The Alpine Journal Vol 31 1917

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Princeton University Library | — LSS | | | | Hil 32101 076197449

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1569 °123 L ihrary of Ned) Princeton University. Presented hy Pirs. Ban Fellows Platt DAN FEL LOWS I

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THE ALPINE JOURNAL Vor. XXXI. Nos. 214-216

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THE ALPINE JOURNAL A RECORD OF MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE AND SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION BY MEMBERS OF THE ALPINE CLUB VoL. XXXI. FEBRUARY 1917 to OctToBEeR 1917 (Nos. 214-216) EDITED BY GEORGE YELD LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK } BOMBAY, OALCUTTA, AND MADRAS : 1918 |

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CONTENTS. ALPINE Club of Canada: War Record of . Alps, The, from 1856 to 1865. By Professor T. G. Bonney, F.RS. Western and Central, the, The Great Passes of. By D. W. Freshfield : : : American Alpine Club, Message from . Blanc, Mont ; Success ‘and Failure on. By W.C. ‘Slingsby Dévouassoud, Frangois Joseph, Reminiscences of. By D. W. Freshfield and Others . : : Flight, A, into Italy. By R. L.G. Irving . Fiihrerbiicher, Old. Gait and Style. By F. W. Bourdillon 3 ‘ ; Habkernthal, the, The Exotic Granites of. By T. Howse Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. By Captain H.D. Minchinton . Historical Documents, ITI. The Fihrerbiicher of Matthius Zumtaugwald (1825-72) ; Johann Zumtaugwald (1826-1900); Stephan Zumtaugwald (1833-1907). By J. P. Farrar Rosa, Monte : | Early Attempts on, from the Zermatt Side. By J. P. Farrar » Last of the Travellers and Guides engaged in, from 1847 to 1856. By Dr. Dib . Records of Attempts on, and Ascents of, from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1860. Compiled from the Travellers’ Books of the Hétel Monte Rosa at Zer- matt and of the Riffelhaus. By H. F. Montagneer Roththal Face, The, of the Jungfrau. By J. P. Farrar Slogen, The Peaks about. By J. H. Clapham : P Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an es a Sir W. M. Conway : Trentino, the, The Campaign in. By Edgar Foa : Valedictory Address. By the President, the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Pickford. . } : : Val Soera, Through. By the Editor . ; Young, Geoffrey [War Service and Wound]. By J.P. Farrar Zum Taugwald and Taugwalder, Zermatt Guide-Families of, The Genealogies of, and Connexion between. By Dr. H. Diibi §G9I60

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v1 Contents. ALPINE CLUB: PAGE Journal : Addenda and Corrigenda to Vol. XXX. . : : : . 119 Vol. XXX. . . 277, 352 Letter from, to the Members of the Alpine Club of Canada 94 Library Catalogue . : : . 110, 270, 346 Members Serving in H.M. Forces : 1, 145, 289 Casualties . : ; : : . . ; 989, 339 Honours and Awards . ; ; ; . 145, 289 Obituary . : : ; . 119, 277, 351 Presentations ; : . 109 Proceedings . ; , 140, 282, 357 ALPINE NoTES : ; : . 118, 276, 350 Afanasieff, R., Death of . : : . 125 Austrian ‘Alpine Club Journal; Casualties to Members : Recorded by 127 ‘C.P.’, Origin of . 120 Croda da Lago, the, Ascent of 124 Fiescher Glacier, The. 126 Innerkofler, Sepp, Killed in Action ; 127 Invitation, ‘An Irresistible 126 Matterhorn, the, The Galerie Route on. By J.P. Farrar. 139 Pennine Alps, Climbers’ Guide to, Vol. III... . 120 Pilkington, C., Illness of : 351 Rosa, Monte, ‘An Early Ascent of (1857 \ 126 Sang, George, Award to, of the Edward Medal 128 Schénbiihl Path Improvement 119 S.A.C., Accounts (1916) 351 Huts of Damma Hut, New . : ; : . 119 Lower Matterhorn, or Hornli Hut ; Reconstruction of. 120 Refuge Solvay, Completion of . 119 South African Mountaineering, The History of . 120 * Tralt,’ Mr. Philpott’s Word, explained . 127 CORRESPONDENCE : Late Mr. T. H. Philpott, The. By H. T. W. Bowyear 357 Old Memories. By H.T. W. Bowyear . 355 To the Members of the Alpine Club of Canada + (Or. Wheeler’s Address) . 94 Ulrich Lauener. Py H. T. Mennell 138 ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP. ILLUSTRATIONS : Argentiére, Col de |’, Ascent to, from Larche 173 Barricate, Le, Defile of, near Ponte Bernardo, Val Stura j ‘ : : ; é . facing 188

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Contents vii ILLUSTRATIONS—continued. PAGE Bocchetta, S. of Scatiglion, View from . ; » facing 190 Ciardoney Glacier, from Gap N.E. of nesuenen - 5, 189 Uja Grande de, ‘Views from. : facing 190, 191 Uje, Colle delle, View from : . facing 189 Dauphin, Mont, and the Upper Valley of the Durance, from the Ascent to Vars . » 175 Facsimiles from Fihrerbiicher of Biner ; : 256-8 . Zumtaugwald Brothers. : ; 230-6 Géant, Col du La Vierge : ‘ : : » Jacing 240 Near the : : ; ‘ : ‘ » 240 Himalayas * Aiguille Blanche ’from Pyramid Shoulder . » oT Bara Lacha Route, Loaded Yaks on » 5 56 Kast Laluni Glacier, Head of . : - 5 56 East Laluni Pass, N. (Lahoul) Side of ee 56 Pyramid Shoulder, on the Way to . 57 Ridge from Buttress Aiguille to Great Kakti Peak (2) a 62 Silver Cone, Looking 8. from, to the ene and Golind Peaks : 62 Zanskar, N. of Shingo-La, ‘Camp i in . » 57 Jungfrau, Roththal, Face of, from Ober-Steinberg » 217 Spitzhorn : ; - 4, 216 Lago, Croda da, from the Falzarego Pass. - 4, 800 Langkofel : Group from the Pordoi Pass _. » 300 Madeleine, Lac de la, and Col de ea looking towards France . . 174 Monument to F. J. Dévouassoud, in the Churchyard Chamonix . facing 206 Mulets, Grands, Twilight at the (in Colour) . A 1 Portraits : Ainslie, C. ‘ : : , . 45, dl4 Biner, Franz Weisshorn ‘ 5, 260 Bonney, T. G., in 1858 and in 1866 . » 18 Carson, T. H. . ; » oA] Croz, Jean Baptiste - » 19 Croz, Michel A. e 19 Dévouassoud, Francois , : » 4 198 Done, N evile Savage : 247 Tairbankes sRey. Avhaean (about) 1880 and 1912 | 103 Grill, Johann, aus der Ramsau, ° Der Kéderbacher’ ,, 261 Group of Climbers taken in 1865 » 88 Group of Climbers taken in 1870. » 99 Group at the Festi Bivouac in 1878 . » 148 Hawkshaw, J.C.,in1862 . . . . 18 Kathrein, Emil ‘ ; é ; : : . 252

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Vill Contents. ILLUSTRATIONS—continued. PAGE Kaufmann, Ulrich . ; . facing 345 Philpott, T. H. : : ; » 340 Schlagintweit, Adolph 309 Schlagintweit, Hermann . ; a . . 809 Schocher, Martin. : , . facing 260 Slingsby, Capt. H. L., m.c. . 4 344 Smyth, Capt. Edmund . » o14 Smyth, Rev. Christopher . » 9315 Smyth, Rev. T. Grenville » ol4 Tairraz, Jean, of Aosta . 19 Todd, Oswald Enk . » 246 Walker, Frank, in 1871 “3 98 Walker, Horace, in 1871 . » 98 Walker, Miss Lucy, i in 187 1 ee 98 Wellig, Franz . ; , : ; . 251 Werner, Capt. C. A. ‘ : . facing 106 Wethered, Rev. F.T. ~ » 315 Zumtaugwald Brothers, Johann, Matthaus, Stephan » 218 Zumtaugwald, Johann 225 & facing 218 Rosa, Monte Felsenkamm des Héchsten Gipfels 328 Oberste Felsenkuppe des . 328 Ostspitze of, with view of Val ‘Anzasca, from the Dufourspitze : 330 Summit Ridge of, from the N ordend 329 Rothbrett, The, from the Stellifluh ; » facing 216 Sambuco, Val Stura : Scene near. ; » 188 Silbersattel, the, Ulrich’s Routes to. . 327 Stura, Valley of the, from near Vinadio (looking E. ) facing 174 Valeille, The, with Lilla i in the foreground ; ~ 5, 145 Val Soera, Punta (N.) di, View from » 191 Map: ' Tilustrating Freshfield’s Article on the Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps 163 In MEemoriaM : Biner, Franz Weisshorn . 253 Carson, Thomas Henry . 341 Dennistoun, James Robert 248 Done, Nevile Savage 247 Fairbanks, Rev. Arthur . 103 Grill, J ohann, aus der Bayrischen Ramsau (‘Der Kaderbacher’ 262 Harrison, Richard Lake . : ; . 105 Kathrein, Emil 250 Kaufmann, Ulrich . 345 Philpott, Rev. Thomas Henry 340 a a a Ee us —— a

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Contents. In Memor1am—continued. Rivington, Alexander Schocher, Martin . : Slingsby, Capt. Henry Laurence, M. . Tiddeman, Richard Hill Todd, Major Oswald Erik Walker, Miss Lucy : Werner, Capt. Charles A. : Whitridge, Frederick Wallingford REVIEWS AND NOTICES: Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol. VII., 1916 : Coolidge, W. A. B., La Storia dei tre Weissthor (Italian translation by G. Laeng) . Din, Dr. H. (edited by), Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpenclub, Vol. L. Durham, W. E., Summer Holidays in the Alps, 1895-1914 Kellas, ‘A. M., A Consideration of the Possibility of Ascending the Loftier Himalayas : Miller, W. H., Camp Craft: Modern Practice and Equip. iient:

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THE ALPINE JOURNAL. FEBRUARY 1917, (No. 214.) MEMBERS SERVING IN HIS MAJESTY’S FORCES. .W Distinguished Service Order. Cdr. Joun Coomspe Honpgson, R.N.—Led destroyer attack on enemy battle cruisers, but, becoming engaged with enemy destroyers, was unable to get within range. On conclusion of gun attack, in which several hostile destroyers were sunk and the enemy beaten off, he attacked enemy battle fleet and fired four torpedoes under very hot fire of enemy battleships’ secondary armament. His destroyer was struck and damaged by a shell. Mentioned in Dispatches. STRUTT, Major (temp. Lt.-Col.) E. L., Royal Scots Spec. Res., - mentioned in General Milne’s dispatch, dated Salonika, October 8, 1916. Gask, Major G. E., F.R.C.S8., R.A.M.C. (T.), mentioned in Sir Douglas Haig’s dispatch, December 23, 1916. Promotions. Bruce, Bt.-Colonel the Hon. C. G., M.V.O., 6th Gurkha Rifles, gazetted temp. Brigadier- -General. JARDINE, Willoughby, Captain R.F.C. PEECH, S, B., Lieut. Royal Defence Corps. Katon, J. E. O, , Sergt. London Regt. T.F., to be temp. oe Lieut. while specially employed. Frence Minirary Honours.—The general commanding the heavy artillery mentions in regimental orders ‘ le brigadier Lory Pierre, de la 67° batterie du 3° Rég* d’artillerie & pied,’ in the following terms: ‘ Although over military age he joined for the duration of the war, and demanded to be employed in a very exposed observation post, continuously under fire. During two months he rendered the very greatest services in observing for the guns, serving as an example to all by his courage and energy.’ [Translated.] M. Lory is Professor at Grenoble and President of the Section Tsére of the C.A.F. VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXIV. | B

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2 The American Alpine Club. ITaLian Miuirary Honours.—tThe silver medal for valour has been awarded to Lieutenant Giusepre Lampuananl, of the Alpini, the well-known mountaineer and Professor at the University of Novara. Lieut. Lampugnani, on August 25, 1915, received the order to seize with his platoon an important enemy observation post, at first considered inaccessible, on the Punta Castellaccio (Tonale). The position was captured under heavy fire, notwithstanding the extremely difficult ground. THE AMERICAN ALPINE CLUB. WE print below a telegraphic message received on December 31 from the American Alpine Club, and the reply made by the Com- mittee on behalf of the Alpine Club. Coming at such a time, the spontaneous and inspiring words of the message of our American kinsmen awake in the hearts of us all the warmest feelings of solidarity. To THE ALPINE CLUB, 23 SaviLE Row, Lonpon, W. We take pleasure in transmitting the following minute unani- mously adopted by a standing vote at the Annual Dinner of the American Club : — ‘The Members and Guests of the American Alpine Club assembled in the City of New York, while affirming their undivided allegiance to the Government of the United States, desire to place on record their deep sympathy with the English Nation in the mighty struggle for the liberties of mankind in which it and its Allies are now engaged. ‘ Although citizens of a neutral nation, we share with the subjects of England those great traditions of freedom, of justice, and of law which are the common inheritance from the Mother Nation of all of the peoples of the English-speaking world. To a struggle which. involves the survival of that inheritance we cannot, as individuals, remain indifferent.

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The American Alpine Club. 3. ‘ We desire to place on record our deep admiration of the heroism and self-sacrifice shown by England and her Allies, to express our absolute confidence that such heroism and self-sacrifice insure the ultimate triumph of Justice, and the continuance of Freedom in the world, and to-assure our brethren of the Alpine Club and of the Alpine Club of Canada of our deep and heartfelt sympathy in this hour of their suffering and of splendid self-sacrifice to the cause of mankind. ‘Cuas. KE. Fay (President). ‘R. H. CoapMan (Secretary).’ (Reply.) CHarLEs E. Fay, President, American Alpine Club, New York: On behalf of the Alpine Club we thank you most sincerely for the Resolution unanimously adopted by the American Alpine Club at their Annual Dinner, expressing deep sympathy with the British Nation and its Allies now engaged in a struggle to safeguard the liberties of mankind for all time ; and we send our heartiest greetings to our brethren of the American Alpine Club. J. P. Farrar, | President. C. H. R. Wo.taston, Hon. Secretary.

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4 Valedictory Address; VALEDICTORY ADDRESS By THE Ricut Hon. LORD JUSTICE PICKFORD, Prestpent. (Read before the Alpine Club December 11, 1916.) \ Y predecessor, in his address to the Club on a similar occa- sion to this, said that his period of office as President had been uneventful. I wish I could say the same of mine. It has been throughout the greater part of it under the cloud created by the tremendous events of the war—a war without precedent in extent, in the number of nations and the millions of men engaged, and in the efficiency and terribly destructive power of the implements of warfare employed. But although it is impossible to avoid mention of the war, I have no intention of making it the subject of my address, except to the extent to which it has influenced the affairs of the Club. It is enough to say that while there is no absolute unanimity _on this any more than on any other subject, there is an immense preponderance of opinion in the country that we could not, consistently with honour or with safety, have stood aside and taken no part, and a determination that the country must make every effort and every sacrifice to bring the war to a satis- factory end. I wish I could feel as sure that there was an equally general and clear appreciation of the difficulties we have still to face, and the way to face them. We have had, since the outbreak of war, to raise an army of a size never contemplated before; we have had to clothe, feed, and arm it, and in spite of inevitable mistakes and confusion we may well be proud of what has been done. In looking at the effect of the war upon the Club, the first and obvious effect noticed is that practically all members of military age who are not held back by ill-health or other insuperable obstacles have joined the forces, or are serving the country in some way, and we grieve to say many of them have been killed in action. One member of the Committee, Col. Harry Walker, Vice- President of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, was killed while in command of the 4th Battalion of the Black Watch before La Bassée. A few months before his death he had been gazetted C.M.G. for his conduct at Neuve Chapelle. He was a mountaineer of high class, a man distinguished in public and philanthropic work, and described by all his friends as of the most lovable nature.

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Valedictory Address. | — & I may group together three members whom we have lost by death in action, for most of their climbing and their military service was done in India: Major J. B. Corry, D.5.0O., R.E., of the 8rd Sappers and Miners (Indian Army) ; Major Battye, a member of a well-known and distinguished family of Indian soldiers, and Captain R. D. Squires. Two others of those so lost bore names well known in this Club—Captain A. M. Slingsby, one of two brothers killed in this war, also an Indian soldier and Indian climber, who two months before his death had obtained the Military Cross, and Captain C. T. K. Carfrae, a nephew of a very old member of this Club, killed near Ypres. The commanding officers of both these members spoke in the highest terms of them in letters written to their families. From our colonies, who have so nobly stood by us, we have lost Lieut. J. R. Dennistoun, of New Zealand, a member of Captain Scott’s 1910-11 Antarctic Expedition and a holder of the King’s Antarctic and the Royal Geographical Society’s Medals. He had climbed and explored much in New Zealand, from which country he came back at once on the outbreak of war to volunteer for service, and died from wounds received while flying on a bombing expedition near Arras. Another young member who volunteered from another pro- fession was 2nd Lieutenant E. Douglas Murray, of the Black Watch. His death cut short a career full of promise. Captain C. Werner, a fine athlete in many branches, previously an assistant master at Harrow, was killed on the Aubers Ridge. When going into action he carried his ice- axe, for which he had sent only a few days before, as he con- sidered it would be a useful tool and weapon under the conditions of this war. Captain G. T. Ewen was posted as missing. I do not know whether his death has been officially recorded, but there does not seem to be room for doubt that he has been killed. Major ~ Bernard Head, who had climbed much in India and New Zealand, was also killed in action. To these names should be added those of Major O. E. Todd, 5th Gurkhas, who was accidentally killed in India, and Lt.-Col. C. Stonham, C.M.G., F.R.C.S., who died from illness contracted while serving in an important and responsible medical position with our Expeditionary Force in the Near East. They died in the service of their country, though not killed in action. This concludes the tale of our losses, so far as I know them from deaths in action or on service up to the present. I wish I could think that it was finally concluded.

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6 Valedictory Address. - If I have said little of those I have mentioned it 1s for no other reason than that fuller details of their lives have already been given, and in many instances are to be found in obituary notices in the ALPINE JouRNAL written by those better qualified to speak of them than myself. I have only mentioned the names of members who have been killed; others have been wounded, and I suppose there are few members of the Club who have not lost some relation or friend whose death leaves a gap hard to fill. | Turning to another side of the effect on our members, I find that honours for conduct in the war have been conferred on several. One of our Vice-Presidents, at that time Major E. L. Strutt, who was, severely wounded, has been decorated with the Croix de Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He has also been promoted to the rank of Lt.-Colonel, and is now serving as Chef de Liaison to General Sarrail at Salonica, a position for which his knowledge of languages well fits him. I notice that his name has again been mentioned in despatches pub- lished within the last few days. The same decoration and also the Military Cross have been conferred upon Captain E. O. Wheeler, son of our honorary member, Mr. A. O. Wheeler. Colonel Bruce, who was wounded in Gallipoli, has been promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General. I think it is no breach of confidence to say that when I had to read many of Sir Ian Hamilton’s despatches for another purpose 1 was pleased to find in them very high praise of Colonel Bruce’s SETVICes. : Captain L. C. F. Oppenheim, who has also been wounded, has been appointed Military Attaché at the Hague, with the temporary rank of Major. The Companionship of the Distinguished Service Order has been granted to Major L. W. Bird, of the Royal Berks Regiment, also a son of a member, and that of St. Michael and St. George to Col. A. H. Tubby, Lt.-Col. Ransom Pickard, and Temp. Lt.-Col. W. T. Lister. These last three are all for medical services rendered during military operations in the field. Perhaps I may be allowed to mention that the honours of the family are not confined to Colonel Tubby. I hear that Mrs. Tubby has earned great credit, though perhaps not official recognition, for her very plucky rescue of two ladies, a Turkish and a Syrian, who had got into difficulties when bathing at Alexandria. |

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Valedictory Address. 7 Mr. Geoffrey Young, while serving at the front with the Friends’ Unit of the Red Cross, was made a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold, and received the distinction, rare for a civilian, of mention in Sir John French’s despatches. In the same week his brother, Lieutenant Hilton Young, R.N.V.R., who is not a member of the Club, received the special medal for valour from the King of Serbia. I have been dealing up to this pomt with the effect of the war on the club through its effect on individual members, but there are effects upon the Club in general to be noticed. We have, of course, lost many members from death and resig- nation, and the supply of candidates to fill their places has been small, with the result that our numbers have been reduced from 722 at the beginning of 1914 to 661. There is, however, no doubt that the Club is in a perfectly sound financial position, but care has been and must be exercised, as, owing to the inability to let our hall, it is doubtful whether the income will this year meet the expenditure. | The earliest question that arose was that of the winter dinner in 1914. Should it be held or not? The Committee were unanimously of opinion that in the circumstances then existing it would be improper to hold the dinner as usual. At that time there were no precedents to be followed arising from the decisions of similar clubs and societies, and the Committee had to decide for themselves. As I have already said, probably no decision ever received unanimous assent, but I think the great weight of opinion in the Club was in favour of the course followed, and practically all clubs and societies accustomed to hold a similar festival acted in the same manner, showing that public opinion as a whole agreed with that of this Club. At the beginning of each year since then we have fixed a date for the dinner in the hope that circumstances would so change as to permit it to be held. Hach year there seemed at - one time some ground for the hope, but each year it has failed and disappointment has followed, and no less in this year than the last. I hope that my successor may be more fortunate. Another question that arose was the position of cur members, both ordinary and honorary, who were subjects of an enemy State. With regard to the ordinary members with one exception the question solved itself automatically. By a rule of the Club any member who does not pay his subscription by a certain date ipso facto ceases to be a member. These enemy members did

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8 Valedictory Address. not pay their subscription—they would have had great diffi- culty in doing so—and they ceased to be members. By the same rule anyone so ceasing to be a member can be reinstated by the Committee. If and when these members or any of them make such application, no doubt the then Committee will deal with it. The remaining member accepted the suggestion of the Committee that he should not remain a member. The position of the honorary members was not so simple. It required some action of the Committee before they ceased to be members. There seems to be an opinion in some quarters— I do not mean in this Club—that to apply different treatment to an enemy from that applied to a friend is to take a narrow- minded view of affairs. I do not myself hold that opinion. I think that subjects of an enemy State, however personally ' estimable, are out of place as honorary members of a British club; and, speaking for myself, I think that they were parti- cularly out of place in this Club. We have on our list of honorary members the King of the Belgians, and we are proud to have him. We are proud to have him as a mountaineer, for his qualifications would well fit him for an ordinary member, and we are proud to have him as a man; for we respect his character and sympathize with his misfortunes. It seems to me that it would be absolutely in- congruous to include in the same list of honorary members with him nationals of the country which invaded and occupied Belgium in defiance of all treaties and in violation of all their promises and undertakings, and conducted that invasion and occupation with a ruthlessness and a savagery which are a disgrace to a civilised nation. The same considerations, I think, apply, though in a less degree, to nationals of a country allied to it. Ido not know whether these reasons influenced all the Committee in their decision, but it was decided to remove the names of subjects of an enemy State from the list of honorary members, and to communicate this decision to them if possible, and this was done. A somewhat different question arose in the case of another honorary member, Sir Sven Hedin, K.C.1.E. He is a national of an allied country, but he has taken a strongly anti-British line, and has made speeches and written articles offensive to this country. We pointed out to him that we had no power or wish to influence his opinions or his actions, but that we con- sidered that to make public attacks upon this country was inconsistent with the position of an honorary member of one of its clubs. After some correspondence he—I will not say

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Valedictory Address. 9 agreed with—acquiesced in this view, and his name was removed from the list. I may mention that a sum of about £1,100 was provided by subscription amongst the members of the Club, and sent to the King of the Belgians to be used as he thought fit for the benefit of his countrymen. The number of new or important climbs is naturally much less than in ordinary times, as climbing by our members has practically ceased to exist since August 1914, but there are some which require mention. A new ascent of Mont Blanc du Tacul by its difficult S.E. aréte was made by Baron de Riseis with Henri and Adolphe Rey, who took nearly 12 hours from the Col du Géant to the summit. Captain V. J. E. Ryan, with Josef and Franz Lochmatter, made an ascent of the Grépon by a sort of couloir on the Nantillons face. The line followed crossed an extremely steep ice-face which even Franz Lochmatter, the imperturbable, describes as in places ‘ very unpleasant.’ Probably this climb is only possible in the early summer, as later in the year the couloir would be all ice. The same party repeated the route up the Mer de Glace face of the Grépon originally made by Mr. Geoffrey Young, the late Mr. H. O. Jones, and Mr. Todhunter, led by Josef Knubel and Brocherel, and then descended the Nantillons face above mentioned. The same party also made a new route up the S. peak of the Aiguille de Blaitiére from the Mer de Glace side. In its lower part the route followed Mr. Broome’s Col des Nantillons route, and then turned off to the left about 500 feet below the Col. The nature of the climb may be judged by two remarks of the clithbers. Captain Ryan: ‘The last 600 feet of this climb was difficult.” Franz Lochmatter: ‘It took a good bit of time.’ Two difficult variations on the Requin were made by the same party. An Italian guideless party repeated Mr. Coolidge’s famous northern route up Monte Viso, taking 15 hours to the summit. They are not disposed to quarrel with the estimate of its difficulties formed by Mr. Coolidge when, led by Almer, be made the first ascent by that route. The indefatigable Wicks, Wilson, and Pradby party, joined in the first case by Dr. Wills, made new ascents of the Mettenberg and the Gwachten, while Dr. Wilson, with Henri Rey, made an ascent of the Eiger Rothstock by its EH. face, the rocks of which

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10 Valedictory Address. are described as so steep that the rope becomes a menace and not a security, and neither climber would care to repeat the scramble. Time appears to have no power over these deter- mined and skilful mountaineers, and whether on an ice climb like the Brenva or a purely rock climb they take no denial. Age cannot wither them, and our remote descendants will probably find them still making new ascents. The great climb of the year was Mr. Geoffrey Young’s con- quest of the famous Rothe Zahne of the Gspaltenhorn. His companion was the late Mr. G. W. Herford (not a member of the Club), since killed in actionin France. His leader was of course Josef Knubel, assisted by a young guide, Hans Brantschen, of St. Nicolas, the latest product of that great school of guides. The ascent involved the traverse of one of the most forbidding and jagged ridges in the Alps. Mr. Young has himself described the climb in the pages of the JourNAL. The so-called Grande Guglia de Peuteret, a 4000-metre point on the §. aréte of the Aiguille Blanche de Peuteret, was finally gained by the brothers Si. Joseph and Baptiste Gugliermina and F. Ravelli. They then traversed to the Aiguille Blanche itself and descended by the E. face of the latter, which had only been descended before by Mr. E. T. Compton and Dr. Blodig and by the late Mr. H. O. Jones’s party. The desperate descent to the Brenva glacier by the same party in the previous year, when caught in a terrible blizzard lasting two days and compelled to bivouac on the aréte above tho Dames Anglaises, was duly recorded in the JouRNAL. The Guglierminas and their friend Professor Lampugnani, lately decorated for valour on the field of battle, and Signor ¥. Ravelli are admitted to be in the very first rank of mountaineers, and their carefully designed and well carried out expeditions are models of what can safely be done in the mountains by a thoroughly trained party without any pro- fessional assistance. Mons. E. R. Blanchet, the well-known authority on the Alps of the Canton de Vaud, was again occupied in making new routes on the Téte de Pierre Grept and the Grand Muveran. Young Félix Veillon, who now accompanies him, seems a worthy successor to his relatives Jules an! Charles Veillon, of Les Plans. The new hut on the Rosenlaui side of the Engelhérner, built by the Akademischer Alpen Club Bern, has enabled some of its young members to extend the multi- tudinous new routes in that group. Thus a complete traverse of the central group from the Simmelisattel to the Gemsen-

