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The early mountaineers were horribly afraid of places which were at all difficult to climb. Mere danger, however, had no terrors for them, and they calmly encamped on frail snow-bridges, or had lunch in the path of avalanches. After a time the dangerous was understood and avoided, and the difficult grappled with by increased skill, until about the middle of the nineteenth century there arose a class of experts, little, if at all, inferior to the best guides of the present day.

The most active and intelligent of the natives of Chamonix, Zermatt, and the Bernese Oberland now learnt to find their way even on mountains new to them. Some were chamois hunters, and accustomed to climb in difficult places. Others, perhaps, had when boys minded the goats, and scrambled after them in all sorts of awkward spots. Others, again, had such a taste for mountaineering that they took to it the very first time they tried it. Of these last my own guide, Joseph Imboden, was one, and later on I will tell you of the extraordinary way in which he began his splendid career.

It is from going with and watching how good guides climb that most people learn to become mountaineers themselves. Nearly all take guides whenever they ascend difficult mountains, but some are so skilful and experienced that they go without, though few are ever good enough to do this quite safely.

I am often asked why people climb, and it is a hard question to answer satisfactorily. There is something which makes one long to mountaineer more and more, from the first time one tries it. All climbs are different. All views from mountains are different, and every time one climbs one is uncertain, owing to the weather or the possible state of the peak, if the top can be reached or not. So it is always a struggle between the mountain and the climber, and though perseverance, skill, experience, and pluck must give the victory to the climber in the end, yet the fight may be a long one, and it may be years before a particularly awkward peak allows one to stand on its summit.

Perhaps, if you have patience to read what follows, you may better understand what mountaineering is, and why most of those who have once tried it become so fond of it.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT GLACIERS

Of all the beautiful and interesting things mountain districts have to show, none surpass the glaciers.

Now a glacier is simply a river of ice, which never melts away even during the hottest summer. Glaciers form high up on mountains, where there is a great deal of snow in winter, and where it is never very hot even in summer. They are also found in northern lands, such as Greenland, and there, owing to the long cold winter and short summer, they come down to the very level of the sea.

One would fancy that if a quantity of snow falls every winter and does not all melt, the mountains must grow higher. But though only a little of the snow melts, it disappears in other ways. Some is evaporated into the atmosphere; some falls off in avalanches. Most of it slowly flows down after forming itself into glaciers. For glaciers are always moving. The force of gravity makes them slide down over their rocky beds. They flow so slowly that we cannot see them move, in fact most of them advance only a few inches a day. But if a line of stakes is driven into the ice straight across a glacier, we shall notice in a few weeks that they have moved down. And the most interesting part of it is that they will not have moved evenly, but those nearest the centre will have advanced further than those at the side. In short, a glacier flows like a river, the banks keeping back the ice at the side, as the banks of a river prevent it from running so fast at the edge as in the middle.

A large glacier is fed by such a gigantic mass of snow that it is in its upper part hundreds of feet thick. Of course when it reaches warmer places it begins to melt. But the quantity of ice composing it is so great that it takes a long time before it disappears, and a big glacier sometimes flows down far below the wild and rocky parts of mountains and reaches the neighbourhood of forests and corn-fields. It is very beautiful at Chamonix to see the white, glittering ice of the Glacier des Bossons flowing in a silent stream through green meadows.

The reason that mountaineers have to be careful in crossing glaciers is on account of the holes, cracks, or, to call them by their proper name, crevasses, which are met with on them. Ice, unlike water, is brittle, so it splits up into crevasses whenever the glacier flows over a steep or uneven rocky bed. High up, where snow still lies, these chasms in the ice are often bridged over, and if a person ventures on one of these snow bridges it may break, and he may fall down the crevasse, which may be so deep that no bottom can be found to it. He is then either killed by the fall or frozen to death. If, as I have explained before, several climbers are roped together, they form a long string, like the tail of a kite, and not more than one is likely to break through at a time. As the rope is--or ought to be--kept tightly stretched, he cannot fall far, and is easily pulled out again.

The snow melts away off the surface of the glacier further down in summer. It is on this bare, icy stream, scarred all over with little channels full of water running merrily down the melting rough surface, that the ordinary tourist is taken when he visits a glacier during his summer trip to Switzerland.

