Hours of Exercise in the Alps

On February 28, 1864, we left Sion with Bennen to mount the Haut de Cry. We started at 2.15 A.M. in a light carriage that brought us to the village of Ardon, distant six miles....

Accessible or not, however, the Mont Cervin is assuredly a different sort of affair from Mont Blanc or Monte Rosa, or any other of the thousand and one summits which nature has...

Right before us was the pyramid of the Aletschhorn, bearing its load of glaciers, and thrusting above them its pinnacle of rock; while right and left of us towered and fell to s...

After climbing for some time, we reached a smooth vertical face of rock from which, right or left, there was no escape, and over which we must go. Bennen first tried it unaided,...

I lay long upon the Alp, scanning crag and snow in search of my guide. From the admirable account of the first attempt on the Matterhorn, drawn up by Mr. Hawkins,[10] it may be...

After this we found the rocks on the ridge so shaken that it required the greatest caution to avoid bringing them down upon us. With all our care, moreover, we sometimes dislodg...

In descending we went straight down upon a bergschrund, which had compelled us to make a circuit in coming up. This particular kind of fissure is formed by the lower portion of...

Expecting fully that they would not persevere beyond a few minutes longer, I called out to Tyndall to know how soon they meant to be back. ‘In an hour and a half,’ he replied, w...

My guide Bennen reached the Grimsel the following morning. Uncertain of my own movements, I had permitted him this year to make a new engagement, which he was now on his way to...

I continued among the rocks, though with less and less confidence in the wisdom of my choice. My knapsack annoyed me excessively; the straps frayed my shoulders, and tied up my...

It is usual for the proprietor of the hotel on the Æggischhorn to retain a guide for excursions in the neighbourhood; and last year he happened to have in his employment one Wal...

Having fixed my head-quarters at the Montanvert, I was engaged for nearly six weeks during the summer of 1857 in making observations on the Mer de Glace and its tributaries. Thr...

An analogy between the motion of a glacier through a sinuous valley and of a river in a sinuous channel has been already pointed out. But the analogy fails in one important part...

Our bivouac at Meyringen was _le Sauvage_, who discharged his duty as a host with credit to himself and with satisfaction to us. Forster (the statesman) arrived, and in the afte...

I rose, and not without difficulty got into my clothes. In the after-cabin, under the superintendence of the able and energetic navigating lieutenant, Mr. Brown, a group of blue...

These deep gorges occur, I believe, for the most part in limestone strata; and the effects which the merest driblet of water can produce on such rocks are quite astonishing. It...

It was at the end of this ridge, where it abuts against the last precipice of the Matterhorn, that my second flagstaff was left in 1862. I think there must have been something i...

Comparing the three lines together, it will be observed that the velocity diminishes as we descend the glacier. In 100 hours the maximum motion of the three lines respectively i...

Here a paltry accident caused me more damage than all the dangers of the day. I was passing a rock, the snow beside it seemed firm, and I placed my bâton upon it, leaning trustf...

Superadded to this source of general rain, we have at Killarney local condensers in the neighbouring mountains. Round the cool crests of Carrantual and his peaked and craggy bro...

Grindelwald was my first halting-place in the summer of 1867: I reached it, in company with a friend, on Sunday evening the 7th of July. The air of the glaciers and the excellen...

The difference in texture exhibited by different clouds caused me to look a little more closely than I had previously done into the mechanism of cloud-formation. A certain expan...

But the opportunity did not occur. For several days the weather had been ill-natured. We had wind so strong as to render the hawsers at the stern of the ‘Urgent’ as rigid as iro...

But, according to Faraday’s explanation, the strength and quickness of the regelation must also go hand in hand with the magnitude of the pressure employed. Helmholtz rightly dw...

I afterwards climbed the glacier to the right, and, as I ascended, still better illustrations of the coexistence of the structure and the strata than those observed upon the ter...

A short time ago I published a book of ‘Fragments,’ which might have been called ‘Hours of Exercise in the Attic and the Laboratory’; while this one bears the title of ‘Hours of...

We now reach the remarkable group of rocks called the Burlings, and find the water between the shore and the rocks a strong green; the home examination shows it to be thick with...