one of the little sisters took the cap
down, nibbled at it, then passed it to another small
sister and said, " Eat of this fruit, for it is good."
The Reverend took in the situation alas, they were
playing the Expulsion from Eden ! Yet he found
one little crumb of comfort. He said to himself,
* For once Jimmy has yielded the chief rdle I
have been wronging him, I did not believe there was
so much modesty in him; I should have expected
him to be either Adam or Eve." This crumb of
comfort lasted but a very little while; he glanced
A Tramp Abroad 179
tmd and discovered Jimmy standing in an im-
;ing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly
own on his face. What that meant was very plain
- he was personating the Deity J Think of the
;uileless sublimity of that idea.
We reached Vispach at 8 P.M., only about seven
hours out from St. Nicholas. So we must have
made fully a mile and a half an hour, and it was all
down hill, too, and very muddy at that. We stayed
all night at the Hotel du Soleil ; I remember it be
cause the landlady, the portier, the waitress, and the
chambermaid were not separate persons, but were
all contained in one neat and chipper suit of spotless
muslin, and she was the prettiest young creature I
saw in all that region. She was the landlord s
daughter. And I remember that the only native
match to her I saw in all Europe was the young
daughter of the landlord of a village inn in the Black
Forest. Why don t more people in Europe marry
and keep hotel?
Next morning we left with a family of English
friends and went by train to Brevet, and thence by
boat across the lake to Ouchy (Lausanne).
Ouchy is memorable to me, not on account of its
beautiful situation and lovely surroundings, al
though these would make it stick long in one s
memory, but as the place where I caught the
London Times dropping into humor. It was not
aware of it, though. It did not do it on purpose.
An English friend called my attention to this lapse,
180 A Tramp Abroad
and cut out the reprehensible paragraph for me.
Think of encountering a grin like this on the face of
that grim journal :
ERRATUM. We are requested by Reuter s Telegram Company to
correct an erroneous announcement made in their Brisbane telegram of
the 2d inst., published in our impression of the 5th inst., stating that
"Lady Kennedy had given birth to twins, the eldest being a son."
The Company explain that the message they received contained the
words "Governor of Queensland, twins first son." Being, however,
subsequently informed that Sir Arthur Kennedy was unmarried and that
there must be some mistake, a telegraphic repetition was at once
demanded. It has been received to-day (nth inst.) and shows that
the words really telegraphed by Reuter s agent were " Governor Queens
land turns first sod," alluding to the Maryborough-Gympic Railway in
course of construction. The words in italics were mutilated by the tel
egraph in transmission from Australia, and reaching the company in the
form mentioned above gave rise to the mistake.
I had always had a deep and reverent compassion
for the sufferings of the "prisoner of Chillon,"
whose story Byron has told in such moving verse ;
so I took the steamer and made pilgrimage to the
dungeons of the Castle of Chillon, to see the place
where poor Bonnivard endured his dreary captivity
300 years ago. I am glad I did that, for it took
away some of the pain I was feeling on the prison
er s account. His dungeon was a nice, cool, roomy
place, and I cannot see why he should have been so
dissatisfied with it. If he had been imprisoned in a
St. Nicholas private dwelling, where the fertilizer
prevails, and the goat sleeps with the guest, and the
chickens roost on him, and the cow comes in and
bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have
been another matter altogether ; but he surely could
A Tramp Abroad 181
not have had a very cheerless time of it in that
pretty dungeon. It has romantic window-slits that
let in generous bars of light, and it has tall, noble
columns, carved apparently from the living rock;
and what is more, they are written all over with
thousands of names; some of them, like Byron s
and Victor Hugo s of the first celebrity. Why
didn t he amuse himself reading these names?
Then there are the couriers and tourists swarms
of them every day what was to hinder him from
having a good time with them? I think Bonnivard s
sufferings have been overrated.
Next, we took the train and went to Martigny, on
the way to Mont Blanc. Next morning we started,
about eight o clock, on foot. We had plenty of
company, in the way of wagon-loads and mule-loads
of tourists and dust. This scattering procession
of travelers was perhaps a mile long. The road was
up hill interminably up hill, and tolerably steep.
The weather was blistering hot, and the man or
woman who had to sit on a creeping mule, or in a
crawling wagon, and broil in the beating sun, was
an object to be pitied. We could dodge among the
bushes, and have the relief of shade, but those
people could not. They paid for a conveyance, and
to get their money s worth they rode.
We went by the way of the Tete Noir, and after
we reached high ground there was no lack of fine
scenery. In one place the road was tunneled
through a shoulder of the mountain; from there
i82 A Tramp Abroad
one looked down into a gorge with a rushing torrent
in it, and on every hand was a charming view of
rocky buttresses and wooded heights. There was a
liberal allowance of pretty waterfalls, too, on the
Tete Noir route.
About half an hour before we reached the village
of Argentiere a vast dome of snow with the sun
blazing on it drifted into view and framed itself in a
strong V-shaped gateway of the mountains, and we
recognized Mont Blanc, the " monarch of the Alps."
With every step, after that, this stately dome rose
higher and higher into the blue sky, and at last
seemed to occupy the zenith.
Some of Mont Blanc s neighbors -bare, light-
brown, steeple-like rocks, were very peculiarly
shaped. Some were whittled to a sharp point, and
slightly bent at the upper end, like a lady s finger;
one monster sugar-loaf resembled a bishop s hat; it
was too steep to hold snow on its sides, but had
some in the division.
While we were still on very high ground, and
before the descent toward Argentiere began, we
looked up toward a neighboring mountain-top, and
saw exquisite prismatic colors playing about some
white clouds which were so delicate as to almost
resemble gossamer webs. The faint pinks and
greens were peculiarly beautiful ; none of the colors
were deep, they were the lightest shades. They
were bewitchingly commingled. We sat down to
study and enjoy this singular spectacle. The tints
A Tramp Abroad 18}
remained during several minutes flitting, chang
ing, melting into each other; paling almost away
for a moment, then re-flushing, a shifting, rest
less, unstable succession of soft opaline gleams,
shimmering over that airy film of white cloud, and
turning it into a fabric dainty enough to clothe an