A Tramp Abroad

by Mark Twain

  CHAPTER XLIX

  [I Scale Mont Blanc--by Telescope]

  After breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix, we went out in the yardand watched the gangs of excursioning tourists arriving and departingwith their mules and guides and porters; then we took a look throughthe telescope at the snowy hump of Mont Blanc. It was brilliant withsunshine, and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly five hundred yardsaway. With the naked eye we could dimly make out the house at the PierrePointue, which is located by the side of the great glacier, and is morethan three thousand feet above the level of the valley; but with thetelescope we could see all its details. While I looked, a woman rode bythe house on a mule, and I saw her with sharp distinctness; I could havedescribed her dress. I saw her nod to the people of the house, and reinup her mule, and put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. I wasnot used to telescopes; in fact, I had never looked through a good onebefore; it seemed incredible to me that this woman could be so far away.I was satisfied that I could see all these details with my nakedeye; but when I tried it, that mule and those vivid people had whollyvanished, and the house itself was become small and vague. I triedthe telescope again, and again everything was vivid. The strong blackshadows of the mule and the woman were flung against the side of thehouse, and I saw the mule's silhouette wave its ears.

  The telescopulist--or the telescopulariat--I do not know which isright--said a party were making a grand ascent, and would come in sighton the remote upper heights, presently; so we waited to observe thisperformance. Presently I had a superb idea. I wanted to stand with aparty on the summit of Mont Blanc, merely to be able to say I had doneit, and I believed the telescope could set me within seven feet of theuppermost man. The telescoper assured me that it could. I then asked himhow much I owed him for as far as I had got? He said, one franc. I askedhim how much it would cost to make the entire ascent? Three francs. I atonce determined to make the entire ascent. But first I inquired if therewas any danger? He said no--not by telescope; said he had taken a greatmany parties to the summit, and never lost a man. I asked what he wouldcharge to let my agent go with me, together with such guides and portersas might be necessary. He said he would let Harris go for two francs;and that unless we were unusually timid, he should consider guides andporters unnecessary; it was not customary to take them, when going bytelescope, for they were rather an encumbrance than a help. He said thatthe party now on the mountain were approaching the most difficult part,and if we hurried we should overtake them within ten minutes, and couldthen join them and have the benefit of their guides and porters withouttheir knowledge, and without expense to us.

  I then said we would start immediately. I believe I said it calmly,though I was conscious of a shudder and of a paling cheek, in view ofthe nature of the exploit I was so unreflectingly engaged in. But theold daredevil spirit was upon me, and I said that as I had committedmyself I would not back down; I would ascend Mont Blanc if it cost memy life. I told the man to slant his machine in the proper direction andlet us be off.

  Harris was afraid and did not want to go, but I heartened him up andsaid I would hold his hand all the way; so he gave his consent, thoughhe trembled a little at first. I took a last pathetic look upon thepleasant summer scene about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass andprepared to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows.

  We took our way carefully and cautiously across the great Glacier desBossons, over yawning and terrific crevices and among imposing cragsand buttresses of ice which were fringed with icicles of giganticproportions. The desert of ice that stretched far and wide about us waswild and desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us wereso great that at times I was minded to turn back. But I pulled my plucktogether and pushed on.

  We passed the glacier safely and began to mount the steeps beyond, withgreat alacrity. When we were seven minutes out from the starting-point,we reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect; an apparentlylimitless continent of gleaming snow was tilted heavenward before ourfaces. As my eye followed that awful acclivity far away up into theremote skies, it seemed to me that all I had ever seen before ofsublimity and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this.

  We rested a moment, and then began to mount with speed. Within threeminutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us, and stopped to observethem. They were toiling up a long, slanting ridge of snow--twelvepersons, roped together some fifteen feet apart, marching in singlefile, and strongly marked against the clear blue sky. One was a woman.We could see them lift their feet and put them down; we saw them swingtheir alpenstocks forward in unison, like so many pendulums, and thenbear their weight upon them; we saw the lady wave her handkerchief. Theydragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way, for they had beenclimbing steadily from the Grand Mulets, on the Glacier des Bossons,since three in the morning, and it was eleven, now. We saw them sinkdown in the snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle. After awhile they moved on, and as they approached the final short dash of thehome-stretch we closed up on them and joined them.

