CHAPTER XXXIV
[The World's Highest Pig Farm]
We hired the only guide left, to lead us on our way. He was overseventy, but he could have given me nine-tenths of his strength andstill had all his age entitled him to. He shouldered our satchels,overcoats, and alpenstocks, and we set out up the steep path. It was hotwork. The old man soon begged us to hand over our coats and waistcoatsto him to carry, too, and we did it; one could not refuse so little athing to a poor old man like that; he should have had them if he hadbeen a hundred and fifty.
When we began that ascent, we could see a microscopic chalet perchedaway up against heaven on what seemed to be the highest mountain nearus. It was on our right, across the narrow head of the valley. But whenwe got up abreast it on its own level, mountains were towering highabove on every hand, and we saw that its altitude was just about that ofthe little Gasternthal which we had visited the evening before. Still itseemed a long way up in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness ofrocks. It had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it which seemed aboutas big as a billiard-table, and this grass-plot slanted so sharplydownward, and was so brief, and ended so exceedingly soon at the vergeof the absolute precipice, that it was a shuddery thing to think of aperson's venturing to trust his foot on an incline so situated at all.Suppose a man stepped on an orange peel in that yard; there would benothing for him to seize; nothing could keep him from rolling; fiverevolutions would bring him to the edge, and over he would go.
What a frightful distance he would fall!--for there are very few birdsthat fly as high as his starting-point. He would strike and bounce, twoor three times, on his way down, but this would be no advantage to him.I would as soon take an airing on the slant of a rainbow as in sucha front yard. I would rather, in fact, for the distance down would beabout the same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce. I couldnot see how the peasants got up to that chalet--the region seemed toosteep for anything but a balloon.
As we strolled on, climbing up higher and higher, we were continuallybringing neighboring peaks into view and lofty prominence which had beenhidden behind lower peaks before; so by and by, while standing before agroup of these giants, we looked around for the chalet again; there itwas, away down below us, apparently on an inconspicuous ridge in thevalley! It was as far below us, now, as it had been above us when wewere beginning the ascent.
After a while the path led us along a railed precipice, and we lookedover--far beneath us was the snug parlor again, the little Gasternthal,with its water jets spouting from the face of its rock walls. We couldhave dropped a stone into it. We had been finding the top of the worldall along--and always finding a still higher top stealing into view ina disappointing way just ahead; when we looked down into the Gasternthalwe felt pretty sure that we had reached the genuine top at last, but itwas not so; there were much higher altitudes to be scaled yet. We werestill in the pleasant shade of forest trees, we were still in a regionwhich was cushioned with beautiful mosses and aglow with the many-tintedluster of innumerable wild flowers.
We found, indeed, more interest in the wild flowers than in anythingelse. We gathered a specimen or two of every kind which we wereunacquainted with; so we had sumptuous bouquets. But one of the chiefinterests lay in chasing the seasons of the year up the mountain, anddetermining them by the presence of flowers and berries which we wereacquainted with. For instance, it was the end of August at the levelof the sea; in the Kandersteg valley at the base of the pass, we foundflowers which would not be due at the sea-level for two or three weeks;higher up, we entered October, and gathered fringed gentians. I madeno notes, and have forgotten the details, but the construction of thefloral calendar was very entertaining while it lasted.
In the high regions we found rich store of the splendid red flowercalled the Alpine rose, but we did not find any examples of the uglySwiss favorite called Edelweiss. Its name seems to indicate that it is anoble flower and that it is white. It may be noble enough, but it is notattractive, and it is not white. The fuzzy blossom is the color of badcigar ashes, and appears to be made of a cheap quality of gray plush. Ithas a noble and distant way of confining itself to the high altitudes,but that is probably on account of its looks; it apparently has nomonopoly of those upper altitudes, however, for they are sometimesintruded upon by some of the loveliest of the valley families of wildflowers. Everybody in the Alps wears a sprig of Edelweiss in his hat. Itis the native's pet, and also the tourist's.
