the riffel—the gorner grat—sunday—zermatt—schwartz see—mountaineering
not vainly did the early persian make
his altar the high places, and the peak
of earth-o’ergazing mountains; and thus take
a fit and unwalled temple, there to seek
the spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,
uprear’d of human hands.—byron.
august 31.—after breakfast my wife and i walked up to the riffel hotel. it is rather more than 3,000 feet above zermatt. the little man rode. we were two hours and a half in doing it. it would be a stiff bit for beginners. the upper part of the forest, on the mountain-side, consists of pinus cembra. this is far from being either a lofty or a spreading tree. the lower branches extend but little beyond the upper ones. there is a good deal of reddish-brown in the bark. in this respect, as well as in the colour of its foliage, and in its form, it contrasts well with the larch and the spruce, though of course not so well with the scotch fir. i heard that its timber is very lasting. 12the views, from the forest, of the gorner glacier, and, when you are beyond the forest, of some of the neighbouring mountains, and of the valley of zermatt, are good.
after luncheon at the riffel hotel, we walked to the summit of the gorner grat. here you have what is said to be the finest alpine view in europe. you are standing on a central eminence of rock in, as far as you can see, a surrounding world of ice and snow. on the left is the cima di jazi, which you are told commands a good view into italy. just before you, as you look across the glacier, which lies in a deep broad ravine at your feet, rise the jagged summits of monte rosa with, at this season, much of the black rock showing through their caps and robes of snow. next the lyskamm, somewhat in the background; then castor and pollux, immaculate snow without protruding rock; next the breithorn, then the naked gneiss of the matterhorn, a prince among peaks, too precipitous for snow to rest on in the late summer, looking like a titanic lycian tomb, such as you may see in the plates of ‘fellowes’s asia minor,’ placed on the top of a titanic rectangular shaft of rock, five thousand feet high. beyond, and completing the circle of the panorama, come the dent blanche, the gabelhorn, the rothhorn, the weisshorn, over the valley of zermatt, the ober rothhorn, and the allaleinhorn, which brings your eye round again to the cima di 13jazi. what a scene! what grandeur for the eye! what forces and masses beneath for the thought! here is the complement to johnson’s charing cross and the east anglican turnip-field. both pleasant sights in their respective classes, but not enough of all that this world has to show.
the little boy in the morning, during our ascent of the riffel, had not been able, when he dismounted, to take a dozen steps without resting, as it appeared both from having outgrown his strength, and from some difficulty in breathing; but in the afternoon he skipped up to the top of the gorner grat, an hour and a half, and ran down again, just as if he had been bred on the mountains. it was difficult to keep him on the path, and from the edges of the precipices. he was at the top some minutes before any of us—we were a large party, for several parties had drawn together in the ascent. i heard a lady exclaim, ‘there is the blue boy again’ (that was the colour of his blouse). ‘he has beaten us all.’ never was there such a difference before between a morning and an afternoon.
as we descended the gorner grat a scud of snow passed by. the antithesis, common in the mountains, of gloom to sunshine, and of cold to warmth, was as complete as it was sudden. in a few minutes it was bright and warm again.
while we were at the hotel two american lads 14came up with their guides, and, after a rest of ten minutes, started for some pass. they had nothing on but coarse grey woollen pants, shirts of the same without collars, and boots very heavily nailed, or rather spiked. they were not more than seventeen years old, if so much.
the riffelberg abounds in beautiful flowers; gentians, sedums, and saxifrages reach almost to the top of the gorner grat. as might be expected at such a height, none rise, at their best, more than an inch or two above the ground. gorgeous lilies and lovely roses would be as much out of keeping, as impossible, here. such objects belong to the sensuous valley.
september 1.—there was a sharp frost this morning, but the sun was bright and warm all day. so warm was it at ten o’clock, that people were glad to sit about on the grass, some preferring the shade of the rocks. it was sunday, and i was requested to conduct divine service. the reading saloon was prepared for the purpose. i shortened the service by omitting the first lesson, the te deum, and the litany. before commencing, i announced to the congregation that i should do this, giving as my reason that the room did not belong exclusively to us, and therefore that it was better to act upon our knowledge of this, than to be reminded of it afterwards by those who had withdrawn that we might hold our service. i had been called upon to conduct the service only a 15few minutes before it commenced, and as i had no memoranda for sermons with me, i took for my text the scene around us, and spoke of the effects such scenes, and the contemplation of nature generally, appear to have on men’s minds. the knowledge men now have of the solar system, and of the sidereal universe, does not prevent the heavens from discoursing to us as eloquently as they did to the psalmist. intelligible law is grander and more satisfactory for thought to rest upon than vague impressions of glorious power. so with the great and deep sea also, now that we know something about the place it occupies in the economy of this terrestrial system. it is the same with the everlasting mountains, since we have come to know something about the way in which they were formed and elevated, and how the valleys were cut out. man is the child of nature, in whose bosom he is brought up. it is true that there are some who cannot see that it is his duty and his happiness to acquaint himself with nature; but no one who had made any progress in the study of nature, ever thought lightly of what he had attained to. and this is true of the knowledge, not only of the grander objects of nature, such as the starry firmament and the great and deep sea, but equally of the most inconspicuous, and, as they appear to our senses, the most insignificant objects in nature. it is not more true of the eternal mountains than of the particles of 16moss that hide themselves in the crevices of the rock, or the lichen that stains its face, &c., &c.