You will notice in most of the photographs of glaciers black streaks along them, sometimes only near the sides, sometimes also in the centre. These are heaps of stones and earth which have fallen from the mountains bordering the glacier, and have been carried along by the slowly moving ice. The bands in the centre have come there, owing to the meeting higher up of two glaciers, which have joined their side heaps of rubbish, and have henceforward flowed on as one glacier. The bands of piled up stones are called moraines, those at the edge being known as lateral moraines, in the centre as medial moraines, and the stones which drop off the end of a glacier, as terminal moraines.

Besides these compact bands, we sometimes find here and there a big stone or boulder by itself, which has rolled on to the ice. Often these stones are raised on a pedestal of ice, and then they are called "glacier-tables." They have covered the bit of ice they lie upon, and prevented it from melting, while the glacier all round has gradually sunk. After a time the leg of the table begins to feel the sun strike it also. It melts away on the south side and the stone slips off. A party of climbers, wandering about on a glacier at night or in a fog, and having no compass, can roughly take their bearings by noticing in what position these broken-down glacier-tables lie.

Occasionally sand has been washed down over the surface of the ice, and a patch of it has collected in one place. This shields the glacier from the sun, the surrounding ice sinks, and eventually we find cones which are lightly covered with sand, the smooth ice beneath being reached directly we scratch the surface with the point of a stick.

It is difficult to realise the enormous size of a large glacier. The Aletsch Glacier, the most extensive in the Alps, would, it has been said, if turned to stone, supply building material for a city the size of London.

Many thousands of years ago there were glaciers in Scotland and England. We are certain of this, as glaciers scratch and polish the rocks they pass over as does nothing else. Stones are frozen into the ice, and it holds them and uses them as we might hold and use a sharply-pointed instrument, scratching the rock over which the mighty mass is slowly passing. In addition to the scratches, the ice polishes the rock till it is quite smooth, writing upon it in characters never to be effaced the history of past events. Another thing which proves to us that these icy rivers were in many places where there are no glaciers now, is the boulders we find scattered about. These boulders are sometimes of a kind of rock not found anywhere near, and so we know that they must have been carried along on that wonderful natural luggage-train, and dropped off it as it melted. We find big stones in North Wales which must have come on a glacier beginning in Scotland! Glacier-polished rocks are found along the whole of the west coast of Norway, and there are boulders near Geneva, in Switzerland, which have come from the chain of Mount Blanc, 60 miles away.

So you see that the glaciers of the Alps are far smaller than they were at one time, and that in many places where formerly there were huge glaciers, there are to-day none. The Ice Age was the time when these great glaciers existed, but the subject of the Ice Age is a difficult and thorny one, which is outside the scope of my information and of this book.

AVALANCHES

We may briefly classify them as follows:--

An ice avalanche is easily understood when it is borne in mind that a glacier is always moving. When this river of ice comes to the edge of a precipice, or tries to crawl down a very steep cliff, it splits across and forms tottering crags of ice, which lean over more and more till they lose their balance and go crashing down the slope. Some of the ice is crushed to powder by its fall, yet many blocks generally survive, and are occasionally heaped up in such huge masses below that they form another glacier on a small scale. If a party of mountaineers passes under a place overhung by threatening ice, they are in great danger, though at early morning, before the sun has loosened the frozen masses, the peril is less. Sometimes, too, if the distance to be traversed is very short and the going quite easy, it is safe enough to dash quickly across.

Dust avalanches occur when a heavy fall of light, powdery snow takes place on frozen hillsides or ice-slopes, and so long as there is no wind or disturbance, all remains quiet, and inexperienced people would think there was no danger. But in reality dust avalanches are the most to be feared of any, for they fall irregularly in unexpected places, and their power is tremendous. While all seems calm and peaceful, suddenly a puff of wind or the passage of an animal disturbs the delicately-balanced masses, and then woe betide whoever is within reach of this frightful engine of destruction. First, the snow begins to slide gently down, then it gathers pace and volume, and even miles away the thul?chter aus und sagtee heard as it leaps from ledge to ledge. Covered with a cloud of smoking, powdery dust, it is a veritable Niagara of giant height, and as it descends towards the forests, it carries with it whatever it finds in its path. Trees are mown down with as much ease as the tender grass of spring. Houses are lifted from the ground and tossed far away.