All the morning, as we loafed along, having a good time, otherpedestrians went staving by us with vigorous strides, and with theintent and determined look of men who were walking for a wager. Thesewore loose knee-breeches, long yarn stockings, and hobnailed high-lacedwalking-shoes. They were gentlemen who would go home to England orGermany and tell how many miles they had beaten the guide-book everyday. But I doubted if they ever had much real fun, outside of the meremagnificent exhilaration of the tramp through the green valleys and thebreezy heights; for they were almost always alone, and even the finestscenery loses incalculably when there is no one to enjoy it with.
All the morning an endless double procession of mule-mounted touristsfiled past us along the narrow path--the one procession going, theother coming. We had taken a good deal of trouble to teach ourselves thekindly German custom of saluting all strangers with doffed hat, and weresolutely clung to it, that morning, although it kept us bareheadedmost of the time and was not always responded to. Still we found aninterest in the thing, because we naturally liked to know who wereEnglish and Americans among the passers-by. All continental nativesresponded of course; so did some of the English and Americans, but, asa general thing, these two races gave no sign. Whenever a man or a womanshowed us cold neglect, we spoke up confidently in our own tongue andasked for such information as we happened to need, and we always got areply in the same language. The English and American folk are not lesskindly than other races, they are only more reserved, and that comes ofhabit and education. In one dreary, rocky waste, away above the line ofvegetation, we met a procession of twenty-five mounted young men, allfrom America. We got answering bows enough from these, of course, forthey were of an age to learn to do in Rome as Rome does, without mucheffort.
At one extremity of this patch of desolation, overhung by bare andforbidding crags which husbanded drifts of everlasting snow in theirshaded cavities, was a small stretch of thin and discouraged grass, anda man and a family of pigs were actually living here in some shanties.Consequently this place could be really reckoned as "property"; it hada money value, and was doubtless taxed. I think it must have markedthe limit of real estate in this world. It would be hard to set a moneyvalue upon any piece of earth that lies between that spot and the emptyrealm of space. That man may claim the distinction of owning the endof the world, for if there is any definite end to the world he hascertainly found it.
From here forward we moved through a storm-swept and smilelessdesolation. All about us rose gigantic masses, crags, and ramparts ofbare and dreary rock, with not a vestige or semblance of plant or treeor flower anywhere, or glimpse of any creature that had life. The frostand the tempests of unnumbered ages had battered and hacked at thesecliffs, with a deathless energy, destroying them piecemeal; so all theregion about their bases was a tumbled chaos of great fragments whichhad been split off and hurled to the ground. Soiled and aged banks ofsnow lay close about our path. The ghastly desolation of the place wasas tremendously complete as if Dor? had furnished the working-plansfor it. But every now and then, through the stern gateways around uswe caught a view of some neighboring majestic dome, sheathed withglittering ice, and displaying its white purity at an elevation comparedto which ours was groveling and plebeian, and this spectacle alwayschained one's interest and admiration at once, and made him forget therewas anything ugly in the world.
I have just said that there was nothing but death and desolation inthese hideous places, but I forgot. In the most forlorn and arid anddismal one of all, where the racked and splintered debris was th
ickest,where the ancient patches of snow lay against the very path, wherethe winds blew bitterest and the general aspect was mournfulest anddreariest, and furthest from any suggestion of cheer or hope, I founda solitary wee forget-me-not flourishing away, not a droop about itanywhere, but holding its bright blue star up with the prettiest andgallantest air in the world, the only happy spirit, the only smilingthing, in all that grisly desert. She seemed to say, "Cheer up!--as longas we are here, let us make the best of it." I judged she had earned aright to a more hospitable place; so I plucked her up and sent her toAmerica to a friend who would respect her for the fight she had made,all by her small self, to make a whole vast despondent Alpine desolationstop breaking its heart over the unalterable, and hold up its head andlook at the bright side of things for once.
We stopped for a nooning at a strongly built little inn called theSchwarenbach. It sits in a lonely spot among the peaks, where it isswept by the trailing fringes of the cloud-rack, and is rained on, andsnowed on, and pelted and persecuted by the storms, nearly every day ofits life. It was the only habitation in the whole Gemmi Pass.
