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De Luc made a second ascent of the Buet, two years later; but it was not until 1779 that a snow peak was again conquered. In that year Murith, the Prior of the St. Bernard Hospice, climbed the Velan, the broad-topped peak which is so conspicuous a feature from the St. Bernard. It is a very respectable mountain rising to a height of 12,353 feet. Murith, besides being an ecclesiastic, was something of a scientist, and his botanical handbook to the Valais is not without merit. It is to Bourrit, of whom we shall speak later, that we owe the written account of the climb, based on information which Bourrit had at first hand from M. Murith.

Murith started on August 30, 1779, with "two hardy hunters," two thermometers, a barometer, and a spirit-level. They slept a night on the way, and proceeded to attack the mountain from the Glacier du Proz. The hardy hunters lost their nerve, and tried to dissuade M. Murith from the attempt; but the gallant Prior replied: "Fear nothing; wherever there is danger I will go in front." They encountered numerous difficulties, amongst others a wall of ice which Murith climbed by hacking steps and hand-holds with a pointed hammer. One of the hardy huntsmen then followed; his companion had long since disappeared.

They reached the summit without further difficulty, and their impressions of the view are recorded by Bourrit in an eloquent passage which recalls De Luc on the Buet, and once more proves that the early mountaineers were fully alive to the glory of mountain tops--

"A spectacle, no less amazing than magnificent, offered itself to their gaze. The sky seemed to be a black cloth enveloping the earth at a distance from it. The sun shining in it made its darkness all the more conspicuous. Down below their outlook extended over an enormous area, bristling with rocky peaks and cut by dark valleys. Mont Blanc rose like a sloping pyramid and its lofty head appeared to dominate all the Alps as one saw it towering above them. An imposing stillness, a majestic silence, produced an indescribable impression upon the mind. The noise of the avalanches, reiterated by the echoes, seemed to be the only thing that marked the march of time. Raised, so to say, above the head of Nature, they saw the mountains split asunder, and send the fragments rolling to their feet, and the rivers rising below them in places where inactive Nature seemed upon the point of death--though in truth it is there that she gathers strength to carry life and fertility throughout the world."

It is curious in this connection to notice the part played by the Church in the early history of mountaineering. This is not surprising. The local cur? lived in the shadow of the great peaks that dominated his valley. He was more cultured than the peasants of his parish; he was more alive to the spiritual appeal of the high places, and he naturally took a leading part in the assaults on his native mountains. The Titlis and Monte Leone were first climbed by local monks. The prior of the St. Bernard made, as we have seen, a remarkable conquest of a great local peak; and five years later M. Cl?ment, the cur? of Champery, reached the summit of the Dent du Midi, that great battlement of rock which forms a background to the eastern end of Lake Geneva. Bourrit, as we shall see, was an ecclesiastic with a great love for the snows. Father Placidus ? Spescha was the pioneer of the T?di; and local priests played their part in the early attempts on the Matterhorn from Italy. "One man, one mountain" was the rule of many an early pioneer; but Murith's love of the snows was not exhausted by this ascent of the Velan. He had already explored the Valsorey glacier with Saussure, and the Otemma glacier with Bourrit. A few years after his conquest of the Velan he turned his attention to the fine wall of cliffs that binds in the Orny glacier on the south.

Bourrit, who wrote up Murith's notes on the Velan, was one of the most remarkable of this group of pioneers. He was a whole-hearted enthusiast, and the first man who devoted the most active years of his life to mountaineering. He wins our affection by the readiness with which he gave others due credit for their achievements, a generous characteristic which did not, however, survive the supreme test--Paccard's triumph on Mont Blanc. Mountaineers at the end of the eighteenth century formed a close freemasonry less concerned with individual achievement than with the furthering of common knowledge. We have seen, for instance, that De Saussure cared little who made the first ascent of Mont Blanc provided that the way was opened up for future explorers. Bourrit's actual record of achievement was small. His exploration was attended with little success. His best performance was the discovery, or rediscovery of the Col de G?ant. His great ambition, the ascent of Mont Blanc, failed. Fatigue, or mountain sickness, or bad weather, spoiled his more ambitious climbs. But this matters little. He found his niche in Alpine history rather as a writer than as a mountaineer. He popularised the Alps. He was the first systematic writer of Alpine books, a fact which earned him the title, "Historian of the Alps," a title of which he was inordinately proud. Best of all, in an age when mountain appreciation was somewhat rare, he marked himself out by an unbounded enthusiasm for the hills.