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Valedictory Address. 11° sattel has been made by Herr Wyss and three companions. The E. flank of the Hohjagiburg was ascended by Herr F. Miller and two friends, and found much less difficult than it looked, while another variation on the Kingspitze was made by the same gentleman. A direct route up the W. face of the Lauteraarhorn was made by MM. Scabell and Egger. This must be very close to the route taken by our members, Messrs. Oakley Maund and Baumann in 1881, and as the rocks are described as ‘ good throughout and very entertaining,’ it is well worth the attention of climbers who have hitherto been deterred from making the ascent of that mountain owing to the length of the route by the Strahlegg. A good deal of attention was paid in 1913-4-5 to the summits of the Lepontine and Ticinese Alps. _ In the Bernina Alps Colonel Strutt, with Josef Pollinger, extended his almost unique knowledge of that district by making the first ascent of the Pizzo del Ferro Orientale by the N. face, involving constant step-cutting in hard snow and ice at an angle of 55° to 65°. The enormous summit cornice was only overcome by the climber, perched on the guide’s shoulders, finally managing to cut a hole through the great overhanging lip. No wonder Pollinger always classes Colonel Strutt as the best amateur iceman with whom he has travelled. Other difficult ascents in the same district were made by Signori Scotti, Calegari, Binaghi, Fasana, and others. Practically nothing new is reported, if indeed anything new remains, in the Central Pennine Alps. The weather in the years 1914-5 was much against high mountain expeditions. Experienced men among our members report that in no July in their recollection were the moun- tains so plastered with snow as in July 1914; thus even the otherwise tame Monte Viso required quite respectable care, and on a brilliant day the range of Mont Blane and the Pennines was nothing less than one great snow wall, so that even well- known rock mountains were difficult to pick out with any certainty. In the Himalayas Dr. de Filippi completed a journey of sixteen and a half months in the Eastern Karakorams, making numerous scientific observations and exploring the Remo Glacier, which is found to be the parent of the Shyok river, a tributary of the Indus, as well as of the Yarkand river, which loses itself in the sand of Central Asia. |

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12 Valedictory Address. Captain H. D. Minchinton made in 1914 an extended journey (cut short by the outbreak of war,in which he served with distinction both in France and Mesopotamia) in Bara Baghal, Lahoul, and Zanskar. He discovered quite a number of lateral glaciers, some of considerable size. His journey is described at length in the present number of the JouRNAL. During my term of office there have been deaths of members and others whom I cannot omit to mention, though very shortly, asin most cases their records are to be found in the notices of them contained in the JouRNAL. We have lost our last original member, Dr. Llewelyn Davies, the first to ascend the Dom and Taschhorn, a scholar, a theo- logian, and a promoter of social and educational progress, who merited, though probably he did not covet, higher promotion in the Church than he obtained. Several of those who have died attained high positions in the State—the Earl of Minto, Viceroy of India, who made the third ascent of the Schreckhorn with Horace Walker and Hans Jaun—Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Governor of South Australia—Sir John Fuller, Governor of Victoria—Sir Kenelm Digby, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, formerly captain of the eleven both at Harrow and Oxford, who made a new route to the Sattel of Monte Rosa—Dr. T. W. Jex-Blake, head master of Cheltenham and afterwards of Rugby and Dean of Wells, and Sir F.: F. Cullinan, Principal Clerk in the Chief Secretary’s office in Dublin. Amongst the other members we have lost are one member of the House of Lords, Lord Ellenborough, who as Captain Law, R.N., was at one time a constant attendant at our meetings —Mr. Frederick Morshead, a great climber, as appears from the record of his deeds in the Journat, who declined the Presidency and Vice-Presidency because he had not time to attend to the duties—Mr. J. H. Fox, a very old member of the Club, who climbed much with Mr. F. F. Tuckett, and cousin of Mr. Harry Fox, who was lost in the Caucasus—and Mr. James Eccles, one of the first climbers of his day, who, with Michel and Alphonse Payot, made the first ascent of Mont Blane by the Brouillard and Fresnay Glaciers, an expedition that has never been repeated in its entirety. | I may mention that Colonel Tilney, the representative of the families of Mr. and Mrs. Eccles, has kindly given to the Club some very fine plates of scenery, chiefly in the neighbour- hood of Mont Blane, of which district Mr. Eccles had such a remarkable knowledge. The Honorary Secretary is gradually

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Valedictory Address. 13 making a list of these plates, which will be kept at the Club for the use of any members who wish to see them. Since our last meeting two distinguished Oxford men, Professor W. W. Esson, Savilian Professor of Geometry, and the Rev. H. F. Tozer, have died. The latter is rightly described in his obituary notice as one of the oldest and foremost repre- sentatives of classical geography and travel. He was also an admirable representative of the Oxford Don of the old school. Besides these we have lost Mr. G. T. Amphlett, president of the Mountain Club of South Africa—the Rev. A. Fairbanks, a constant attendant at our meetings, some of whose climbs were recorded in a paper recently contributed by Mr. J. Stogdon—and Mr. R. L. Harrison, for many years an auditor of our accounts. Several great guides have died—Melchior Anderegg, of whom it ig unnecessary to say more than has already been said—a very great guide; J. J. Blane, called Le Greffier, a good guide himself and father of good guides; Pierre, known as Pére, Gaspard, who made the first ascent of the Meije with M. de Castelnau ; Sepp. Innerkofler, of Sexten, who was killed in the war, one of the best of the Tyrolese guides, with a knowledge of snow and ice beyond that of most guides from that district ; J. B. Rodier, a well-known Dauphiné guide; Jean Maitre, of Evolena; Franz Biener, known to everyone as Weisshorn Biener; Josef Lochmatter, one of the family of famous brothers; and lastly Martin Schocher, the well-known Pontresina guide. . Herr Cathrein, of the Eggishorn and Rieder Alp, well known to most Alpine travellers, died quite recently. I may add to the mention of Herr Cathrein that his well-known relation, Dr. Alexander Seiler, generously offered hospitality in the Seiler hotels at Zermatt to wounded British officers, for which we tender him our hearty thanks. Two ladies well known in the Alps died at a great age—Miss Catherine Martha Gardner, whose great feat was the descent of the Pigne d’Arolla by the N. face, and Miss Lucy Walker, the sister of Horace Walker, formerly President of the Alpine Club.. Time does not permit me to say much of Miss Walker. She climbed for several years, and frequented the Alps for years after she had given up climbing. Her great achievement was the first ascent by a lady of the Matterhorn at a time when that mountain retained more respect than it sometimes receives now. No one who knew her and her brother ean fail to regret them both, there was not a charitable or worthy

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14 Valedictory Address. object to which they were not quick to give their help, and I think it is nght to say that there could not be better examples of the kindly, honourable, unassuming English lady and gentleman than Lucy and Horace Walker. _ As I have said before, the supply of new members has been small, but there are two additions which should not pass without mention. _ The honorary membership of the Club has been accepted by Captain Duhamel, a well-known French mountaineer and. author, a veteran of the war of 1870, now serving in the 28th Bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins (Commandant la Division des Skieurs), in which same distinguished corps his three sons are also serving. Mr. J. B. Colgrove, one of the famous three C’s —Colgrove, Cust, and Cawood—has rejoined as an ordinary member. Sir Edward Davidson mentioned the deaths of the other two during his term of office. I am glad to be able to mention that we still have as a member the last survivor of the band. Only this evening the Rev. T. H. Philpott, who originally became a member in 1865, has rejoined us. Quite recently he gave us some charming ‘ Memories of an Alpine Partnership of the Sixties, Hornby and Philpott,’ and we welcome on his return the surviving member of the partnership. As there have been deaths not caused by the war, so there have been honours not arising from it, and they have worthily fallen upon two of our ex-Presidents, Viscount Bryce and Mr. —or should I say Dr.—Douglas Freshtield. Viscount Bryce’s peerage was well deserved by public services extending over many years. + With regard to Mr. Freshfield, honours fall so thick and fast that I hardly know where to begin. First, in his fiftieth year of membership in this Club he was elected President of the Royal Geographical Society, a position for which he is admir- ably fitted ; then the Italian Geographical Society elected him an honorary member. | The Royal Scottish Geographical Society presents a medal called the Livingstone Medal, not annually, but from time to time to distinguished persons. On the last occasion before that which I am about to mention it was presented to Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. This year the Society, recognizing that ‘ Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war,’ conferred the medal on Mr. Freshfield. The latest—I will not say the last—of his honours was that of Honorary D.C.L. of the University of Ox- ford. For this degree he was presented, as was fitting, by the

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Valedictory Address. 15 Public Orator, our member Mr. A. D. Godley, whose Latin oration on the occasion has appeared in the JouRNAL and is no doubt familiar to all members. | You will have noticed that an alteration has this year been made in the Journat in that there have only been three numbers instead of four. We were unwilling to make an alteration after so many years, but we felt bound to do so on the advice of the editors, based on the necessity for economy of paper, the increased cost of production, and the possibility of a deficiency of material by reason of the enforced cessation of climbing. Although reduced in the quantity of its numbers, there has been no falling off in the quality of the contents of the JouRNAL. Through the development of what was called to me by one of our members the historical method by Captain Farrar, a new and attractive feature has been added. From diaries, manuscript notes, correspondence, and guides’ Fiihrer- biicher, Captain Farrar has collected records of early climbs, some by guideless, some by guided parties, which are most interesting as history of the sport and descriptions of the conditions under which it was then pursued, so different from those of to-day. I know such research is a pleasure to him per- sonally, but he none the less deserves our thanks for adding another pleasure to our reading of the JourNAL. The editor, Mr. Yeld, has established a record which I think will stand for a very long time. He has completed his twenty- first year as editor—a period more than twice as long as that attained by any of his predecessors, and I am glad to say he seems no worse for it and is still carrying on. We owe him much gratitude, and we hope that he may go on adding to his record for a long time to come. The hbrary has been well kept up, and the additions have been noticed from time to time. I may mention in particular that we have been fortunate enough to acquire the MS. journals of the late Mr. A. W. Moore from 1860 to 1863 and 1865 to 1869, which contain much valuable material for the pursuit of the historical method which I have mentioned. Mr. Freshfield has in hand a life of De Saussure, also a valuable addition to Alpine history, and I am glad to see that he is most properly availing himself of his presidency of the Royal Geographical Society to utilize that body as a branch of the Alpine Club. In addition to the President’s own papers on mountain subjects, Dr. Kellas read a valuable paper on the effect of high altitudes, which should be of great use in the

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16 The Alps from 1856 to 1865. attacks on the Himalayas which we hope will take place after the war. As usual, we are under great obligations to Mr. Sydney Spencer and Mr. G. P. Baker for their services in connection with picture exhibitions. Latterly there has been difficulty in arranging exhibitions by reason of the scarcity of exhibits, but the Honorary Secretary, never at a loss, has succeeded in securing in their place two exhibitions not provided by the Club, one of which we now see round us. I cannot end without a word as to the Honorary Secretary, but I find a difficulty in the fact that, after all, the stock of laudatory adjectives is limited and I must not repeat myself too often. Perhaps I had better confine myself to saying that I endorse every word said by Sir Edward Davidson and Mr. Broome, and to adding for myself that he has made my term of office much less onerous and even more agreeable than it would have been without him. He has added to the gratitude we owe him by undertaking to carry on the work of Honorary Secretary until his successor, Major Gask, is freed from his military duties. I conclude by offering my thanks to all the members of the Club, in and out of office, for the kindness, courtesy, and con- sideration I have experienced from all of them, and by ex- pressing my hope that my successor may soon be able to celebrate the conclusion of peace and a return to our ordinary life, freed from the cloud of sorrow and anxiety caused by the war. Tur Aupes FRomM 1856 to 1865. HAVE been told that a few reminiscences of ‘the days that are no more’ would be welcome to those members of our Club—and they are now a great majority—who, for the. best of reasons, never had experience of them. My first inclina- tion was to reply in the words of the Needy Knife-Grinder, ‘Story! I have none to tell’; for so much may be read of those early days in books such as ‘ Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers,’ Forbes’ ‘Travels through the Alps of Savov,’ Hinchliff’s ‘Summer Months among the Alps,’ and Wills’ ‘ Wanderings in the High Alps,’ to name no others. But on reflecting that the increased Alpine literature and wider outlook of the

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The Alps from 1856 to 1865, 17. present day have relegated these books to the rank of classics—praised by many, but read by few—I thought that a small collection from an old man’s memories might enable our worthier successors to realise that, though the peaks them- selves have but slightly changed, the ways of men are greatly altered. I have selected the period from 1856 to 1865, because in the former year I had my first view of the Alps, when I spent a Long Vacation, with a small reading party, at Lausanne and Ouchy, taking a ‘ week off’ to visit Chamonix and the Great St. Bernard, and because eight of the next nine summer holidays were passed in varied mountain rambles between the Viso and Chur, my acquaintance with the Engadine and Tyrol not beginning till 1867. First as to how we then got to the peaks and glaciers. That was not so easy a matter as it had become before 1914. Though, when I crossed the Channel for the first time, the days of long journeys by diligence, through France, Belgium, and Germany, had come to an end, though the Rhine was well provided with steamboats, the railways did no more than deposit the traveller on the outskirts of the mountains. They came to an end, for instance, at Geneva, Bale, and Zurich, that between the first-named city and Lausanne being still unfinished. The Lautaret and the Genévre were the only high roads across the French Alps, and to the north of these were the Cenis, the Simplon, the St. Gotthard, the Bernardino and the Spliigen. Mule-paths only led across the Grimsel, the Furka, and the Lukmanier, or up even the more important lateral valleys. One could drive to Chamonix, but the diligence from Geneva stopped at St. Martin and the journey had to be completed in light chars-a-bancs which held four passengers seated sidewayse In the summer of 1856 we had to go to Lausanne by diligence from Bale to Bienne, from which town a steamer took us to Yverdon, and a short railway brought us to the end of our journey. As the diligence was already full, we were sent on in ‘ suppléments,’ and I have not yet forgotten the discomfort of one experience that night, when half a dozen travellers were packed into a chaise that would not have been roomy for four. As I happened to be a middle passenger I could not move a leg from the beginning to the end of the stage. Neither can I forget the delight of the early morning when we got out of another carriage to walk up the slopes above the Pierre Pertuis; the green grass dappled with mountain flowers and contrasted with the dark pine woods, the fresh fragrant air, and the mowers jodelling as they went forth to their task, while, later. VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXIV. C

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18 The Alps from 1856 to 1565. in the morning, the journey along the lakes, already connected by a canal, was like an introduction to a new world. . Wishing to see Berne on my return journey, I had to go there by diligence, whence another one took me to Bale. So, as a rule, in travelling about the Alps the older and less active folk had to ride, and the younger went on foot. Thus to change one Alpine centre for another was in those days a slower business than it has since become. In 1858, my first real journey among the higher Alps, my companion, J. C. Hawkshaw,! and I spent about three weeks in Switzerland on our way to Italy, seeing a good deal of the Bernese Oberland and crossing from Zermatt to the Val Anzasca, without using any horse transport. As was customary with walkers in those days, we carried our knapsacks, forwarding portmanteaux from town to town; in fact, that continued to be my practice for some ten years after the period of which I am writing, but, though one is thus more independent, it adds to the toil and diminishes the pleasure of a journey. In scrambling it is apt to get in the way, and it makes one’s back unpleasantly hot. Of the rucksack I cannot speak from experience, for it did not come into use till I had ceased to be my own porter. A pedestrian arriving thus burdened at one of the aggrandised modern hotels might now perhaps experience a chilly reception, but I do not remember any instance of it in those early days.” Hawkshaw, like myself, delighted in bathing, and as travellers of the other sex were rare on mountain paths we could generally find some pleasant tarn in which to have a swim, so we always found room for a towel in our knapsacks. One bath, however, I shall never forget. We had arrived one evening at the Grimsel Hospice, and the adjacent lake suggested a morning swim. So we turned out very early and soon found a low rock, sufficiently screened for our purpose, from which we took simultaneous headers. Such was the temperature of pt ee ee eee eS — eae eee eee ~- esse - Se ee: ae 1 Son of the noted engineer, Sir John Hawkshaw, and himself past-President of the Institute of Civil Engineers; then a West- minster lad of seventeen, but an excellent walker, and the best of companions. | . 2 Except an amusing one in 1865, when our late President, Bishop Browne, and I were going to Aviernoz, a few miles. from Annecy, to visit some ice caves, where the owner of a farmhouse, at Les Olliers, to whom, in default of an auberge, we had applied for breakfast, was at first rather supercilious in manner, because, as he afterwards explained, he mistook us for colporteurs.

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The Alps from 1856 to 1865. 19 the water that I came up face to the shore and promptly scrambled out, and he very speedily followed my example. Since then I have more than once ‘ tubbed ’ in a glacier stream, but never have had so cold a plunge. One often had to rough it. Even in §witzerland the inns, as a rule, were second-rate or below that, except in the larger towns, and in these the palatial edifices which have since sprung up like mushrooms were unknown. In that country, however, they were fairly clean, though often with certain sanitary defects. The mountain cookery was generally anything but Parisian, and the bread, even in such a place as Zermatt, was usually sour. I well remember how my palate and my digestive organs used to welcome the pure white bread which awaited us in the Italian valleys. More wholesome, though good imitations of the neighbouring rocks, were the loaves of black bread, which were, I think, more common in the South-Western — than in the Central Alps. These were flat cakes, like huge buns—sometimes half a yard in diameter—and they were made, as I was told, twice or even once in the year. To masticate them required Father William’s strength of jaw; even to cut them was no easy task. A back volume of this Journal gives A. W. Moore’s account of the loaf of black bread which might be excluded from the list of provisions supplied by Oyace. ‘ We tried to chop it with an ice-axe, and it hopped about the chalet like a marble; we boiled it for four long hours, while we glared greedily at the pot, and at the end a quarter of an inch of the outside was turned into a gluey slime, and within it was as hard as ever.’? At Les Olliers our host, already mentioned, cut off with no little exertion a large segment from the outside of a huge loaf of black bread and reserved it ‘for his little horse,’ bidding us cut inwards, and I remember, in the Val Tournanche, seeing at an auberge a knife terminating in a hook and a staple fixed in a flat board, so as to apply the principle of the lever in cutting the local black bread. Vegetarians in those days would have fared badly in the mountains, for garden produce was rare; but meat, even in Switzerland, was not always easily obtained. Veal was commoner than beef, and sometimes one had to be content with goat’s flesh. Constant exercise seemed to have developed the sheep’s muscular system: Tyndall’s protest against the Alpine mutton was often justifiable. ‘ Through the lack of wholesome nutriment, the noblest stations in the 8 Alpine Journal, i. 222,

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20 The Alps from 1856 to 1865. Alps are sometimes converted into dens of dyspepsia, which even the mountain air cannot abolish. The Riffel and the Eggischhorn, for example, are unrivalled positions, and the proprietors of the hotels on both are, as far as I know them, intelligent and obliging men. Let them aim, in all earnestness, at the substitution of wholesome, tender mutton for the wicked tissue which, under this name, is frequently presented to travellers, and they will double the attractiveness of their respective houses. This question touches both physics and morals. A man cannot climb as he ought to do upon woody fibre ; nor can he adore aright, or lift his soul in any becoming way to those regions towards which his beloved mountains aspire, if the coats of his stomach are in a state of irritation.’ But often, in the Tarentaise, Dauphiné, and the Cottian Alps, fresh meat could not be obtained; there was nothing better than inferior bacon and corresponding sausages of the German type, with a rare and skinny fowl. For some years I always carried tea, and W. Mathews brought chocolate. The wine was often sour, so that for a man, like myself, no less sensitive than Tyndall, Alpine travel was often a continuous struggle with dyspepsia, and a place had to be found in the knapsack for bicarbonate of soda. The effect of my first visit to Dauphiné and the Viso district, when, out of ten days, two had been spent under a big boulder, three in haylofts, and the others in none too restful beds, and a wholesome meal had been a rarity, was to put me so thoroughly out of condition that, on leaving the French side of the Viso, I had to halt many times, even on the two hours’ ascent from the Bergerie of La Ruine to the Col de Seyliéres. As to the cause of this there could be no doubt. We reached Turin the same (Saturday) night, and after some three days at the excellent Hotel Europa, Hawkshaw and I went by the Val Tournanche to Zermatt, Mathews having abandoned the Alps in despair in consequence of the persistent bad weather.5 Favoured by a brief spell of improvement, on the following Saturday we crossed the Théodule to the Riffel- haus, taking the Breithorn and the Little Mont Cervin en route ; ascended Monte Rosa on the Monday, went up to the Lysjoch and down to Zermatt on the Wednesday, over the Col Durand to Zinal on the Thursday, and returned to Zermatt by the Triftjoch on the Friday, and I have never walked with less 4 Vacation Tourists in 1860, p. 317. 5 The weather in August and September of 1860 was extremely bad.

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The Alps from 1856 to 1865. 21 fatigue or more enjoyment than during this week of 1860. That was a good piece of Alpine work for my companion, Hawkshaw, who had spent his nineteenth birthday under the above-named boulder. Insects that murdered sleep were once among the ‘ minor horrors’ of Alpine travel. Even in the better Swiss hotels the flea was not unknown; in the South-Western Alps it often abounded. Whymper quotes the remark of a Dauphiné peasant: ‘ As to fleas, I don’t pretend to be different to anyone else—I have them.’ This time, at any rate, he spoke the truth, and I think the creatures enjoyed the ‘ pasture new’ afforded by an Englishman’s flesh. One could not wonder at their abundance. This is no exaggeration of our experience in 1860 of the inns of the Dauphiné and Cottian Alps. ‘ After any meal the plates are scraped in the eating-room and the broken victuals thrown upon the floor. The dogs of the neigh- bourhood then investigate the débris and devour what they can of it, leaving the bones behind. As brooms are entirely un- known, a geological formation of offensive character is soon accumulated.’® A similar process apparently went on all over the house, for the floors of our bedrooms were in the same condition. Of course there has since been a great change for the better. In 1887, in a journey through Dauphiné with geological aims, I spent four days at La Grave, where the Hotel ‘ chez Juge,’ though its cuisine was better than that of most Dauphiné inns, was once little less dirty, and justified A.W. Moore’s remark that there was ‘ nothing stable about it, except the smell’? (for its ground floor, as was often the case, was given up to horses and other animals), and I found it had been partly rebuilt and en- larged, was clean, and in every way improved. In Switzerland the mountain inns are now as a rule thoroughly clean, and those agile tormentors have become as rare as in England, while the same is true of their more slowly moving companions in beds. One insect pest only seems to have become more numerous— the mosquito. For that Martigny always had a bad reputa- tion, but I do not remember even five-and-thirty years ago to have found it a nuisance at Vernayaz, Sion, and Sierre, and in 1900 it forced me even at Arolla to decamp from a pleasant resting-place among the firs near the Hotel Kurhaus, though the inn itself was free from them. Flies, however, were everywhere a pest, as they are still apt to be. The common 8 W. Mathews in Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, Second Series, ii. 136. * Whymper, Scrambles amsngst the Alps, p. 194.

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92 The Alps from 1856 to 1865. house-fly almost swarmed in the South-Western Alps, especially on the Italian side ; while out of doors, in addition to them, the horsefly, with two others that bit fiercely, one like a big blue- bottle, the other something like a hornet, but rarer and fortunately more nervous, did their best to spoil pleasure, especially in the Oberland and in the month of July. For these pests I think the limestone districts are worse than the erystalline. Happily, at about 6000 feet they are left behind. The Alpine climber in those early days was not unfrequently something also of an explorer. Very little was known of the chain to the south of Mont Blanc, except in the immediate neigh- bourhood of the few high-roads. The maps were often indiffer- ent, occasionally almost absurdly wrong. Travellers described, and even the official map published by the Sardinian engineers indicated, a grand peak, called the Mont Iseran, which rose, ‘streaming with glaciers,’ to a height of 13,271 feet, just to the east of the pass of that name. This peak had no better foundation in fact than a big crag with a small glacier on its top, which is only 10,684 feet in height, can be reached in about an hour’s scramble from the summit of the pass (9085 feet), and has been familiar to the people of the country for several centuries. That phantom was dispelled in 1859 by W. Mathews, and the actual mountain was ascended by J. J. Cowell,® the former of whom shows that by some extraordinary blunder the Sardinian engineers confused this comparatively incon- spicuous knob with the eastern peak of the Levanna and trans- ferred to it the measurement of the Grand Paradis, miles away to the east. In the Pennine Alps only twenty-two out of fifty-one principal peaks above 12,000 feet had been climbed in 1862°; a slightly larger proportion in the Oberland, and fewer in the Graians and Tyrol. Mathews conquered the Viso in 1861, and Whymper the highest peak of the Pelvoux in the same summer, but this was, I believe, the only one of eleven distinct peaks in Dauphiné of at least. the above-named elevation which had been reached by man. When we went to that district in 1860, we had to be content with General Bourcet’s map( 1749-1754), which, though good enough for the valleys, was useless for the high mountains, which it represents in a conventional and semi-pictorial fashion. In 1862, however, thanks to our friend F. F. Tuckett, we had 8 J. J. Cowell, Vacation Tourists in 1860, p. 261; W. Mathews, Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, Second Series, 11. 404. ® Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, Second Series, vol. 11, chapter xv.

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The Alps from 1856 to 1865. 23 the advantage of a photograph of the map, prepared by the Ktat-Major Frangais, which the authorities had kindly supplied to him. But prior to this date some districts of the Alps were hardly better known to surveyors than parts of the Karakoram- Himalayas were thirty years later. The art of mountain-climbing has greatly advanced since those early days, though it had already progressed far beyond the stage known to De Saussure. A well-known print in colours represents him and his son making their way through the séracs on their ascent to the Col du Géant, attired very much as they would have been for a stroll about the streets of Geneva.1° Each is walking between two guides, the three holding on to a long alpenstock. The guides are similarly furnished, only one of them having a piolet. Even during the years of which I write, the alpenstock was almost always carried by travellers, who usually had it branded with the names of the places which they had visited, ‘Jct on marque les bdtons’ being a common placard at any one of the places of refreshment of the slightest note. During these years neither Mathews nor I used an ice- axe, but we had alpenstocks with stronger shafts and larger -steel points than the ordinary kind. The leading guide, asa rule, had a piolet (in fact, the best men from Chamonix usually carried one), but sometimes an ordinary hatchet was strapped on to the knapsack. When we crossed the New Weissthor in 1858, I noted in my diary that, the morning being unpromising, “a guide, who, judging from his bdton, had been up every mountain in the neighbourhood,’ prophesied we should have to come back. The rope, however, had become usual. In the South-Western Alps it was difficult, sometimes impossible, to find a man really competent to act as guide above the snow- line. But even by 1865 much had changed. In those few years glacier passes had been crossed and snow peaks climbed almost by the dozen. The words ‘inaccessible’ and ‘im- possible ’ were dropping out of the Alpine dictionary, and the proverb ‘ Where there is a will there is a way’ had proved to be generally true. But in the more remote districts failures - were commoner than now. Few climbers could tolerate the tedium of wet days in a filthy chalet, under a big boulder, or in a little cave, and abandoned a tempting item in their pro- gramme, as I know too well. But I was not eel in regard ue me ws ee ee eee ee ee ee _ ae ae eee we eae ee a ee ee ee as Repronaeed't in outline in E. Whines 8 ere and Mont Blanc, p. 40. uf Lady’s Tour round Monte Rosa, Pp. 393.

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24 The Alps from 18356 to 1865. weather till after I had been obliged to give up out-of-the-way wanderings. Our guide in 1860 was Michel Auguste Croz, whom we had taken over from W. Mathews, when he parted from us at Turin; and Michel, with his elder brother Jean Baptiste, accompanied Mathews and myself during our journey of 1862 in the Graian, Cottian, and Dauphine Alps, in which more than one excursion was frustrated by bad weather, and we were forced by the state of the snow to turn back at the foot of the actual peak of the Ecrins.12 Jean Baptiste was an excellent guide, hardly inferior to and more companionable than his brother, whose endurance, strength, and firmness of foot were remarkable. When he gripped me by the hand he seemed as if nothing could move him from his footing. His topographical instinct also was extraordinary. In 1868, when we were again in Dauphiné, that more imaginative than veracious local guide, Alexandre Pic, gave us a circumstantial description of a route from La Grave up the Glacier de la Casse Déserte to the Glacier Blanc, just at the foot of the Kcrins. Croz was incredulous from the first, and was exceptionally grumpy all the morning, after we had started with Pic to show the way, till the latter, when called upon to indicate the pass, pointed to a not very promising snow-saddle. This, we knew at a glance, must take us to La Bérarde, quite away from Les Kcrins, from which we were cut off by a long wall of impracticable crags. For want of something better to do, we determined to make for that saddle (now “lnown as the Col de la Casse Déserte). ‘The ascent was steep, and some- times not very easy; and I remember at one place Michel, who was next to me, pointing with a grim smile to Pic, whose legs were shaking under him. After that he was quite cheerful for the rest of the day, though we thought it better, as the weather had become threatening, not to attempt the descent on the western side, of which we could see but little. The only maps of that district which Croz could have seen were worthless, but, as we were climbing up to the above-named Col, Mathews, who, as mentioned above, had a copy of the French surveyors’ map, and I were debating where the summit of Les Kicrins was likely to make its appearance. We differed slightly, when Croz remarked that he thought a third position more probable, and after we had mounted a little he was proved to be the most noon Het He was a born son of the moun- 12 As eibedls in this Jounal, i. p. 66.

