Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the Years 1860–69

Beachy Head.

On the 23rd of July 1860, I started for my first tour in the Alps. As we steamed out into the Channel, Beachy Head came into view, and recalled a scramble of many years ago. With the impudence of ignorance, my brother and I, schoolboys both, had tried to scale that great chalk cliff. Not the head itself⁠—where seabirds circle, and where the flints are ranged in orderly parallel lines⁠—but at a place more to the east, where a pinnacle called the Devil’s Chimney had fallen down. Since then we have been often in dangers of different kinds, but never have we more nearly broken our necks than upon that occasion.

Nothing but the heavy breathing of our already sound asleep comrades broke the solemn stillness of the night. It was a silence to be felt. Nothing? Hark! what is that dull booming sound above us? Is that nothing? There it is again, plainer⁠—on it comes, nearer, clearer; ’tis a crag escaped from the heights above! What a fearful crash! We jump to our feet. Down it comes with awful fury; what power can withstand its violence? Dancing, leaping, flying; dashing against others; roaring as it descends. Ah, it has passed! No; there it is again, and we hold our breath, as, with resistless force and explosions like artillery, it darts past, with an avalanche of shattered fragments trailing in its rear! ’Tis gone, and we breathe more freely as we hear the finale on the glacier below.

We retired at last, but I was too excited to sleep. At a quarter-past four every man once more shouldered his pack and started.

We had need of a porter, and, by the advice of our landlord, descended to the chalets of Breuil in search of one Luc Meynet. We found his house a mean abode, encumbered with cheese-making apparatus, and tenanted only by some bright-eyed children; but as they said that uncle Luc would soon be home, we waited at the door of the little chalet and watched for him. At last a speck was seen coming round the corner of the patch of pines below Breuil, and then the children clapped their hands, dropped their toys, and ran eagerly forward to meet him. We saw an ungainly, wobbling figure stoop down and catch up the little ones, kiss them on each cheek, and put them into the empty panniers on each side of the mule, and then heard it come on carolling, as if this was not a world of woe: and yet the face of little Luc Meynet, the hunchback of Breuil, bore traces of trouble and sorrow, and there was more than a touch of sadness in his voice when he said that he must look after his brother’s children. All his difficulties were, however, at length overcome, and he agreed to join us to carry the tent.

“The Chimney.” On the southwest ridge of the Matterhorn.

The Col du Lion was passed, and fifty yards more would have placed me on the “Great Staircase,” down which one can run. But on arriving at an angle of the cliffs of the Tête du Lion, while skirting the upper edge of the snow which abuts against them, I found that the heat of the two past days had nearly obliterated the steps which had been cut when coming up. The rocks happened to be impracticable just at this corner, and it was necessary to make the steps afresh. The snow was too hard to beat or tread down, and at the angle it was all but ice; half-a-dozen steps only were required, and then the ledges could be followed again. So I held to the rock with my right hand, and prodded at the snow with the point of my stick until a good step was made, and then, leaning round the angle, did the same for the other side. So far well, but in attempting to pass the corner (to the present moment I cannot tell how it happened) I slipped and fell.

The slope was steep on which this took place, and was at the top of a gully that led down through two subordinate buttresses towards the Glacier du Lion⁠—which was just seen, a thousand feet below. The gully narrowed and narrowed, until there was a mere thread of snow lying between two walls of rock, which came to an abrupt termination at the top of a precipice that intervened between it and the glacier.

Not a footstep could be seen.

It was not yet certain that we had not been beaten. The summit of the Matterhorn was formed of a rudely level ridge, about 350 feet long, and the Italians might have been at its farther extremity. I hastened to the southern end, scanning the snow right and left eagerly. Hurrah! again; it was untrodden. “Where were the men?” I peered over the cliff, half doubting, half expectant. I saw them immediately⁠—mere dots on the ridge, at an immense distance below. Up went my arms and my hat. “Croz! Croz!! come here!” “Where are they, Monsieur?” “There, don’t you see them, down there?” “Ah! the coquins, they are low down.” “Croz, we must make those fellows hear us.” We yelled until we were hoarse. The Italians seemed to regard us⁠—we could not be certain. “Croz, we must make them hear us; they shall hear us!” I seized a block of rock and hurled it down, and called upon my companion, in the name of friendship, to do the same. We drove our sticks in, and prized away the crags, and soon a torrent of stones poured down the cliffs. There was no mistake about it this time. The Italians turned and fled.