He was born in 1735, and in one of his memoirs he describes the moment when he first heard the call of the Alps: "It was from the summit of the Voirons that the view of the Alps kindled my desire to become acquainted with them. No one could give me any information about them except that they were the accursed mountains, frightful to look upon and uninhabited." Bourrit began life as a miniature painter. A good many of his Alpine water colours have survived. Though they cannot challenge serious comparison with the mountain masterpieces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they are not without a certain merit. But Bourrit would not have become famous had he not deserted the brush for the pen. When the Alps claimed him, he gave up miniatures, and accepted an appointment as Precentor of Geneva Cathedral, a position which allowed him great leisure for climbing. He used to climb in the summer, and write up his journeys in the winter. He soon compiled a formidable list of books, and was hailed throughout Europe as the Historian of the Alps. There was no absurd modesty about Bourrit. He accepted the position with serene dignity. His house, he tells us, is "embellished with beautiful acacias, planned for the comfort and convenience of strangers who do not wish to leave Geneva without visiting the Historian of the Alps." He tells us that Prince Henry of Prussia, acting on the advice of Frederick the Great, honoured him with a visit. Bourrit, in fact, received recognition in many distinguished quarters. The Princess Louise of Prussia sent him an engraving to recall "a woman whom you have to some extent taught to share your lofty sentiments." Bourrit was always popular with the ladies, and no climber has shown a more generous appreciation for the sex. "The sex is very beautiful here," became, as Mr. Gribble tells us, "a formula with him as soon as he began writing and continued a formula after he had passed his threescore years and ten."

We have said that Bourrit's actual record as a climber is rather disappointing. We may forget this, and remember only his whole-hearted devotion to the mountains. Even Gesner, Petrarch, and Marti seem balanced and cold when they set their tributes besides Bourrit's large enthusiasm. Bourrit did not carry a barometer with him on his travels. He did not feel the need to justify his wanderings by collecting a mass of scientific data. Nor did he assume that a mountain tour should be written up as a mere guide-book record of times and route. He is supremely concerned with the ennobling effect of mountain scenery on the human mind.

"At Chamounix," he writes, "I have seen persons of every party in the state, who imagined that they loathed each other, nevertheless treating one another with courtesy, and even walking together. Returning to Geneva, and encountering the reproaches of their various friends, they merely answered in their defence, 'Go, as we have gone, to the Montanvert, and take our share of the pure air that is to be breathed there; look thence at the unfamiliar beauties of Nature; contemplate from that terrace the greatness of natural objects and the littleness of man; and you will no longer be astonished that Nature has enabled us to subdue our passions.' It is, in fact, the mountains that many men have to thank for their reconciliation with their fellows, and with the human race; and it is there that the rulers of the world and the heads of the nations ought to hold their meetings. Raised thus above the arena of passions and petty interests, and placed more immediately under the influence of Divine inspiration, one would see them descend from these mountains, each like a new Moses bringing with them codes of law based upon equity and justice."