  Presently we all stood together on the summit! What a view was spreadout below! Away off under the northwestern horizon rolled the silentbillows of the Farnese Oberland, their snowy crests glinting softly inthe subdued lights of distance; in the north rose the giant form of theWobblehorn, draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds; beyondhim, to the right, stretched the grand processional summits of theCisalpine Cordillera, drowned in a sensuous haze; to the east loomed thecolossal masses of the Yodelhorn, the Fuddelhorn, and the Dinnerhorn,their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun; beyondthem shimmered the faint far line of the Ghauts of Jubbelpore and theAiguilles des Alleghenies; in the south towered the smoking peakof Popocatapetl and the unapproachable altitudes of the peerlessScrabblehorn; in the west-south the stately range of the Himalayas laydreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all around the curving horizonthe eye roved over a troubled sea of sun-kissed Alps, and noted,here and there, the noble proportions and the soaring domes of theBottlehorn, and the Saddlehorn, and the Shovelhorn, and the Powderhorn,all bathed in the glory of noon and mottled with softly gliding blots,the shadows flung from drifting clouds.

  Overcome by the scene, we all raised a triumphant, tremendous shout, inunison. A startled man at my elbow said:

  "Confound you, what do you yell like that for, right here in thestreet?"

  That brought me down to Chamonix, like a flirt. I gave that man somespiritual advice and disposed of him, and then paid the telescope manhis full fee, and said that we were charmed with the trip and wouldremain down, and not reascend and require him to fetch us down bytelescope. This pleased him very much, for of course we could havestepped back to the summit and put him to the trouble of bringing ushome if we wanted to.

  I judged we could get diplomas, now, anyhow; so we went after them, butthe Chief Guide put us off, with one pretext or another, during all thetime we stayed in Chamonix, and we ended by never getting them at all.So much for his prejudice against people's nationality. However, weworried him enough to make him remember us and our ascent for sometime. He even said, once, that he wished there was a lunatic asylumin Chamonix. This shows that he really had fears that we were going todrive him mad. It was what we intended to do, but lack of time defeatedit.

  I cannot venture to advise the reader one way or the other, as toascending Mont Blanc. I say only this: if he is at all timid, theenjoyments of the trip will hardly make up for the hardships andsufferings he will have to endure. But, if he has good nerve, youth,health, and a bold, firm will, and could leave his family comfortablyprovided for in case the worst happened, he would find the ascent awonderful experience, and the view from the top a vision to dream about,and tell about, and recall with exultation all the days of his life.

  While I do not advise such a person to attempt the ascent, I do notadvise him against it. But if he elects to attempt it, let him be warilycareful of two things: chose a calm, clear day; and do not pay t
hetelescope man in advance. There are dark stories of his getting advancepayers on the summit and then leaving them there to rot.

  A frightful tragedy was once witnessed through the Chamonix telescopes.Think of questions and answers like these, on an inquest:

  CORONER. You saw deceased lose his life?

  WITNESS. I did.

  C. Where was he, at the time?

  W. Close to the summit of Mont Blanc.

  C. Where were you?

  W. In the main street of Chamonix.

  C. What was the distance between you?

  W. _A little over five miles_, as the bird flies.

  This accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the disasteron the Matterhorn. Three adventurous English gentlemen, [1] of greatexperience in mountain-climbing, made up their minds to ascend MontBlanc without guides or porters. All endeavors to dissuade them fromtheir project failed. Powerful telescopes are numerous in Chamonix.These huge brass tubes, mounted on their scaffoldings and pointedskyward from every choice vantage-ground, have the formidable look ofartillery, and give the town the general aspect of getting readyto repel a charge of angels. The reader may easily believe that thetelescopes had plenty of custom on that August morning in 1866, foreverybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was on foot, andall had fears that misfortune would result. All the morning the tubesremained directed toward the mountain heights, each with its anxiousgroup around it; but the white deserts were vacant.

  1. Sir George Young and his brothers James and Albert.

  At last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who were looking through thetelescopes cried out "There they are!"--and sure enough, far up, onthe loftiest terraces of the Grand Plateau, the three pygmies appeared,climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit. They disappeared in the"Corridor," and were lost to sight during an hour. Then they reappeared,and were presently seen standing together upon the extreme summitof Mont Blanc. So, all was well. They remained a few minutes on thathighest point of land in Europe, a target for all the telescopes, andwere then seen to begin descent. Suddenly all three vanished. An instantafter, they appeared again, _two thousand feet below_!

