A Tramp Abroad — Volume 07

by Mark Twain

  The first woman who ascended Mont Blanc was a girl agedtwenty-two--Mlle. Maria Paradis--1809. Nobody was with her but hersweetheart, and he was not a guide. The sex then took a rest for aboutthirty years, when a Mlle. d'Angeville made the ascent --1838. InChamonix I picked up a rude old lithograph of that day which picturedher "in the act."

  However, I value it less as a work of art than as a fashion-plate. Missd'Angeville put on a pair of men's pantaloons to climb it, which waswise; but she cramped their utility by adding her petticoat, which wasidiotic.

  One of the mournfulest calamities which men's disposition to climbdangerous mountains has resulted in, happened on Mont Blanc in September1870. M. D'Arve tells the story briefly in his HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC.In the next chapter I will copy its chief features.

  CHAPTER XLV

  A Catastrophe Which Cost Eleven Lives

  On the 5th of September, 1870, a caravan of eleven persons departedfrom Chamonix to make the ascent of Mont Blanc. Three of the partywere tourists; Messrs. Randall and Bean, Americans, and Mr. GeorgeCorkindale, a Scotch gentleman; there were three guides and fiveporters. The cabin on the Grands Mulets was reached that day; the ascentwas resumed early the next morning, September 6th. The day was fineand clear, and the movements of the party were observed through thetelescopes of Chamonix; at two o'clock in the afternoon they were seento reach the summit. A few minutes later they were seen making the firststeps of the descent; then a cloud closed around them and hid them fromview.

  Eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night came, no one hadreturned to the Grands Mulets. Sylvain Couttet, keeper of the cabinthere, suspected a misfortune, and sent down to the valley for help. Adetachment of guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedioustrip and reached the cabin, a raging storm had set in. They had to wait;nothing could be attempted in such a tempest.

  The wild storm lasted MORE THAN A WEEK, without ceasing; but on the17th, Couttet, with several guides, left the cabin and succeeded inmaking the ascent. In the snowy wastes near the summit they came uponfive bodies, lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude whichsuggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there, while exhaustedwith fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold, and never knew whendeath stole upon them. Couttet moved a few steps further and discoveredfive more bodies. The eleventh corpse--that of a porter--was not found,although diligent search was made for it.

  In the pocket of Mr. Bean, one of the Americans, was found a note-bookin which had been penciled some sentences which admit us, in flesh andspirit, as it were, to the presence of these men during their last hoursof life, and to the grisly horrors which their fading vision looked uponand their failing consciousness took cognizance of: TUESDAY, SEPT. 6. I have made the ascent of Mont Blanc, with tenpersons--eight guides, and Mr. Corkindale and Mr. Randall. We reachedthe summit at half past 2. Immediately after quitting it, we wereenveloped in clouds of snow. We passed the night in a grotto hollowed inthe snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and I was ill all night.

  SEPT. 7--MORNING. The cold is excessive. The snow falls heavily andwithout interruption. The guides take no rest.

  EVENING. My Dear Hessie, we have been two days on Mont Blanc, in themidst of a terrible hurricane of snow, we have lost our way, and arein a hole scooped in the snow, at an altitude of 15,000 feet. I have nolonger any hope of descending.

  They had wandered around, and around, in the blinding snow-storm,hopelessly lost, in a space only a hundred yards square; and when coldand fatigue vanquished them at last, they scooped their cave and laydown there to die by inches, UNAWARE THAT FIVE STEPS MORE WOULD HAVEBROUGHT THEM INTO THE TRUTH PATH. They were so near to life and safetyas that, and did not suspect it. The thought of this gives the sharpestpang that the tragic story conveys.

  The author of the HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC introduced the closingsentences of Mr. Bean's pathetic record thus:

  "Here the characters are large and unsteady; the hand which traces themis become chilled and torpid; but the spirit survives, and the faith andresignation of the dying man are expressed with a sublime simplicity."

  Perhaps this note-book will be found and sent to you. We have nothing toeat, my feet are already frozen, and I am exhausted; I have strength towrite only a few words more. I have left means for C's education; I knowyou will employ them wisely. I die with faith in God, and with lovingthoughts of you. Farewell to all. We shall meet again, in Heaven. ... Ithink of you always.