This is fine writing with a vengeance, just as Ruskin's greatest passages are fine writing. Before we take our leave of Bourrit, let us see the precentor of the cathedral exhorting a company of guides with sacerdotal dignity. One is irresistibly reminded of Japan, where mountaineering and sacrificial rites go hand in hand--

"The Historian of the Alps, in rendering them this justice in the presence of a great throng of people, seized the opportunity of exhorting the new guides to observe the virtues proper to their state in life. 'Put yourselves,' he said to them, 'in the place of the strangers, who come from the most distant lands to admire the marvels of Nature under these wild and savage aspects; and justify the confidence which they repose in you. You have learnt the great part which these magnificent objects of our contemplation play in the organisation of the world; and, in pointing out their various phenomena to their astonished eyes, you will rejoice to see people raise their thoughts to the omnipotence of the Great Being who created them.' The speaker was profoundly moved by the ideas with which the subject inspired him, and it was impossible for his listeners not to share in his emotion."

Let us remember that Bourrit put his doctrine into practice. He has told us that he found men of diverse creeds reconciled beneath the shadow of Mont Blanc. Bourrit himself was a mountaineer first, and an ecclesiastic second. Perhaps he was no worse as a Protestant precentor because the mountains had taught him their eternal lessons of tolerance and serene indifference to the petty issues which loom so large beneath the shadow of the cathedral. Catholic or Protestant it was all the same to our good precentor, provided the man loved the hills. Prior Murith was his friend; and every Catholic mountaineer should be grateful to his memory, for he persuaded one of their archbishops to dispense climbers from the obligation of fasting in Lent.

THE STORY OF MONT BLANC

Dumas visited Chamounix in 1883. Balmat was then a veteran, and, of course, the great person of the valley. Dumas lost no time in making his acquaintance. We see them sitting together over a bottle of wine, and we can picture for ourselves the subtle art with which the great interviewer drew out the old guide. But Balmat shall tell his own story--

"H'm. Let me see. It was in 1786. I was five-and-twenty; that makes me seventy-two to-day. What a fellow I was! With the devil's own calves and hell's own stomach. I could have gone three days without bite or sup. I had to do so once when I got lost on the Buet. I just munched a little snow, and that was all. And from time to time I looked across at Mont Blanc saying, 'Say what you like, my beauty, and do what you like. Some day I shall climb you.'"

Balmat then tells us how he persuaded his wife that he was on his way to collect crystals. He climbed steadily throughout the day, and night found him on a great snowfield somewhere near the Grand Plateau. The situation was sufficiently serious. To be benighted on Mont Blanc is a fate which would terrify a modern climber, even if he were one of a large party. Balmat was alone, and the mental strain of a night alone on a glacier can only be understood by those who have felt the uncanny terror that often attacks the solitary wanderer even in the daytime. Fortunately, Balmat does not seem to have been bothered with nerves. His fears expressed themselves in tangible shape.

"Presently the moon rose pale and encircled by clouds, which hid it altogether at about eleven o'clock. At the same time a rascally mist came on from the Aiguille du Gouter, which had no sooner reached me than it began to spit snow in my face. Then I wrapped my head in my handkerchief, and said: 'Fire away. You're not hurting me.' At every instant I heard the falling avalanches making a noise like thunder. The glaciers split, and at every split I felt the mountain move. I was neither hungry nor thirsty; and I had an extraordinary headache which took me at the crown of the skull, and worked its way down to the eyelids. All this time, the mist never lifted. My breath had frozen on my handkerchief; the snow had made my clothes wet; I felt as if I were naked. Then I redoubled the rapidity of my movements, and began to sing, in order to drive away the foolish thoughts that came into my head. My voice was lost in the snow; no echo answered me. I held my tongue, and was afraid. At two o'clock the sky paled towards the east. With the first beams of day, I felt my courage coming back to me. The sun rose, battling with the clouds which covered the mountain top; my hope was that it would scatter them; but at about four o'clock the clouds got denser, and I recognised that it would be impossible for me just then to go any further."