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The Alps from 1856 to 1865, 25 tains, and only happy among them, looking a victim of boredom in towns. He was an almost incessant smoker, so that one of his teeth was worn down by the friction. of his rather large wooden pipe. That pipe was a good signal of the work before us. If we were coming to a difficult bit, it was slipped into his pocket, and when that was over was replaced in his mouth. Croz, when there was a choice, preferred ice to rocks and seemed to me a little reluctant to use the rope, which might be inter- preted as a presentiment. This, however, on one occasion was nearly disastrous to him. I had suggested putting it on as we were descending from the Triftjoch to the névé of that glacier, and he had replied that he thought it needless. Presently we came to the bergschrund, across which he jumped. But it was more masked by snow than he had reckoned, and he only saved himself from being engulfed by fortunately getting his outstretched arms on firm ice. As he was carrying the rope, it might have been impossible to rescue him, though we had a second guide, Johann Kronig from Zermatt. This was to save time, for Croz had taken us alone up Monte Rosa and to the Lysjoch. In 1863 his brother had some other engagement, so Michel brought a younger man from Chamonix, J. B. Simond, and the latter accompanied the late R. W. Taylor and myself in 1864, when we went from Thonon, on the Lake of Geneva, to the southern part of Dauphiné with a similar but much more limited intention to that which afterwards took Sir Martin Conway along ‘The Alps from End to End.’ It was an interesting journey, though, on three occasions, unfavourable weather obliged us to substitute mule-paths for glacier passes. In 1865 I did not undertake any serious expeditions, for I had not quite recovered from a shght malarial attack, the result of a quick change the previous summer from Dauphiné to the old towns near the lower part of the Rhone ; so I visited 1ce- caves, with G. F. Browne, now Bishop and a past-President of our Club, and we rambled from them to and about the Western Oberland, without any higher ascent than the Buet. An extract from an account of our experiences in 1860 during an attempted ascent of the Pelvoux may serve to show how we had occasionally to rough it.8% After a climb for about an hour and a half, sometimes rather steep, from the Val Sapiniére, we 13 Contributed to a college magazine, entitled The Eagle, in. 1. Our party was seven ‘n number: W. Mathews, J.C. Hawkshaw, and myself, Michel Croz our guide, Mons. Reynaud, a French engineer, who had joined as a companion, and two local guides.

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26 The Alps from 1856 to 1865. ‘ emerged upon a slope of turf, thickly spread with large blocks, to one of the largest of which the guide pointed, saying ‘Voila la cabane ”’ (which was our promised resting-place for the night).14 I had expected a hut of some kind and a truss of hay for a bed. There was nothing but a huge mass of rock, | that had in former times fallen down from the cliffs above, and had rested so as to afford a shelter under one of its sides. This had been still farther enclosed with a rough wall of loose stones, and thus a sort of kennel was made, about nine or ten feet by five or six, and about four feet high at the entrance, whence it sloped gradually down to about two feet at the other end. Our thoughts turned regretfully to some extra wraps left down below, but we did our best to make things as comfortable as was possible for the night. Dead juniper boughs were collected for a fire, and the guides set to work to clean out the cave, which, being frequented by the sheep as well as the shepherds, was in a sufficiently filthy condition. The first who entered quickly emerged again, holding at arm’s length the mortal remains of a defunct mutton in a very lively condition, which he quickly sent over the precipice for the ravens to sup on, if they had any fancy for it. The floor was then swept and strewed with fern and dock leaves, and a fire lighted to sweeten the place. Night came on, the sky grew wild and stormy, and at last I crawled after my companions into the den. But almost instantly I retreated much faster, more than half choked. A fire is a very comfortable thing on a cold night, but has its - drawbacks when the house is without a chimney and the smoke has to escape by the door. If, besides this, the only room be about four feet high, and the fire made of damp juniper wood, matters are still worse. However, by lying down so as to avoid the thickest part of the smoke, I contrived to endure it after a time. The fire, and such extra clothing as we had with us, prevented us from suffering from cold during the night.’ By making my gaiters a substitute for a mattress and taking the softest stone I could find for a pillow, I managed, like my companions who adopted the same precautions, to obtain some sleep. But it was a dreary night, and gave birth to a drearier day ; ; thick banks of cloud and mists, above, below, around, pouring down a steady, hopeless rain! We were reluctant to retreat, so we decided to send down our local guides for an additional stock of provisions and wait for the chance of a ee ane tg A TR, 144 A barometer observation gave the height above sea-level as 7351 feet.

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The Alps from 1856 to 1865. 27 brighter to-morrow. But it was a tiresome time. About mid- day snow fell at intervals, and the rain became less heavy, till in the afternoon it ceased and we strolled about, hunting for plants and minerals with very little success, but we collected a good store of juniper wood and put it near the fire to dry. At last night came, and we prepared for bed. But we had to make a change in our arrangements. During the morning the roof had begun to leak, and the floor had become too wet to lie upon ; so We arranged smooth stones on it, and sat or lay upon these. ‘Thus we were more uncomfortable this night than before ; we were crowded closer together, our legs, which pointed to the fire, getting in a hopeless tangle. I woke up once so stiffened with the pressure of my stony seat that for some time I could not identify my own legs.’ At last the day dawned, and, though very far from ideal, it held out some hopes of success. We left our shelter and presently began to mount rapidly upwards. But when we halted for breakfast the older of our two local guides declared that he was too tired to go further. Then clouds began to gather, and a mist enveloped us. At last we came to the side of a glacier, just where it poured in a cascade over a precipice. Here our other local guide declared that he was afraid of the crevasses, was tired, and felt pain from an old wound. Argu- | ments and reproaches were equally vain; no further would he go. Croz justly said that, though he was reluctant to turn back, the mists prevented him from knowing what line to follow, so that we were obliged to acquiesce in failure, after all our discomfort. We took as straight a course as possible down to the valley, and had the satisfaction of giving our worthless guides, by the pace at which we went, a jolting which they did not like. I may complete this part of my reminiscences by the story of a more successful expedition, the ascent of the Grivola,!® which in 1862 was still a novelty ; our party, W. Mathews and myself, with the brothers Jean Baptiste and Michel Auguste Croz, and a porter from Cogne, being the fourth that actually reached the summit, and the second one with travellers. On August 12 we left Cogne, where we had been entertained by the curé, M. Chamonin, who had himself made the first successful ascent by the 8.K. face on September 5, nook This route had 15 A barometer observation gave the altitude of this apey as 10,235 feet. | 18 From an account in The Eagle, iv. 65.

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98 The Alps from 1856 to 1865. been followed by our friend F. F. Tuckett, about six weeks before us, and we had the same intention. Leaving Cogne in the afternoon, we reached the chalets of Pousset Dessus (8389 feet above the sea) in less than three hours’ easy walking, and found them tenanted by three civil bergers. “ As usual, the furniture of their abode was of the simplest character, con- sisting of a large bed at one end, a bench or two, a fire in one corner, with a huge cauldron, and a quantity of cheese in various stages. When darkness had come on, after a sunset — too beautiful in colour to be wholly satisfactory to moun- taineers, we began to make ready for the night. I was casting about my eyes to discover the softest spot on the floor for a sleeping-place, when, to my horror, the bergers insisted on our occupying their bed.’ I did my best to escape their too hospitable offers (my friend was pachydermatous), but in vain, so I was obliged to yield and stretch myself by his side, Jean Baptiste already snoring away in the inner place. ‘Where Michel and the others slept, or at what hour his pipe went out and the cheese-making ceased, I cannot say; for, in spite of the wonted inmates of these Arcadian retreats, I slept. ‘Holes in the roof, though useful for ventilation in the earlier part of the night, become objectionable towards morn- ing, and I was aroused from my light slumbers by the cold at an early hour. Presently Michel went out and returned growling something about “ brouillard,’ and in reply to my question informed me that starting was impossible at present. However, in a while, some change for the better took place, and after a light breakfast we started at 3.45 a.m., with the best wishes of our hosts.” We mounted rough slopes of grass and rocks towards the ridge of the Pousset, arriving on its crest, after disturbing four chamois, at 4.50. From this we looked across the white snow-field of the Glacier de Trajo to the grand peak for which we were bound.?” To its mght Mont Blane and the higher summits of the Pennine chain raised their familiar forms ; but behind us a flat sea of clouds veiled every- thing below 10,000 feet, from which the culminating masses of the Western Graians rose like rocky islands. ‘ Very soon a golden gleam illuminated the summit of the Grivola, and crept slowly downwards ; a flash of hght darted across the fleecy ocean beneath us, and the sun rose slowly up, pouring a flood of dazzling radiance over the dead expanse of white mist below.’ 1? The height of the crest of this ridge is given in Ball’s Western Alps as 10,519 feet; of the Grivola, 13,022 feet.

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The Alps from 1856 to 1865. 29 We kept to the Pousset ridge till we found an easy line of descent to the glacier, on which we arrived at 5.37, and after crossing it without difficulty halted for breakfast at the foot of the actual peak of the Grivola, which rose precipitously to a height of nearly 1900 feet above us.}8 Breakfast over, a few steps up a steep snow-siope brought us to the foot of one of the rock couloirs, and up this we scrambled. ‘For the next two hours there was plenty to do, but little to describe: now we clambered on all fours up a steep, _ smooth slab; now climbed with hands and feet up a gully or cliff, not disdaining once or twice a haul in front or a shove behind; now and then, for a change, finding a few yards up which we could walk upright, as on a rude staircase, until, in an hour and forty minutes from our breakfast-place, we reached the eastern aréte and glanced down one of the steep slopes of snow visible from the Val d’Aosta. This view, how- ever, lasted but a few minutes, and we again turned our faces to the rocks. I saw that we were approaching the top, but was beginning to feel somewhat tired of such severe and monotonous work, and was consoling myself with the thought that about another quarter of an hour would bring it to an end ; when suddenly the clatter of the iron-shod poles carried by Mathews and one of the guides, who were a few yards ahead of me, ceased. . . . I hauled myself up the great block which hid them from me, when, to my surprise, I looked down into the Val Savaranche. I glanced round; right and left of me was a stone man: we were on the top. This 1s an aréte 25 or 80 feet long and 8 or 4 wide, slightly crescent-shaped, with the concavity towards the Val Savaranche, consisting of large loose blocks, and rocks split and shattered in every direction . . . a greyish-green chlorite schist, with large veins of quartz.’ We spent about three hours on the top, Mathews working with the theodolite,?° and I sketching the view, which, though rather spoiled by clouds in some directions, especially the Tarentaise, showed the higher peaks in the main chain of the Graians rising well above them. The Pourri (our late conquest) and the Grande Casse, with one or two neighbours, besides the great peaks of Dauphiné and the yet more distant Viso, were also visible. The whole of the.Pennine chain was 18 The difference between the two stations, according to a large aneroid which I carried, was 1869 feet. 19 Tn an hour and fifty minutes from the foot of the peak. 2 At that date the height of the Grivola was still uncertain.

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80 The Alps from 1856 to 1865. well seen, and one of the lower western summits of the Oberland appeared over the depression of the Great St. Bernard. The mountain air gave exceptional zest to a cold duck and some fine pears, a present from old Jean Tairraz, our landlord at Aosta, and then, all too soon, we reluctantly began the descent. ‘ This was perhaps more trying to the nerves than the ascent, for it requires some practice to contemplate unmoved a glacier one or two thousand feet below, with a few yards of steep rock leading down invitingly straight from your feet to the edge of an apparent precipice. However, by great care | we got down without trouble, except that once or twice stones from those behind would come rattling down in disagreeable proximity to those in front. Most haste is generally worst speed in descending rocks.’ But we reached our breakfast- place in little more than an hour and a half from the top, and fifty minutes of actual walking brought us baek to the chalets where we had passed the night. Here we imbibed much milk, and our hosts, though we pressed more upon them, refused to accept over six francs for the party. Some chalet folk are extortionate, but others, like these, quite the reverse. I have left this account of our expedition as it was written in 1868, except for some abridgment, though perhaps it may occasionally produce a smile in the present generation of climbers, because it will show how their predecessors estimated a mountain of which they would think little. There has, however, been one change in the High Alps which has not always added to their beauty and has sometimes made a peak or a pass more difficult, and this is the remarkable shrinkage of their glaciers. In 1856 the end of the Glacier des Bois came down to the Valley of Chamonix; in 1858 the clear blue ice crags of the Rosenlawi Glacier ended abruptly at the brink of the ravine which had been carved by its subglacial torrent, and the Unter Grindelwald Glacier not only concealed the noted marble quarry,*! which has once more been exposed, as well as its own ravine, but its torrent then issued from an ice cave on the level of the main valley.22 In 1859 the Gorner Glacier was still advancing, and its front could be seen crumpling up the green turf of a meadow into a wall two or three feet high, and the Brenva Glacier in 1861 formed an almost level lobe of ice on the bed of the Allée Blanche. By 1865 the shrinkage had everywhere begun, and five years later it had become very 21 Described in this Journal by F. F. Tuckett, vi. 30-42. 22 T have still a rough sketch of it, made in 1858.

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The Alps from 1856 to 1865. 31 conspicuous, and though perhaps it has now stopped, and some glaciers have slightly advanced, the ice has not nearly regained the ground which it lost so rapidly aln.ost half a century ago. So to some extent in the mountains themselves, to a far greater one in all that facilitates travel, the old order has changed, yielding place to new. But are there not losses as well as gains in this? The Alps are now flooded with travellers of all kinds and nationalities. To speak only of representatives of our own country, personally-conducted parties, such as those organized by Cook and Lunn, were unknown half a century ago. I remember, in 1875, seeing one gathered by the former walking | into Chamonix. It was an irregular procession of incongruities, headed by an elderly clergyman in a top hat, who ‘ pegged ’ the footpath with his alpenstock at every step as if that were a cere- monial observance. In the old days one had generally begun a pleasant talk with one’s neighbour at a table d’héte by the end of the second course, and often made permanent friends during a two or three days’ stay at the same inn. Now the number of social undesirables is so large that caution is necessary before breaking the conversational ice. The inns themselves are more comfortable, sometimes even luxurious, but in old days the host and hostess got to know their guests, who now may generally say ‘ Nos numerus sumus.’ Those portrayed by Whymper in the Club Room at Zermatt”? could never forget the hearty welcome of M. and Mme. Seiler on their arrival, and the almost regretful parting when the pleasant stay at the Mont Rose came to anend. ‘They, like old Jean Tairraz of the Hotel du Mont Blanc at Aosta, and not a few such as these, have now passed away ; indeed, I believe that I am the only survivor, though I was not the youngest of that group. Kindly folk, however, are still to be found in the Alpine hotels, though com- paratively speaking palatial; in fact, the less fashionable the centre, the better chance of meeting with a friendly host and making pleasant acquaintances. But the Alpine region has lost not a little of that element, which, for want of a better epithet, I must call the picturesque. For instance, though a railway does not really mar the scenery in the great valleys, such as the Rhine and the Rhone, the Isére and the Durance, the effect is very different when the mountains have closed in upon the river. Then it ceases to be an eyesore only when it dives underground. No less can be said of mountain railways, such as those up to -_——— 23 Scrambles amongst the Alps, p. 262.

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32 The Alps from 1856 to 1865. Miirren, the Rigi, Pilatus, 5. Salvatore and Monte Generoso. Even worse abominations are that over the Little Scheidegg, and most of all its offshoot which aims at detiling the snows of the Jungfrau and has already come far too near accomplishing its purpose, and that one which has actually succeeded, the railway from Zermatt up the Gorner Grat. It has at any rate ‘demonstrated that in Switzerland the love of Mammon surpasses that of mountains, for it has culminated, as I am told, in an hotel built on the actual summit of the Grat. Of this spot, in former days, the greatest charm was that one could sit on the topmost rock and look successively on every part of that marvellous panorama of encircling mountains. Ihave stood on most of the points of view comparable with this in position, in accessibility and in altitude, and do not hesitate to give the Gorner Grat the preference. It is true, as I intimated above, that I have never seen the disfigurement, for I resolved at once that I would not revisit Zermatt till that excrescence had been extirpated. We were even threatened, not so long ago, with a corkscrew railway to the summit of the Matterhorn, when no doubt that peak would have been crowned by a restaurant and its crags decorated with flaming advertisements. Let us hope that one good result may come from the present war— that of drying up the golden stream which has nourished this and similar fungoid growths of a plutocratic age. But what can be expected from a people which allowed the grand crag overhanging the Devil’s Bridge to be covered with advertise- ments, and a vendcr of chocolate to paint with a corresponding tint a huge boulder in one of the wildest parts of the glen below and to inscribe thereon the name of his tirm ? The erection of modern and frequently ugly houses has too often marred the picturesqueness of the mountain villages, where the chalets, rudely built of dark-red logs, henmmed in the narrow streets, and made such inviting groups for the artist. No doubt the new is less malodorous and more salubrious than the old, but it is more attractive to the nose than it is to the eye. One of the old covered wooden bridges seemed always to invite a sketch, but the modern iron structure which has so often taken its place, though no doubt more convenient for traffic, offers no temptations to linger. The towns, perhaps, have fared even worse than the villages. Around the ancient nucleus, street after street of new and often unattractive houses has sprung up, while many of the old structures have been rebuilt, or, what is hardly a less evil, have been victims of the unbridled zeal of the restorer. In 1856 the cathedrals of

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The Alps from 1856 to 1865. 33 Berne and Lausanne, with the castle in the latter town, had felt only the touch of time, which often mellows rather than injures, An old stone gateway and part of the city wall were standing at Lucerne half a century ago on the site, so far as I can identify it, now covered by a great hotel. One of those grey stone towers with a pyramidal roof, once so common, stood near the Hotel Bellevue at Zurich and another at Ouchy by the Lake of Geneva. The one has disappeared,the other has been ‘ restored,’ pierced with inappropriate windows, encased in a modern hotel —in a word, so ‘ uglified’ that destruction would have been preferable. In 1856 only some scattered villas in pleasant gardens connected this lakeside village with Lausanne: now the latter has spread out in all directions over the slopes once covered by vineyards, and in so doing has not increased the charms of Lake Léman. Berne has suffered even more. It still retained, in 1856, its ancient aspect of a peninsular city, guarded on three sides by the Aar, which swept from south to north far beneath its walls, like the Wear round Durkam. But now great iron bridges span the valleys, across which extensive new suburbs have sprung up. Trams glide along to and fro, as in the most modern of cities ; convenient, no doubt, probably inevitable, if Switzerland wished to be progres- sive, but utterly incongruous. Not only so, but the houses which have risen on the higher ground to the south of the Aar interfere with the famous view from the cathedral terrace of the snowy giants of the Bernese Oberland. Klein Basel, when first I saw it, did not bristle with chimneys, and Basel itself still retained much of its antique aspect. Now almost everything is modernised, and even the picturesque Alte Briicke has been replaced by a structure, doubtless better for traffic, but destitute of either architectural beauty or historical interest. In this, as in the rest of the larger Swiss towns, as well as in the other parts of the Alps, little is left to tempt the ' _ traveller to linger who, like Dr. Syntax, is in search of the pictur- esque. I admit that much has been gained in the ease and comfort of travel and in the greater prosperity of the country, but when I turn over my journals and sketch-books I realise that not a little has been lost. Half a century ago we could still see some relics of the quaint costumes once distinctive of the different cantons. The women in Valais retained the low hat with its broad encircling ribbon. Those of Canton Berne wore their picturesque costume in the streets and markets, instead of reserving it for restaurants; numbers of little peculiarities have disappeared, for some of which, however, VOL. XXXT.—NO. CCXIV. D

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34 The Alps from 1856 to 1865. such as ‘ peasant brats that offer flowers,’ uninvited awakeners of echoes, and persistent beggars, one does not lament. But, in regard to flowers, the increasing crowds of travellers threaten to exterminate the more attractive, so that near to their haunts the Alpine pastures are losing one of their greatest charms. The Swiss, however, are now doing their best to protect the choicer members of their mountain flora, and one wishes success to their sanctuaries for plants and for animals. Some differences, I think, may be noticed between the younger and the older generation of mountaineers. We were less skilful and less daring. Our object being to get to the top of a peak, we took the way which presented the fewest difficulties ; we enjoyed overcoming these, but a route which seemed almost impracticable or distinctly dangerous had, for us, no special attraction. To put the matter shortly, mountain- climbing has become more than formerly a branch of gym- nastics. Perhaps also a desire to increase knowledge attracted a larger proportion of our early members to the Alps. These presented many problems—physical, botanical, geological— and even their geography was but imperfectly known. In one or other of these departments such men as John Ball and William Mathews, J. Tyndall and A. Ramsay, F. F. Tuckett and KE. Whymper, made distinct additions to knowledge. Then came a time when a fashion was set of sneering at science, and striving after facetiousness. That phase, however, has passed away,and our members, now that the Alps have been explored and every peak of importance has been scaled, are making us familiar with the Caucasus and the Karakoram-Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains and the Andes, and with African peaks unknown even by name in our younger days. More than this, since reproduced photographs began to be used to illustrate our Journal, it has been very helpful for the study of scenery above the snow-line in different parts of the world. But it is time to bring these rambling memories to an end, and I will do this “as in private duty bound’ by declaring thankfully that I owe to the Alps, not only some of the greatest pleasures of my life, but also, more than to anything else, such beneficial effects on body and mind that, though not naturally of a robust constitution, my strength, at more than fourscore years, is anything but ‘labour and sorrow.’ T. G. BonnEy,

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Gatt and Style. 35 GAIT AND STYLE. By F. W. BOURDILLON. (Read before the Alpine Club, June 6, 1916.) | N the last occasion when I had the honour of reading a Paper before the Alpine Club, I found to my regret that its title had been regarded as somewhat ambiguous. I have endeavoured, therefore, to find for the present paper a title conveying a clear idea of its contents. There is a familiar Scots phrase, ‘To gang your ain gait,’ which expresses the hearty desire of every climber, though it is not always realisable in a mixed party; and there is an equally well-known French phrase, Le style c’est l'homme, which has cheered many a fine writer with the reflection what a fine fellow he must be. In the phrase ‘ Gait and Style’ then—at least until the spelling re- formers have reduced all identical sounds to identical spelling —there should be no ambiguity, though in the collocation of the two words there may be the suspicion of a pun. The word Style, it is true, has been applied to other displays beside that which the literary man makes of himself; and ina certain country of which we have heard much lately a Paper on style for mountaineers would no doubt be an imperially inspired attempt to prescribe for mountain-climbers the method of progression and the manner of costume considered imperially appropriate: such as perhaps the goose-step—a happy name for it if attempted (say) on the Brenva aréte ; and the spiked helmet, which might have its uses in getting out of an over- hanging bergschrund. Among British climbers, however, it would be ridiculous to use the word ‘ style ’ in this sense. It has, no doubt, occasionally occurred to many of us to regret that there 1s no prescribed style for climbers, to wish that certain costumes were forbidden, certain equipment made obligatory. To help a lady up or down a difficult bit of rock, when her long skirt catches in every jag and sets every loose stone rolling, and when her narrow un-nailed shoes, with high heels that only want shaving to become spikes, require taking off every five minutes to empty out the stones or gravel—to make this kind of mountaineering enjoyable the lady must be super-charmung or the mountaineer hyper-susceptible.

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36 Gait and Style. However, the female of one race will contrive to look neat and seemly and attractive in any costume, however unsuitable to the occasion ; while that of another will appear the opposite, however appropriately clad. On a certain mountain—I will not give the most distant clue to the scene or actors of this terrible tale—two climbers with two guides came across another party of four persons, a husband roped to one guide and a wife roped to another. They were going separately. And tothe casual observer it looked as © if they had decided that one or other of them should not return alive. If so, the lady evidently had a very clear notion of which was to be the survivor. She was beautifully dressed in brown velveteen garments—knickerbockers of the most correct—everything complete. She looked like an active boy, and raced to the top and down again in really surpassing style. The husband was less fortunate. He did not achieve the summit at all. On the descent he was descried by the aforesaid party of four undergoing the following trying expe- rience. There was a very steep ice-slope with a thin covering of loose snow, along the very top of which it was just possible to walk gingerly on a sort of precarious ledge of trodden snow. The four spectators had negotiated this; and from a point further on, and rather below, watched the unfortunate man and his guide endeavouring to pass it. The guide let out rope and sent his Herr on to the treacherous pathway before him.. A few steps, and down he went, slipping to the full end of the rope. The guide hauled him back and started him again. - Again he slipped, again stopped at the end of the rope, and was again hauled up like an exhausted salmon. When this had happened three or four times, and it was evident that the poor man’s nerves must be in rags, the onlooking party in pity detached a guide to go up and help; and eventually he was got across, tellement quellement, and, later, rejoined his wife at the moun- tain inn below. She was radiant—not with joy at his appear- ance, which indeed was pitiable—but with her own success and the record time she had taken over the ascent and descent. But her own appearance—how find words, even faintly to suggest it, without shocking? Her face was scarlet: her orange-red hair had broken loose from all fastenings, and roamed like Sargasso seaweed in the neighbourhood of her shoulders. Her clothes had suffered much—no doubt from the swiftness of her descent. There were rents here and gapings there. White raiment showed, draggled, torn and dirty; garments displayed unblushing frills, and deeply blushing limbs beneath.