  It is the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims with amerciful swiftness, but here the rule failed. These men sufferedthe bitterest death that has been recorded in the history of thosemountains, freighted as that history is with grisly tragedies.

  CHAPTER XLVI

  [Meeting a Hog on a Precipice]

  Mr. Harris and I took some guides and porters and ascended to the Hoteldes Pyramides, which is perched on the high moraine which borders theGlacier des Bossons. The road led sharply uphill, all the way, throughgrass and flowers and woods, and was a pleasant walk, barring thefatigue of the climb.

  From the hotel we could view the huge glacier at very close range. Aftera rest we followed down a path which had been made in the steep innerfrontage of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself. One of theshows of the place was a tunnel-like cavern, which had been hewn in theglacier. The proprietor of this tunnel took candles and conducted usinto it. It was three or four feet wide and about six feet high. Itswalls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich blue light thatproduced a lovely effect, and suggested enchanted caves, and that sortof thing. When we had proceeded some yards and were entering darkness,we turned about and had a dainty sunlit picture of distant woods andheights framed in the strong arch of the tunnel and seen through thetender blue radiance of the tunnel's atmosphere.

  The cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and when we reached itsinner limit the proprietor stepped into a branch tunnel with his candlesand left us buried in the bowels of the glacier, and in pitch-darkness.We judged his purpose was murder and robbery; so we got out our matchesand prepared to sell our lives as dearly as possible by setting theglacier on fire if the worst came to the worst--but we soon perceivedthat this man had changed his mind; he began to sing, in a deep,melodious voice, and woke some curious and pleasing echoes. By and by hecame back and pretended that that was what he had gone behind there for.We believed as much of that as we wanted to.

  Thus our lives had been once more in imminent peril, but by the exerciseof the swift sagacity and cool courage which had saved us so often, wehad added another escape to the long list. The tourist should visit thatice-cavern, by all means, for it is well worth the trouble; but I wouldadvise him to go only with a strong and well-armed force. I do notconsider artillery necessary, yet it would not be unadvisable to takeit along, if convenient. The journey, going and coming, is about threemiles and a half, three of which are on level ground. We made it inless than a day, but I would counsel the unpracticed--if not pressedfor time--to allow themselves two. Nothing is gained in the Alps byover-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding two days' work into one forthe poor sake of being able to boast of the exploit afterward. It willbe found much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days, andthen subtract one of them from the narrative. This saves fatigue, anddoes not injure the narrative. All the more thoughtful among the Alpinetourists do this.

  We now called upon the Guide-in-Chief, and asked for a squadron ofguides and porters for the ascent of the Montanvert. This idiot glaredat us, and said:

  "You don't need guides and porters to go to the Montanvert."

  "What do we need, then?"

  "Such as YOU?--an ambulance!"

  I was so stung by this brutal remark that I took my custom elsewhere.

  Betimes, next morning, we had reached an altitude of five thousand feetabove the level of the sea. Here we camped and breakfasted. There wasa cabin there--the spot is called the Caillet--and a spring of ice-coldwater. On the door of the cabin was a sign, in French,
to the effectthat "One may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes." We did notinvest; what we wanted was to see a dead one.

  A little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the new hotel onthe Montanvert, and had a view of six miles, right up the great glacier,the famous Mer de Glace. At this point it is like a sea whose deepswales and long, rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement andfrozen solid; but further up it is broken up into wildly tossing billowsof ice.

  We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine, andinvaded the glacier. There were tourists of both sexes scattered far andwide over it, everywhere, and it had the festive look of a skating-rink.

  The Empress Josephine came this far, once. She ascended the Montanvertin 1810--but not alone; a small army of men preceded her to clear thepath--and carpet it, perhaps--and she followed, under the protection ofSIXTY-EIGHT guides.

  Her successor visited Chamonix later, but in far different style.