He spent a second night on the mountain, which was, on the whole, more comfortable than the first, as he passed it on the rocks of the Montagne de la C?te. Before he returned home, Balmat planned a way to the summit. And now comes the most amazing part of the story. He had no sooner returned home than he met three men starting off for the mountain. A modern mountaineer, who had spent two nights, alone, high up on Mont Blanc, would consider himself lucky to reach Chamounix alive; once there, he would go straight to bed for some twenty-four hours. But Balmat was built of iron. He calmly proposed to accompany his friends; and, having changed his stockings, he started out again for the great mountain, on which he had spent the previous two nights. The party consisted of Fran?ois Paccard, Joseph Carrier, and Jean Michel Tournier. They slept on the mountain; and next morning they were joined by two other guides, Pierre Balmat and Marie Couttet. They did not get very far, and soon turned back--all save Balmat. Balmat, who seems to have positively enjoyed his nights on the glacier, stayed behind.

"I laid my knapsack on the snow, drew my handkerchief over my face like a curtain, and made the best preparations that I could for passing a night like the previous one. However, as I was about two thousand feet higher, the cold was more intense; a fine powdery snow froze me; I felt a heaviness and an irresistible desire to sleep; thoughts, sad as death, came into my mind, and I knew well that these sad thoughts and this desire to sleep were a bad sign, and that if I had the misfortune to close my eyes I should never open them again. From the place where I was, I saw, ten thousand feet below me, the lights of Chamounix, where my comrades were warm and tranquil by their firesides or in their beds. I said to myself: 'Perhaps there is not a man among them who gives a thought to me. Or, if there is one of them who thinks of Balmat, no doubt he pokes his fire into a blaze, or draws his blanket over his ears, saying, 'That ass of a Jacques is wearing out his shoe leather. Courage, Balmat!'"

Balmat may have been a braggart, but it is sometimes forgotten by his critics that he had something to brag about. Even if he had never climbed Mont Blanc, this achievement would have gone down to history as perhaps the boldest of all Alpine adventures. To sleep one night, alone, above the snow line is a misfortune that has befallen many climbers. Some have died, and others have returned, thankful. One may safely say that no man has started out for the same peak, and willingly spent a third night under even worse conditions than the first. Three nights out of four in all. We are charitably assuming that this part of Balmat's story is true. There is at least no evidence to the contrary.

Naturally enough, Balmat did not prosecute the attempt at once. He returned to Chamounix, and sought out the local doctor, Michel Paccard. Paccard agreed to accompany him. They left Chamounix at five in the evening, and slept on the top of the Montagne de la C?te. They started next morning at two o'clock. According to Balmat's account, the doctor played a sorry part in the day's climb. It was only by some violent encouragement that he was induced to proceed at all.

"After I had exhausted all my eloquence, and saw that I was only losing my time, I told him to keep moving about as best he could. He heard without understanding, and kept answering 'Yes, yes,' in order to get rid of me. I perceived that he must be suffering from cold. So I left him the bottle, and set off alone, telling him that I would come back and look for him. 'Yes, yes,' he answered. I advised him not to sit still, and started off. I had not gone thirty steps before I turned round and saw that, instead of running about and stamping his feet, he had sat down, with his back to the wind--a precaution of a sort. From that minute onwards, the track presented no great difficulty; but, as I rose higher and higher, the air became more and more unfit to breathe. Every few steps, I had to stop like a man in a consumption. It seemed to me that I had no lungs left, and that my chest was hollow. Then I folded my handkerchief like a scarf, tied it over my mouth and breathed through it; and that gave me a little relief. However, the cold gripped me more and more; it took me an hour to go a quarter of a league. I looked down as I walked; but, finding myself in a spot which I did not recognise, I raised my eyes, and saw that I had at last reached the summit of Mont Blanc.

"Then I looked around me, fearing to find that I was mistaken, and to catch sight of some aiguille or some fresh point above me; if there had been, I should not have had the strength to climb it. For it seems to me that the joints of my legs were only held in their proper place by my breeches. But no--it was not so. I had reached the end of my journey. I had come to a place where no one--where not the eagle or the chamois--had ever been before me. I had got there, alone, without any other help than that of my own strength and my own will. Everything that surrounded me seemed to be my property. I was the King of Mont Blanc--the statue of this tremendous pedestal.