  Evidently, they had tripped and been shot down an almost perpendicularslope of ice to a point where it joined the border of the upper glacier.Naturally, the distant witness supposed they were now looking upon threecorpses; so they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently sawtwo of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third. Duringtwo hours and a half they watched the two busying themselves over theextended form of their brother, who seemed entirely inert. Chamonix'saffairs stood still; everybody was in the street, all interest wascentered upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stagefive miles away. Finally the two--one of them walking with greatdifficulty--were seen to begin descent, abandoning the third, who was nodoubt lifeless. Their movements were followed, step by step, until theyreached the "Corridor" and disappeared behind its ridge. Before they hadhad time to traverse the "Corridor" and reappear, twilight was come, andthe power of the telescope was at an end.

  The survivors had a most perilous journey before them in the gatheringdarkness, for they must get down to the Grands Mulets before they wouldfind a safe stopping-place--a long and tedious descent, and perilousenough even in good daylight. The oldest guides expressed the opinionthat they could not succeed; that all the chances were that they wouldlose their lives.

  Yet those brave men did succeed. They reached the Grands Mulets insafety. Even the fearful shock which their nerves had sustained was notsufficient to overcome their coolness and courage. It would appear fromthe official account that they were threading their way down throughthose dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o'clock in themorning, or later, because the rescuing party from Chamonix reachedthe Grand Mulets about three in the morning and moved thence toward thescene of the disaster under the leadership of Sir George Young, "who hadonly just arrived."

  After having been on his feet twenty-four hours, in the exhausting workof mountain-climbing, Sir George began the reascent at the head of therelief party of six guides, to recover the corpse of his brother. Thiswas considered a new imprudence, as the number was too few for theservice required. Another relief party presently arrived at the cabinon the Grands Mulets and quartered themselves there to await events. Tenhours after Sir George's departure toward the summit, this new reliefwere still scanning the snowy altitudes above them from their own highperch among the ice deserts ten thousand feet above the level of thesea, but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any livingthing appearing up there.

  This was alarming. Half a dozen of their number set out, then early inthe afternoon, to seek and succor Sir George and his guides. The personsremaining at the cabin saw these disappear, and then ensued anotherdistressing wait. Four hours passed, without tidings. Then at fiveo'clock another relief, consisting of three guides, set forward fromthe cabin. They carried food and cordials for the refreshment of theirpredecessors; they took lanterns with them, too; night was coming on,and to make matters worse, a fine, cold rain had begun to fall.

  At the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent, theofficial Guide-in-Chief of the Mont Blanc region undertook the dangerousdescent to Chamonix, all alone, to get reinforcements. However, a coupleof hours later, at 7 P.M., the anxious solicitude came to an end, andhappily. A bugle note was heard, and a cluster of black specks wasdistinguishable against the snows of the upper heights. The watcherscounted these specks eagerly--fourteen--nobody was missing. An hour anda half later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin. They hadbrought the corpse with them. Sir George Young tarried there but a fewminutes, and then began the long and troublesome descent from the cabinto Chamonix. He probably reached there about two or three o'clock in themorning, after having been afoot among the rocks and glaciers during twodays and two nights. His endurance was equal to his daring.

  The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George and the reliefparties among the heights where the disaster had happened was a thickfog--or, partly that and partly the slow and difficult work of conveyingthe dead body down the perilous steeps.

  The corpse, upon being viewed at the inquest, showed no bruises, and itwas some time before the surgeons discovered that the neck was broken.One of the surviving brothers had sustained some unimportant injuries,but the other had suffered no hurt at all. How these men could fall twothousand feet, almost perpendicularly, and live afterward, is a moststrange and unaccountable thing.

  A great many women have made the ascent of Mont Blanc. An English girl,Miss Stratton, conceived the daring idea, two or three years ago, ofattempting the ascent in the middle of winter. She tried it--and shesucceeded. Moreover, she froze two of her fingers on the way up, shefell in love with her guide on the summit, and she married him when shegot to the bottom again. There is nothing in romance, in the way of astriking "situation," which can beat this love scene in midheaven onan isolated ice-crest with the thermometer at zero and an Artic galeblowing.

  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.