Chapter 4
The porter's rap came unexpectedly soon, and in response to the question, "What is the weather?" he said, "Not utterly bad." There is plenty of starlight; there had been through the night plenty of live thunder leaping among the rattling crags, some of it very interestingly near. We rose; there were three parties ready to make the ascent. The lightning still glimmered behind the Matterhorn and the Weisshorn, and the sound of the tumbling cataracts was ominously distinct. Was the storm over? The guides would give no opinion. It was their interest to go, it was ours to go only in good weather. By three o'clock I noticed that the pointer on the aneroid barometer, that instrument that has a kind of spiritual fineness of feeling, had moved a tenth of an inch upward. I gave the order to start. The other parties said, "Good for your pluck! _Bon voyage, gute reise_," and went to bed. In an hour we had ascended one thousand feet and down again to the glacier. The sky was brilliant. Hopes were high. The glacier with its vast medial moraines, shoving along rocks from twenty to fifty feet long, was crossed in the dawn. The sun rose clear, touching the snow-peaks with glory, and we shouted victory. But in a moment the sun was clouded, and so were we. Soon it came out again, and continued clear. But the guide said, "Only the good God knows if we shall have clear weather." Men get pious amid perils. I thought of the aneroid, and felt that the good God had confided his knowledge to one of his servants.
Leaving the glacier, we came to the real mountain. Six hours and a half will put one on the top, but he ought to take eight. I have no fondness for men who come to the Alps to see how quickly they can do the ascents. They simply proclaim that their object is not to see and enjoy, but to boast. We go up the lateral moraine, a huge ridge fifty feet high, with rocks in it ten feet square turned by the mighty plow of ice below. We scramble up the rocks of the mountain. Hour after hour we toil upward. At length we come to the snow-slopes, and are all four roped together. There are great crevasses, fifty or a hundred feet deep, with slight bridges of snow over them. If a man drops in the rest must pull him out. Being heavier than any other man of the party I thrust a leg through one snow-bridge, but I had just fixed my ice ax in the firm abutment and was saved the inconvenience and delay of dangling by a rope in a chasm. The beauty of these cold blue ice vaults cannot be described. They are often fringed with icicles. In one place they had formed from an overhanging shelf, reached the bottom, and then the shelf had melted away, leaving the icicles in an apparently reversed condition. We passed one place where vast masses of ice had rolled down from above, and we saw how a breath might start a new avalanche. We were up in one of nature's grandest workshops.
How the view widened! How the fleeting cloud and sunshine heightened the effect in the valley below! The glorious air made us know what the man meant who every morning thanked God that he was alive. Some have little occasion to be thankful in that respect.
Here we learned the use of a guide. Having carefully chosen him, by testimony of persons having experience, we were to follow him; not only generally, but step by step. Put each foot in his track. He had trodden the snow to firmness. But being heavier than he it often gave way under my pressure. One such slump and recovery takes more strength than ten regular steps. Not so in following the Guide to the fairer and greater heights of the next world. He who carried this world and its burden of sin on his heart trod the quicksands of time into such firmness that no man walking in his steps, however great his sins, ever breaks down the track. And just so in that upward way, one fall and recovery takes more strength than ten rising steps.
Meanwhile, what of the weather? Uncertainty. Avalanches thundered from the Breithorn and Lyskamm, telling of a penetrative moisture in the air. The Matterhorn refused to take in its signal flags of storm. Still the sun shone clear. We had put in six of the eight hours' work of ascent when snow began to fall. Soon it was too thick to see far. We came to a chasm that looked vast in the deception of the storm. It was only twenty feet wide. Getting round this the storm deepened till we could scarcely see one another. There was no mountain, no sky. We halted of necessity. The guide said, "Go back." I said, "Wait." We waited in wind, hail, and snow till all vestige of the track by which we had come--our only guide back if the storm continued--was lost except the holes made by the Alpenstocks. The snow drifted over, and did not fill these so quickly.
Not knowing but that the storm might last two days, as is frequently the case, I reluctantly gave the order to go down. In an hour we got below the storm. The valley into which we looked was full of brightest sunshine; the mountain above us looked like a cowled monk. In another hour the whole sky was perfectly clear. O that I had kept my faith in my aneroid! Had I held to the faith that started me in the morning--endured the storm, not wavered at suggestions of peril, defied apparent knowledge of local guides--and then been able to surmount the difficulty of the new-fallen snow, I should have been favored with such a view as is not enjoyed once in ten years; for men cannot go up all the way in storm, nor soon enough after to get all the benefit of the cleared air. Better things were prepared for me than I knew; indications of them offered to my faith; they were firmly grasped, and held almost long enough for realization, and then let go in an hour of darkness and storm.