"Then I turned towards Chamounix, waving my hat at the end of my stick, and saw, by the help of my glass, that my signals were being answered."

Balmat returned, found the doctor in a dazed condition, and piloted him to the summit, which they reached shortly after six o'clock.

"At six the next morning Paccard awoke me. 'It's strange, Balmat,' he said, 'I hear the birds singing, and don't see the daylight. I suppose I can't open my eyes.' Observe that his eyes were as wide open as the Grand Duke's. I told him he must be mistaken, and could see quite well. Then he asked me to give him a little snow, melted it in the hollow of his hand, and rubbed his eyelids with it. When this was done, he could see no better than before; only his eyes hurt him a great deal more. 'Come now, it seems that I am blind, Balmat. How am I to get down?' he continued. 'Take hold of the strap of my knapsack and walk behind me; that's what you must do.' And in this style we came down, and reached the village of La C?te. There, as I feared that my wife would be uneasy about me, I left the doctor, who found his way home by fumbling with his stick, and returned to my own house. Then, for the first time, I saw what I looked like. I was unrecognisable. My eyes were red; my face was black; my lips were blue. Whenever I laughed or yawned, the blood spurted from my lips and cheeks; and I could only see in a dark room."

"'And did Dr. Paccard continue blind?' 'Blind, indeed! He died eleven months ago, at the age of seventy-nine, and could still read without spectacles. Only his eyes were diabolically red.' 'As the consequence of his ascent?' 'Not a bit of it.' 'Why, then?' 'The old boy was a bit of a tippler.' And so saying Jacques Balmat emptied his third bottle."

The last touch is worthy of Dumas; and the whole story is told in the Ercles vein. As literature it is none the worse for that. It was a magnificent achievement; and we can pardon the vanity of the old guide looking back on the greatest moment of his life. But as history the interview is of little value. The combination of Dumas and Balmat was a trifle too strong for what Clough calls "the mere it was." The dramatic unities tempt one to leave Balmat, emptying his third bottle, and to allow the merry epic to stand unchallenged. But the importance of this first ascent forces one to sacrifice romance for the sober facts.

But Dumas was not alone responsible for the Balmat myth. This famous fiction was, in the main, due to a well-known Alpine character, whom we have dealt with at length in our third chapter. The reader may remember that Bourrit's enthusiasm for mountaineering was only equalled by his lack of success. We have seen that Bourrit had set his heart on the conquest of Mont Blanc, and that Bourrit failed in this ambition, both before, and after Balmat's ascent. In many ways, Bourrit was a great man. He was fired with an undaunted enthusiasm for the Alps at a time when such enthusiasm was the hall-mark of a select circle. He justly earned his title, the Historian of the Alps; and in his earlier years he was by no means ungenerous to more fortunate climbers. But this great failing, an inordinate vanity, grew with years. He could just manage to forgive Balmat, for Balmat was a guide; but Paccard, the amateur, had committed the unforgivable offence.

This much we may now regard as proved. Paccard took at least an equal share in the great expedition. Balmat was engaged as a guide, and was paid as such. The credit for the climb must be divided between these two men; and the discredit of causing strained relations between them must be assigned to Bourrit. Meanwhile, it is worth adding that the traditions of the De Saussure family are all in favour of Balmat. De Saussure's grandson stated that Balmat's sole object in climbing Mont Blanc was the hope of pecuniary gain. He even added that the main reason for his final attempt with Paccard was that Paccard, being an amateur, would not claim half the reward promised by De Saussure. As to Paccard, "everything we know of him," writes Mr. Freshfield, "is to his credit." His scientific attainments were undoubtedly insignificant compared to a Bonnet or a De Saussure. Yet he was a member of the Academy of Turin, he contributed articles to a scientific periodical published in Paris, he corresponded with De Saussure about his barometrical observations. He is described by a visitor to Chamounix, in 1788, in the following terms: "We also visited Dr. Paccard, who gave us a very plain and modest account of his ascent of Mont Blanc, for which bold undertaking he does not seem to assume to himself any particular merit, but asserts that any one with like physical powers could have performed the task equally well." De Saussure's grandson, who has been quoted against Balmat, is equally emphatic in his approval of Paccard. Finally, both Dr. D?bi and Mr. Freshfield agree that, as regards the discovery of the route: "Paccard came first into the field, and was the more enterprising of the two."