Close at hand, now, was a chance for a blood-curdling Alpine adventure.Close at hand was the snowy mass of the Great Altels cooling its topknotin the sky and daring us to an ascent. I was fired with the idea, andimmediately made up my mind to procure the necessary guides, ropes,etc., and undertake it. I instructed Harris to go to the landlord of theinn and set him about our preparations. Meantime, I went diligently towork to read up and find out what this much-talked-of mountain-climbingwas like, and how one should go about it--for in these matters I wasignorant. I opened Mr. Hinchliff's _Summer Months Among The Alps_(published 1857), and selected his account of his ascent of Monte Rosa.
It began:
"It is very difficult to free the mind from excitement on the eveningbefore a grand expedition--"
I saw that I was too calm; so I walked the room a while and workedmyself into a high excitement; but the book's next remark--that theadventurer must get up at two in the morning--came as near as anythingto flatting it all out again. However, I reinforced it, and read on,about how Mr. Hinchliff dressed by candle-light and was "soon down amongthe guides, who were bustling about in the passage, packing provisions,and making every preparation for the start"; and how he glanced out intothe cold clear night and saw that--
"The whole sky was blazing with stars, larger and brighter than theyappear through the dense atmosphere breathed by inhabitants of the lowerparts of the earth. They seemed actually suspended from the dark vaultof heaven, and their gentle light shed a fairylike gleam over thesnow-fields around the foot of the Matterhorn, which raised itsstupendous pinnacle on high, penetrating to the heart of the Great Bear,and crowning itself with a diadem of his magnificent stars. Not a sounddisturbed the deep tranquillity of the night, except the distant roarof streams which rush from the high plateau of the St. Theodule glacier,and fall headlong over precipitous rocks till they lose themselves inthe mazes of the Gorner glacier."
He took his hot toast and coffee, and then about half past three hiscaravan of ten men filed away from the Riffel Hotel, and began the steepclimb. At half past five he happened to turn around, and "beheld theglorious spectacle of the Matterhorn, just touched by the rosy-fingeredmorning, and looking like a huge pyramid of fire rising out of thebarren ocean of ice and rock around it." Then the Breithorn and the DentBlanche caught the radiant glow; but "the intervening mass of Monte Rosamade it necessary for us to climb many long hours before we could hopeto see the sun himself, yet the whole air soon grew warmer after thesplendid birth of the day."
He gazed at the lofty crown of Monte Rosa and the wastes of snow thatguarded its steep approaches, and the chief guide delivered the opinionthat no man could conquer their awful heights and put his foot upon thatsummit. But the adventurers moved steadily on, nevertheless.
They toiled up, and up, and still up; they passed the Grand Plateau;then toiled up a steep shoulder of the mountain, clinging like flies toits rugged face; and now they were confronted by a tremendous wallfrom which great blocks of ice and snow were evidently in the habit offalling. They turned aside to skirt this wall, and gradually ascendeduntil their way was barred by a "maze of gigantic snow crevices,"--sothey turned aside again, and "began a long climb of sufficient steepnessto make a zigzag course necessary."
Fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a moment or two. At oneof these halts somebody called out, "Look at Mont Blanc!" and "we wereat once made aware of the very great height we had attained by actuallyseeing the monarch of the Alps and his attendant satellites right overthe top of the Breithorn, itself at least 14,000 feet high!"
These people moved in single file, and were all tied to a strong rope,at regular distances apart, so that if one of them slipped on thosegiddy heights, the others could brace themselves on their alpenstocksand save him from darting into the valley, thousands of feet below. Byand by they came to an ice-coated ridge which was tilted up at a sharpangle, and had a precipice on one side of it. They had to climb this, sothe guide in the lead cut steps in the ice with his hatchet, and as fastas he took his toes out of one of these slight holes, the toes of theman behind him occupied it.