I reached the Riffelhouse after eleven hours' struggle with rocks and softened snow, and said to the guide, "To-morrow I start for the Matterhorn." To do this we go down the three hundred stories to Zermatt.
Every mountain excursion I ever made has been in the highest degree profitable. Even this one, though robbed of its hoped-for culmination, has been one of the richest I have ever enjoyed.
THE MATTERHORN
The Matterhorn is peculiar. I do not know of another mountain like it on the earth. There are such splintered and precipitous spires on the moon. How it came to be such I treated of fully in _Sights and Insights_. It is approximately a three-sided mountain, fourteen thousand seven hundred and eighteen feet high, whose sides are so steep as to be unassailable. Approach can be made only along the angle at the junction of the planes.
It was long supposed to be inaccessible. Assault after assault was made on it by the best and most ambitious Alp climbers, but it kept its virgin height untrodden. However, in 1864, seven men, almost unexpectedly, achieved the victory; but in descending four of them were precipitated, down an almost perpendicular declivity, four thousand feet. They had achieved the summit after hundreds of others had failed. They had reveled in the upper glories, deposited proof of their visit, and started to return. According to law, they were roped together. According to custom, in a difficult place all remain still, holding the rope, except one who carefully moves on. Croz, the first guide, was reaching up to take the feet of Mr. Haddow and help him down to where he stood. Suddenly Haddow's strength failed, or he slipped and struck Croz on the shoulders, knocking him off his narrow footing. They two immediately jerked off Rev. Mr. Hudson. The three falling jerked off Lord Francis Douglas. Four were loose and falling; only three left on the rocks. Just then the rope somehow parted, and all four dropped that great fraction of a mile. The mountain climber makes a sad pilgrimage to the graves of three of them in Zermatt; the fourth probably fell in a crevasse of the glacier at the foot, and may be brought to the sight of friends in perhaps two score years, when the river of ice shall have moved down into the valleys where the sun has power to melt away the ice. This accident gave the mountain a reputation for danger to which an occasional death on it since has added.
Each of these later unfortunate occurrences is attributable to personal perversity or deficiency. Peril depends more on the man than on circumstances. One is in danger on a wall twenty feet high, another safe on a precipice of a thousand feet. No man has a right to peril his life in mere mountain climbing; that great sacrifice must be reserved for saving others, or for establishing moral principle.
The morning after coming from Monte Rosa myself and son left Zermatt at half past seven for the top of the Matterhorn, twelve hours distant, under the guidance of Peter Knubel, his brother, and Peter Truffer, three of the best guides for this work in the country. In an hour the dwellings of the mountain-loving people are left behind, the tree limit is passed soon after, the grass cheers us for three hours, when we enter on the wide desolation of the moraines. Here is a little chapel. I entered it as reverently and prayed as earnestly for God's will, not mine, to be done as I ever did in my life, and I am confident that amid the unutterable grandeur that succeeded I felt his presence and help as fully as at any other time.
At ten minutes of two we were roped together and feeling our way carefully in the cut steps on a glacier so steep that, standing erect, one could put his hand upon it. We were on this nearly an hour. Just as we left it for the rocks a great noise above, and a little to the south, attracted attention. A vast mass of stone had detached itself from the overhanging cliff at the top, and falling on the steep slope had broken into a hundred pieces. These went bounding down the side in long leaps. Wherever one struck a cloud of powdered stone leaped into the air, till the whole mountain side smoked and thundered with the grand cannonade. The omen augured to me that the mountain was going to do its best for our reception and entertainment. Fortunately these rock avalanches occur on the steep, unapproachable sides, and not at the angle where men climb.
How the mountain grew upon us as we clung to its sides! When the great objects below had changed to littleness the heights above seemed greater than ever. At half past four we came to a perpendicular height of twenty feet, with a slight slope above. Down this precipice hung a rope; there was also an occasional projection of an inch or two of stone for the mailed foot. At the top, on a little shelf, under hundreds of feet of overhanging rock, some stones had been built round and over a little space for passing the night. The rude cabin occupied all the width of the shelf, so that passing to its other end there was not room to walk without holding on by one's hands in the crevices of the wall. We were now at home; had taken nine hours to do what could be done in eight. What an eyrie in which to sleep! Below us was a sheer descent, of a thousand or two feet, to the glacier. Above us towered the crest of the mountain, seemingly higher than ever. The sharp shadow of the lofty pyramid lengthened toward Monte Rosa. Italy lifted up its mountains tipped with sunshine to cheer us. The Obernese Alps, beyond the Rhone, answered with numerous torches to light us to our sleep. According to prearrangement, at eight o'clock we kindled a light on our crag to tell our friends in Zermatt that we had accomplished the first stage of our journey. They answered instantly with a cheery blaze, and we lay down to sleep.