Bourrit, by the way, had not even the decency to be consistent. He spoiled, as we have seen, poor Paccard's chances of obtaining subscribers for his book, and, later in life, he quarrelled with Balmat. Von Gersdorf had started a collection for Balmat, and part of the money had to pass through Bourrit's hands. A great deal of it remained there. Bourrit seems to have been temporarily inconvenienced. We need not believe that he had any intention of retaining the money permanently, but Balmat was certainly justified in complaining to Von Gersdorf. Bourrit received a sharp letter from Von Gersdorf, and never forgave Balmat. In one of his later books, he reversed his earlier judgment and pronounced in favour of Paccard.

Poor Bourrit! It is with real regret that one chronicles the old precentor's lapses. Unfortunately, every age has its Bourrit, but it is only fair to remember that Bourrit often showed a very generous appreciation of other climbers. He could not quite forgive Paccard. Let us remember his passion for the snows. Let us forget the rest.

It is pleasant to record that De Saussure's old ambition was gratified, and that he succeeded in reaching the summit of Mont Blanc in July 1787. Nor is this his only great expedition. He camped out for a fortnight on the Col de G?ant, a remarkable performance. He visited Zermatt, then in a very uncivilised condition, and made the first ascent of the Petit Mont Cervin. He died in 1799.

As for Balmat, he became a guide, and in this capacity earned a very fair income. Having accumulated some capital, he cast about for a profitable investment. Two perfect strangers, whom he met on the high road, solved his difficulty in a manner highly satisfactory as far as they were concerned. They assured him that they were bankers, and that they would pay him five per cent. on his capital. The first of these statements may have been true, the second was false. He did not see the bankers or his capital again. Shortly after this initiation into high finance, he left Chamounix to search for a mythical gold-mine among the glaciers of the valley of Sixt. He disappeared and was never seen again. He left a family of four sons, two of whom were killed in the Napoleonic wars. His great-nephew became the favourite guide of Mr. Justice Wills, with whom he climbed the Wetterhorn.

MONTE ROSA AND THE B?NDNER OBERLAND

The conquest of Mont Blanc was the most important mountaineering achievement of the period; but good work was also being done in other parts of the Alps. Monte Rosa, as we soon shall see, had already attracted the adventurous, and the B?ndner Oberland gave one great name to the story of Alpine adventure. We have already noted the important part played by priests in the conquest of the Alps; and Catholic mountaineers may well honour the memory of Placidus ? Spescha as one of the greatest of the climbing priesthood.

Father Placidus was born in 1782 at Truns. As a boy he joined the Friars of Disentis, and after completing his education at Einsiedeln, where he made good use of an excellent library, returned again to Disentis. As a small boy, he had tended his father's flocks and acquired a passionate love for the mountains of his native valley. As a monk, he resumed the hill wanderings, which he continued almost to the close of a long life.

He was an unfortunate man. The French Revolution made itself felt in Graub?nden; and with the destruction of the monastery all his notes and manuscripts were burned. When the Austrians ousted the French, he was even more luckless; as a result of a sermon on the text "Put not your trust in princes" he was imprisoned in Innsbruck for eighteen months. He came back only to be persecuted afresh. Throughout his life, his wide learning and tolerant outlook invited the suspicion of the envious and narrow-minded; and on his return to Graub?nden he was accused of heresy. His books and his manuscripts were confiscated, and he was forbidden to climb. After a succession of troubled years, he returned to Truns; and though he had passed his seventieth year he still continued to climb. As late as 1824, he made two attempts on the T?di. On his last attempt, he reached a gap, now known as the Porta da Spescha, less than a thousand feet below the summit; and from this point he watched, with mixed feelings, the two chamois hunters he had sent forward reach the summit. He died at the age of eighty-two. One wishes that he had attained in person his great ambition, the conquest of the T?di; but, even though he failed on this outstanding peak, he had several good performances to his credit, amongst others the first ascent of the Stockgron in 1788, the Rheinwaldhorn in 1789, the Piz Urlaun in 1793, and numerous other important climbs.