in the afternoon we walked back to zermatt.
though every effort was being made at zermatt to prevent people from going up to the riffel without tickets assuring them of accommodation at the riffel hotel, still, so many, in their impatience, set this regulation at defiance, and went up on the chance that they would be allowed six feet by three somewhere, that night after night, as we were told, the authorities were obliged—perhaps it was a necessity which was accepted not unwillingly—to convert the bureau, the salle-à-manger, and the reading-room, into dormitories. at all events, we were turned out of the reading-room before ten o’clock to make way for a pile of mattresses we found at the door, ready to be substituted for the chairs and tables we had been using. to be berthed in this way is far from pleasant; but it is not worse than spending the night in the crowded cabin of a small steamer, or in the hermetically-closed compartment of a railway carriage, with five other promiscuous bodies.
september 2.—started this morning for the schwartz see and hornli. we were all mounted—it was the only time i was during the excursion. in ascending the mountain, when we were above the pine-wood, and so in a place where there was no protection, and where the zig-zags were short and precipitous, both 17the hind legs of the little boy’s horse slipped off the path. the animal was so old, and worn-out, and dead-beaten with its daily drudgery, that it had appeared to us not to care, hardly to know, whether it was dead or alive. but now it made an effort to recover itself, with the power or disposition for making which we should not, beforehand, have credited it. perhaps the centre of gravity in the poor brute was never actually outside the path. i was close behind, and saw the slip and scramble. it was an affair of a few seconds, but it made one feel badly for more minutes.
at the schwartz see, we sent the horses to the foot of the zmutt glacier, and began the ascent of the hornli. in about a quarter of an hour we made the discovery that the blue boy was not man enough for the hornli. i do not know, however, that we should have seen much more if we had gone to the top. we were close to the mighty matterhorn, of which the hornli is a buttress, and at our feet was the great gorner glacier. these were the two great objects, and neither of them would have been seen so well had we been higher up. in returning we went by the way of the zmutt glacier, a wild scene of alpine desolation. there is much variety, and much that interests in this excursion; the cultivated valley, the junction of the findelen and the zmutt with the visp, the wooded and then the naked mountain, the two great glaciers, the sedgy, flowery turf above 18the wood, the little black tarn, the bare rock of the hornli, and, over all, the shaft of the matterhorn. on the ridge above the schwartz see we found a handsome blue pansy. somewhere else i saw a yellow one of almost equal size.
our guide, victor furrer, speaks english well. he wished to come to england for the seven winter months, thinking that he could take the place of under-gardener or stableman in a gentleman’s house, or that of porter in a london hotel. swiss education disposes the people to look for openings for advancing themselves in life beyond the narrow limits of their own country, and qualifies them for entering them.
the number of peak-climbers and pass-men assembled at zermatt had increased during our short absence. among the latter was an irish judge, who did the st. theodule. the law was in great force here, as was also the church. the gentleman who had attempted the matterhorn on saturday, had been driven off by the weather. though fine down here, it had been windy, wet, and frosty up there; and to such a degree that the face of this alpine pier, for it is more of that than of a mountain, had become glazed with a film of ice. to-day he again attempted it from this place; and, the weather having been all that could be desired, he had gone, and climbed, and conquered. he found the air so calm on the summit 19that he had no occasion to protect the match with which he lighted his cigar; and, if he had had a candle, he would have left it lighted for the people at the riffel to look at through their telescopes.
notwithstanding the argument which may be founded on the graves (one a cenotaph) of the four englishmen in the god’s acre of the catholic church of zermatt, one cannot but sympathise with the triumph, and applaud the pluck and endurance of our mountaineering countrymen. it must be satisfactory, very satisfactory indeed, for a man to find that he has such undeniable evidence that he is sound in wind and limb, and, too, with a heart and head to match; and that he can go anywhere and do anything, for which these by no means insignificant qualifications are indispensable. mountaineering, in its motives, to a great extent resembles hunting, and, where there is a difference, the difference is, i think, to its advantage. it is more varied, more continuously exciting, more appreciated by those who do not participate in it, and, which is a great point, more entirely personal, for your horse does not share the credit with you. shooting and fishing can bear no comparison with it. the pluck, endurance, and manliness it requires are not needed by them. it is also a great merit that it is within the reach of those who have not been born to hunting, fishing, and shooting, and will never have the means of paying for them. all these pursuits have each 20its own literature; and, as the general public appears to take most interest in that of the mountaineers, there is in this, as far as it goes, reason for supposing that the pursuit itself is of all of them the most rational and stirring.
alpinism is also a natural and healthy protest in some, whose minds and bodies are young and vigorous, against the dull drawing-room routine of modern luxury; and in others against the equally dull desk-drudgery of semi-intellectual work, to which so many are tied down in this era of great cities. it is for a time a thorough escape from it. it is the best form of athleticism, which has its roots in the same causes; and it is, besides, a great deal which athleticism is not.
to a bystander there is something amusing in the quiet earnestness with which a peak-climber discusses the possibilities of an ascent he is contemplating. i was with two this afternoon who were about to attempt a mountain by a side on which it had not yet been scaled. the difficulty was what had hitherto been regarded as pretty much of a sheer precipice of some hundreds of feet. one of the two, however, had examined it carefully with his glass, and had come to think that there was roughness enough on its face for their purpose. the guides who were present were of the opposite opinion. that it had never been ascended on that side, but might perhaps prove not unascendable, was the attraction.