When four of us lay together I was so crowded against the wall that I thought if it should give way I could fall two thousand feet out of bed without possibility of stopping on the way. The ice was two feet thick on the floor, and by reason of the scarcity of bedding I was reminded of the damp, chilly sheets of some unaired guest-chambers. I do not think I slept a moment, but I passed the night in a most happy, thoughtful, and exultant frame of mind.
At half past three in the morning we were roped together--fifteen feet of rope between each two men--for the final three or four hours' work. It is everywhere steep; it is every minute hands and feet on the rocks; sometimes you cling with fingers, elbows, knees, and feet, and are tempted to add the nose and chin. Where it is least steep the guide's heels are right in your face; when it is precipitous you only see a line of rope before you. We make the final pause an hour before the top. Here every weight and the fear that so easily besets one must be laid aside. No part of the way has seemed so difficult; not even that just past--when we rounded a shoulder on the ice for sixty feet, sometimes not over twenty inches wide, on the verge of a precipice four thousand feet high. To this day I can see the wrinkled form of that far-down glacier below, though I took care not to make more than one glance at it.
The rocks become smoother and steeper, if possible. A chain or rope trails from above in four places. You have good hope that it is well secured, and wish you were lighter, as you go up hand over hand. Then a beautiful slope for hands, knees, and feet for half an hour, and the top is reached at half past six.
The view is sublime. Moses on Pisgah could have had no such vision. He had knowledge added of the future grandeur of his people, but such a revelation as this tells so clearly what God can do for his people hereafter that that element of Moses's enjoyment can be perceived, if not fully appreciated. All the well-known mountains stand up like friends to cheer us. Mont Blanc has the smile of the morning sun to greet us withal. Monte Rosa chides us for not partaking of her prepared visions. The kingdoms of the world--France, Switzerland, Italy--are at our feet. One hundred and twenty snow-peaks flame like huge altar piles in the morning sun. The exhilarant air gives ecstasy to body, the new visions intensity of feeling to soul. The Old World has sunk out of sight. This is Mount Zion, the city of God. New Jerusalem has come down out of heaven adorned as a bride for her husband. The pavements are like glass mingled with fire. The gates of the morning are pearl. The walls, near or far according to your thought, are like jasper and sapphire. The glory of God and of the Lamb lightens it.
But we must descend, though it is good to be here. It is even more difficult and tedious than the ascent. _Non facilis descensus_. With your face to the mountain you have only the present surface and the effort for that instant. But when you turn your back on the mountain the imminent danger appears. It is not merely ahead, but the sides are much more dangerous. On the way down we had more cannonades. In six hours we were off the cliffs, and by half past three we had let ourselves down, inch by inch, to Zermatt, a distance of nine thousand four hundred feet.
Looking up to the Matterhorn this next morning after the climb, I feel for it a personal affection. It has put more pictures of grandeur into my being than ever entered in such a way before. It is grand enough to bear acquaintance. People who view it from a distance must be strangers. It has been, and ever will be, a great example and lofty monument of my Father's power. He taketh up the isles as a very little thing; he toucheth the mountains and they smoke. The strength of the hills is his also; and he has made all things for his children, and waits to do greater things than these.
THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO RIVER
Before me lies a thin bit of red rock, rippled as delicately as a woman's hair, bearing marks of raindrops that came from the south. It was once soft clay. It was laid down close to the igneous Archaean rocks when Mother Earth was in her girlhood and water first began to flow. More clay flowed over, and all was hardened into rock. Many strata, variously colored and composed, were deposited, till our bit of beauty was buried thousands of feet deep. The strata were tilted variously and abraded wondrously, for our earth has been treated very much as the fair-armed bread-maker treats the lump of dough she doubles and kneads on the molding board. Other rocks of a much harder nature, composed in part of the shells of inexpressible multitudes of Ocean's infusoria, were laid down from the superincumbent sea. Still the delicate ripple marks were preserved. Nature's vast library was being formed, and on this scrap of a leaf not a letter was lost.
Beside this stone now lies another of the purest white. It once flowed as water impregnated with lime, and clung to the lower side of a rock now as high above the sea as many a famous mountain. The water gradually evaporated, and the lime still hung like tiny drops. Between the two stones now so near together was once a perpendicular distance of more than a mile of impenetrable rock. How did they ever get together? Let us see.
After the rock making, by the deposit of clay, limestone, etc., this vast plain was lifted seven thousand feet above the sea and rimmed round with mountains. Perhaps in being afterward volcanically tossed in one of this old world's spasms an irregular crack ripped its way along a few hundred miles. Into this crack rushed a great river, perhaps also an inland ocean or vast Lake Superior, of which Salt Lake may be a little remnant puddle. These tumultuous waters proceeded to pulverize, dissolve, and carry away these six thousand feet of rock deposited between the two stones. There was fall enough to make forty Niagaras.