The early history of Monte Rosa has an appeal even stronger than the story of Mont Blanc. It begins with the Renaissance. From the hills around Milan, Leonardo da Vinci had seen the faint flush of dawn on Monte Rosa beyond--

A thousand shadowy pencilled valleys And snowy dells in a golden air.

The elusive vision had provoked his restless, untiring spirit to search out the secrets of Monte Rosa. The results of that expedition have already been noticed.

After Da Vinci there is a long gap. Scheuchzer had heard of Monte Rosa, but contents himself with the illuminating remark that "a stiff accumulation of perpetual ice is attached to it." De Saussure visited Macunagna in 1789, but disliked the inhabitants and complained of their inhospitality. He passed on, after climbing an unimportant snow peak, the Pizzo Bianco . His story is chiefly interesting for an allusion to one of the finest of the early Alpine expeditions. In recent years, a manuscript containing a detailed account of this climb has come to light, and supplements the vague story which De Saussure had heard.

Long ago, in the Italian valleys of Monte Rosa, there was a legend of a happy valley, hidden away between the glaciers of the great chain. In this secret and magic vale, the flowers bloomed even in winter, and the chamois found grazing when less happy pastures were buried by the snow. So ran the tale, which the mothers of Alagna and Gressoney told to their children. The discovery of the happy valley was due to Jean Joseph Beck. Beck was a domestic servant with the soul of a pioneer, and the organising talent that makes for success. He had heard a rumour that a few men from Alagna had determined to find the valley. Beck was a Gressoney man; and he determined that Gressoney should have the honour of the discovery. Again and again, in Alpine history, we find this rivalry between adjoining valleys acting as an incentive of great ascents. Beck collected a large party, including "a man of learning," by name Finzens . With due secrecy, they set out on a Sunday of August 1788.

They started from their sleeping places at midnight, and roped carefully. They had furnished themselves with climbing irons and alpenstocks. They suffered from mountain sickness and loss of appetite, but pluckily determined to proceed. At the head of the glacier, they "encountered a slope of rock devoid of snow," which they climbed. "It was twelve o'clock. Hardly had we got to the summit of the rock than we saw a grand--an amazing--spectacle. We sat down to contemplate at our leisure the lost valley, which seemed to us to be entirely covered with glaciers. We examined it carefully, but could not satisfy ourselves that it was the unknown valley, seeing that none of us had ever been in the Vallais." The valley, in fact, was none other than the valley of Zermatt, and the pass, which these early explorers had reached, was the Lysjoch, where, to this day, the rock on which they rested bears the appropriate name that they gave it, "The Rock of Discovery." Beck's party thus reached a height of 14,000 feet, a record till Balmat beat them on Mont Blanc.

The whole story is alive with the undying romance that still haunts the skyline whose secrets we know too well. The Siegfried map has driven the happy valley further afield. In other ranges, still uncharted, we must search for the reward of those that cross the great divides between the known and the unknown, and gaze down from the portals of a virgin pass on to glaciers no man has trodden, and valleys that no stranger has seen. And yet, for the true mountaineer every pass is a discovery, and the happy valley beyond the hills still lives as the embodiment of the child's dream. All exploration, it is said, is due to the two primitive instincts of childhood, the desire to look over the edge, and the desire to look round the corner. And so we can share the thrill that drove that little band up to the Rock of Discovery. We know that, through the long upward toiling, their eyes must ever have been fixed on the curve of the pass, slung between the guarding hills, the skyline which held the great secret they hoped to solve. We can realise the last moments of breathless suspense as their shoulders were thrust above the dividing wall, and the ground fell away from their feet to the valley of desire. In a sense, we all have known moments such as this; we have felt the "intense desire to see if the Happy Valley may not lie just round the corner."