"Slowly and steadily we kept on our way over this dangerous part of theascent, and I dare say it was fortunate for some of us that attentionwas distracted from the head by the paramount necessity of looking afterthe feet; _for, while on the left the incline of ice was so steep thatit would be impossible for any man to save himself in case of a slip,unless the others could hold him up, on the right we might drop a pebblefrom the hand over precipices of unknown extent down upon the tremendousglacier below._
"Great caution, therefore, was absolutely necessary, and in this exposedsituation we were attacked by all the fury of that grand enemy ofaspirants to Monte Rosa--a severe and bitterly cold wind from the north.The fine powdery snow was driven past us in the clouds, penetrating theinterstices of our clothes, and the pieces of ice which flew from theblows of Peter's ax were whisked into the air, and then dashed over theprecipice. We had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from beingserved in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then, in the moreviolent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our alpenstocks into the iceand hold on hard."
Having surmounted this perilous steep, they sat down and took a briefrest with their backs against a sheltering rock and their heels danglingover a bottomless abyss; then they climbed to the base of anotherridge--a more difficult and dangerous one still:
"The whole of the ridge was exceedingly narrow, and the fall on eachside desperately steep, but the ice in some of these intervals betweenthe masses of rock assumed the form of a mere sharp edge, almost like aknife; these places, though not more than three or four short pacesin length, looked uncommonly awkward; but, like the sword leading truebelievers to the gates of Paradise, they must needs be passed beforewe could attain to the summit of our ambition. These were in one or twoplaces so narrow, that in stepping over them with toes well turned outfor greater security, _one end of the foot projected over the awfulprecipice on the right, while the other was on the beginning of the iceslope on the left, which was scarcely less steep than the rocks._ Onthese occasions Peter would take my hand, and each of us stretching asfar as we could, he was thus enabled to get a firm footing two pacesor rather more from me, whence a spring would probably bring him to therock on the other side; then, turning around, he called to me to come,and, taking a couple of steps carefully, I was met at the third by hisoutstretched hand ready to clasp mine, and in a moment stood by hisside. The others followed in much the same fashion. Once my right footslipped on the side toward the precipice, but I threw out my left arm ina moment so that it caught the icy edge under my armpit as I fell, andsupported me considerably; at the same instant I cast my eyes down theside on which I had slipped, and contrived to plant my right foot ona piece of rock as large as a cricket-ball, which chanced to protrudethrough the ice, on the very edge of the precipice. Being thus anc
horedfore and aft, as it were, I believe I could easily have recoveredmyself, even if I had been alone, though it must be confessed thesituation would have been an awful one; as it was, however, a jerk fromPeter settled the matter very soon, and I was on my legs all right in aninstant. The rope is an immense help in places of this kind."
Now they arrived at the base of a great knob or dome veneered with iceand powdered with snow--the utmost, summit, the last bit of soliditybetween them and the hollow vault of heaven. They set to work with theirhatchets, and were soon creeping, insectlike, up its surface, with theirheels projecting over the thinnest kind of nothingness, thickened up alittle with a few wandering shreds and films of cloud moving in a lazyprocession far below. Presently, one man's toe-hold broke and he fell!There he dangled in mid-air at the end of the rope, like a spider, tillhis friends above hauled him into place again.
A little bit later, the party stood upon the wee pedestal of the verysummit, in a driving wind, and looked out upon the vast green expansesof Italy and a shoreless ocean of billowy Alps.
When I had read thus far, Harris broke into the room in a nobleexcitement and said the ropes and the guides were secured, and asked ifI was ready. I said I believed I wouldn't ascend the Altels this time. Isaid Alp-climbing was a different thing from what I had supposed it was,and so I judged we had better study its points a little more before wewent definitely into it. But I told him to retain the guides and orderthem to follow us to Zermatt, because I meant to use them there. I saidI could feel the spirit of adventure beginning to stir in me, and wassure that the fell fascination of Alp-climbing would soon be upon me. Isaid he could make up his mind to it that we would do a deed beforewe were a week older which would make the hair of the timid curl withfright.
This made Harris happy, and filled him with ambitious anticipations. Hewent at once to tell the guides to follow us to Zermatt and bring alltheir paraphernalia with them.