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Gait and Style. 37 And still—such was the pride of success, the joy of victory over & mountain and a man-husband, that the lady herself appeared absolutely indifferent to her own appearance, and strutted and crowed ecstatically without, while the poor much- worse-half sat miserably within, consoling himself with coffee. One of the spectators was unconscionable enough to perpe- trate the following libellous epigram : ‘QO Woman, in a nurse’s dress Retaining some retiringness ! And even on a motor-bike Occasionally lady-like ! In knickers on the mountain’s brow How little like an angel thou!’ To avoid misconception, I may perhaps mention that the lady in question did not appear to belong to any of the countries now known as the Allied Nations. But with ‘ style ’ in this sense of the word the present Paper has nothing to do. Its subject might perhaps be stated as the relation of Legs to Letters, of the climber’s muscles to the climber’s mind. Just as a small child who has scrambled for the first time on to a chair calls to everyone, ‘ Look at me,’ so climbers, children of Nature, often seek to express themselves, their feelings and their doings, for the benefit of the public. What is their best method of expression, the best style for a climbing Paper? If the style is indeed the man, what is the climbing style that is the climbing man ? + I need make no apology to the members of the Alpine Club for offering them a discourse mainly literary. Every true Alpinist is, we all know, at heart a poet ; and although there are, mercifully, many who only think their poetry and do not pen it, that is no doubt due to the modesty, self-restraint, and consideration for others which (with so many other virtues) are fostered and developed by the habit of mountain-climbing. The very birth, or at least conception, of the Alpine Club took place, we are told, in a house which had been the home of a poet ; not a very great poet, perhaps, but of one who carried his poetry into the things of common life, and who left the impress of a poet’s personality on the house in which he had lived and the gardens which he had laid out, in pleasances and pleached walks, in pools and cascades and statues and inscribed stones, one of them bearing an inscription immortally beautiful. There has always been about the Alpine Club a pleasant savour of literary taste and poetic feeling, which I think shows itself

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88 Gait and Style. unmistakably in the general tone and literary quality of the twenty-nine volumes of the ALPINE JOURNAL. It is a fertile subject, the literary expression of the love of ‘mountains. There have been, of course, and no doubt always will be, some who have in them the love of mountains and all ‘the gifts of the climber, the strength of limbs, the tenacity of character, the endurance, the boldness, the spirit of comrade- ship, but who yet lack altogether the gift of expression, and who can neither draw a recognisable mountain nor write a readable account of their feats or their things seen, and whose description of a climb reads almost like a page from a scientific text-book : ‘ Woke at 1, off at 2, on rocks by 3, on glacier by 4, in couloir by 5, aréte by 6, col by 7, top by 8.’ | Between this and the account of a climb (say) by Leslie Stephen what a world of distance! And yet both had probably much the same feelings during the climb—anxieties, hopes, disappointments, pleasures, and exhilaration. But such baldness is not very frequent. Most climbers are born with some descriptive power, which even a Public School education cannot wholly destroy, and which in many of us 1s developed by the profession to which we may happen to belong, ‘and takes a particular tinge or character from it. There is the dry scientific style; the didactic tutorial; the formal or persuasive of the two branches of the legal profession; the sermonesque of the clerical; the sensational of the journalist ; the imaginative of the novelist ; and lastly, in a class by itself, the style of those who describe graphically what they have never seen, which may be called the Ouida-esque. Well, different as the styles may be, there are enough people in the world to provide readers and listeners for all of them, and whatever may be our own opinion we may safely say of all that ‘ For those who like that sort of thing, it is just the sort of thing they would like.’ And yet, I think, without being either ill-natured or ‘ supe- rior,’ we may reasonably claim that some styles are better than others, more elevating and worthier of their subject. It may be the painful necessity of some to have to cheapen their style to suit their audience, to provide sensation or romance for the Daily Mail or the weakly female. But except for these hard- driven slaves of King Demos there is no excuse for writing ‘ignobly when writing of mountains. No excuse ? Why, yes: excuses enough! What pastime in the world brings such gay spirits as that of climbing? And

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Gait and Style. 39° ‘paiety of spirit tends to levity of lips. In the exhilaration of a climb who is there among us who has not talked nonsense, made feeble jokes and bad puns ? At moments when life itself is as champagne, such things are the froth and foam of it. Only, if we attempt to preserve or reproduce them, how flat, stale, and unprofitable they are apt to become! What was humorous on the mountain pathway seems pointless in the London street. What seemed witty in the hut becomes merely jocose in the drawing-room. ‘Jocose!’ Horrid word—odious thing! but sometimes a fatal snare to the immature or ungifted writer, seek- ing to enliven his simple narrative or brighten the plain descrip- tion of hig ascent. How wellit would be if the youthful climber, inexperienced in writing, before embarking on his account of some new climb, daring, brilliant, and hazardous, would go through a course of study in the best Alpine literature, and saturate his mind in Forbes or Leslie Stephen or Whymper or . but time fails to name them, the glorious host who have fascinated us and thrilled us and provoked us to envy and longing by the splendour of their feats ane the magic of their description. But there is, for the inexperienced or unskilful writer, a further pitfall, another tempting snare—that of the rhapsodical. For an untimely or distasteful rhapsody may jar even worse than an unseasonable jest. Non cuwis homini contingit adire Corinthum. It is not given to every man to approach—in style—the Epistle to the Corinthians. It is not granted to all—indeed it is granted to very few—the skill to translate rapture into rhapsody, to reproduce emotion in language which affects with- out boring or disgusting, if the reader happens not to be tuned to precisely the same pitch. Training and study of style can do much, especially in producing taste, sobriety, and self- restraint, in teaching how to suit the style to the subject, to be terse and graphic in representing the thrill of stress and action, and suitably expansive in reproducing the calmer joys of scenery. But no effort or pains can enable anyone not dowered with the poet’s birth-gift to write such a description as the following ; and woe be to the rash wight who seeks to imitate it ! ‘Miirren faces the Jungfrau. This glorious creature is your one object of interest from morning to night. It seems so near that you could fancy a stone might be thrown across to it. Between you and it is a broad valley : but so deep, and with sides so uPFeeipivous, that

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40) Gait and Style. it is entirely out of sight. So the Jungfrau vis-d-vis-es you frankly through the bright, sweet intervening air. And then she has such moods ; such unutterable smiles, such inscrutable sulks, such growls of rage suppressed, such thunder of avalanches, such crowns of stars. One evening our sunset was the real rose-pink you have heard of so much. It fades, you know, into a deathlike chalk-white. That is the most awful thing. A sort of spasm seems to come over her face and in an instant she is a corpse, rigid, and oh socold! Well, so she died, and you felt as if a great soul had ebbed away into the Heaven of Heavens ; and thankful, but very sad, I went upto my | room. Iwas reading by candlelight, for it gets dark immediately after sunset, when A. shrieked to me to come to the window. What a Resurrection—so gentle, so tender—like that sonnet of Milton’s about his dead wife returning in vision! The moon had risen; and there was the Jungfrau—oh chaste, oh blessed saint in glory ever- lasting! Then all the elemental spirits that haunt crevasses and hover around peaks, all the patient powers that bear up the rock buttresses and labour to sustain great slopes, all streams, and drifts, and flowers, and vapours, made a symphony, a time most solemn and rapturous.’ } Such a description as this is not a thing that can be imitated ; it is a sudden flowering of a poet’s mind, not an artificial or laboured production; just a page in a private letter to a sister, and followed by an apology : ‘Forgive my rhapsody; but, you know, you don’t get those things twice.’ Could mountain-lovers have a finer lesson in style—the consummate description on the one hand, and the warning on the other ? | A strange thing this ‘ style’ in literature, in writing! The ordinary plain man, especially the ordinary plain Englishman, the type of the imaginary John Bull, is rather apt to despise it, and to be secretly of opinion that any writing but the simplest matter-of-fact statement, preferably in monosyllables, is mere affectation. ‘Call a spade a spade ’ is one of his most frequently quoted proverbs. All the same, if you say to John Bull ‘ That’s a lie!’ he will knock you down; whereas if you say ‘I fear, sir, you are indulging in a terminological inexacti- tude,’ he will only laugh. Phrases cannot alter. facts; but they can largely influence our view of facts. Otherwise there would be little livelihood for lawyers, and none for politicians. 1 Letters of T. E. Brown, vol. i. pp. 75, 76. [Written October 1874 to Mrs. Williamson, his sister.]

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Gait and Style. 41 In practice everyone is conscious of the effect of style, of the different feeling produced if the same fact be stated in serious language or flippant, in Shakespearean manner or Gilbertian. De Quincey, one of the great masters of prose style in the English language, insisted on the actual artistic value of style, which he says ‘is able to yield a separate intellectual pleasure quite apart from the interest of the subject treated,’ and he ranks ‘style, or the management of language,’ among the fine arts, among which you will no doubt recollect that he also—in a celebrated paper—ranks murder. There has been a noticeable tendency in modern times to consider style, as De Quincey considers it here, as a thing separable from subject, and to value it for its own artistic quality, and not merely as a vehicle of expression. This view is akin to the cry raised some few years ago, ‘ Art for Art’s sake’; but surely the man or woman inside the clothes must count in any consideration of the costume. The true value of style consists in its enhancing and re- inforcing the value of its subject, as the wood of a musical instrument reinforces the sound of the strings, and even varies it according to its own shape, of harp or piano, violin or guitar, or banjo. We appreciate style according to its power of stimulating emotion, of adding effectiveness, of quickening visualisation, of creating an atmosphere, and producing by suggestion in the hearer or reader a frame of mind suitable for the subject or the occasion. If indeed there be a separable Art of Style it is more akin to the art of the gardener than that of the craftsman. For human speech is a living thing; if used mechanically it loses allits power. The parts of speech, words, phrases, expressions, so far from being parts of a machine, as some would treat them, are more like living organisms. They are born, they grow, they die—we may almost say of themselves. Words have wills of their own, syllables have souls. They even have faces, or features that seem like faces, just as the face of a clock seems to wear different expressions at the different hours of the day. Consider any page of print, and see if the actual words have not some look about them like a facial expression, familiar or strange, friendly or hostile, stiff or intimate. Even a coined word, apparently a mere artificial production, if it attains currency, will take charge of itself, and grow, and change, often beyond recognition. For some unknown reason the coinage of new words seems always entrusted to pedants e

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49 Gait and Style. and dull wits. Never, perhaps, was there evolved a more fear- some collocation of syllables than the word Kinematograph. But once out in the world it quickly made a million little friends of its own, and with their aid transformed itself into Cinema, with. a subtle attractiveness in the associations of the first syllable. Some brain equally ponderous devised for a baby’s use the philosophic-sounding word Perambulator. But to fit itself for the lips and taste of its principal follower, the nursemaid, this mouth-filling pente-syllable had very soon to drop dignity and become the humble and slightly vulgar morsel —Prain. | One objection to the schemes of spelling-reformers is that they overlook this facial expression of words, and in fact would simply destroy much of its charm and most of its use- fulness by insisting that all syllables pronounced the same should be spelt the same. This is very much like insisting that all persons bearing the name of Smith must present the same appearance and dress alike. What trouble it would give the eye and brain! Instead of the instant lightning- like recognition and identification, there would be delays, mistakes, puzzles, confusion, vexation, even scandal; as with persons, so also with words. For instance, there is a monosyllable of everyday necessity to a large part of mankind, which professes to consign people and things to a dreadful future. It is used to all sorts of creatures and things, animate and inanimate—laundresses, compositors, tax-collectors, eyes, flies, golf-balls, men who roll rocks on you, and in fact anything and anybody at the moment troublesome or inconvenient. In practice the little expletive has become hardly more than an instinctive relief of a slight nervous irritation, like a cough to get rid of a tickle in the throat. Still, however, in what our forefathers called ‘ ears polite,’ it retains a certain savour of wickedness, and from some lips would even now sound shocking to most people. Now, as written and printed—for nowadays it gets itself printed in full—this little horror of a word was most appropriately born with a tail, and wears the letter N in addition to the three letters necessary to its bemg. And as there is another word of precisely similar sound, meaning sometimes the mother of a sheep or other animal, and at others a device used by beavers and engineers to store water, it 1s very seemly and useful that the wicked little word should be so conspicuously marked off from its sedate and respectable homonym. In oral speech there is occasionally some ambiguity. For instance: in one of our

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Gait and Style. 48 most beautiful Sussex parks there is a golf-course laid out, on. which the chief features offering natural bunkers used to be one or two ponds of artificial origin and divers gnarled and storm- beaten old oak trees. In written speech these features can be very simply described without shocking anyone. But when, after playing a bad round, a perturbed and heated golfer is heard telling a friend that the bunkers were all dammed ponds and blasted oaks, you feel that he is not only stating the facts but also relieving his feelings. It is evident, then, that in a system of uniform spelling there lie hidden dangers to morality as well as to esthetic taste. . But I only draw attention to this pomt to emphasise what I mentioned before, the vitality of words, the fact that they require to be treated as living things, not as mere parts of a ‘machine, to be assembled mechanically, as cog-wheels, bolts, or levers. Even proper names, in spite of the well-known statement in Logic, that they ‘have no connotation,’ have — certainly associations and a vitality of their own. Otherwise why should not human beings merely bear numbers, like the number of one’s motor-car or one’s store-ticket ? There is a fitness, an expressiveness, a beauty often in the mere name of a place; and in some languages there is’often the opposite. What barbarous tongue was it that named the loveliest lake in Europe the Vierwaldstdttersee, when the musical syllables of Lucerne are ready to hand? Those of us who have climbed the Matterhorn must, I think, sometimes regret that they did not climb the Cervin instead. Well, style is the deft employment of words, and the utilisa- tion of this living power in them. And although numerous writers have discoursed on the subject of literary style, I do not call to mind any special treatment of the matter in connection with mountains and Alpine climbing. There seems room, therefore, for a few desultory remarks on the style suitable for the description of mountain scenery and mountain climbs. Presumably all description of these is intended to produce an impression on the imagination, and not to be a mere register on the mind’s index. <A description may be designed for either of two purposes, literary or scientific ; either to help visualisa- tion and call up a picture on the mental retina, or else simply to classify and identify the object. But we do not usually write descriptions of the Alps for this second purpose, or enume- rate the features of a mountain as botanists do those of flowers ; though much of the botanist’s vocabulary might be applied to mountains and to climbers ; mountains inight be described

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44 * Gait and Style. as serrate—crenulate—bijugate—multidigitate—multidentate ; and certain phrases employed about plants irresistibly recall certain attitudes in climbers: ‘erect, when they ascend per- pendicularly ’ ; ‘ procumbent, when they spread along the ground the whole or the greater portion of their length’ ; ‘prostrate when they le still closer to the ground.’ Or again: ‘ When they simply climb without twining they support themselves by special clasping organs, or sometimes by small excrescences.’ Nor do we identify mountains by minute individual details, as a policeman does criminals ; though many of us can no doubt, on our old garments, identify special rents left. by particular rocks, like the finger-prints of a criminal—a dearly loved criminal, whose very crimes are endearing. The scientific description of mountains belongs to the domain of the geologist, whose nomenclature—though awe-inspiring— is less fearsome than that of the botanist. But on this occasion we are concerned only with literary description: description for the purpose of visualisation, of presenting an image to the mind’s eye. In literature there are two broadly distinguished styles, both of which may be employed for descriptive purposes, viz. prose and poetry, or, as Douglas Jerrold said, Prose and Worse. The two often pass into one another ; prose becomes intentionally poetic, and poetry unintentionally prosy. The most recent invention of our wonderful age in this direction is a curious hybrid between the two, which comes—or at least has received its name—from France, that land of hybrid roses. This hybrid style has been named Vers libres, and may be regarded as the realisation of the old desire of M. Jourdain, in the Bourgeois Gentulhomme, when he desired to address the belle Marquise in a style nt prose, ni vers. It is at present somewhat of a rarity, and has the attractiveness of a novelty and a curiosity. Whether it will prove, like other hybrids, barren and sterile, remains to be seen. But anything in the nature of a mule begins life with a bad reputation. The ALPINE JoURNAL has wisely and steadily refused to admit a ‘ Poet’s Corner’; and no doubt the Editor is keeping his weather eye lifted against any stealthy incursion of this new poetry, so written or printed as to appear mere harmless prose. Except under this insidious guise there is little fear that the serpent verse will steal into our well-kept garden; at least so long as we severely keep the Eves of mountain climbing to their own separate Eden. There is, however, other mountain literature than the ALPINE JOURNAL, and some of it has taken the guise of verse: nota

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Gait and Style. 46 large proportion, and comparatively little first-rate. This is rather a curious and striking fact. I suppose most people would agree that the two natural features that inspire very much the same feelings of sublimity and magnificence, and fill us with the same love and awe, delight and exhilaration, are the Sea and Mountains. They have indeed often been coupled, as by - Wordsworth : ‘Two voices are there; one 1s of the sea, One of the mountains, each a mighty voice.’ It is therefore rather surprising to find how much poets have written on the subject of the sea that is impressive, suggestive, inspiring, and how litle of the same kind and worth about mountains. Are there anywhere to be found lines that fill the soul with such a vision of the hills as do the lines of Keats with a vision of the sea ? ‘The moving waters at their priest-like task Of pure ablution round Earth’s human shores.’ One turns to Tennyson—that wonderful word-painter of landscape—and finds a few rare and precious gems of descrip- tion, such as that of the glacier : ‘the firths of ice That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls To roll the torrent out of dusky doors.’ But Tennyson seems never to have felt the friendliness and intimacy of the Alps, which mountain-lovers find there, but to have been mainly moved by their coldness and terror.2. The mountain picture in the Palace of Art showed : ‘,.. a foreground black with stones and slags, Beyond, a line of heights, and higher All barr’d with long white cloud the scornful crags, And highest, snow and fire.’ {f we take up a mountain anthology such as Mr. Brett James’ ‘The Charm of Switzerland,’ we cannot fail to be struck with -. § Ina few remarks at the end of the meeting when this paper was read Mr. Solly expressed a kindly dissent from this point, reminding us most happily of the exquisite stanza in ‘ The Daisy ’: * How faintly-flush’d, how phantom-fair, Was Monte Rosa, hanging there A thousand shadowy-pencill’d ,valleys And snowy dells in a golden air.’

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46 Gait and Style. the comparative scantiness and poverty of the verse beside the richness and abundance of the prose. It is perhaps rash to suggest any explanation of this. Every- body would probably have one of his own. And our old friend the Man in the Street would say that of course poets—people with long hair and weak legs—could not write about mountains, as they would be afraid to go near them. At the samme time there seems ready to hand a simple and natural explanation, viz. that poetry is the art of awaking and re-awaking feeling, by mental stimulus and sympathetic suggestion. Now the feeling produced by mountains is one that no suggestion can awaken in those who have not felt it; while for those who have, little stimulus is needed to re-awaken it : a single word, a mere name, will do this, while a page of poetry will seem vapid. The very words ‘ ice-slope,’ ‘ couloir,’ ‘ aréte’ ; the mere names Bernina, Dent Blanche, Finsteraarhorn, these conjure up in a moment pictures more living and thrills more vivid than any elaboration of words or craft of poet language can possibly produce ; and beside these mind’s-eye pictures the most skilful and suggestive word-painting seems tawdry and impertinent. The poems most successful in awaking or re-awaking the emotions of mountain scenery are those which rather take it for granted than try to describe it ; poems such as the ‘ Pro- metheus’ of A®schylus, or Lermontoft’s ‘Demon,’ in which by a touch here and there we are made conscious of the at- mosphere of the mountains around us, feel the breath of the mountain air, and instinctively fill up the picture for ourselves out of our own stored impressions. In the sister art of prose quite another state of things prevails ; beautiful and suggestive passages abound ; and the difficulty of an anthologist is embarras de richesse and of an essayist classification. For there are many different’ styles. Minds differ as do beasts of the field—the swift, the slow; the dull, the nimble ; the coarse, the dainty ; and they require different food and methods of feeding. Writers must provide divers styles of mental pabulum as farmers provide varying diet for their live-stock—roots, or grasses, or clover. The scientific mind likes getting to the root; the tourist on holiday enjoys the sen- sation of being out at grass; the climber on good rock or hard snow considers himself in clover. And in this great Noah’s Ark of a world in which we have to huddle together with all sorts and conditions of beings, like or unlike ourselves, in as friendly toleration as we can, it is well to bear in mind continually the homely old adage,

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Gait and Style. 47 ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison.’ The cheapness and vulgarity and tawdry sentiment which sicken and disgust the refined soul provide entertainment and delight for those whom we may call by the general name of ‘ The Gallery.’ And despite all the efforts of doctrinaire educationists, it is sadly probable that the majority of mankind will always remain ‘ The Gallery,’ and can never be educated out of their hankering after mental fried-fish and tripe-and-onions. The best we can do is to keep the higher style at a high standard ; to be tolerant even in our distaste, good-humoured even in our critical judgments; and ready to lend a helping hand to every soul, however different from ourselves, who turns wistful eyes towards the more excellent way. Flattering ourselves, therefore, that we are of the Refined and not of ‘ The Gallery,’ we may leave out of our view the vulgar and the tawdry, and all literary atrocities akin to the art- atrocities of comic postcards, those postcards which depict the loveliest of mountains with the vulgarest human features, and over-coloured descriptions like chocolate-box pictures in the flamboyant style of certain popular lady-novelists ; and we will confine our discussion of Style to such literature as a self-respecting A.C. can read—and be seen reading. There have been many stylists and many styles in English prose. There is the highly artificial style of HEuphues: * Kasier to write than to read, yet easier to read than to imagine any reason for writing.’ There 1s the resonance of the Religio Medicr’; the eloquence of John Milton; the humour of Charles Lamb, wistful, pathetic, playful, all at once; the rhetoric of Macaulay—rhetoric in the best sense; the dyspeptics of Carlyle ; the easy word-mastery of De Quincey. Nearer the present day there have been writers conspicuous for style of one kind or another. We all know the deft craftsmanship of Robert Louis Stevenson, the exquisite atmosphere-painting of Walter Pater ; the mental torture-engines, rack, tongs, and pincers, of George Meredith. Which, if any, of these should the Alpine writer choose for reading or for imitation? The answer is: For reading, All; for imitation, None. In verse or in prose the writer with a marked style of his own is sut generis, & unique specimen, not a type. Imitation always results in either parody or mere plagiarism. Now I am not going to be presumptuous enough to offer guidance or instruction. Members of the Alpine Club are just as good judges of Style as myself, or better, and every writer must grow his own style for himself, or it will not be

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48 Gait and Style. his own. But I think that for descriptive writing, whether of the mountains themselves or of adventures on them, we should all agree that there are, broadly speaking, two distinct styles which have been used by others, and may be used by ourselves, with greater or less success according to our brains and our pains. These are: The Realistic or pure photographic, the aim of which is a simple, literal, uncoloured presentment of what the writer saw or heard or performed. The Emotional, which aims not only at presenting scenes and facts, but also at suggesting the feelings aroused by them. This style would better be called the sentimental or esthetic, were it not that both these words have been dismissed from service with bad characters. For the account of a new climb or an interesting expedition the former—the photographic presentment (but in careful focus)—is naturally the best, a simple relation of facts in orderly sequence, unrolled lke a cinema-film, uncoloured, ubheightened, the simpler the better. There are many fine examples of this style at its best in the ALPINE JoURNAL, and in those numerous books on climbing exploits which every climber prizes. But even this simple style is not easy to all writers. It usually requires a pen practised in selection and restraint, a judgment quick to distinguish the telling detail from the trivial, and a view large enough to see the whole, and the parts in due proportion to the whole. Such a description is, so to speak, the dry bread of Alpine Literature ; the Staff of its Life indeed, and satisfying enough to the keen appetite of the climber; but apt to seem a little savourless and stodgy and untempting to the general public. And there are, it must be remembered, very many readers who love mountains without climbing or wishing to climb them, or whose climbing desires are limited to an ascent to a view-point, or to the solitude of some Alpine slope where they may be alone with Nature, . 3 ‘And live awhile in Eden dreams Among the gentians and the streams.’ - Who is to write for these? Are they to be left to the merey of the semi-religious sentimentalist, or else to. the literary hack, the professional magazine-writer, the sensational journalist, who will ‘ get up the subject’ out of Alpine Club papers and books on climbing, and dress an appetising dish compounded of hashed fragments and other people’s leavings,

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Gait and Style. 49 disguised by skilful seasoning out of all natural savour and simplicity ? These lovers of the Hills deserve better than that, for they are true lovers. And for them it 1s right and well and fortunate that many good climbers and true, even members of the Alpine Club, have abandoned at times the severer style, have come down from the cold regions of pure climbing thought, and. clothed their experiences and their descriptions in language that makes more appeal to the, emotions. Of such is the great bulk of Alpine Literature. And a noble literature it is, worthy, or almost worthy, of its grand theme ; and in English at all events, of which I am mainly speaking, it shows a perceptible standard of taste and elevation of style, which I venture to think has been largely owing to the influence of the Alpine Club and of those distinguished men who, from the first, devoted to its service not only superlative limbs and muscles but also unusual literary abilities. But for all lovers of mountains, whether they climb them or not, there is one pre-eminent writer, apostle of their creed, prophet of their visions, interpreter of their dreams—John Ruskin. There were lovers of the Alps before him, in whose pages we find some glow of the inountain spirit, the flush before the dawn ; but in all writers since, it is his spirit, his example, his enthusiasm, which have been the inspiration of their pen and the standard of their style. Well may it be so! For it is to Ruskin more than all others that mankind owes the re-discovery of its long-lost heritage, called in the beautiful old story The Garden of Eden; owes the awakening to realise that this Garden of God is not one small particular plot on the ecarth’s surface, remote, undis- coverable, with gateway waved over by the flaming brand ; but is simply the Earth itself, ‘Wherever flowers in beauty grow, Or wood-birds sing, or waters flow, Or uplands clothed in forest rise, Or snow-peaks range on sapphire skies.’ The fame and repute of Ruskin have undergone strange vicissitudes. In his earlier career it was the current estimation of him that his views on Art were sound and valuable, but his ideas on Political Economy were mere piffle. Nowadays an opinion exactly opposite is widely held, if not quite universal. The art critics—little realising how largely their principles are founded on Ruskin’s ideas and teaching—make lheght of VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXIV, | E

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50 Gait and Style. his writing on art-subjects; while, on the other hand, numerous eager disciples profess adherence to his somewhat communistic (and wholly unworkable) theories of Political and Social Economy. But for many of us, though we may disagree with some of his tenets, and have outgrown or further developed others, Ruskin is still Arch-Priest in the Temple of Harth’s beauty, chief Flamen before the altar of the hills. Devoted to Art, devotee of Nature, devout in love and duty to God and his neighbour, be seems to me (for all his frequent wilful- ness and in spite of the final loss of mental balance) to be pre-eminently sane in his adjustment of these varied relations of Humanity—to Nature, Art, and Religion, including in the last the service of Man as well as of the Temple. Nature is at present the best word to express the Universe of Phenomena of which Man himself is but a morsel, though 1n his own eyes a morsel of supreme importance. For Ruskin, Nature came first and came last. Art and Religion were the exponents of Nature to man, Art to his intellectual soul, Religion to his spiritual. All the pleasures of Art, m which he found and expressed so great pleasure, were secondary to the joy in Nature. To destroy or mar a beautiful landscape or inspiring bit of scenery was in his eyes a greater iniquity even than to ruin a picture by Turner. And this is, I think, the inner feeling of all mountain-lovers; and it is because Ruskin has expressed his feeling, and clothed the expression of it in language glowing with the same joy and enthusiasm, that he holds such a unique place in the hearts of all Alpinists and lovers of natural beauty.’ Here my paper should end; but if I am not wearying you, or keeping you too long, I should like to add a postscript. Members of the Alpine Club do not concern themselves much, perhaps, with the merely popular in mountain literature. Of late years there has been a large output of such books, usually on heavy loaded paper, with misrepresentations of mountains, plain or coloured. And some of us musi have occasionally regretted the good old days when no book could be printed or published without royal or official permission. Just as I knew an old fellow who used to murmur when driving perilously through a school swarming out on to the road, 3 To avoid possible misconception, it may be as well to say that there is no suggestion here that a writer should try to imitate Ruskin’s style. The words above on the inimitability of any marked style are quite as applicable to Ruskin’s as to any writer’s.

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Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. 51 ‘Oh for the days of good King Herod!’ In retrospect a despot’s power often seems alluring. We have seen strange curtailments of English liberties in these days. And it is not beyond hoping for that some day all books on mountains and climbing will have to come before the Committee of the Alpine Club, and receive the Pontifical imprimatur of the President. Nor is it only the ight and rubbishy in mountain literature that some of us would like to see restrained. Are there not nowadays too many guide-books and hand-books published —trustworthy accounts of actual ascents, and painstaking directions for particular climbs? It is very difficult to draw the line between accounts and directions of real value and need and those which in effect if not in intention spoil a climb for others by vulgarising it, turning it into a beaten track, each foothold noted, each hand-grip suggested ; here turn the body, here throw the arm over the blocking boulder, here leave the chimney, here use the knee and here the eyelid. Might not much of this matter, accurate and instructive as it is, be kept locked in the climber’s breast, allowed to lie, where Wordsworth says the child does, | “In Abraham’s bosom all the year 9 Otherwise there seems no end to the books that might be written, and the places that might be spoiled. I confess I tremble every publishing season lest some hand- ‘book appear to the climbs on the chalk cliffs, and some pro- faning pen enumerate and detail all my own pet rambles and scrambles on Beachy Head, where the foxes used to hie or run sure-footedly, although once indeed I saw one have a fall. All round the coast, wherever it is precipitous, there are to be found minor delights for the climber, places where angels yet fear to tread ; and long may it be ere foolscap rush in! HIMALAYAN SCRAMBLES IN 1914. _ By CAPTAIN H. D. MINCHINTON (Ist (K.G.O.) Gurkha Rifles). TN 1911 I had arranged to join the late Captain Todd, of the 5th Gurkhas, in the Kaghan Valley, but had to forgo my leave at the last moment, and it was not until 1914 that I again had the chance of two months’ leave.

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52 Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. My companions were four Gurkha orderlies of my battalion, of whom Rabia and Jaising were old hands at climbing (vide ‘A.J.’ xxviii. 882 seq.), and the other two, Ajabsing and Jitram, promising recruits to mountaineering. Our itinerary appeared in ‘ A.J.’ xxix. 89 seq. I settled on Lahoul for our trip, but meant to avoid the usual route thither by Kulu and the Rotang Pass and to force a way in by a little known route through Chota Baghal to Bara Baghal, and thence by some pass over the dividing range to . bring me out near Kyelang, the chief village of Lahoul. We started off on July 4, ; reaching Beijnath onthe6th. Here we left the main road into Kulu, and crossed the Salethar Pass (9000 ft.) to Gundah, the chief village in Chota Baghal. On the third day from here we crossed the Thamsar Pass (15,200 ft.) into Bara Baghal, arriving that evening at the village of that name. Whilst waiting on the pass for the coolies, Jaising and I climbed an easy shale and boulder summit of about 16,200 ft. to the W. of the pass. The following day we rested and I made inquiries about the Bara Baghal Pass into Lahoul. The headman of the village informed me that the pass, locally known as the Sha or Asa Pass, was quite impossible and had not been used for years. He said that at the head of the Laluni glacier, however, there was a pass, and he produced a man who averred he knew the way over it. So I determined to use this pass, which would bring me out into Lahoul at nearly the same place—the Laluni lying in the next valley to the E. of the Bara Baghal Pass. On the 12th, with about twenty-five villagers, mostly splendid men, we started off and made a very wet camp on a lovely hillside after about six hours’ marching. The next day a lovely march took us through fir and birch woods to the Laluni nullah. The Laluni glaciers are, actually, two glaciers separated by some rock peaks of considerable height. On the map these glaciers are shown as joining and running on down like the tail of a Y for some distance. Actually, they have shrunk and the snout of each is about half a mile back from the original junction. Our guide took us up the E. branch, crossing the ice above the snout to the W. bank, where we found a splendid camping place below a cliff of the watershed separating the two Laluni glaciers. The Laluni country is perfect; beautiful fir and birch woods below—the two branches of the glacier above, each surrounded by an amphitheatre of 19-20,000-foot snow peaks,.