I was once where a deluge of rain had fallen a few days before in a mountain valley. It tore loose some huge rocks and plunged down a precipice of one thousand feet. The rock at the bottom was crushed under the frightful weight of the tumbling superincumbent mass, and every few minutes the top became the bottom. In one hour millions of tons of rock were crushed to pebbles and spread for miles over the plain, filling up a whole village to the roofs of the houses. I knew three villages utterly destroyed by a rush of water only ten feet deep. Water and gravitation make a frightful plow. Here some prehistoric Mississippi turned its mighty furrows.
The Colorado River is one of our great rivers. It is over two thousand miles long, reaches from near our northern to beyond our southern border, and drains three hundred thousand square miles of the west side of the Rocky Mountains. Great as it remains, it is a mere thread to what it once was. It is easy to see that there were several epochs of work. Suppose the first one took off the upper limestone rock to the depth of several thousand feet. This cutting is of various widths. Just here it is eighteen miles wide; but as such rocks are of varying hardness there are many promontories that distinctly project out, say, half a mile from the general rim line, and rising in the center are various Catskill and Holyoke mountains, with defiantly perpendicular sides, that persisted in resisting the mighty rush of waters. The outer portions of their foundations were cut away by the mighty flood and, as the ages went by, occasionally the sides thundered into the chasm, leaving the wall positively perpendicular.
We may now suppose the ocean waters nearly exhausted and only the mighty rivers that had made that ocean were left to flow; indeed, the rising Sierras of some range unknown at the present may have shut off whole oceans of rain. The rivers that remained began to cut a much narrower channel into the softer sand and clay-rock below. From the great mountain-rimmed plateau rivers poured in at the sides, cutting lateral cañons down to the central flow. Between these stand the little Holyokes aforesaid, with greatly narrowed base.
I go down with most reverent awe and pick the little ripple-rain-marked leaf out of its place in the book of nature, a veritable table of stone written by the finger of God, and bring it up and lay it alongside of one formed, eons after, at the top. They be brothers both, formed by the same forces and for the same end.
Standing by this stupendous work of nature day after day, I try to stretch my mind to some large computation of the work done. A whole day is taken to go down the gorge to the river. It takes seven miles of zigzag trail, sometimes frightfully steep, along shelves not over two feet wide, under rock thousands of feet above and going down thousands of feet below, to get down that perpendicular mile. It was an immense day's work.
The day was full of perceptions of the grandeur of vast rock masses never before suggested, except by the mighty mass of the Matterhorn seen close by from its Hörnli shoulder.
There was the river--a regular freight train, running day and night, the track unincumbered with returning cars (they were returned by the elevated road of the upper air)--burdened with dissolved rock and earth.
A slip into this river scarcely seemed to wet the foot; it seemed rather to coat it thickly with mud rescued from its plunge toward the sea. What unimaginable amounts the larger river must have carried in uncounted ages! In the short time the Mississippi has been at work it has built out the land at its mouth one hundred miles into the Gulf.
In the side cañon down which we worked our sublime and toilful way it was easy to see the work done. Sometimes the fierce torrent would pile the bottom of a side cañon with every variety of stone, from the wall a mile high, into one tremendous heap of conglomerate. The next rush of waters would tear a channel through this and pour millions of tons into the main river. For years Boston toiled, in feeble imitation of Milton's angels, to bring the Milton Hills into the back Bay and South Boston Flats. Boston made more land than the city originally contained, but it did not move a teaspoonful compared with these excavations.
The section traversed that day seemed while we were in it like a mighty chasm, a world half rent asunder, full of vast sublimities, but the next day, seen from the rim as a part of the mighty whole, it appeared comparatively little. One gets new meanings of the words almighty, eternity, infinity, in the presence of things done that seem to require them all.
In 1869 Major J. W. Powell, aided by nine men, attempted to pass down this tumultuous river with four boats specially constructed for the purpose. In ninety-eight days he had made one thousand miles, much of it in extremest peril. For weeks there was no possibility of climbing to the plateau above.
Any great scene in nature is like the woman you fall in love with at first sight for some pose of head, queenly carriage, auroral flush of color, penetrative music of voice, or a glance of soul through its illumined windows. You do not know much about her, but in long years of heroic endurance of trials, in the great dignity of motherhood, in the unspeakable comfortings that are scarcely short of godlike, and in the supernal, ineffable beauty and loveliness that cover it all, you find a richness and worth of which the most ardent lover never dreamed. The first sight of the cañon often brings strong men to their knees in awe and adoration. The gorge at Niagara is one hundred and fifty feet deep; it is far short of this, which is six thousand six hundred and forty. Great is the first impression, but in the longer and closer acquaintance every sense of beauty is flooded to the utmost.