Twenty-three years after this memorable expedition, Monte Rosa was the scene of one of the most daring first ascents in Alpine history. Dr. Pietro Giordani of Alagna made a solitary ascent of the virgin summit which still bears his name. The Punta Giordani is one of the minor summits of the Monte Rosa chain, and rises to the respectable height of 13,304 feet. Giordani's ascent is another proof, if proof were needed, that the early climbers were, in many ways, as adventurous as the modern mountaineer. We find Balmat making a series of solitary attempts on Mont Blanc, and cheerfully sleeping out, alone, on the higher snowfields. Giordani climbs, without companions, a virgin peak; and another early hero of Monte Rosa, of whom we shall speak in due course, spent a night in a cleft of ice, at a height of 14,000 feet. Giordani, by the way, indited a letter to a friend from the summit of his peak. He begins by remarking that a sloping piece of granite serves him for a table, a block of blue ice for a seat. After an eloquent description of the view, he expresses his annoyance at the lack of scientific instruments, and the lateness of the hour which alone prevented him--as he believed--from ascending Monte Rosa itself.

Giordani's ascent closes the early history of Monte Rosa; but we cannot leave Monte Rosa without mention of some of the men who played an important part in its conquest. Monte Rosa, it should be explained, is not a single peak, but a cluster of ten summits of which the Dufour Spitze is the highest point . Of these, the Punta Giordani was the first, and the Dufour Spitze the last, to be climbed. In 1817, Dr. Parrott made the first ascent of the Parrott Spitze ; and two years later the Vincent Pyramid was climbed by a son of that Vincent who had been taken on Beck's expedition because he was "a man of learning." Dr. Parrott, it might be remarked in passing, was the first man to reach the summit of Ararat, as Noah cannot be credited with having reached a higher point than the gap between the greater and the lesser Ararat.

But of all the names associated with pioneer work on Monte Rosa that of Zumstein is the greatest. He made five attempts to reach the highest point of the group, and succeeded in climbing the Zumstein Spitze which still bears his name. He had numerous adventures on Monte Rosa, and as we have already seen, spent one night in a crevasse, at a height of 14,000 feet. He became quite a local celebrity, and is mentioned as such by Prof. Forbes and Mr. King in their respective books. His great ascent of the Zumstein Spitze was made in 1820, thirty-five years before the conquest of the highest point of Monte Rosa.

TIROL AND THE OBERLAND

The story of Monte Rosa has forced us to anticipate the chronological order of events. We must now turn back, and follow the fortunes of the men whose names are linked with the great peaks of Tirol and of the Oberland. Let us recapitulate the most important dates in the history of mountaineering before the opening of the nineteenth century. Such dates are 1760, which saw the beginning of serious mountaineering, with the ascent of the Titlis; 1778, which witnessed Beck's fine expedition to the Lysjoch; 1779, the year in which the Velan, and 1786, the year in which Mont Blanc, were climbed. The last year of the century saw the conquest of the Gross Glockner, one of the giants of Tirol.

The scene now changes to the Oberland. Nothing much had been accomplished in the Oberland before the opening years of the nineteenth century. A few passes, the Petersgrat, Oberaarjoch, Tschingel, and Gauli, had been crossed; but the only snow peaks whose ascent was undoubtedly accomplished were the Handgendgletscherhorn and a peak whose identification is difficult. These were climbed in 1788 by a man called M?ller, who was engaged in surveying for Weiss. His map was a very brilliant achievement, considering the date at which it appeared. The expenses had been defrayed by a rich merchant of Aarau, Johann Rudolph Meyer, whose sons were destined to play an important part in Alpine exploration. J. R. Meyer had climbed the Titlis, and one of his sons made one of the first glacier pass expeditions in the Oberland, crossing the Tschingel in 1790.

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