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Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. 53 and divided by a splendid ridge of rock pinnacles running to over 18.000 ft. Some of vou mav have read the chapter entitled ‘The Spirit of the Laluni’ in ‘ The Ibex of Sha- Ping.’ The author, the late Lieut. L. B. Rundall, a brother officer and dear friend of mine, had been there the previous vear on a shooting trip and had seen the great beauty of it. One of our many plans was to go there together another year to climb the Laluni peaks. Many of the pictures in his book would have served to illustrate my paper in ‘A.J.’ xxvii, for they are mostly pictures of the Dhoali Dhar range, or near the Thamser Pass or in the Laluni valley. By his death in action at Festubert in December, ’14, the Club has lost one who, I feel, would one day have been amongst its keenest members— one who loved the mountains for themselves and what they gave him. On the 14th we started at 6 a.m. up grassy moraines, apparently heading for the impassable rock-wall forming the N.W. side of the amphitheatre, where the pass must lie if it were there at all. I could see some hesitation amongst the men, but after an hour's walking we turned up a shale slope, heading, seemingly, for a depression in the watershed between the Laluni branches. This did not look right, but the ‘ guide’ still seemed moderately certain. On arriving at snow slopes I took the lead and scrambled up to the depression—to find myself, as I had feared, looking down on to the W. Laluni glacier ! Opposite rose a fine snow peak of about 20,000 feet, with hanging glaciers clinging to its flanks. To the right I could see up to the head of this new glacier, and through the mist could make out that the wall at the end was much lower than in the case of the EX. branch, and at one place was a gap which looked as if it must be a pass. Naturally I surmised that we had tried the wrong branch, and determined to get the coolies down to the W. glacier and up to the gap. But it was easier said than done. The way down was not to ther hking— fifty feet of steep crumbly rock and then a steep ice-and-snow couloir ; moreover, thev averred that the pass was somewhere near the head of the EF. branch and that the ‘ guide’ had lost his way: he had turned up the hillside too soon, he said. In vain did I festoon the rocks with ropes and cut * soup- plates ’ down the ice below. In vain did I induce my servant (the ‘ cook ’) to descend the rocks and jom the Gurkhas m the couloir below as an example—by no means could I cajole the coolies to descend. |

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5A Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. So there remained but one thing to do—give it up—and I did it, with much bad language born of exasperation. Two of the Gurkhas set off to climb a rock peak of about 18,000 feet near by, but could see nothing of the real pass in the dense mist which had gathered. The rest of us returned and pitched camp again in the original place by midday. After lunch I set off with the other two Gurkhas, up débris slopes behind our camp and then, keeping on a level, crossed the shoulder of the ‘ watershed ’ and got down on to the ice above the snout of the W. glacier. From here we could see up to the head of it again, and I was more than ever convinced that the pass lay there, and determined to reconnoitre it with one of the orderlies next day. On the 15th, while some of the coolies, with two Gurkhas, set off to make a great effort to find the pass in the E. branch, I set off with Jitram for the W. branch. We began by again ascending Watershed Pass’ (c. 14,800 ft.) as on the previous day, then descending from it to the W. glacier. There was much slushy snow on this, and we were very wet before we got out of it up the glacier. Short slopes of névé, alternating with little plateaux, brought us to the foot of our pass—a gap in the N. wall of the amphitheatre. Six hundred feet of snow, a little ice, and easy but rotten rock took us to the gap at 10 a.m. (W. Laluni Pass, c. 17,800 ft.). A magnificent view met our gaze. <A torn and sérac’d névé lay at the foot of a steep snow wall and plunged out of sight, to reappear some thousands of feet below as a glacier, the snout of which disappeared in its turn down a narrow gorge. Around us lay snow peaks and rock pinnacles—away to the right lay an icefall, falling from a névé to join the glacier below us and helping to swell it. Straight opposite—to the North—lay the Lahoul country across the Chandra-Bhaga rivers, and quite plainly we could see Kyelang village itself, the mule path leading to it, sheep grazing on the hills, and snow peaks glistening in the sunshine behind the village. But this was no coolie pass! A fine climbers’ pass it would have made, but for us it was useless—and there lay Kyelang, which we had planned to reach this day. At 11 a.m. we left our pass and retraced our steps warily to the névé below, and plunged down the softened snow slopes till we reached the foot of the couloir leading up to ‘ Watershed Pass.’ Hot sun and the steep pull-up frightened me off, but not so Jitram. So after a rest he began the ascent while I kept down the

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Himalayan Scrambles wn 1914. 55 glacier, meaning to cross the shoulder lower down which we had come over to inspect the previous evening. Unfortunately I turned up the rocks too soon and got emmeshed in some slanting, slabby, crumbly chimneys, where I struggled for an hour before extricating myself, very tired, and getting on to the right track. About 5 p.m. I reached the camping ground, but not a sign of the camp was visible! While I was resting and wondering what had happened I heard a shout, and descried a figure waving from about a mile further up the moraine. So I set off again, and after half an hour’s tiring walking reached the party to find the tents pitched and the men jubilant at having found the right way to the pass. According to them, about half a mile further up the moraine, a slope of scree and easy rock led to the pass—a barely visible depression in the rock- wall.1 This gave access to a snow plateau whence they pre- sumed a descent would be possible. The latter piece of news was not reassuring, as I had seen no sign of an easy descent when scanning the glacier-girt walls from the other pass with Jitram. : On the 16th we were off at daybreak and soon came to the mouth of a narrow scree couloir with apparently a steep rock- wall above—the top of which formed, I was told, the pass. The rocks proved conveniently broken, and an easy ascent— once enlivened by some falling stones while we were resting— took us to the top. (EH. Laluni Pass, c. 17,000 ft.). There were a few nasty passages for the coolies, but they managed them splendidly with bare feet in spite of heavy loads. At the top our ‘ guide’ confessed that his knowledge of the route was confined to having been carried over the pass as a small boy on his father’s back some fourteen years ago, since when no one, as far as he knew, had ever crossed the pass! This ex- plained the difficulty of finding it. However, here we were at the top and now had to find a way down. Jaising and I immediately set off across the quarter-mile of snowfield to prospect. The snowfield ended abruptly in what appeared to be a steep rock-face, quite impossiblefor coolies, which plunged down 2000 ft. to the glacier below. Right and left, icefalls descended, barring any passage. We cast about to find a way down the rocks for the coolies, and by the time they arrived had traced out a line of descent—hard, but possible, necessitating use of the 1 Photo No. 1.

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56 Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. hands most of the way, and an ice couloir to be crossed half- way down. The coolies were, of course, appalled at the prospect of the descent as seen from above, and refused to attempt it till Jaising and I set off down the rocks to encourage them and prepare the way. The other three orderhes at last induced them to descend, ropes being used at the worst places, and loads removed and lowered at these points. Somewhere about 2 p.M. we were all assembled on the last rocks—still separated from the glacier by a snow slope and schrund. However, a good » bridge soon took us over, and we halted at the first boulders on a moraine for a long rest.2. It had taken about four hours from the’ pass, and I must say I was greatly relieved when this really nasty descent was over without a mishap to anyone. We continued down easy ice and got off it on to grass on the right bank. The snout ended at the top of a steep, narrow gorge, choked with snow-beds and avalanche débris, which made our further descent very easy. At one spot we nearly came to grief, where a waterfall cropped out, necessitating a crawl over a dangerous slab high above the water and rocks below. Fortunately we were able to find a way over a grassy shoulder above for the coolies. ‘Ihe gorge seemed never-ending, and it was not until 6 p.m., with many coolies still some way back, that we halted for the night on a little grass-patch at the side of the snow at, I suppose, 11,000 ft. The next morning we set off down the gorge again, soon struck a path on the right bank at the foot of the snow and in half an hour reached the small village of Muling, where the gorge opened out into grass slopes and fields, opposite to the Gundla rest-house on the far side of the Chandrariver. ‘lhe inhabitants were most surprised to see us, but coolies were quickly collected —of both sexes here in Lahoul—who set off for Kyelang. I paid off the Bara Baghal men, who had done very well, though they had grumbled a lot at the difficulties and nearly mutinied twice—and I can’t say I wondered! Then I followed leisurely | with the orderlies, and, crossing the river by a bridge lower down, struck the mule path to Kyelang, where we arrived, after a hot walk, in the course of the afternoon. We put in two days’ well-earned rest there, during which time I made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Schnabel, the Moravian mis- sionaries, and have to thank them for much kindness—even to darning my socks. My plan was now to follow the Bara Lacha route for one 2 Photo No. 2.

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Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. 57 and a half marches and then turn to the N.W. up the Topo Tokpo nullah—a large valley, and, from the absence of detail on the map, more or less unexplored. I arranged for three Lahoulis to stay with us, to collect wood, and go to and from Kyelang to take and fetch letters, and supplies of fresh vegetables and bread, with which the good. Schnabels arranged to supply’ me. On the 20th I set off with a string of coolies and three goats, for milk, and marched up the valley to Jispa. While I had been resting at Kyelang the weather had been grand, but just as we got into camp a tremendous thunderstorm broke, and with it the weather, and gave Lahoul the wettest and coldest season ‘within the memory of the oldest inhabitant ’—dis- tinctly bad luck for me. The next day we marched up the valley for about four miles to the entrance of the Topo Tokpo nullah, struck a goat track on the left bank of the torrent, and about midday reached the few huts at Palamao.? (I believe it is shown on the map as being on the right bank.) After a midday halt we marched on till 4 p.m. Having completed some twelve miles, the latter part in mist and drizzle, we then pitched a very damp camp. The valley bottom is not much broader than the actual river- bed. Lines of aiguilles run down at right angles to the river, the vallons between them being filled with various-sized glaciers (none shown on the map) and discharge streams which have to be crossed, often with difficulty. These glaciers descend from snow peaks behind, running to 20,000 ft., and from which the aiguille ridges run out. The next day we did a six-mile march and stopped a little short of the large side nullah leading N. to the Shingo-la, an easy snow-pass into Zanskar. This also was a wet march. I had hoped, so far north, to escape the monsoon, but now began to doubt it. However, I decided to pitch my base camp here and devote three weeks to climbing and exploring the surrounding peaks. We could see up to the head of the valley, which was filled with a large glacier and a ‘ cirque’ of good peaks. On the 22nd, Jaising and I went on up the valley to explore, whilst the others collected wood from a few stunted fir-trees— the sole firewood available. A wet night and day followed, and I came to the conclusion that this was not good enough, so decided, as enpesenly 3 Photo No. 3:

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58 Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. not out of reach of the monsoon, to go still further north by crossing the Shingo-la into Zanskar. On the 24th I sent off one of the permanent Lahoulis to fetch coolies again, and with Jaising and Jitram went up to a bivouac at about 15,800 ft. on a rocky peak to the N. of our camp. We saw numbers of golind (snow-cock) on the way up, from which I gavé a name to the peak. We were delayed by dense mists in starting the following morning, but easy going on shale, rocks, and snow took us to our summit (Golind Peak, c. 18,300 ft.) by 9 a.m. We got fine views of some of the neighbouring peaks—the two Kundino peaks lying across a glacier-basin to the E. of us. Clouds obscured everything to the 8. and W., but on the latter side, across the Shingo nullah, we could see ice-cliffs on a peak of evidently con- siderable height. To the W. steep snow slopes descended from our peak to a little glacier from which a torrent fell into the Shingo nullah, and I decided to try and traverse our peak by a descent to this glacier, and back by the Shingo-la route. We had first to strike N. down a snow ridge till we could find a place to break through the cornice. The first 500 ft. of the descent—bad snow, ice, and rotten outcrops of rock—was rather difficult, below which easy rocks took us to a final snow slope and schrund and the glacier below. We made a mistake in keeping down it too long and had an hour’s ice- cutting down the snout to get off it. We then ran down to the Shingo torrent, found a track, and reached our camp at 4 p.m. During the day a party of Lahoulis had arrived to take me over into Zanskar, and we started early the following morning. I left Ajabsing and Jitram at the base camp, with half the stores, the outer fly of my tent, and my camp bed and table, as I wanted to travel light. The goats I sent back, as one had died of exposure, and the other two threatened to do likewise. On the 26th we did a six-hour march up the Shingo nullah, pitching camp in mist and rain. The 27th dawned badly, but we made a start. After an hour the drizzle turncd to sleet, and then to snow before we reached the easy glacier and moraine leading to the pass. The pass presents no difficulty. Lahoul and Zanskar men take their sturdy little ponies and yaks over it, but the driving snow hid all traces of the track on the flat snow and shale moraine, and we were soon flounder- ing hopelessly, thigh-deep. I went ahead to try and find the pass—the orderlies helping and encouraging the coolies. Soon I found myself amongst crevasses and saw visions, through

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Hwmalayan Scrambles in 1914. 59 the snow clouds, of huge precipices towering in front—evidently I was off the track. Then a lucky break in the storm showed me a low depression half left, which 1 knew must be the pass. So off we floundered again through deep snow and driving storm till we reached a patch of rocks where the storm lifted and welcome sunshine appeared to dry us. Ina short time we found ourselves at a cairn marking the summit of the Shingo-la (16,722 ft.). A weird flat-topped pass, this, with moraine and glacier from E. and W. meeting gently to form it and to flow N. and 8S. a little way down each side of the pass. Below us lay a barren valley, curving out of sight a mile further down, just below the snow line. Down this we went and round the corner to find, half a mile further down, an edelweiss- covered patch of grass by a stream. This seemed an ideal place for our bivouac-camp, and we accordingly pitched it at once to give things a chance to dry in the late afternoon . sunshine. We had not descended much from the level of the pass, the camp being at a good 15,200 ft. Behind us rock buttresses, enclosing a tiny glacier, rose to a rock peak, whence a tremendous serrated ridge—with two tremendous gendarmes, peaks in themselves, half-way along it—ran along with a final rise to a fine peak, capped with ice, and from the faces of which fell snow slopes and glaciers. From later observation I rather fancy this may be identical with Col. Bruce’s ‘ Great Kakti Peak,’ which he reached by snow slopes from the E. Looking back southwards a small circle of peaks was visible to the W. of the pass, enclosing a glacier which ran down on to the pass, while further to the W. a large glacier lay close to us. There was obviously plenty of work to be done here, given fine weather. The great difficulty was firewood—there were no trees, only a few stunted little bushes a foot high, which, with their roots, formed the only combustible obtainable. So I arranged for Rabia to descend with one permanent coolie next day to the nearest village in Zanskar (owing to absence of map and notes I cannot remember its name)—a long march—to bring back wood and some goats, whilst the other two coolies returned to the base camp for firewood. They left the following morning before daylight, while Jaising and I started, later, to explore. We crossed the glacier stream and in three hours reached the top of Glacier Peak, opposite our camp. The going was very simple—shale and a snow ———— 4 Photo No. 4.

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60 Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. slope; the peak, being about.19,000 ft., made it a fine view point. The summit was an immense ice-cap, whence tremendous sérac’d ice-walls fell northwards to a glacier several thousand feet below. A snow peak in the ‘cirque’ W. of the Shingo-la attracted our attention, and we were able, amidst the drifting clouds, to trace a route up the small glacier and thence up the peak, and managed, luckily for us, to retain it firmly in our memories. By 3 p.m. we were back in camp, intending to try this peak next day. The morning was dark and rainy, but Jaising and I started at 6 a.m. and when near the top of the Shingo-la turned to the W. on to our glacier and followed the moraine till it ceased amidst crevasses. Clouds swooped down and it began to snow lightly, but with the route firmly in our minds, from our reconnaissance the previous day, we determined to persevere as far as possible. So we roped and put on our crampons, and left our rucksacks under a mackintosh. We started up the middle of the glacier-basin till crevasses sent us to the left, then back towards the middle on account of séracs on a rock-face above us, débris from which we skirted. ~The swirl of snow made the locating of hidden crevasses very difficult. Whilst prodding for a bridge over one, I suddenly heard the tinkle of falling icicles under my feet. ‘oo late I realised that I was already standing on a crevasse, and as I stepped hurriedly backwards the covering gave way and I found myself in a realm of icicles below. Luckily it was a small crevasse, and my crampons stuck into the walls. Jaising had kept the rope taut, so I was within arm’s length of the surface and was soon up again. Not to be discouraged by this little contretemps, we kept on up the steepening névé till we struck the base of a very abrupt wall. Though we could see nothing, we knew that above this lay a depression in the ridge leading to our peak. A bridge at the steepest part took us over the schrund, and then began most fatiguing step-cutting up this extremely steep pitch—mostly ice and necessitating huge steps, in spite of crampons. After some 300 ft. the slope began to ease off, and led us to a sloping névé, of which a portion was covered by blocks of ice, fallen from a cornice above. Skirting this, we soon arrived at ‘Snowstorm Col’ (c. 18,600 ft.). We sheltered in the lee of some rocks, munching chocolate and raising and debating whether, having done the worst part of the ascent and reached the Col, we should try for the peak or retreat on account of the storm. We decided on the former course, for we knew

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Himalayan Scrambles wn 1914. 61 that all that now remained was to keep on up the easy snow ridge we had now reached, which would lead us in about 700 ft. to our summit. The danger was a known cornice to the right of the ridge and the unknown to the left of it. We could only see the length of the rope, but gaily started off up the easy slope. By bending down and peering along the surface, a dark line could be discerned; this was the edge of the cornice, so we could check our position every few steps. To the left we could see nothing but the broad snow slope disappearing into the driving snow, so were safe from falling over anything in that direction. After about 300 ft. we began to see a dark line to the left also—evidently another edge, and a little higher we noticed that the edges on both sides were begining to converge. Keeping strictly in the middle, we pushed on up — till we could see the edges meet as the apex of a triangle— evidently the top! Another hundred feet of careful gomg landed us upon it—to find ourselves looking down into a swirl of snow-cloud into which an ice-covered rock-face disappeared. Right and left, snow arétes fell away, and as nothing was visible rising in any direction we were, without doubt, on the summit which we had aimed at—Snowstorm Peak (c. 19,300 ft.). No thought of a descent by a different route could be enter- tained, and we were somewhat hard put to it to follow the same route in the descent through the storm. The descent of the wall was nasty, but difficulties ceased on the névé below, and we found ourselves at length, without further incident, at our rucksacks again. They were:nearly buried in snow, and several mimutes were needed to untie the sodden rope with cold fingers. By 8 p.m. we reached camp, pursued by sleet, which turned to snow towards evening. The tents had to be weighted with stones, and a wall built, to prevent their being blown away, but Rabia had got back with three milch- goats, a success this time, and a load of alder branches, the only wood he had been able to obtain at the village below. We spent a wretched night, with snow drifting in everywhere, and a bitter wind made it impossible to keep warm, in spite of much extra clothing and spare garments, ropes, boots, &c. wedged in along the bottom of the tent fly. The next morning was brilliantly fine, but several inches of snow lay over every- thing, and all day-long avalanches crashed from the peaks. In the afternoon I climbed up ‘ Buttress Aréte’ to a height of about 18,000 ft. and got some fine views, discovering a fine peak—‘ the Silver Cone ’—close to and connected with our snowstorm Peak, though in the storm we had known nothing

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62 Himalayan Scrambles vn 1914. of its proximity. It was obviously to be reached via ‘Snow- storm Col’ by skirting close under Snowstorm Peak itself. Behind me ‘ Buttress Aréte’ joined a huge rock buttress which terminated in the rock-peak whence the great ridge running to ‘ Kakti Peak ’ commenced, and this I determined to attempt next day. A descent by an ice-couloir to a little glacier at the foot of the buttress showed me the lie of the land and how to get on to the buttress at its Shingo-la end. I gave Jaising a day off, instructing him to send off two coolies at daylight over the pass to the base camp for wood and the outer fly of my tent; I did not want more cold snowy nights under a single fly if possible. Rabia and I started at 4 a.m. and made our way up to the Buttress Glacier and across above its snout, and then over scree to the foot of what appeared to be a snow slope leading to the top of the buttress. This turned out to be ice, and gave us an hour’s cutting before we reached the end of the buttress and our breakfast. We then scrambled along the broad top of the buttress and up easy rocks to the peak at the beginning of the Kakti ridge—Buttress Aiguille (c. 19,100 ft.). The ridge to the Kakti, perhaps a mile long, was very narrow. On the 8. side, throughout its entire length, fell a sheer precipice of many thousand feet to the glacier on to which we had strayed when crossing the Shingo-la.6 To the N. fell a steep snow slope. The ridge itself was snow standing out from the rocks, and corniced, leaving a little ledge of rock overhanging the precipice. Half-way along towered the two tremendous gendarmes. It was our intention to traverse the whole ridge, descending by some easier route on the Lahoul side of the peak and back over the Shingo-la—probably by lantern-light. Our traverse began to be difficult at once. Good rocks descending from Buttress Aiguille landed us on the snow aréte, but the crest was unsafe and we had to progress by the rock ledge to the right (S. side) overhanging the precipice. This was mostly iced and very nasty. At length the rocks got too steep and we had to effect a traverse across bad snow to get on to the crest of the snow aréte. A slip was not to be thought of, as Rabia had toremain on the rock on the edge of the precipice whilst I trod in Agag-like fashion across the rotten snow— once on the crest we were safe, as it was easier here. The snow aréte soon abutted against the first and lower ‘ Gen- darme Aiguille’ and some wriggling took us along the 8. side of it. Then suddenly our hopes fell with a crash. Between er nn en ee = = + as See -_ 5 Photo No. 5

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Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. 63 the ‘ Gendarme Aiguilles’’ was a huge gash of at least 200 ft. with perpendicular sides, without a vestige of a chance of getting into it or out of it again. That ended all chance of climbing the Kakti by this aréte—a great pity, for it looked as if, on past the ‘ Gendarmes,’ it would have given fine climbing — and, though difficult, would go. We set to and climbed our ‘Gendarme Aiguille’ (c. 19,000 ft.)—-quite a good scramble— and lay on a slab on the top smoking and debating what to do. for the day was yet young, and a cloudless one. Several thousand feet below to the N. lay a large glacier, and we con- ceived the idea of descending to it, thus making a traverse and breaking new ground. ‘To descend direct from here was impossible, but it looked practicable to do so from near ‘ Buttress Aiguille,’ below which the snow slope was less steep. We could not see the rock-face below the snow slope, but imagined it falling to the big glacier and not difficult. So we set off to retrace our steps and did so successfully, with a ‘ mauvais quart d’heure’ getting from the crest of the aréte to the iced rocks—luckily less iced now, under the hot morning sun. Arriving at the selected spot to strike down, we made an easy descent in fairly good, though soft, snow to the rocks, and saw that they fell at an easy angle—but to a hanging glacier only, and not to the main glacier. Some ice-worn rocks gave us trouble in getting on to this glacier, and then Rabia anchored in a small crevasse while I crept to the edge of the hanging glacier to prospect. It was an extraordinary sen- sation, leaning over the very edge of the hanging glacier— peering down the enormous face of a sérac, wondering what would happen should it suddenly elect to join its forerunners at the bottom of a thousand feet of rock, where they lay shattered on the moraine of the big glacier. An abortive attempt to the left sent us over to the right, where better luck attended us, and a moraine-covered tongue of ice ran down till it was lost in the larger moraine below and gave us easy access to the main glacier. A weary two hours of ‘dry’ glacier—covered-in streams—and then moraine, took us to a spot on the left bank where we could get on to grass slopes, and another hour over a grassy shoulder took us back to camp (4 p.m.) and gallons of hot tea, a good reward for a not unenterprising day. The glacier we had discovered—the big one—was surrounded bv some good peaks, and Rabia was detailed to find a bivouac place on its right bank on the following day, while Jaising and I tried our luck on the ‘ Silver Cone.’

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64 Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. The night was so fine that we hardly needed a lantern when we started a few minutes after 4 a.m. (August 1). We followed our previous route to Snowstorm Col, having to make the best possible time up the steep wall, as small fragments of icicle were already sliding down over the glittering surface from the cornice on Snowstorm Peak above us to the right. After breakfast on the Col, we cut across almost on a level on moderate snow to a little depression separating Snowstorm Peak and the Silver Cone. From here to the summit—a rise of some 1500 feet—there was no difficulty. It was just a plain snow ridge, but it cost us much fatigue. The ridge—the watershed between Lahoul and Zanskar—rose at no great slope, but, owing to the presence of a cornice overhanging a tremendous rock-face to the W., we were obliged to keep down on the E. slope of the ridge. The snow, after the recent bad weather, was soft and binding, every step was knee-deep, and it caked in our crampons till each foot felt like a ton weight—rather trying under a hot sun and at that elevation! After much laboured ploughing, at about 10 a.m. we reached the summit of the Silver Cone (c. £0,000 ft.)—a corniced ridge, with good snow, and some bare rocks lying invitingly at the further and higher end. We spent a glorious hour basking in the sun and smoking, and trying to take in the marvellous panorama. By far the finest of all the view was a peak lying just 8. of us across a glacier. This huge peak—* The Pyramid ’—over- topped us by at least a thousand feet—a truly magnificent peak with ice slopes glistening in the sunshine and _ séracs plastered on to its steep sides.6 Just one possible route was visible, by a shoulder which jutted out to the §., if this could be reached. It was part of this peak which we had seen through the clouds from Golind peak, and it 1s probably the finest peak in Lahoul and very possibly the highest. We might have descended to a glacier on the Lahoul side of us, thence over a col to another glacier descending to the S. of the Shingo-la, but the state of the snow forbade it, and we decided to retrace our steps exactly by the same route. This we did without difficulty, except at the steep wall below Snowstorm Col. The day remained perfect, and at the early hour of 2.30 we were back in camp, having done our highest but far from hardest climb in a little over 10 hours. Unfortunately it clouded over during the night, and the § Photo No. 6.