An avalanche is preceded by a blast even more destructive than the masses of snow which it hurls along. As it advances with ever-increasing rapidity the air in front is more and more compressed as the avalanche rushes on with lightning-like speed behind it. The wind sweeps everything before it, and many are the tales related by those who have survived or witnessed a display of its power. On one occasion more than a hundred houses were overwhelmed by a huge avalanche at Saas , and during the search afterwards the rescue party found amidst the ruins a child lying asleep and uninjured in his cradle, which had been blown to some distance from his home, while close by stood a basket containing six eggs, none of which were broken. I have myself seen a row of telegraph posts in an Alpine valley in winter thrown flat on the ground by the air preceding an enormous avalanche, which itself did not come within 300 yards of them. It is a very wonderful thing that persons buried beneath an avalanche can sometimes hear every word spoken by a search party, and yet not a sound that they utter reaches the ears of those outside. A great deal of air is imprisoned between the particles of snow, and so it is possible for those overwhelmed by an avalanche to live inside it for hours. Cases have been known where a man, buried not far below the surface, has been able to melt a hole to the outer air with his breath, and eventually free himself from his icy prison. On 18th January, 1885, enormous avalanches fell in some of the mountainous districts of northern Italy, houses, cattle, crops, and granaries being carried away, and many victims buried beneath the ruins. Some touching episodes of wonderful escapes were related. "For instance, at Riva, in the valley of Susa, a whole family, consisting of an old woman of seventy, her two daughters, her four nieces, and a child four months old, were buried with their house in the snow, exposed apparently to certain death from cold and hunger. But the soldiers of the Compagnie Alpine, hearing of the sad case, worked with all their might and main to save them, and at last they were found and brought out alive, the brave old grandmother insisting that the children should be saved first, and then her daughters, saying that their lives were more precious than her own." The soldiers, who worked with a will above all praise, were obliged in several cases to construct long galleries in the snow in order to reach the villages, which were sometimes buried beneath 40 feet of snow.

The driving roads over Alpine passes are in places exposed to avalanches in winter. At the worst spots galleries of stone are built, through which the sleighs can pass in perfect safety, and if an avalanche fell while they were inside it would pass harmlessly over their heads. On the Albula Pass, in Switzerland, as soon as the avalanches come down, tunnels are cut in the snow through them, and are in constant use till early summer.

Occasionally houses or churches are built in the very path of an avalanche. A V-shaped wall, called an avalanche-breaker, is put behind, and this cuts the snowy stream in two parts, which passes on harmlessly on either side of the building. Sometimes avalanche-breakers of snow, hardened into ice by throwing water over them, are constructed behind barns which have been put in exposed places.

In order that an avalanche may get up speed enough to commence its swift career, the slope the snow rests on where it starts must be at an angle of from 30? to 35? at least.

THE GUIDES OF THE ALPS: WHAT THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY DO

There is no profession drawing its members from the peasant class which requires a combination of so many high and rare qualities as that of a mountain guide. Happily, the dwellers in hill countries seem usually more noble in mind and robust of frame than the inhabitants of plains, and all who know them well must admit that among Alpine guides are to be found men whose intelligence and character would rank high in any class of life.

I have usually noticed that the abilities and duties of a guide are little understood by the non-climber, who often imagines that a guide's sole business is to know the way and to carry the various useless articles which the beginner in mountaineering insists on taking with him.

And how is this proficiency obtained? How does the guide learn his profession?

In different ways, but he usually begins young, tending goats on steep grassy slopes requiring balance and nerve to move about over. Later on, having decided that he wishes to be a guide, the boy, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, offers himself for examination on applying for a certificate as porter. The requirements for this first step are not great: a good character, a sound physique, a knowledge of reading and writing, and in most Alpine centres the guild of guides will grant him a license. He can now accompany any guide who will take him, on any expedition that guide considers within the porter's powers. His advancement depends on his capacity. Should he quickly adapt himself to the work, the guides will trust him more and more, taking him on difficult ascents and allowing him occasionally to share the responsibility of leading on an ascent and coming down last when descending. It will readily be seen that the leader must never slip, and must, when those who follow are moving, be able to hold them should anything go wrong with them. The same applies to the even more responsible position of last man coming down. When a porter reaches this stage, he is little inferior to a second guide. He can now enter for his final examination. If he is competent, he has no trouble in passing it, and I fear that if the contrary--as is the case in many of those who apply--he gets through easily enough.