  It was seven weeks after the first fall of the Empire, and poor MarieLouise, ex-Empress was a fugitive. She came at night, and in a storm,with only two attendants, and stood before a peasant's hut, tired,bedraggled, soaked with rain, "the red print of her lost crown stillgirdling her brow," and implored admittance--and was refused! A few daysbefore, the adulations and applauses of a nation were sounding in herears, and now she was come to this!

  We crossed the Mer de Glace in safety, but we had misgivings. Thecrevices in the ice yawned deep and blue and mysterious, and it made onenervous to traverse them. The huge round waves of ice were slippery anddifficult to climb, and the chances of tripping and sliding down themand darting into a crevice were too many to be comfortable.

  In the bottom of a deep swale between two of the biggest of theice-waves, we found a fraud who pretended to be cutting steps to insurethe safety of tourists. He was "soldiering" when we came upon him, buthe hopped up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough for acat, and charged us a franc or two for it. Then he sat down again, todoze till the next party should come along.

  He had collected blackmail from two or three hundred people already,that day, but had not chipped out ice enough to impair the glacierperceptibly. I have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it seemsto me that keeping toll-bridge on a glacier is the softest one I haveencountered yet.

  That was a blazing hot day, and it brought a persistent and persecutingthirst with it. What an unspeakable luxury it was to slake that thirstwith the pure and limpid ice-water of the glacier! Down the sides ofevery great rib of pure ice poured limpid rills in gutters carved bytheir own attrition; better still, wherever a rock had lain, there wasnow a bowl-shaped hole, with smooth white sides and bottom of ice, andthis bowl was brimming with water of such absolute clearness that thecareless observer would not see it at all, but would think the bowl wasempty. These fountains had such an alluring look that I often stretchedmyself out when I was not thirsty and dipped my face in and drank tillmy teeth ached. Everywhere among the Swiss mountains we had at hand theblessing--not to be found in Europe EXCEPT in the mountains--of watercapable of quenching thirst. Everywhere in the Swiss highlands brilliantlittle rills of exquisitely cold water went dancing along by theroadsides, and my comrade and I were always drinking and alwaysdelivering our deep gratitude.

  But in Europe everywhere except in the mountains, the water is flat andinsipid beyond the power of words to describe. It is served lukewarm;but no matter, ice could not help it; it is incurably flat, incurablyinsipid. It is only good to wash with; I wonder it doesn't occur tothe average inhabitant to try it for that. In Europe the people saycontemptuously, "Nobody drinks water here." Indeed, they have a soundand sufficient reason. In many places they even have what may be calledprohibitory reasons. In Paris and Munich, for instance, they say, "Don'tdrink the water, it is simply poison."

  Either America is healthier than Europe, notwithstanding her "deadly"indulgence in ice-water, or she does not keep the run of her death-rateas sharply as Europe does. I think we do keep up the death statisticsaccurately; and if we do, our cities are healthier than the cities ofEurope. Every month the German government tabulates the death-rate ofthe world and publishes it. I scrap-booked these reports during severalmonths, and it was curious to see how regular and persistently each cityrepeated its same death-rate month after month. The tables might as wellhave been stereotyped, they varied so little. These tables werebased upon weekly reports showing the average of deaths in each 1,000population for a year. Munich was always present with her 33 deaths ineach 1,000 of her population (yearly average), Chicago was as constantwith her 15 or 17, Dublin with her 48--and so on.

  Only a few American cities appear in these tables, but they arescattered so widely over the country that they furnish a good generalaverage of CITY health in the United States; and I think it will begranted that our towns and villages are healthier than our cities.

  Here is the average of the only American cities reported in the Germantables:

  Chicago, deaths in 1,000 population annually, 16; Philadelphia, 18; St.Louis, 18; San Francisco, 19; New York (the Dublin of America), 23.

  See how the figures jump up, as soon as one arrives at the transatlanticlist:

  Paris, 27; Glasgow, 27; London, 28; Vienna, 28; Augsburg, 28;Braunschweig, 28; Koenigsberg, 29; Cologne, 29; Dresden, 29; Hamburg, 29;Berlin, 30; Bombay, 30; Warsaw, 31; Breslau, 31; Odessa, 32; Munich, 33;Strasburg, 33, Pesth, 35; Cassel, 35; Lisbon, 36; Liverpool, 36;Prague, 37; Madras, 37; Bucharest, 39; St. Petersburg, 40; Trieste, 40;Alexandria (Egypt), 43; Dublin, 48; Calcutta, 55.