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Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. 65 morning saw heavy snow-clouds drifting above the peaks. However, Rabia and I determined to get ina climb if possible and made a start at 8 a.m. to try to traverse ‘ Yellow-rock Peak ’ (c. 19,100-ft.). It looked fairly easy on the N. side, with some good rock climbing near the top and what appeared to be easy snow slopes to run down on the 8. side. An hour found us at the base of the peak, and another hour at the top of a scree slope and below a shoulder of yellow rock—hence the peak’s name. This gave pleasant scrambling for some time and then failed us. Roping, we sect off to traverse to our left over a nasty ice couloir to reach another rock ridge in the face of the peak. Then followed a few hundred feet of loose and often difficult rock, up which Rabia led. As this was easing off, I mismanaged the rope and upset two rocks just above me. The larger one nearly knocked my legs from under me; the smaller one passed over one hand, badly cutting one finger, and gave me a playful push in the chest as it went on downwards. At the same moment the clouds swooped down and it began to snow. <As we were near the top of the peak, we decided to push on, relying on an easy descent on the other side. The rocks ended in a steep snow slope of about 200 ft. overhung by a cornice, but after much cutting and hewing I managed to break up through it, in spite of my squashed finger, and crawl over the edge on to the summit, closely followed by Rabia. We started down immediately, faces into the driving snow, descending the easy snow slopes, and were just preparing to glissade the last few hundred feet to the shale below when the snow gave place to ice and forced us to spend an hour cutting down instead. Then we ran for camp, but the snow followed us down and did not cease for two nights. Fortunately the outer fly of my tent had arrived, which improved matters, but the cold was pretty severe. On the 4th the snow ceased falling and I at once sent down to the Zanskar village for coolies, having come to the conclusion that, as climbing was out of the question for some days, I might as well get back to my base camp. On the 5th Jitram and Ajabsing, who had come over to Jom us, made a trip with me up the large glacier to the W. of Yellow-rock Peak, and on our return to camp we found that the coolies had arrived. On the 6th we started at daybreak in order to get over the Shingo-la, with its new snow, before the heat, and to enable us to reach our base camp that same day. The coolies got ever VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXIV. F

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66 Himalayan Scrambles on 1914. the pass well—though several suffered from the glare before we were off the snow on the 8. side at 10 a.m. Then we made - leisurely progress down the Shingo nullah to a snow bridge which spanned the torrent shortly before it joins the Topo -Tokpo stream. We found the snow bridge nearly destroyed by an avalanche of stones and mud which had descended from a buttress of Golind Peak. This accounted for a tremendous roar we had heard not long before. When half an hour from camp we had an alarming experience. The goat-track crossed some flat slabs of rock—above was a 40-foot waterfall, below a similar one—into a steep gully leading to the river below. There had never been more than a trickle of water across the slabs from above whenever we had crossed before. Just as the leading coolies were approaching the slabs, suddenly, without warning, a mass of mud and boulders shot over the waterfall above. Instinctively we all crouched under cover. With a crash that shook the hillside and spattered us over with mud and splinters of rock, the mass hit the slabs and then went roaring on down the gully to the river. For several minutes the mud avalanche swept past us, then it began to subside, with now and then an extra rush as a big boulder crashed over. After half an hour we were able to get by, the normal trickle of water being now a rushing, muddy torrent. From a shoulder a little further on we came in sight of our tents ; a few yards behind the tents flowed a stream in a sunken waterway. As we breasted the last rise, a sullen roar burst from somewhere above, and we saw another stream of mud and rocks sweeping slowly down the hillside behind our camp, apparently straight for it. Fascinated, we watched its im- pending doom, but the bank of our stream stemmed and turned the advancing mud wave, and the avalanche rushed down the waterway into the river. A flock of sheep, grazing higher up, had not been so lucky, and several were swept away in the rush. We saw yet another such avalanche sweep down further ahead, all from somewhere on Golind Peak. Evidently the many days’ snow had filled some hollows, and the melting had proved too great a weight for the confines. The following day was wet, and I decided to get back to Kyelang and strike out in another direction, so sent off to Jispa for coolies. The 8th pretended to clear up, and I con- ceived a sudden idea to try the huge ‘ Pyramid,’ hoping the big shoulder might be accessible from this side. At 1 p.m. we started off, and, after crossing the snow bridge to the right bank of the Shingo torrent, struck straight up a gully, meaning to bivouac as high as possible. Above the gully lay some

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Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. 67 jagged red aiguilles, higher above a black rock peak—the * Aiguille Noire ’—and behind that again a snow summit, the * Aiguille Blanche.’ I hoped to find a way from the latter on to the Pyramid’s snowy shoulder. But bad luck dogged us—a bad night swooped down, and we hurried back to camp in rain. The 9th was bad, but on the 10th it looked more hopeful in the afternoon, and we rushed off very late and bivouacked at 6 p.m. at under 15,000 ft., much too low, but it could not be helped. . There was rain during the night, and mist delayed our start till 5 a.m. Then I did a fatal thing. Every single day since July 6, when we left Bir, I had never once failed to carry a lantern in my rucksack; but this one day, through an inexplicable fault in reasoning, and a desire to save weight, I sent it back with the Mummery tent and blankets. This day the party consisted of Jaising, Ajabsing, and Jitram, besides myself. An hour’s scrambling took us obliquely under the red aiguilles to névé at the foot of the ‘ Aiguille Noire’ and another hour’s easy climbing to the top of it, where we breakfasted at 7 a.m. Then we roped and began to follow a rock ridge towards the ‘ Aiguille Blanche.’ One gendarme gave us some trouble, but Ajabsing found a way up the flank on somewhat iced rocks, above which a snow slope took us to the top of the Aiguille Blanche (c. 19,500 ft.).? We now found ourselves almost on a level with the Pyramid’s shoulder, but separated from it by a long snow ridge, with some gendarmes cropping out half-way along. The ridge descended about 500 ft. to a depression whence a very steep snow slope rose to the shoulder. The ridge was heavily corniced and the commencement an impossibly narrow and steep aréte, which would not ‘ go.’ _ So we descended a snow ridge to the E. for 600 ft., then traversed a nasty snow slope to reach slabs which formed the _E. face ofthe gendarmes. Here we got into great difficulty, and after half an hour I found our progress so slow that I decided to continue with Jaising alone, if we were to have any chance of reaching our peak—two moving so: much quicker than four. So Ajabsing and Jitram returned by the same route to the breakfast place on one rope, whilst Jaising and I continued on the other. The slabs were at a steep angle, mostly iced and distinctly dangerous. I led round into an ice couloir, and then Jaising, taking the lead, led out of it up very difficult rocks, Saag) Shan leet ea =e et Nt ——— 7 Photo No. 7.

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68 Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. up which I hardly dared to follow, with only the moral support of the rope, as he was badly placed. However, some precarious moments saw the danger over, and we climbed straight upwards to the last gendarme and then followed the snow aréte— easy here—to the depression. Then began the ascent of the shoulder, which proved to be of very hard snow. Wescrambled up this, one close behind the other, more or less ‘ on all fours ’"— digging in toes, axe points, and fingers, and in this somewhat unorthodox fashion quickly gained the shoulder without mishap at 2.30 p.m. At last we were on the main peak—at about 19,700 ft., and there now remained a rock and snow ridge and then a final steep slope, probably ice. There was not much hope of getting there, but after a few minutes’ ‘ breather’ we started off. At once a gendarme barred our way, and it took us half an hour to defeat it and retrieve an axe which I let slip, and which luckily fell into a patch of soft snow at the foot of the rocks. This was not good enough—3 o'clock, the long ridge hardly begun, a final slope of unknown quality, a storm blowing up from the §8.—and no lantern. We had, however, at least found a way on to the peak reaching nearly or quite 20,000 ft. and had some most difficult climbing, so could be quite satisfied. We decided against retracing our steps—the thoughts of those slabs were not pleasant—but traced a route to a névé below us to the E., partly on rocks, partly by the edge of the snow slope we had come up, where this abutted against the rocks. At first the rocks went well, then the snow looked pre: ferable and we descended fairly rapidly, one at a time, mostly face to the slope. A final descent of easy rock landed us on the névé, about 1700 ft. below the gendarme. We traversed this névé below the ‘ Aiguille Blanche,’ then turned up easy rocks and shale to reach our rucksacks at the breakfast place. It was now about 6 p.mM.—we had had no halt of more than a few minutes’ duration since 7.80 a.M., so were rather ‘done.’ We found Ajabsing waiting for us, shivering under a rock; he had sent Jitram down to fetch a lantern to meet us, foreseeing that we would be benighted. In spite of the. inpaess of the hour, hunger and weariness compelled us to rest for halfan hour. Then we scrambled down our old tracks to the névé below the ‘ Aiguille Noire,’ where a squall of driving snow met us. Now followed a nasty descent across gullies in the face of the red aiguilles, most enjoyable A 8 Photo No. 8.

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Himalayan Scrambles in 1914. 69 scrambling in daylight, but highly unpleasant in the gathering darkness andstorm. We soon lost the route of ascent, and were completely benighted. | | We knew, however, that we had only to creep down in a certain direction to reach the head of the gully in which we had bivouacked, and after various vicissitudes, including a slide down a huge wet slab, found ourselves there, and on known ground. We crept on down the gully, nearly breaking our legs over boulders many a time. When half-way down, the storm blew over, and at the same time we espied a lantern wending its way across the snow bridge over the torrent below. Much cheered, we quickened our pace and met the lantern and its bearer Jitram with our head coolie, much perturbed as to our safety. So perturbed had they been that they had forgotten to bring a spare candle, and before we were half-way back to camp the only one burnt itself out. We were, however, on the oft-trod goat-track, and reached camp before midnight. The coolies had meantime arrived from below, and we started early next day to reach Jispa, about a sixteen-mile march, arriving there about 6 p.m. Here I found a runner awaiting me with a telegram from Dharmsala, sent on from Kulu, recalling me to my battalion at once. A week’s forced marching, over the Ranghi-la, Rotang, and Bubu Passes, took us back through Kulu to Dharmsala on August 20, to find that my battalion had left for service. | I was ordered to remain at the depot until, after ten months’ strenuous work, in June 1915 I took a draft to join the battalion in France. With me went Jaising; the other three orderlies had gone with a draft a month before. Rabia was left on duty at the base in France as being rather too old for the trenches— the authorities there little knew what sturdiness his small frame concealed! Jitram was invalided with appendicitis. Jaising and I both fell foul of Turkish bullets (later) in Mesopotamia— leaving Ajabsing, now a promising N.C.O., alone to represent our little party of climbers. NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Head of the E. Laluni glacier—from second camp on moraine. A denotes the position of E. Laluni pass, and -+-+ the route up to It. (July 14, 714.) 2. The N. (Lahoul) side of the E. Laluni pass. -+ denotes the difficult descent from the pass to the glacier, which the party made, (July 16, 714.) ; 3. Loaded yaks on Bara Lacha route.

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70 Success and Failure on Mont Blane. 4. My camp in Zanskar, just north of the Shingo-la. A denotes Snowstorm Col; Bis Snowstorm Peak. (July 29, 714.) 5. The long ridge from Buttress Aiguille to Great Kakti Peak (?). A is the Lower Gendarme Aiguille; B is the higher Gendarme Aiguille. Gap between them not visible, but sun shining through on to patch of snow. Route of ascent marked: same for descent as far as arrow, which marks direction of our descent to glacier. (July 31, 714.) 6. Looking S. from the ‘Silver Cone.’ A denotes the Pyramid peak. B denotes Golind peak (July 25) with route of descent marked. C denotes the Pyramid shoulder, which we reached at +. (Aug. 1, 714.) 7. On the way to the Pyramid shoulder. A gendarme, round which Ajabsing, seen below +-, has just led. (Aug. 11, 714) 8. The ‘Aiguille Blanche’ from the Pyramid shoulder. Gathering storm-clouds. From summit, reached from S., we descended snow ridge to HK. (left). From A to B was the difficult traverse across snow-covered and iced slabs to the last gendarme (B), whence snow aréte was followed to C (depression), whence steep snow slope rose to the Pyramid shoulder. (Aug. 1], *14) SuccESS AND FAILURE ON Mont BULANc. BY WM. CECIL SLINGSBY. I. A Day’s WALK FRoM CoURMAYEUR TO CHAMONIX OVER Mont Buanc. ‘Where undissolving, from the first of time, Snows swell on snows amazing to the sky ; And icy mountains, high on mountains pil’d, Seem to the shivering sailor from afar Shapeless and white, an atmosphere of clouds. Alps frown on Alps, or rushing hideous down, As if old Chaos was again returned, Wide rend the deep, and shake the solid pole.’ THomson’s Winter. P to now, no description has ever appeared in any mountaineering Journal of the crossing of Mont Blane in one day which a friend and I, accompanied by two guides, made in the year 1879,

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Success and Failure on Mont Blane. 71 I had enjoyed five mountaineering campaigns in Norway before I saw the Alps. On my first visit to Switzerland in 1878 my companion was the Rev. A. G. Girdlestone, whom I had met in Norway, when, with two others, we made a fine glacier pass across the heart of the Horungtinder, probably the first ever made over this grand range of mountains. I went to the Alps with a feeling of some awe, expecting to find the mountains and glaciers much more formidable than those in Norway and that I should feel a want of experience. This was not the case, and I was as happy and as easy in my mind as in Scandinavia. I made a good many ascents and passes in the Pennines and the Oberland with Girdlestone, and others without him, in company with guides. One of our best guideless expeditions was an attempt on the then unclimbed N. aréte of the Grand Cornier, when M. Javelle joined us. We failed when within an ace of success, solely on account of the then dangerous condition of the steep, snow-covered, ice- sheathed face, only a few feet below the flat, narrow summit ridge. As the vicar had taken me out to the Alps, it was clearly my duty to take out, or be taken out by, the curate, the Rev. C. J. Ord, an excellent mountaineer and an ideal travelling companion. This was arranged for the following year, 1879, and was duly carried out. A notable experience was onthe Weissmies, which we climbed without guides. On the top we got into an awful N.E. wind and a snow blizzard. Though we turned and fled at once, we got frost-bitten in our hands, feet, and our left ears. The good folk at Saas im Grund treated us scientifically with iced water. Most of us know what that means. The traces were visible for many a long day, and our ears were swollen to nearly three tines their usual size. For a dozen years after this, a cold east wind always reminded me of the Weiss.nies. At Saas we were joined by appointment by Franz Ander- matten and his son Adolph, with the intention of carrying out an ambitious programme. As is by no means unusual, the Adler was protected by an icy coat of mail, and it was delightful to see dear old Franz at work which he loved so much and executed so well. Though the Riffelhaus was full, we were squeezed in some- how. The bad weather which ensued only allowed us to n ake our few ascents by stealth, but we had a n ost jolly time. + Norway, The Northern Playground, p. 61.

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72, Success and Failure on Mont Blane. Here I inet for the first time Horace and Miss Walker, whose | friendship was to mean so much to me and mine, during many happy years. Full of knowledge and of true love for the mountains, they were full of encouragement as well for those of us who were comparative novices. Mr. James Eccles was also there, and others whose friendship I have valued highly. What a jolly party we were on the Riffelhorn one day, and as we were guided by Melchior and Jakob Anderegg, the two Payots, and the two Andermattens, we thought we were justified in making a supposed new route! That evening there was promise of better weather, so all the storm-bound Riffelites determined to sally forth at midnight. The Walkers went up the Nord-End of Monte Rosa, Eccles and the Payots crossed the Zwillinge Joch into Italy. Ord and I with our guides went up the Fehk Joch, ascended Castor and Pollux, and descended to the Schwarzthor, the descent bemg then very difficult. Never have I felt before or since such fierce heat as we had near the bottom of the Schwarze glacier. The air seemed to be stagnant ; there was not a breath of wind, nor yet a cloud to shield us from the direct rays of the burning sun, nor from the rays reflected from the millions of crystal facets until we reached the Gorner glacier. Meanwhile, the many mountaineers at Zermatt had looked out, either personally or by deputy, at a very early hour, but seeing above them the heavy clouds which we more-favoured Riffelites had looked down upon, thought that ‘a little more sleep and a little more slumber’ was suitable for the day. Later, when they heard of our successes, they were wild with jealousy. Possibly the young lady who sauntered up to the Riffel the following day, an ice-axe In one daintily gloved hand, a fan in the other.and wearing high-heeled boots, did not share their jealousy ? - At the vine-trellised inn in Val Tournanche we found the ereat Mr. John Ball, who was botanising in that lovely valley. ~The few hours which we spent with him were most enjoyable, and the information which we gleaned was of great value. A fortnight in the Graians was spent very pleasantly in spite of bad weather. We rescued an English lady at the top of the Grivola from the charge of one of the most incompetent guides IT have ever seen on a mountain. He said he had ‘ mal de téte.’ This we did not dispute, but instead we took him on to our rope and lent Franz to the Englishwoman. Another day we surprised a lammergeier on the brink of a cliff in a dense

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Success and Failure on Mont Blanc. 78 forest. I shall never forget the way in which the noble bird slowly turned its head round, looked at us disdainfully at eight or ten yards’ distance, and then plunged into space with outspread wings. It was a grand sight. On an attempted ascent of the Grand Paradis from the Glacier della Tribolazione by the north face, when we had gone some distance on the glacier, a heavy but not a long- enduring thunderstorm forced us to retreat. On the way down we came in sight of a herd of chamois. We hid behind a rock while Franz, the old hunter, whistled repeatedly, just two notes. Within a quarter of an hour almost the whole herd came within easy range. I was reminded of the grouse poachers who call the birds to them on the Yorkshire moors, but of course with a different call. Soon after this we were all comfortably housed in the Hotel Royal at Courmayeur. Our month’s mountaimeering had put us all into good hard condition, and probably we were as fit as we ever could be to enable old Franz to realise an ambition: which he had cherished for some years. At this period, 1879, there was a great rivalry, by no means of an amiable character, between Swiss and Chamonix guides. In a smaller degree this was shared by those of Italy. Like the rest of our party, Franz had never seen the Italian side of Mont Blanc, but, though he knew that 1t was the highest in the Alps, his effervescing patriotism would not permit him” to consider it possible that this Franco-Italian mountain possessed any superiority, save that of height, over his own beloved Saas and Zermatt giants. He had climbed most of these, including the Weisshorn, and the Dom, direct from the valleys without sleeping out. He considered the Dent Blanche as an exception, as its base was too far away from Zermatt. ‘Mont Blane is only a mountain like the rest. There is no need to sleep out for it. We ought to cross it in one day.’ _ It was of little use to point out to Franz that, as Mont Blanc was 15,782 ft. above sea level, Courmayeur only 4016 ft., and Chamonix 38416 ft., it meant an ascent of 11,766 ft. and a descent of 12,366 ft., or having to deal with 24,182 ft. on the ascent and the descent combined. These large figures only made Franz chuckle and put the first finger of his right hand against, and parallel with, his nose, aS was his wont when pleased. Franz was irrepressible and in very high spirits, though the

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74 Success and Failure on Mont Blane. mountain just then seemed in bad order. The Aig. Noire de Peuteret was speckled with snow, but the bright sunshine cheered us and we agreed to wait a few days. Ord and I however suggested that we should take a couple of good Courmayeur guides. Franz had no objection to take one, and at the ‘ Bureau des Guides’ he found several men who were willing to go, provided that we spent a night ina hut. This would not, however, fit in with Franz’s pet project of crossing the mountain in one day, and the old man had such implicit and well-founded faith in himself that we felt bound to support him. Séraphin, then an excellent guide, began also to believe in the hero from Saas, and would, I think, have come with us but for adverse local opinion. The four of us spent a long and an easy day on the Crammont and were pleased to see how quickly the Italian sun stole the snow from places where it had then no business to lie. Franz at last realised that Mont Blanc was the great giant of the Alps, and the acquisition of this knowledge made the old warrior all the keener to be at grips with the towers of fantastic tracery and the glittering snowfields on the grandest face of the noblest mountain in the Alps. Still, he held persistently to his pet theory that it was undesirable and unnecessary to sleep out for a mountain ascent. In a paper entitled ‘Minor Climbs from Courmayeur,’ Dr. ‘Claude Wilson advocates Franz Andermatten’s principles clearly, and generally speaking convincingly, and I strongly recommend this paper to the consideration of young moun- taineers. As for myself, I hate a nountain hut as a rule, but love a bivouac and a sleeping-bag in fine warm weather, or a tent when it is cold or rainy. The route which we wished to take was then termed ‘ The Miage route,’ and is now called ‘ Rochers du Mont Blanc route.’ As none of us had seen the Glacier du Mont Blanc, by which our route partly lay, Franz and Adolph went to prospect, after obtaining some general directions in Courmayeur. Ord and I meanwhile went up Mont de la Saxe, and as the day was perfect we thoroughly enjoyed the view. Franz returned in high spirits, telling us that they had found the way and thought we should succeed. The hotel was full of fashionable Italians taking the baths and inhaling pure mountain air, a welcome change from the heat, the dust, the flies, and the noise of the cities of the plain. Somehow they had heard of our projected adventure and plied us with questions not always easy to answer.

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Success and Failure on Mont Blane. 75 We dined early and so were able to get three hours in bed. Roused at eleven o’clock, we soon realised that there was no need to creep softly and stealthily downstairs, boots in our hands, like burglars, for the whole household had apparently stayed up to see the last of the mad Englishmen and their two Swiss guides, who were going to perish on the mountains. After much kindly hand-shaking, and a hearty and a sincere ‘Bon voyage,’ we stepped out into starlit night at two minutes past midnight. It was Friday morning, July 25, 1879. Friday is my lucky mountaineering day. I had proved it in Norway, I had proved it in the Alps, and I had great hopes of proving it again. It was a glorious night; the stars scintillated with the true Italian Alpine briliancy, but the frowning crags of Mont Chétif made it necessary for us to use a borrowed lantern. At first there was not a sound but that of our own footsteps until we reached the bridge over the river Dora. The savage grandeur of the Aig. Noire de Peuteret was partly softened by the unusual amount of snow which rested on its ledges and in that most extraordinary hollow, now called Le Fauteuil des Allemands. When through the forest, we found the turf of the meadows in the lovely Val Véni crisp with frost. The wondrous beauty and grandeur of this valley are so well known to most of my readers that I need not dilate upon them. Franz had arranged for a porter to meet us near the Lac de Combal to carry our knapsacks to the hut. We waited forty- one precious minutes until he turned up, having overslept himself after a pretty hard day’s work. This delay might have ruined our enterprise. At 3.20 we left the path and at 4 set foot onthe ice. Foran hour we had the most delightful walking on that best of all pavements, an icy weather-beaten floor, nearly level, and rough enough to prevent slipping. As dawn appeared, each of the peaks of the Trelatéte range glowed in order of their height with a rich rose colour in the light of the rising sun. The stars faded, away imperceptibly, first the less brilliant ones, and soon after Sirius and Arcturus them- selves, until a dark blue sky overhung the Miage glacier valley. Our porter pointed out to us the ancient gold mines below the Col Infranchissable, which seemed to us to be on the face of an apparently most vicious mountain-wall. I have seen them in recent years, but never discovered how they were reached. Possibly quite easily ? At half-past five we reached rocks which gave us some

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76 Success and Failure on Mont Blane. pleasant though cold climbing. This brought us to the old hut ‘ Cap™* del Rocher,’ at 6.47. It was pretty well snowed up, but still we had our well-earned breakfast mside. At that time cold tea was much drunk on the mountains. To our disappointment we found coffee in place of the tea. The guides of course had wine, and Ord joined them. I was then a teetotaller in practice, but never was in theory, much to the chagrin of total abstainmg lecturers and theorists. As coffee, to my thinking, would create thirst rather than quench it, I - determined to wait until we reached water. As it turned out, we found none until we reached the Grands Mulets at 7.20 p.m., as, on the line of our ascent, we were always in the shade. Though nineteen hours was a good schooling for total abstinence, and the walk from Courmayeur to the Grands Mulets was long and certainly tiring, I did not suffer from thirst in the slightest degree. After a halt of 85 minutes we dismissed our porter and shouldered our knapsacks. We reached the Glacier du Mont Blane at 8 o’clock, and for the first time that day saw the actual summit | ‘High in the stainless imminence of air.’ An hour later twelve black dots appeared on the snowy crest, moving slowly, very slowly, towards the top; their apparent Liliputian size and snail-like motion made us realise the colossal proportions of our surroundings. In spite of this the heroic Franz said we should be on the top in three hours. _ For some hours it was easy going. We steered to the base of a long, a very long, snow slope or couloir which was to serve as our route for many a long hour. But whether this was the orthodox route or not I do not even now know for certain, in spite of much help from Captain Farrar and several books in various languages, each containing excellent diagrams, which | he sent me. I do know, however, that when we were on the . Glacier du Mont Blanc it appeared to be the obvious highway . for us to follow. I also know well that this route brought us up to a little gap on the high side of the higher Bosse du Droma- daire, and that on another ascent of Mont Blanc in which I took part I looked down from this same gap on to the Glacier du ~ Mont Blane. | _ In this year of much snow it was, however, quite possible that in some places where we encountered steep, hard snow, or solid ice, we might at other times have had to climb relatively

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Success and Failure on Mont Blane. 77 bare rock. We also realised that, under less icy conditions, a route on our right hand might probably have been followed. At the head of the glacier we found fine powdery snow quite up to our shoulders. This had either to be beaten down or we had to crawl over it as best we could. To my mind this is the greatest difficulty for an amateur to overcome, of the many which he may meet on the mountains. I have never yet succeeded in floating or swimming half-submerged over the snow in the manner which some guides seem to do with consummate ease. ‘True, some professionals are no better in this respect than ainateurs. Adolph, tall and heavy as he was, was leading and made light of it. Franz laughed and chuckled inordinately at our endeavours resembling those of a barn-door fowl which has fallen into deep water ; but the old warrior, who was carrying a fair load, did not altogether escape immersion, whereupon he laughed the more merrily. As we had reached hard ice, I took Adolph’s load and strapped it to my own. I was also carrying a Scotch plaid. In 1879 rucksacks were almost unknown in the Western Alps. Those who have never carried an old-fashioned knapsack can hardly realise the discomforts, especially under the arms, which we endured in spite of various ease contrivances. It was 10.15 when we stepped on hard-frozen snow or ice, and for six long hours we were chmbing, when possible on rocks snow-covered or sheathed in ice, or on deep, hard-frozen snow. Very often only one of us could move at a time, and until we reached the ridge just above the Bosse there was no single place where the four of us could have sat down without holding on with an axe, or to a splinter of rock. Practically, every step during these six hours had to be won with the axe. Adolph, a strong and a lusty fellow, cut endless steps, some needing forty good strokes, and never once acknowledged that he was tired. On the other hand, my two knapsacks almost bent me double, and Ord felt his burden as much as I did mine. Hour after hour sped away. We were late and could not afford to rest. Now and then we got on a little granite crest, but it could never be followed far, as 16 was sure to shoot upwards to a point in orthodox aiguille form, so we returned to our icy highway. At 4.15 we stood in the little gap above the Bosses du Dromadaire, and, for the first time, felt the cold, as a keen wind swept over the ridge. <A tent was made out of my plaid and we dissected a fowl on strictly pr actical anatomical principles, and then greedily gobbled it up.

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78 Success and Failure on Mont Blane. We did not stop long, and though now we had the old tracks, the stimulus of excitement and probably also of doubt was lacking. It was only a heavy trudge on soft snow up a steep hill, but it was real hard work for us to drag our weary limbs up to the top even without the knapsacks. At last the goal was reached. All our waned enthusiasm was rekindled. Normal respiration had returned, our fatigue had wholly vanished, and a fresh breeze, tempered by sunshine, made our short stay at the top really enjoyable. I found, as I have since found, that I could walk about on the top of Mont Blane as easily as at home. Possibly we were more or less acclimatised to rarefied air, as in the past month we had several times been above 13,000 ft., but I must say no more on this subject as I have had no experience on any mountain higher than Mont Blanc. We had reached the summit at 5.15, or in seventeen hours and thirteen minutes after leavimg Courmayeur, and were determined, if possible, to get to Chamonix that evening, and especially as we bad reason to believe that the guides at Courmayeur had telegraphed to the Bureau des Guides at Chamonix that we were attempting to cross the mountain. We knew also that Chamonix would at least not be dis- appointed if we did not succeed in carrying out our project in full with our Swiss guides. i We only reinained five minutes on the summit and left at 5.20, regretting the precious forty-one lost at the Lac de Combal. The problem how to descend 12,366 ft. after 5.20 p.m. was not a very easy one to solve. Owing to a day’s bright sunshine the snow was very heavy, often knee or waist deep, and we frequently rolled over and did not feel too sweet-tempered. It really was a great toil. At 7.80 we reached the Grands Mulets and had some delicious soup, the first drmk I had had since leaving Courmayeur. We only remained 20 minutes there, and raced off over the only greatly crevassed glacier which we had been on that day. Fortunately there was much snow in the gully near Pierre Pointue and in perfect condition, and in few minutes we had really a very long, wild, and jolly glissade down, down, down many hundreds of feet into the forest land. Equally fortunate too was the fact that the Aiguille du Midi was then benevolently disposed and never attempted to cannonade us. The forest was dark, and in those days we had no pocket lanterns, but fortune favoured us and where we could do so safely we ran.

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Success and Failure on Mont Blane. 79 We did not wish to be benighted in the forest, though we knew that others had undergone that experience. At last, at 10.10, after having been out 22 hours and 8 minutes, we reached Couttet’s Hotel and were heartily welcomed by Mr. Thomas Woodbine Hinchliff, the Marquis Alfred de Pallavicini, M. Couttet, and others, who had been watching us on our descent as long as they could. | Mr. Hinchliff was much interested in our experience, and . pleased that our guides, however unintentionally, had in some measure beaten those of Chamonix on what the latter con- sidered to be their own mountain. Equally interested too was Pallavicini, who had seen us on the Glacier du Mont Blanc from near the summit. He invited me to join him in the Dolomites the following summer, but I had other plans in view. His Tyrolean guides had apparently been treated with scant courtesy by the men of Chamonix. This too was the experience of old Franz and Adolph the following morning. Indeed, as soon as Franz met us he proposed a walk up to the Flégére so as to get out of the way. I suppose we had slept well. At any rate we fell in with the proposal, and either walked off any stiffness which we had acquired, or perhaps prevented it from appearing. Fortunately we did not claim originality for our expedition. It is, however, a strange fact that, until I had written the foregoing, I was not aware that Mont Blanc had been crossed in one day from Courmayeur to Chamonix by Messrs. G. E. Foster and A. W. Moore, though I had several times heard Horace Walker speak of Moore’s traversing the mountain. Somehow, I always imagined that it referred to the ascent from the Col de Voza and descent to Chamonix. This was in spite of the notices in ‘ A.J.’ xii. 259 and the earlier one of ‘A.J.’ vi. 298, where, in the latter, it will be seen that the party left Courmayeur at 12.20 a.m., reached the summit of Mont Blanc at 4 p.m, and Chamonix at 10.40 p.m. The last volume of the‘ A.J.’ revealed to me the fact that Mr. Passingham also crossed Mont Blanc in a day. I met him at Zermatt a few days after our expedition, in which he was much interested and asked me many questions. Passingham and I had much talk, as we were both then interested in the Zinal face of the Weisshorn. The details of his great nountaimeering achievements, and of the Brothers Parker, contained in the volume referred to, as well as the portraits of men whom many of us have known intimately, and of whom we have none but pleasant recollections, are most interesting.