At Chamonix the guides' society is controlled by Government. The rules press hardly on the better class of guides there, or would do so if observed; but a first-class guide is practically independent of them, and mountaineers who know the ropes can avoid the regulations. At Zermatt greater liberty is allowed, and, indeed, I believe that everywhere except at Chamonix a guide is free to go with any climber who applies for him. At Chamonix the rule is that the guides are employed in turn, so that the absurd spectacle is possible of a man of real experience carrying a lady's shawl across the Mer de Glace, while a guide, who is little better than a porter, sets out to climb the Aiguille de Dru! However, the exceptions to this rule make a broad way of escape, for a lady alone, a member of an Alpine club, or a climber bent on a particularly difficult ascent, may choose a guide.

The pay of a first-class guide is seldom by tariff, for the class of climber who alone would have the opportunity of securing the services of one of the extremely limited number of guides of the first order generally engages him for some weeks at a time. Indeed, such men are usually bespoken a year in advance. The pay offered and expected is 25 fr. a day, including all expeditions, or else 10 fr. a day for rest days, 50 fr. for a peak, 25 fr. for a pass, in both cases the guide to keep himself, while travelling expenses and food on expeditions are to be paid for by the employer. If a season is fine and the party energetic, the former rate of payment may be the cheaper. The second guide generally receives two-thirds as much as the first guide.

A. Dumkopf took me up the Matterhorn to-day. He showed wonderful sureness of foot and steadiness of head, and I consider him a first-class guide, and have pleasure in recommending him.

A. S. SMITH.

Christian Almer has been our guide for three weeks, during which time we made the ascents of the Matterhorn , Weisshorn , Dent Blanche, and the Bietschhorn. Every journey that we take under Almer's guidance confirms us in the high opinion we have formed of his qualities as a guide and as a man. To the utmost daring and courage he unites prudence and foresight, seldom found in combination.

W. A. B. COOLIDGE. Visp, September 22nd, 1871.

It is when things go badly that a first-class guide is so conspicuously above an inferior man. In sudden storms or fog you may, if accompanied by the former, be in security, while the latter may get his party into positions of great peril. The former will take you slowly and carefully, sounding, perhaps, at every step, over what appears to you a perfectly easy snow plateau. The latter goes across a similar place unsuspecting of harm and with the rope loose, and, lo and behold, you all find yourselves in a hidden crevasse, and are lucky if you escape with your lives. In the early days of mountaineering guides were frequently drawn from the chamois hunters of a district, a sport requiring, perhaps, rather the quickness and agility of the born climber and gymnast than the qualities of calculation and prudence needed in addition by the guide.

The most thoroughly unorthodox beginning to a great career of which I have ever heard was that of Joseph Imboden, of St Nicholas. When a boy his great desire, as he has often told me, was to become a guide. But his father would not consent to it, and apprenticed him to a boot-maker. During the time he toiled at manufacturing and mending shoes he contrived to save 20 fr. He then, at the age of sixteen, ran away from his employer, bought a note-book, and established himself at the Riffel Hotel above Zermatt. On every possible occasion he urged travellers to employ him as guide.

"Where is your book, young man?" they invariably enquired.

He showed it to them, but the pages were blank, and so no one would take him.

"At last," Imboden went on, "my 20 fr. were all but spent, when I managed to persuade a young Englishman to let me take him up Monte Rosa. I told him I knew the mountain well, and I would not charge him high. So we started. I had never set foot on a glacier before or on any mountain, but there was a good track up the snow, and I followed this, and there were other parties on Monte Rosa, so I copied what the guides did, and roped my gentleman as I saw the guides doing theirs. It was a lovely day, and we got on very well, and my gentleman was much pleased, and offered me an engagement to go to Chamonix with him over high passes.