  Edinburgh is as healthy as New York--23; but there is no CITY in theentire list which is healthier, except Frankfort-on-the-Main--20. ButFrankfort is not as healthy as Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, orPhiladelphia.

  Perhaps a strict average of the world might develop the fact that whereone in 1,000 of America's population dies, two in 1,000 of the otherpopulations of the earth succumb.

  I do not like to make insinuations, but I do think the above statisticsdarkly suggest that these people over here drink this detestable water"on the sly."

  We climbed the moraine on the opposite side of the glacier, and thencrept along its sharp ridge a hundred yards or so, in pretty constantdanger of a tumble to the glacier below. The fall would have been onlyone hundred feet, but it would have closed me out as effectually as onethousand, therefore I respected the distance accordingly, and wasglad when the trip was done. A moraine is an ugly thing to assaulthead-first. At a distance it looks like an endless grave of fine sand,accurately shaped and nicely smoothed; but close by, it is found to bemade mainly of rough boulders of all sizes, from that of a man's head tothat of a cottage.

  By and by we came to the Mauvais Pas, or the Villainous Road, totranslate it feelingly. It was a breakneck path around the face of aprecipice forty or fifty feet high, and nothing to hang on to but someiron railings. I got along, slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, andfinally reached the middle. My hopes began to rise a little, but theywere quickly blighted; for there I met a hog--a long-nosed, bristlyfellow, that held up his snout and worked his nostrils at meinquiringly. A hog on a pleasure excursion in Switzerland--think of it!It is striking and unusual; a body might write a poem about it. Hecould not retreat, if he had been disposed to do it. It would have beenfoolish to stand upon our dignity in a place where there was hardly roomto stand upon our feet, so we did nothing of the sort. There were twentyor thirty ladies and gentlemen behind us; we all turned about and wentback, and the hog followed behind. The creature did not seem set up bywhat he had done; he had probably done it before.

  We reached the restaurant on the height called the Chapeau at four inthe afternoon. It was a memento-factory, and the stock was large, cheap,and varied. I bought the usual paper-cutter to remember the place by,and had Mont Blanc, the Mauvais Pas, and the rest of the region brandedon my alpenstock; then we descended to the valley and walked homewithout being tied together. This was not dangerous, for the valley wasfive miles wide, an
d quite level.

  We reached the hotel before nine o'clock. Next morning we left forGeneva on top of the diligence, under shelter of a gay awning. If Iremember rightly, there were more than twenty people up there. It wasso high that the ascent was made by ladder. The huge vehicle was fulleverywhere, inside and out. Five other diligences left at the same time,all full. We had engaged our seats two days beforehand, to make sure,and paid the regulation price, five dollars each; but the rest of thecompany were wiser; they had trusted Baedeker, and waited; consequentlysome of them got their seats for one or two dollars. Baedeker knowsall about hotels, railway and diligence companies, and speaks his mindfreely. He is a trustworthy friend of the traveler.

  We never saw Mont Blanc at his best until we were many miles away; thenhe lifted his majestic proportions high into the heavens, all whiteand cold and solemn, and made the rest of the world seem little andplebeian, and cheap and trivial.

  As he passed out of sight at last, an old Englishman settled himself inhis seat and said:

  "Well, I am satisfied, I have seen the principal features of Swissscenery--Mont Blanc and the goiter--now for home!"

  CHAPTER XLVII

  [Queer European Manners]

  We spent a few pleasant restful days at Geneva, that delightful citywhere accurate time-pieces are made for all the rest of the world, butwhose own clocks never give the correct time of day by any accident.

  Geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are filled with themost enticing gimcrackery, but if one enters one of these places he isat once pounced upon, and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this,that, and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get out again,and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment. The shopkeepers of thesmaller sort, in Geneva, are as troublesome and persistent as arethe salesmen of that monster hive in Paris, the Grands Magasins duLouvre--an establishment where ill-mannered pestering, pursuing, andinsistence have been reduced to a science.