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80 Success and Failure on Mont Blane. A few words of appreciation of Franz Andermatten are at least due from me, though Mr. I’. J. Church paid a most fitting tribute to the memory of the old guide in ‘ A.J.’ xi. 845, and Sir Martin Conway. did likewise in ‘ Pioneers of the Alps.’ Franz was certainly, in his day, as excellent a mountaineer as he was delightful as a companion on the mountains which he loved so intensely. He was invariably cheerful, whether in foul weather or bright sunslime, in defeat or when success crowned the efforts of his party. Full of quaint humour and racy anecdotes, he was the favourite of all who knew him. When the occasion demanded some little strengthenmg of language he was quite ready to fire off choice examples of suitable Swiss patois. Notably was this the case when a clumsy German woman bombarded us with a 2 ft. cube of rock when we were descending the Matterhorn and crossing the slabs below the final little chimney. But this was the only time when he had to draw upon classical literature when I was with him. Though possessed of a craving for adventure and excitement, he would run no unjustifiable risk, but had the real moral courage to order a retreat when, from the dictates of his wide experience, he knew that to advance would be to court danger. He was, perhaps, the most wnselfish man I ever met, and invariably studied the interests of his employers rather than his own. He revealed a notable example of this trait in his character at Prarayé. My last expedition in 1879 was with Mr. F. J. Church and Dr. G. Seriven, guided by Franz and Adolph Andermatten, when we crossed the Tiefenmatten Joch, echmbed the Dent d’Herens, and descended to Prarayé. At that period the owner had an unenviable reputation for churlshness. Franz, who had been a sufferer, was determined to pay off old scores if possible. His plan was deep and led to much anticipatory chuckling. We were to act under his orders, and he insisted that when the time came he was. to pay the reckoning. Subtle diplomacy was needed. Church was deputed to be the suppliant for the luxury of sleeping on the hay in the barn and the favour of bread and milk. Above all things he was to adopt the principle of swaviter in modo however much he might feel inclined to the fortiter i re. It was most amusing to see and hear our envoy, hat in hand, in a manner almost befittmg a suppliant before a Roman emperor at Aosta in ancient days. Church began by expatiat- ing on the good grazing in the valley, the general excellence

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Success and Failure on Mont Blanc. _ 81 of the farm and its buildings. Then he referred to favours received by former visitors at Prarayé, and by degrees caused the old man to glow with generous pride, and not only were bread and milk forthcoming but also cheese. As fresh hay was spread for us to lie on, we slept as well as naturally-tired men ought to. In the morning we had more bread and milk. Then Church, suave as before, asked’ what we should pay for the great privileges we had enjoyed. ‘Ah, sir, I leave that entirely to you.’ ‘ Quite right,’ said Church; ‘my servant shall pay you.’ Franz waited until we had got out of earshot, and was quite equal to the occasion. Suffice it to say that the amount - was not large: Few men’ with whom I have travelled have understood the weather signs so well as Franz, and not many could read a mountain face or ridge and find a route, good and sound, in a district new to him so well ag he. He was undoubtedly very proud of his achievement on Mont Blane, especially as there had been so unusual an amount of snow and ice to contend with, as well as the loss of valuable time at the Lac de Combal. This latter caused him more anxiety than he cared to acknowledge. There is no wonder that he repeated the expedition a little later with Church and Scriven, though they slept at the hut. Probably also he accompanied Passingham ? All who have chmbed with Franz Andermatten have a very rich store of happy memories of his delightful personality, his winsome smile, his great skill, and his indomitable perseverance. IT. A TRAVERSE oF Mont Buanc witHout GUIDES. ¢ . . your native soil forego, And climb the frozen Alps, and tread th’ eternal snow.’ (DRYDEN’s Virgil, 10th Pastoral.) So overwhelming are the attractions of Mont Blanc that I feel that the temptation to linger in fond memory over happy days, spent with congenial friends on the great mountain, is too strong to be resisted during these horrible days of war. Hence, I hark back once again to Courmayeur and Chamonix. Towards the end of June 1896 a large party arrived by VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXIV.

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82 Success and Failure on Mont Blane. various routes and on different days at the cosy Hotel Klénthal at Vorauen, in Canton Glarus, one of the loveliest limestone valleys I have ever seen. Horace Walker, Ellis Carr, and I were told to climb the Glarnisch. A reference to ‘ A.J.’ xviii. 824 will prove that we obeyed orders. After a few most enjoyable weeks, and the due celebration in Bouvier form of various birthdays of youngsters connected with the party, which fortunately usually coincided with mountain ascents, we turned towards Mont Blane. The ladies made for Chamonix, the rest for Courmayeur. Above Bourg St. Pierre we men divided. C. Pilkington, G. A. Solly, and Ellis Carr crossed the Grand St. Bernard, whilst Walker and I, who knew Napolcon’s great road pretty well, went by the Col des Planards and the Col Ferret. When we reached the top of the latter, new to both of us, we were simply astounded at the grandeur of the view, which suddenly burst upon us. The precipices of the Grandes Jorasses seen from there are overwhelmingly grand. Walker was especially interested, as he had made the first ascent of the highest peak. Our party rejoined at the Hotel Royal, and here we met an old A.C. friend in the person of the Hon. Gerald FitzGerald. _ Our object was to cross Mont Blanc by the Aiguille Grise or Dome route—call it which you like—to Chamonix. This was to be done without guides, and we were ‘to share the common danger and divide the care.’ Porters were to accom- pany us to the Dome hut. Arrangements were soon made, and five lightly laden A.C.s accompanied by three fairly heavily-laden porters, whose loads were considerably increased later by firewood, went forth to seek adventure. Carr found so many crystals on the Miage moraine that we felt that he would have succeeded, almost beyond the bounds of avarice, if he had taken up the profession of a diamond prospector. It was well for us that our friend had kept to a more normal career, otherwise we should have missed his genial company and excellent songs during the two nights which we spent in the Dome hut. As we turned up the rocks on the right bank of the Dome Glacier, I noticed, with much interest, the great increase of the icefall of the Glacier du Mont Blane, which was much more broken and wilder than in the year 1879. The Dome hut seemed almost palatial, but in due course we > found that there were certain disadvantages in being accom- ee eel

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Success and Failure on Mont Blane. 88 panied by porters. There grows in the fair valleys of Italy a vegetable which the lusty sons of Piedmont rightly consider to be wholesome. Its Italian name is aglio, ‘a genus of strongly-scented bulbous plants, all of them edible, and some of them of the greatest antiquity as potherbs.’ I hardly like to assert that, during the two nights which we spent in the Déme hut, we slept quite “nm the odour of sanctity.’ Up betimes, a hasty breakfast and a farewell to our porters, two of whom were to carry our baggage by the grass passes round to Chamonix, and we stepped out into crisp air and on to frost-hardened snow. The weather was lovely, and we fully expected to be welcomed in the afternoon by some of the ladies of our party at the Grands Mulets. We got along merrily for a few hours when one of those sudden, violent, and wholly unexpected thunder- storms, which we all know so well, broke upon us and awakened the echoes from crag to crag with Nature’s full orchestral power. It was grand and impressive, but it drove us down to the hut. _ Fortunately, the porters had not left, so we sent them down to the chalet below the Lac de Combal for more wood and provisions and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Indeed, how could it be otherwise, as with congenial companions we spent a lazy day surrounded by wild precipices, chaotic glaciers, frost-riven peaks, and under a deep blue sky-canopy which had succeeded the storm ? Next day, July 25th, we were still earlier on our way and had the benefit of the steps we had previously cut. All went well, and we avoided, though quite unintentionally, the narrow snow aréte by climbing a rock face by which we reached a higher portion of the ridge and in due course gained the broad snowfield above the Déme du Goutter, and the tracks of the Chamonix mountaineers. When above the Bosses du Dromadaire we turned on Horace Walker to act as guide, and it was really delightful for us to be led, step by step, to the very summit of Mont Blanc by such a@ veteran. As there was a little wind we were not sorry to be able to find shelter under one side of that hideous iron building which, until it sank out of recognition below the eternal snows, always suggested a Chicago beef tin. At the Grands Mulets we learned that Mrs. Pilkington and Mrs. Slingsby, accompanied by Melchior Anderegg, had spent a few hours there and had only just left. The bottle of cham-

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84. Success and Failure on Mont Blane. pagne which they had brought for us was certainly appreciated. As the ladies had at least as interesting a day as we, I quote the followmg from my wife’s journal : * July 25th.—Mrs. P. and Istarted at 4.45 a.m. with Melchior, having shaken off, with much scolding, all but three men who said they were necessary for the mules. We, however, declined a guide for “the old gentleman ’’—Melchior—which was pressed upon us with a persistency worthy of a stronger case. At Pierre Pointue we dismissed our retinue, by no means an easy matter, and ascended the glacier with Melchior. The glacier was in splendid condition, and though the crevasses were very numerous we found no difficulty, and felt as fresh as paint when we reached the Grands Mulets at 10.30 and sat outside looking at the marvellous world of ice and snow. * After lunching, we saw to our joy five little specks far above us appearing on the snowfield. We left for them a bottle of champagne, and then, with Melchior, returned to Pierre Pointue, where we awaited our climbers.’ Whilst at the Grands Mulets the ladies saw a lad of about seventeen come alone up the glacier. Wholly inexperienced, it was his intention to reach his mythical hotel on the summit of Mont Blanc the following day. In vain the ladies pointed out the dangers and the folly of such an enterprise, and did their best to frighten and to dissuade him. He did make the. attempt, and my wife and I heard him tell his father on the diligence the following day that he had been ‘ within 500 ft. of the summit, but had been stopped by an alley ’ that he would — have had to cross. This ‘alley’ I recognised as a narrow and rather a steep snow bridge between the Petit and the Grand Plateau. The: father apparently was displeased, not because the lad had made the attempt, but because he had failed. No wonder that Mont Blanc takes so heavy a toll of human lives ! We were duly interviewed by the editor of the local paper, who inserted a few flattering paragraphs in his next issue, because the then President of the A.C. as well as Horace ‘ Walker had honoured Chamonix with their company, so Melchior had told him. Our whole party, including Melchior, saw my wife and myself off on the diligence the followmg morning. They were much amused when, at the last moment, two of the three porters who had so successfully odorised the Dome hut mounted the diligence bound for St. Gervais. Melchior, who

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Success and Failure on Mont Blane. 85 had been told about the * odour of garlic,’ was so tickled by the fact that one of the five mountaineers was not yet clear of these really excellent fellows that he chuckled and danced round and round most gaily, holding his nostrils all the time, much to the amusement of us all. IIT. FAILURE ON Mont BuANnc. — ‘A man lately came from Killarney and said that he had seen nothing. But you know, sorr, that it takes an artist to enjoy scenery the best. Sending some men to Killarney is like putting a pig in a frilled shirt.’ Railway porter at Cork Station to Prof. J. N. Collie, F.RS. Circumstances over which I had no control prevented me, almost at the eleventh hour, from joining Collie and other friends in what proved to be a most successful cam- paign in the Canadian Rockies. Fortunately, I was invited, soon after my disappointment, to join the doughty Yorkshire trio, Eric Greenwood, J. J. and W. A. Brigg, on their annual tour in the Alps. This I accepted with pleasure. — True, I was rather staggered when I was told that we were to begin with Mont Blanc, which they hoped to cross from Chamonix by way of Mont Maudit and Mont Blanc du Tacul and so return to Chamonix. It was to bea true Yorkshire company, as Messrs. Alfred Holmes and G. Hastings, who were then at the Montanvert, were to take part in it. Hven if I wished to do so, I could not well shuffle out of it on the ground of any ineligibility of birth, as I am certainly a Yorkshireman. Still, I did think it rather a severe traming walk, but I neither blanched nor flinched, well knowing that the tour had been most carefully planned some months before by friends with whoin I had often climbed in the British Isles, and in whom I had the fullest confidence. Surely I, to some extent an inter- loper, was not going to shirk hard work and some adventure ? ‘All right,’ I said, ‘ but [ll take for once three bites at a cherry.’ ‘Three bites! What in the world do you mean?’ ‘The first bite will be up to Pierre Pointue, where I will sleep. ‘The second will be to the Grands Mulets, when, after a night’s rest, I shall be ready. ‘ The third bite should be Mont Blane,’

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86 Success and Failure on Mont Blane. F I plodded in the cool of the evening up the steep mountain- side and had my ‘first bite’ at Pierre Pomtue. My friends, with the exception of Holmes, who was not well, jomed me the next morning and we spent a delightful day, and an easy one too, on the Glacier des Bossons and idling on the rocks of the Grands Mulets. In place of Holines, Mr. A. C. Roberts came. We left at 3.45 the next moming, July 28rd, and I gather from Mr. W. A. Brigg’s diary, and from my own few notes, that though the view was one of almost perfect loveliness there were signs of wind on the summit. We were on two ropes, Green- wood, J. J. Brigg, and Roberts leading, and Hastings, W. A. Brigg, and I on the other rope. All went well until we reached the ridge a little below the Vallot hut. Here a terrible wind assailed us, coming up out of sunny Italy. Three other parties arrived almost at the same time, having come from the Déme hut. To advance would have been suicidal, and as none of us were tired of life we beat a retreat at once, but five minutes later were sitting on the snow in grilling sunshine. Our party of three remained a considerable time on n the Grand Plateau to enable Hastings to take some photographs. One thing I realised for the first time, viz. that to appreciate fully the solemn grandeur of this Grand Plateau and its surroundings one should ascend Mont Blanc from Chamonix, as in descending it when the snow is soft one cannot take in the majesty of the whole. We certainly enjoyed the scenery intensely. The photography being accomplished, we started to follow the others. To our great amazement we saw advancing towards us, just below the Grand Plateau, a solitary figure walking on the tracks of the day as calmly as if he were on a garden footpath. He proved to be a young Parisian, dressed in velveteens and knickers, with bicycle shoes, a close-fitting cap, no gloves, no goggles, but carrying a light cane. When we reached him, after the usual prectings he asked us how far it was to the Vallot hut, apparently thinking that most successful of icehouses was an inn. “Monsieur wishes to ascend Mont Blanc ?’ ‘IT hope to do so.’ ‘You cannot do this to-day.’ ‘Why not? Here is the road. It is easy to follow.’ * We have failed. So too have the other parties, because there is a gale of wind on the top.’ * But there is no wind here.’ ‘Monsieur has slept at Pierre Pointue ? ?

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‘Early Ascents of the Matterhorn. 87 ‘Ah, no. At Chamonix. I left at 4 a.m.’ ‘You walk well. Monsieur is doubtless a strong climber ?’ ‘Not at all, but I love the mountains.’ ‘Monsieur knows them well, no doubt ?’ ‘Alas, no. I pane never set foot on a mountain. I live in Paris.’ ‘But doubtless monsieur is a Clubiste and knows wen the dangers of the mountains ? ’ ‘Yes, Iam a Clubiste.’ ‘ Of the C.A.F., of course ? ’ ‘No, of a bicycling club.’ There was an open crevasse near us. We took him carefully to the edge and told him that it was probably 300 métres deep. He stepped back hurriedly. I told him that there were others, equally deep, hidden by the snow, and with a little wholesome argument we got him to return with us. He was certainly an exceedingly plucky fellow. As for us, we had failed, but surely not ignominiously ? Still it is probable that if we had taken the Corridor route we should have been sheltered from the wind and might have been successful. This ‘ training walk ’ was the prelude to many grand moun- tain expeditions, for which I cannot too warmly express my thanks to my three Yorkshire friends, so staunch and true, Eric Greenwood, J. J. and W. A. Brigg, who, during a period of many years, have acquired a comprehensive knowledge of the Alps, from the Maritimes to the Hastern Dolomites, such as few of us possess. Practically, the whole of this has been done without guides. That I may have yet another climb with them is, I trust, not too vain a desire. EARLY ASCENTS OF THE MATTERHORN. HE ‘ Travellers’ Book’! of the Hotel du Mont-Rose con- tains no record whatever of the various unsuccessful attacks on the Matterhorn made between the years 1858 and 1865, and the account of the first ascent written by -1f{The thanks of the.Club are-offered to Dr. Alexander Seiler for permission to make these extracts for reproduction here, and to Mr. Henry F. Montagnier for the trouble which he has taken ta make them.]

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88 Early Ascents of the Matterhorn. Mr. Whymper a few days after the event has unfortunately been abstracted by some unscrupulous curio hunter. On September 1, 1869, Mr. Whymper entered the following protest against this theft : Several leaves have been torn from this part of the ‘ Livre des Etrangers.’ These leaves contained an account of the first ascent of the Matterhorn, of the accident which occurred during the descent in which Lord Francis Douglas, Mr. Hadow, Rev. Charles Hudson and the guide Michel Croz lost their lives, and of the means which were taken to recover their bodies. This account was written for the information of the numerous travellers who visit Zermatt. It bore testimony to the courage of those who so lamentably perished, to the devotion of Michel Croz, and to the gallantry of the guides Franz Andermatten and the brothers Lochmatter, who so nobly volunteered to seek the bodies of those who were lost, when not a single guide in Zermatt would move, in face of threatened excommunication by their priests. It spoke of the unwearying kindness of Madame and Monsieur Seiler. This account has been appropriated bv some person unknown. Other and more valuable things, esteemed by Mons. Seiler, have been stolen from this book. As the associate of those who lost their lives on July 14, 1865, and of those who subsequently performed an act of the highest courage, and as the friend of Mons. Alex. Seiler, I protest against these thefts. This book is the property of Mons. Seiler, and no one has any more right to take a leaf from it than to steal his money. To this note a few lines have been added by another writer, but unluckily a portion of the leaf containing the signature, the date, and several words has been torn off: Owing to the brevity of the above statement one passage has been frequently misunderstood. As one of the nearest relatives of Mr. Hudson, I am anxious to state for the benefit of those who may hereafter read it that the threat of excommunication launched against the Zermatt guides was not intended to prohibit their taking part in the search, but to prevent their missing the Sunday morning mass ... purpose. The fact that Michel Croz was a Roman Catholic should of course remove the idea that the object was to prevent their doing a service to those of another creed. Louis GEORGE... 2 On August 17, 1867, Mr. Craufurd Grove gives an interesting account of the second ascent of the Matterhorn by a traveller, ? (This. we are informed by Mrs. Charles Hudson, was Bree Mylne, formerly Bishop of Bombay.]

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P. Taugwalder (fila), Jakob Anderegg. Cranfurd Grove. R. J. 8S. F. Macdonald. Melchior Anderegg. Digitized by Google Pe iveing. RL E. N. Buxton. W. F. Short. Leslie Stephen. 1865. A GROUP IN

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Digitized by Google

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Early Ascents of the Matterhorn. 89 containing many details which are omitted in his paper in the ALPINE JouRNAL (‘The Northern and Southern Ascents of the Matterhorn,’ vol. iv. pp. 185-193): Having recently ascended the Matterhorn from Breuil, it appears to me that it may not be out of place to give some little information respecting the ascent in this book, as any travellers who may intend ascending the mountain from the South are exceedingly likely to pass through Zermatt on their way to Breuil. I left Breuil on August 13 accompanied by J. A. Carrel, J. B. Bich and Salomon Meinet, all of Valtournanche. These three went with me to the summit. Augustin Meinet, also of Valtournanche, was taken with us as a porter to the grotto. During the first day (Aug. 13) we ascended to the Grotto, which I may explain is a hut or refuge which has been constructed very high on the shoulder of the mountain, just over the narrow band of snow known as the ‘ Cravatte.? The way thither presents considerable difficulty, which, however, is much alleviated by cords, which have been fixed in the worst places. In fine weather with the rocks clear of snow there is nothing to prevent travellers from ascending to this point, passing the night there and returning to Breuil the next day, and I think they will find it well worth the trouble, but the expedition should not, in my opinion, be undertaken in bad weather or when there is snow on the rocks, as the ascent might prove exceedingly dangerous. On the second day (Aug. 14) we left the Grotto and reached the summit, returning to the Grotto to pass the night. The ascent occupied about six hours and a half, and the descent very little less. I am exceedingly anxious not to exaggerate dangers and difficulties and not to prevent travellers from ascending this extra- ordinary peak, but I can only truthfully describe the impressions which the Matterhorn has left upon me by saying that the difficulty of ascending the final aréte appeared to me to surpass anything which J had encountered in any other part of the Alps. The expedition may, however, I believe, be made in safety by travellers well accustomed to mountain-climbing and accompanied by first-rate guides, provided always that the weather be good and the rocks free from snow, but I would most emphatically warn mountaineers against attempting the ascent in bad weather or when there is snow on the rocks, or without good and reliable guides, of whom there should be, in my opinion, two for each traveller. The summit of the Matterhorn consists of a long aréte of snow. The flagstaff planted by the Italian party we found still standing, and fastened our flag to it. We saw also the flagstaff planted by Mr. Whymper’s party, which is placed some little distance to the east of the Italian one, at a place where the aréte appeared to rise about to a level with the spot on which we stood. Witbout instruments I could not determine whether the site

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90 Early Ascents of the Matterhorn. of Mr. Whymper’s flagstaff was or was not level with the Italian flagstaff, but it was probably lower by some small degree than the Italian one on the day when we ascended, as we could see the foot of the lower aréte of Monte Rosa over it. The ridge probably varies a good deal at different times, inasmuch as the spot on which the Italians erected their flagstafi in a heap of loose stones is now a ridge of snow. Mr. Whymper’s party have also erected a cairn on the western extremity of the aréte, close by the place where the Italian guides subsequently planted their flagstaff. I cannot speak too highly of the three men who went with me to the summit, Carrel, Bich and Salomon Meinet, and I thoroughly advise any one attempting the ascent to have at least one of them with him. Carrel was the leader and did most of the difficult work. Augustin Meinet, who went with us to the Grotto, is very willing and hard working. I may perhaps be permitted to add that I found civility and attention and the most moderate charges at the little hotel at Breuil, which has, as it appears to me, been very unjustly complained of. On October 7, 1867, Mr. William Leighton Jordan describes in detail the third ascent effected by a tourist 3: Having last week ascended the Matterhorn from Breuil, I enter here a few remarks which may be of interest to any mountaineers who may next season attempt the ascent either from this side or from Breuil. At 5.15 a.m., on the Ist inst. I left the Hotel Mont Cervin at Breuil in company with the guides Jean Joseph Maquignaz and Jean Pierre Maquignaz, having with me also Victor Maquignaz, Emmanuel Maquignaz, César Carrel and Frangois Ansermin to act as porters to the ‘ cabane ’ on the‘ Cravatte.’ We reached the ‘ cabane ’ at 3.45 p.m., having spent an hour en route (from 11.15 to 12.15) at the ‘ hut’ besides other stoppages. On the morning of October 2 we left the “cabane’ at 5.40 a.m.; our party consisting of myself and the three brothers Joseph, Pierre and Victor Maquignaz, the latter having requested to be allowed to accompany us a8 a volunteer. We reached the Peak Tyndall at 6.10 a.M., traversed the aréte Tyndall at 7.15 a.m., reached the Col Felicité (the point at which the new route diverges from that followed by Abbé Gorret in 1865, and by Mr. Grove this year) at 7.45 A.M. At 9.50 a.m. we reached the summit of the western peak. The Italian flag and flagstaff which we found there we removed (excepting the stump and a long splinter) to the eastern peak, where we bound it _to the stump of Mr. Whymper’s flagstaff, which we discovered after removing a considerable amount of snow and ice from what appeared to us to be the highest point of the mountain. We found traces of ao ements ee © ett = ER a tn ode a 3 [Mr. Leighton Jordan’s note in the book at the inn at Breuil was reprinted, ‘A.J.’ xxx. 321-3, The present note contains a few minor details in addition. ] ce gc, ee

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Early Ascents of the Matterhorn. 91 each party which had preceded us on the mountam; namely, on the eastern peak, Michel Croz’s shirt, left as a flag by Mr. Whymper’s party on July 14, 1865, found buried in snow and ice close to the stump of the eastern flagstaff ; and on the western peak the remnants of an Italian flag left by the guides Carrel and Bich (the Abbé Gorret’s party on July 16, 1865), also found buried in snow and ice; Bich’s coat left by Mr. Grove’s party on August 14 this year; and the greater part of a red and white flag left by the guides Joseph and Pierre Maquignaz on September 13 this year. The stumps of both flagstafis were firmly frozen in solid ice and snow, the difficulty of digging in which prevented our attempting any search for the bottle left by Mr. Whymper’s party. At 11.15 a.m. we commenced to descend the Zermatt aréte (which terminates in the Hérnli), and descended as far as a point at which, in an attempt to ascend the mountain from this side, I turned back on September 10 in a snowstorm, with Pierre Knubel and Jean [Joseph] Marie Lochmatter. After thus making certain of a route by which, in confidence of fine weather, we intended to descend to Zermatt on the following day, we spent some time in endeavouring to make out a better though a more giddy route down the rocky face which looks towards the Riffel and Monte Rosa. Having lingered about these glorious slopes as long as we considered prudent at this season of the year, we returned to the summit, which we regained at 2.15 p.M., and reached our sleeping quarters at the “cabane ’ (or grotto) on the Breuil side of the mountain at 5.40 p.m. Nearly an hour in the ascent from this point to the summit and a full hour in the descent, we employed in changing the position of the ropes left on the route, so as to ease and quicken our intended trip on the following day. At 3 a.m. on the following morning (October 3) the wind gently cautioned us (Joseph, Pierre and me) to reconsider our plans, and the weather gradually became so threatening that at 6.35 a.m. we commenced a steady retreat from the mountain, resolved not to linger longer until safe on the grass slopes below. The four porters were still somewhat laden in consequence of our having prepared ourselves for the risk of being caught in bad weather at this unseason- able time of the year; so that the two guides and I, after quitting the glacier at the foot of the mountain, waited nearly an hour for them, within hearing all the time but out of sight in the dense clouds above. We afterwards all together reached the Hotel Mont Cervin at Breuil at 11 a.m. A ridge of snow blown up from the northern side, and forming a sharp edge overhanging the southern side, formed the summit of the mountain. Nearly all the aréte Tyndall was a truly ticklish bit of work. The rock in the hollow between the two peaks is that of which the greater part of the mountain is composed. And the rocks overlying this, which form the eastern and western peaks (as far as I could judge from the specimens which I could get), are not similar

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‘92 Ivarly Ascents of the Matterhorn. to each other. But rocks similar to all are abundant lower down on the mountain on both sides. Of course it will be understood that with so much snow on the summit of the mountain my examination was necessarily imperfect. There is granite on both sides of the mountain about half-way up. That on this side is, I think (without having compared specimens side by side), similar to granite on the side of Monte Rosa facing the Col de Lys; but I did not find any on the Breuil side exactly similar to it. Having traversed both sides of the mountain (that is, from the summit to Breuil and also from the summit to Zermatt) it may be of interest to many if I here state, without fear of future contradic- tion, that this side of the mountain is naturally easier (or rather less difficult) of ascent than the Breuil side: though the enterprise of the Valtournanche guides, assisted by the liberality of the Italian Alpine Club, in fixing ropes and making a snug sleeping-place, has made the Breuil side more convenient at the present inclement season of the year. As far as my experience, of mountaineering in Switzerland goes, this ascent of the Matterhorn is the most glorious and enjoyable trip a mountaineer can make. All who are not fully conscious of perfect self-possession, as well as no small amount of skill and endur- ance, should consider well the warning given by Mr. Grove some pages further back in this book: but those who ‘ where the feebler faint, can only feel, feel to the rising bosom’s inmost core, their joy awaken and their spirits soar,’ may with confidence in fine weather next season make a two days’ excursion over the summit of the mountain from this place to Breuil, or from Breuil to this place, if they have with them either Jean Joseph, Jean Pierre or Victor Maquignaz to act as guides for the Breuil side and the summit of the mountain, and either Peter Knubel or Jean [Joseph] Marie Loch- matter to act as guides for that part of this side of the mountain with which the three former are not acquainted. No other men have hitherto traversed the new routes on either side of the mountain. And Mr. Whymper’s route on this side, as also that taken by Abbé Gorret’s party in 1865 and by Mr. Grove this year on the Breuil side, are not likely to be taken again. On September 1, 1868, Messrs. W. K. Utterson Kelso and | A. J. Girdlestone record the ascent of the Matterhorn: Ascended the Matterhorn from Zermatt. We found a large amount of loose snow on the lower part of the mountain, which in our opinion was difficult and dangerous in the extreme. Our guides were Joseph Marie Lochmatter and the two Knubels, whom we considered first-rate in every respect. September 4, 1868, Mr. G. B. Marke writes : T ascended the Matterhorn on September 3 with Nicolas Knubel and Pierre Zurbriggen (Saas) as guides. Left Zermatt on September

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Early Ascents of the Matterhorn. 93 2 at 9 a.M., and reached the chalet at 4.50 p.m. Started next morning at 4.30 a.M., and after an exceedingly difficult and dangerous climb reached the summit at 7.15 a.m. Rested at the summit for five minutes and then descended with great difficulty to the chalet, which we reached at 12.45 p.m. We rested there an hour, and ‘reached Zermatt at 5.50; then ascended immediately to the Rifiel, which I reached in 1.35. The expedition is an exceedingly difficult one, requiring at least two guides for each traveller. The weather was magnificent. September 4, 1868.—Signor Felice Giordano, the first Italian traveller to reach the summit. <A detailed narrative of this expedition by Sig. Giordano appeared in the ‘ Bolletino of the C.A.I. for 1868,’ pp. 295-320 (‘ Ascension del Monte Cervino nel Settembre, dell’ Ingegnere Felice Giordano ’): Le 4 septembre j’ai fait l’ascension du Grand Cervin (Matterhorn) en partant de Breuil en Valtournanche, et descendant a Zermatt. Guides J. Ant. Carrel et Joseph Maquignaz, tous deux de Valtour- nanche. Je portai avec moi un barométre (Fortin) pour déterminer l’altitude du sommet et autres points remarquables du pic. Le jour 4 4 deux heures aprés-midi le barométre placé sur la pointe ouest mar- quait 448-55 mm., temp. air 0°. J’ai laissé sur le méme sommet, et attaché au gros baton qui s’y trouve planté, un thermométre 4 minimum (Fahrenheit de Casella, No. 805). Le premier voyageur intelligent qui fera l’ascension en 1869 est prié de lire le degré de froid sans déranger le dit thermométre. La glace et la neige qui en cette saison couvrent les parties supérieures du pic, ont rendu ma traversée assez laborieuse ; mais quoique nous n’eussions qu’une corde, la grande capacité de mes guides ont vaincu toute difficulte. Je leur rends ici nies éloges. Pendant la descente & Zermatt, presque au pied du pic nous fimes mis en grand danger par une grosse avalanche de pierres. I] serait désirable pour la plus grande sécurité de la course de ce coté de Zermatt, que le passage fat pratiqué plus prés de l’aréte et pas dans les couloirs. Les deux baraques ou refuges construits tant de céte d’Italie que de Suisse sont d’une grande utilité. La premiére, placée a l’endroit dit “ Cravatte,’ se trouve & l’altitude de 41 . . . m. et la seconde a. . . sur la mer. L’ascension et la descente du Matterhorn me semblent pouvoir se faire & peu prés également bien tant du coté d’Italie (course que javais déja faite en 1866) que du coté de Suisse ; cependant le coté suisse ,quoique peut-étre dangereux dans la partie située entre l’épaule et l’aréte supérieure, qui est fort rapide et formée d’une roche dure sans points d’appui, me semble plus expéditif et plus agréable. Le pic est presqu’enti¢rement formé de Gneiss talqueux en couches. Le tout repose sur des couches de calcaire schisteux et des schistes serpenteux chloriteux qui en forment la base generale.