"Then I said to myself: 'Lies have been very useful till now, but the time has come to speak the truth, and I will do so.'

"So I said to him: 'Herr, until to-day I have never climbed a mountain, but I am strong and active, and I have lived among mountaineers and mountains, and I am sure I can satisfy you if you will take me.'

"He was quite ready to do so, and we crossed the Col du G?ant and went up Mont Blanc, but could do no more as the weather was bad. Then he wrote a great deal in my book, and since then I have never been in want of a gentleman to guide."

Imboden's eldest son, Roman, began still younger. When only thirteen he was employed by a member of the Alpine Club, Mr G. S. Barnes, to carry his lunch on the picnics he made with his friends on the glaciers near Saas-F?e. The party eventually undertook more ambitious expeditions, and one evening, Roman, who was very small for his age, was seen entering his native village at the head of a number of climbers who had crossed the Ried Pass, the little boy proudly carrying the largest knapsack of which he could possess himself, a huge coil of rope, and an ice-axe nearly as big as himself. Thus commenced the career of an afterwards famous Alpine guide.

During some fifteen seasons Imboden accompanied me on my climbs, frequently with Roman as second guide. Once the latter went with me to Dauphin?, and, though only twenty-three at the time, took me up the Meije, Ecrins, and other big peaks, his father being detained at home by reason of a bitter feud with the railway company about to run a line through his farm. It is sad to look back to the terrible ending of Roman's career at a period when he was the best young guide in the Alps. How little, in September 1895, as with the Imbodens, father and son, I stood on the summit of the Lyskamm, did any of us think that never again should we be together on a mountain, and that from the very peak on which we were Roman would be precipitated in one awful fall of hundreds of feet, his companions, Dr Guntner and the second guide Ruppen, also losing their lives.

I shall never forget the evening the news reached us at Zermatt. Imboden was, as usual, my guide, but Roman was leading guide to Dr Guntner. A month or two previously this gentleman had written to Roman asking if he would climb with him. Roman showed the letter to his father, saying: "I only go with English people, so I shall refuse." "Do not reply in a hurry," was the answer; "wait and see what the Herr is like, he is coming here soon." So Roman waited, saw Dr Guntner, liked him immensely, and engaged himself, not only till the end of the season, but also for a five months' mountaineering expedition in the Himalayas. We had all arrived at Zermatt from F?e a few days before, and while we waited in the valley for good weather, Dr Guntner, Roman Imboden, and Ruppen went to the Monte Rosa Hut to get some exercise next day on one of the easier peaks in the neighbourhood. Dr Guntner much wished to try the Lyskamm. Roman was against it, as the weather and snow were bad. However, in the morning there was a slight improvement, and as Dr Guntner was still most anxious to attempt the Lyskamm and Roman was so attached to him that he wished to oblige him in every way he could, he consented to, at any rate, go and look at it. Another party followed, feeling secure in the wake of such first-rate climbers, and, though the snow was atrocious and the weather grew worse and worse, no one turned back, and the summit was not far distant.

The gentleman in the second party did not feel very well, and made a long halt on the lower part of the ridge. Something seems to have aroused his suspicions--some drifting snow above, it was said, but I could never understand this part of the story--and an accident was feared. Abandoning the ascent, partly because of illness, partly on account of the weather, the party went down. At the bottom of the ridge, wishing to see if indeed something had gone wrong, they bore over towards the Italian side of the mountain. Directly the snowy plain at the base of the peak became visible, their worst fears were confirmed, for they perceived three black specks lying close together. Examining them through their glasses, it was but too certain that what they saw were the lifeless bodies of Dr Gunnter, Roman, and Ruppen.

Meanwhile, unconscious of the awful tragedy being enacted that day on the mountains, I had sent Imboden down to St Nicholas to see his family, and, after dinner, was sitting writing in the little salon of the Hotel Zermatt when two people entered, remarking to each other, "What a horrible smash on the Lyskamm!"

I started to my feet. Something told me it must be Roman's party. Crossing quickly over to the Monte Rosa Hotel, I found a silent crowd gathering in the street. I went into the office.

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