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94 The Alpine Club of Canada. September 9, 1868. M. Paul Sauzet, of Lyons, the first French climber to reach the summit, enters the following lines : Premiére ascension du Mont Cervin faite par un francais ; Guides Joseph Maquignaz et Antoine Carrel; pour la premiére fois arrivé au sommet et descendu jusqu’a Breuil dans la méme journée. ee ee ee ee ee ee ee, ds — THE ALPINE CLUB OF CANADA. [We have ventured to reprint this letter —Ep1ToR.] To THE MEMBERS OF THE ALPINE CLUB OF CANADA. | Greeting : As a national organisation, the Alpine Club of Canada has nobly upheld the best traditions of the Empire. Canadians have covered themselves with glory, and not least among them are the Members of the Club who have fought abroad or worked at home in the Empire’s cause. Some ninety-five members have been enrolled for Active Service. Of these, as far as we know, three have joined the Supreme Honour Roll, fifteen have been wounded, two are prisoners of war, three have won the D.8.0., four have won the Military Cross, two have won the Cross of the Legion of Honour, one the D.C.M.; there have been nine mentions in despatches, one lady member has been decorated and one has been given the rank of Hon. Captain. This is a record of which we may well be proud, and one that will closely bind the traditions of the Club with the traditions of the Empire of which it is a part. The Alpine Club of Canada is striving to hold its own during these years of difficulty and stress. It is doing so on behalf of those at the Front who are eagerly looking to the time when we can again unite in peace and happiness around the camp fire beneath the snow-clad peaks we love so well. We at home are trying to do our part and to stand firmly together, shoulder to shoulder, so that when the time comes—and God grant that it may come soon—we can give our men the welcome they deserve and show them how truly we appreciate the great and glorious sacrifices they are making for us, for our liberty, and for our homes. I ask all members to give every possible help to this end. Such help can best be given by remaining members of the Club, so that in future years of peace we shall have the right to point with pride to the traditions created for our Club by its soldier members in the time of war. With sincere good wishes to you and the hope that the New Year

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The Exotic Granites of the Hubkernthal. — 95 may bring us the great joy and happiness of Peace with Honour, and the vindication of Right and Justice, without which let there be no peace. I am, Very faithfully yours, ARTHUR O. WHEELER, Director. THE EXOTIC GRANITES OF THE HABKERNTHAL. During a long stay at Berne and at Spiez, on the Lake of Thun, I had a good opportunity for examining the exotic granites and collecting specimens in the Habkernthal. I also visited the bunte nagelfluh on the north side of the Lake of Thun. The bed of the Rombach, a stream flowing down the Habkern Valley to the Lake of Thun, is full of blocks of these granites. Higher up the valley, larger blocks are imbedded in the shales of the Flysch. These granites vary in colour and structure; most of them have two felspars, pmk and white; some are porphyritic, others have veins of epidote and pegmatite and are not found as rocks in any part of the Alps. Some few blocks have been found at Rueschegg, near Schwarzenburg, and near the baths of Gurnigel. Of these I saw specimens in the museum at Berne. The bunte nagelfluh is intimately connected with and evidently partially derived from these granites. I noticed some pebbles in this formation very like the Habkern granites. Swiss geologists have two theories explaining the origin of these formations. One theory is that they came from the Schwarzwald, as some of the porphyritic granites of that range resemble those of the Habkernthal. But it is difficult to understand how these blocks and pebbles could have travelled south. The other theory, more generally accepted, is that these granites formed part of a mountain range existing in the south-east of Swit- zerland, before the grand upheaval of the present Alps in Miocene times. In confirmation of this theory, I may mention that I noticed that the pebbles at Gunten, on the Lake of Thun, were larger than those at Belpberg near Berne, the smaller pebbles having been carried further to the north by the action of water than the larger ones. I also saw, with the coloured granites in the Habkernthal, blocks of a white granite, very like the protogine from the Aar glacier. Proto- gine does not occur in the Schwarzwald. The Habkern blocks were mentioned by Murchison in 1849, also by Ball, ‘Central Alps,’ p. 60 (second edition). They are fully discussed in Professor Bonney’s * Building of the Alps,’ pp. 48- 52, and in his paper published in the Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. 1902,

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96 Old Fiihrerbiicher. pp- 194-198, in both of which he discusses the remarkable breccias in the Flysch in the Grande Eau valley above Le Sepey. They both are mentioned, with more references to Continental authors in Lubbock’s ‘ Scenery of Switzerland ’—see table of contents. The difficulty in appealing to overthrust masses (as Professor Bonney points out) for the sources of these blocks is that they are in the Flysch, which in this part of the Alps is Eocene, and older than the great periods of mountain-making, with which the ‘ thrusts’ are connected. It is known that there were mountains on the site of the Alps prior to the Flysch, but of these we know very little—' see Professor Bonney’s ‘ Building of the Alps’ for some remarks on this subject. In conclusion, geologists will find the Habkernthal well worth a visit, independently of its granites, and can eat, drink, and rest at a comfortable little inn at Habkern, three hours’ walk from Interlaken, T. Howset, F.LS. OLD FUHRERBUCHER. Mr. Henry F. Montacnier has kindly presented to the Club the Fiihrerbiicher, dating back into the late ’fifties, of the well-known Zermatt guides Johann, Matthaus and Stephan zum Taugwald. These guides were the immediate successors of Brantschen and Damatter, mentioned by Forbes, and took part in the early ascents of Monte Rosa and other peaks. The book of Johann is of great value and contains many entries of historical interest. It may be said to be the most important document of the kind acquired by the Club since the Paccard note- book presented by the late C. EK. Mathews. The Club has also been able to acquire the Fihrerbuch of Franz Weisshorn Biener, who as he lay dying last September expressed the wish that his book should be offered to the Club of which so many of his employers had been or were members. The Club is again indebted to Mr. Montagnier for his good offices in this matter. It is intended to continue the ‘ Historical Document’ series in an early number by an analysis of these books, and it is expected that further light may be thrown on the point, never very satis- factorily settled, how far the parties who made the attempts from the Silbersattel before the Héchste Spitze was attained really got. It is also hoped to put together from Biener’s Buch an account of the life of a guide who, if not of front rank, was a staunch and valiant mountaineer. The best thanks of the Alpine Club are due to Mr. Montagnier for his care for the interests of the Club and for the presentation of books of unique interest.

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In Memoriam. 97 IN MEMORIAM. MISS LUCY WALKER. On September 10, after a long illness, Miss Lucy Walker, the great pioneer of lady mountaineers, passed away in her eighty-first year. With her lamented death another and an important link with the early days of mountaineering is broken, for she began chimbing in 1858 and continued actively climbing each season until 1879, with the exception of 1861, 1872 (the year of her father’s death), and 1874 (when her brother Horace was in the Caucasus). I am not quite sure about the season of 1878, but if she was in the Alps that yearI do not think she made any expeditions of import- — . ance. She continued to visit the Alps year by year until about three or four years ago, when advancing years and bodily infirmities rendered long journeys impossible. Her father’s and brother’s names appear in the first list of members of the Alpine Club in the year 1859 (although they were not original members), so that they were all climbing steadily throughout the golden period of mountaineering until Mr. Frank Walker’s death in 1872. I have known them intimately all my life, and I made the ascent of the Matterhorn with Miss Walker and her father on July 21, *1871, when he was sixty-five years of age. It proved to be his last great ascent. This was the nineteenth actual ascent of the Matterhorn and is remarkable as being the first ascent by a lady, and for the advanced age of Mr. Frank Walker, who was even then stricken with a mortal disease to which he succumbed early in 1872. Mr. Frank Walker was a great pioneer of mountaineering, and visited the Alps at a time when mountaineers were but few. Unfortu- nately no exact record of his early work seems to exist, so far as I can ascertain, but perhaps the most remarkable expedition that he made was the first ascent of Mont Blanc from the Brenva Glacier when fifty-nine years of age. He, like his son and daughter after him, was the incarnation of hospitality, and I think I may say that in my early days I have met at his house practically all the pioneers of our noble sport. A very good portrait of Miss Walker appears in Mr. Whymper’s picture, ‘The Club Room of Zermatt in 1864’ (Scrambles, p. 262). She appears in the doorway of the Monte Rosa Hotel, and her father is seated on the bench at the opposite side of the picture, between Leslie Stephen and G. HK. Foster. Strangely enough, neither Horace Walker nor Moore appear in this important picture. How well I remember the ‘Walker’ Alpine party in the latter ‘sixties and early ’seventies! Mr. Frank Walker and his daughter with Melchior Anderegg, and Horace Walker and A. W. Moore with Jakob Anderegg, while Mrs. Walker and Miss Kate Barrett moved from base to base, to meet the active members of VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXIV. H

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| 98 In Memonam. the party from time to time. It was an ideal party, very much like that of the Tucketts of the same period, so charmingly outlined and described in Miss Tuckett’s (Mrs. Fowler’s) books. In those far-off mid-Victorian days, when it was even considered ‘ fast’ for a young lady to ride in a hansom, Miss Walker's wonderful feats jn the mountains did not pass without a certain amount of criticism, which her keen sense of humour made her appreciate as much as anyone. After her ascent of the Matterhorn some rather amusing verses appeared in Punch (vol. 61, p. 86; August 26, 1871), which by kind permission of the proprietors of Punch I am © permitted to quote here. These verses are under the title of A CuimBING GIRL. A lady has clomb to the Matterhorn’s summit, Which almost like a monument points to the sky ; Steep not very much less than the string of a plummet Suspended, which nothing can scale but a fly. This lady has likewise ascended the Weisshorn, And, what’s a great deal more, descended it too, Feet foremost; which, seeing it might be named Icehorn, So slippery ’tis, no small thing is to do. No glacier can baffle, no precipice balk her, No peak rise above her, however sublime. Give three times three cheers for intrepid Miss Walker. I say, my boys, doesn’t she know how to climb! Mr. Coolidge, writing of Miss Walker, says: “She was a very remarkable woman to have climbed so steadily and so long! My Aunt (Miss Brevoort) would certainly never have started if Miss Walker had not set the example. They never met but once at Zermatt, just after the Matterhorn ascent.’ Miss Walker survived Miss Brevoort nearly forty years. Fortunately Miss Walker gave me many years ago a list of her various expeditions (to which, at the instance of Mr. Coolidge, she added the year and date of each expedition). This complete list of the expeditions of the first great lady mountaineer is sure to be of interest to mountaineers of all nationalities, and is given herewith in full. Miss WALKER’S LIST. Always with Father until 1872, save Finsteraarhorn 1862. After- wards with Brother. Copied from Mr. Gardiner’s List, March 7, 1893, revised from Miss Walker’s own list January 17, 1911. - 1858. July. § $$Theodul. _ a Monte Moro, 1859. July. Titlis. : ' 5. Oberaarjoch,

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aa | wt? ye ; 4 2 > Horace Walker. Mrs. F. Walker. A. W. Moore. : Mr. Frank Walker. Johann Jaun., Miss Hughes. A (INOVTITID TARKWBRAT AY 7E0°%7

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1859. 1860. 1862. 1863. 1864. 1865. 1866. 1867. 1868. July 8,9. Strahleck. 35 15. Tschingel Pass. ~ 18. Altels. . July 7,8. Jungfrau (almost). ag 13. Weissthor. 5 16. Adler Pass. a (?) Strahlhorn. 55 21. Mont Vélan. sf 25. Col du Géant, 1861 (2). ‘3 28. Col d’Heérens. July 1. Gauli Pass. - 8. Oberaarhorn. 9. Finsteraarhorn (with Horace W.). as 12. Alphubel Pass. ¥ 15. Monte Rosa. a 19. . Triftjoch. ss 23. Aiguille du Goiter. » 25, 26. Mont Blanc. July 16,17. Zumstein Spitze. July 1. Grivola (almost). - 4,5. Grand Combin. - 7. Col du Sonadon. | 2 8. Col de la Reuse de l’Arolla - 9. Col de Valpelline. 3 12. Rimpfischhorn. » 15,16. Aletschhorn. 5 21. Balmhorn (1st ascent). m 25. Higer. June 23. Sustenhorn. as 23. Sustenlimmi. », 27, 28. Jungfrau. July 4, 5. Moming Pass. . 8. Breithorn. » 10,11. Grivola. June 23. Moénchjoch. » 21, 28. Wetterhorn. July 6. Ewigschneefeld (?Horn.) % 9. Weisshorn. » 13,14. Dom. _ 17. Biesjoch. Aug. 13, 14. Monch. » 13,14. Ménchjoch. », 19, 20. Schreckhorn. », 26,27. Bliimlisalp. : June 26. Mont Pourri (attempt). July 2. Coldu Géant. - 8. Col du Tour. 5 12. Pigne d’Arolla. In Memoriam. Col de Valcournera, 99

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100 1868. 1869. 1870. 1871. 1872. 1873. In Memoriam. July 14. Theodul. 20. Lyskamm. a 5, 23, 24. Gross Viescherhorn. hs 25. Ménchjoch. June 28, 29. Dachstein. — July. 9. Watzmann. es 16. Hintereis Pass. ,, 18,19. Ortler Spitze. ,, 23,24. Piz Bernina. June 94. Uri Rothstock. . », 27,28. Trift Pass (Triftlimmi). ,, 29, 30. Lauteraarjoch. July 6. Jungfraujoch. . 9. Beichgrat | , 10, 11. Baltschiederhorn.. , 19, 20. Aiguille Verte. | - 23. Buet. June 24. Diablerets. July 1.. Wetterliicke. “3 5. Monte Leone. s 8. Castor.. ” 8. Felikjoch. » -- 10. Schwarzthor. zs 18. Weissthor. - 15. Balfrin. ,, 17, 18. Weisshorn (attempt). 20, 21. Matterhorn. Father died. June 20. Titlis. 23. Wendenjoch. J uly 3,4. Jungfrau from Wengern Alp. , 9, 10. Taschhorn. ‘s 11. Weissthor. s: 14. Monte Moro. » 17,18. Weisshorn. i 19. Riffelhorn. 4 22. Col Durand. | 26. Rothhorn (attempt). Did not visit Alps. Brother Horace in Caucasus with, Moore, Grove, and Gardiner. July 7. Wildstrubel. » 14,15. Allalinhorn. Sept. 3. Col de Seilon. ‘ 10. Passo d’Antrona. June 28. Galenstock. July 5. Weissthor. ss 12. Mischabelhorn (Dom). a 12, Alphubelhorn, (2

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In Memoriam. 101 “* "" 1879. June. 20. Col de Collon. : . _ 4, 26, 27. Monte Viso. July 2. Col du Mont Corvé. - 5. Theodul. ae 12. Nord End (attempt). nF ' 22. Mondelli Pass. 24. Basodino. In.all 95 expeditions and 3 attempts = 98. Her geniality, humour, and lively wit made her a favourite where- ‘ever she went, and her hospitality and kindness of heart endeared her to all her numerous friends. Itis sad to think that the delightful home of the Walker family exists no longer; and 1 am sure that “among the older generation of mountaineers no memories will be pleasanter than those of the true hospitality dispensed from that ‘most genial centre by two generations of the Walker family. FREDERICK GARDINER, The very interesting account of Miss Lucy Walker’s career as a mountaineer naturally ends with her actual climbing; but she lived for many years after this, and through all of them her love for the mountains remained undiminished, and year after year she returned to scenes of her early triumphs—sometimes as a member of a travelling Alpine party, and sometimes stopping at some high Alpine hotel. Long friendship with the Seilers naturally led to her often going back to Zermatt and the Riffel. In the earlier years of this second period, which may be said to have lasted from 1880 to 1912, the same temperament and qualities which had carried her to the top of the Matterhorn remained undiminished, and with her life-long friend and guide, Melchior Anderegg, she made many long and tiring expeditions, which were the anxiety and wonder of other members of the party. I well remember one such day in the Sulden Thal, when we were taking a day’s rest after an expedition, that she quietly stole off with Melchior and paid a visit to the Schaubach Hut, the journey to and from which, according to Baedeker, takes more than four hours, which, for a lady of her age and weight, was an exeornay afternoon’s walk, as she was sixty-one at the time. Her energies were immense, and she was a bold, inveterate, and able sightseer, and we were often roused by her from our laziness, and taken to some point of view or interesting place, which but for her insistence we might have missed. Travelling in her company was always enlightened by her great vivacity, her pithy remarks, and her interesting reminiscences of former travels, while her memories shed arrold-world and fascinating interest on the peaks and valleys, and the towns and villages through which we passed. These recollections seldom had reference to her climbing exploits, unless there was-some quaint occurrence

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.102 In Memoriam. or troublesome experience to adorn the tale. Rather would she tell you, when looking at some trimly tweed-clad maiden, how in her early days she climbed in a white print dress, of the difficulty of managing it on the mountains, and of restoring it as nearly as possible to its original shape and colour on her return to civilisation. Often as I have travelled with her I did not know till after her death the full extent of her expeditions, and I was greatly surprised at their number, and at the difficulties that she had overcome. In 1912 the Ladies’ Alpine Club persuaded her to become their President, and although the Committee gave her every help, the burden of taking the chair at the annual dinner was a very heavy one. She was a great invalid at the time, and we all remember with admiration the pluck and determination which carried her so successfully through her very trying ordeal. She was a staunch, loyal, and affectionate friend, whose friendship was valued by all, and she will always remain to all who knew her a gracious memory, surrounded by all the best traditions of Alpine chmbing and mountain travel. CHARLES PILKINGTON. LINES ADDRESSED TO MISS L. W. THE Angels still stand on the mountain tops, But thou no more may’st climb to meet them there, By the dread steps of that steep, crystal stair, Carved in the Heaven high wall, in wide mid air. Still, riding on the clouds, the Queen Moon stops, Over the ‘Silver Horns,’ her silver chair ; But thou, from some star-curtained, rocky ledge, May’st see no more thy watchfire’s leaping glow Redden her pale light, on some treacherous edge, Where the ice cornice, glittering smooth and fair, O’erhangs the unmeasured depth of Dark below: Nor, from some rose-flushed snow spire in the sky, Breathless look down on dim Immensity ; While in the west the day bleeds slow to death, Swooning into the outstretched arms of Night; Nor feel the living thrill of the first breath Of new-born Morning, when her feet alight On the great granite peaks, that one by one Crown themselves with the rising of the sun. Yet happy thou! for all this has been thine, And shall be, till thou lie beneath the sod, Thence to arise, to see things more divine— If such there be—before the throne of God. 7 | Fanny KEMBLE. < (From ‘ Temple Bar’ Magazine for March 1889. Reprinted by the courtesy of Messrs. Macmillan & Co. Ltd.)

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In Memoriam. 108 THE REV. ARTHUR FAIRBANKS. | 1849-1916. By the death of the Rev. Arthur Fairbanks the Club has lost one of its most enthusiastic members. He went first to the Alps in 1868, and I don’t think he missed a year after that till the war brought his visits to an end. He spent fortv-five summers in the mountains, and his summers were not like the summers of most of us. He would go out in May and stay till September. Sometimes he would spend the whole of the time at the Bel Alp; other years he would roam a little and climb the Weisshorn one year, the Matter- horn another, or the Dent Blanche or the Grindelwald peaks. But the Bel Alp was his centre, and there he was always on the ice and the rocks, and by constant practice he developed a power of dealing with ice difficulties, which I have never seen surpassed even by the best guides. On rocks he was good and safe, but he was not an accomplished rock gymnast. A day with him on the Ober-Aletsch ice-fall was a day of excitement, and I must admit I was often glad in the evening to find myself at dinner and not at the bottom of some yawning crevasse. No one could find the easiest way through an ice-fall better than he could, but his delight was to wrestle with the hardest and most broken bits. With a perfect balance he would skim across the narrowest ice edges, and on a slope a chip or two of the axe gave him all the support he wanted. I am afraid he often had to wait for me while I enlarged his chips into steps sufficient to keep me from sudden death. He was very fond of introducing people to the ice world, and well knew how to help the trembling steps of a novice. Many people will remember the jovial parties that they have enjoyed under his guidance on the Aletsch. I climbed with him for about five years; and we did various peaks without guides and were cheated of others by weather or circumstance. He was the best and cheeriest of companions; nothing put himout. His laugh was infectious, and you felt all the time that he was good, good to the very bottom. For years he was the life and soul of the Bel Alp. The services in the chapel there owe much to him, and he was the warm friend of the guides and workmen attached to the place. He never forgot old Tony, whose steadiness did so much to save the lives of his party in the accident on the Unterbach glacier in 1885. He gave him an annuity for life. When I look back on my happy Alpine days, I always seem to see my old friend, as an inseparable part of the mountains, and it is sad to think that the Alps will know kim no more. | J. Sroepow. [The following instructive account of the socident referred to was found among Mr. Fairbanks’s papers and well merits printing, as showing great resource and presence of mind.

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104 In Memoriam. MEMORANDUM OF ACCIDENT ON THE UNTERBACH _ GLACIER, AUGUST 14, 1885. PaRTY consisted of myself, Rev. W. Henry, Rev. C. Deedes, and Anton Walden, and were roped in this order, about 15 ft. apart. We were coming down the névé which was unusually crevassed, and I had led over some half-dozen crevasses, jumping the 3 or 4 ft. width at the point at which we crossed—always from a firm edge to a firm edge. Another crevasse occurred, and, thrown off my guard by the character of those already crossed, I advanced to its edge without testing the solidity of the snow from which I purposed springing; at the moment of taking the jump the névé beneath my feet (which proved to be a corniche 2 ft. or 3 ft. overhanging the crevasse) gave way, and I fell like a stone into the gulf. Henry (who came next) was dragged over head first, losing his hat and alpenstock. Then the great strength of A. Walden, with the assist- ance which Deedes was able to give, pulled the party up, Deedes being within about 3 ft. of the real edge, and Walden 15 it. behind him. These could not tell what the situation was of those in the crevasse, but must have endured terrible anxiety for some minutes. They behaved splendidly, showing great nerve and self-control, and simply retained their strong hold on the rope until we were able to acquaint them with our position. From the moment of the névé giving way with me I was unconscious of anything which happened, until I found myself suspended by the rope in the middle of the crevasse, about 30 ft. down, and with some 30 ft. still below me, where the crevasse tapered to a mere cleave. At the part where I was hanging, the walls, which were perpendicular and of hard blue ice, were about 3 ft. 6 apart. Looking up, I saw Henry between me and the sky, some 10 or 11 ft. down the crevasse. Providentially I had retained my axe, and instantly began, as well as I could, to cut a step in one wall of the crevasse, into which I got a foot, and propped myself with my back against the opposite wall. Then I called up to Walden that I was all right and had some hold. The first horror of the position was now relieved, and I was able to ease slightly the strain of the rope, the knot of which was behind my left shoulder the weight of my body therefore pressing on the muscles in front (beneath the right armpit), and to bring the knot round to my chest. Henry then communicated to me that he had precarious foothold on a small ledge which occurred in the upper (névé) stratum of the crevasse, and that he was at present able to support himself. I then shouted to Walden (1) that he must on no account relinquish his hold on us; (2) but that he might ease the tension of the rope, as we were both supporting ourselves ; (3) that he must unrope himself, and let down his end of the rope to Henry. This he did, with every precaution as I afterwards learned, anchoring his axe in the névé

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In Memonam. 105 and securing the rope to it on which our safety depended : with the help of this simple mechanical aid Deedes was now able almost entirely to set Walden free ; the end of the rope taken off Walden was let down to Henry, who fastened himself to it, and then un- fastened the original loop in which he had been second on the rope. This was a matter of some difficulty since the knot was drawn very tight by our weight, but as soon as it was accomplished, and the loop had disappeared, the rope was drawn again tight, which was my security, and Walden pulled Henry out by the end last let down. Thus Henry was got off the rope, on which he had been between me and the party above, and the rope was clear to me. During the whole of this time I was propping myself across the crevasse, and during Henry’s ascent had to endure much pelting from the falling ice, Walden now, for the first time I think, at my invitation, came to the edge, and looked down ; about 20-25 mins. must have elapsed since the fall. I then told him I preferred not being pulled nght out, as the distance was great, and the rope had to fray over the edge of the crevasse; he returned therefore to his strong position, and I cut my way about 18 ft. up from the level to which I had fallen, getting my feet into the higher steps I cut on one side, and then signalling to be pulled up so that my back might be raised on the opposite side: then, when the crevasse got too wide, they pulled me up the remaining 12 ft. 1 felt quite cool whilst in the crevasse, which was about $ hr., losing my breath sometimes when my feet slipped, and I swung again in the rope and had to screw and scramble back to my hold, but 1 was able quietly and coolly to direct the solving of the problem involved in our rescue, which Walden could not organise since he could not see how matters were, but he carried all out with admirable calmness and self-control and skill—H. and D. too were splendid. I was unhurt—save a bruise on my thigh, a few scratches and bruises on my fingers, and a slight wrench to the muscles beneath my right arm. One was thankful to lie panting on the snow when all was over. The two great and principal mercies in the accident were (1) my keeping my axe, which enabled me to help myself; (2) Henry’s lighting on some support; (3) Tony’s great strergth in holding us, and (4) the fact of our being unhurt by the fall—the two latter, if less remarkable, are not less the original causes in the accident by which a grievous disaster was averted. a EERE «oe RICHARD LAKE HARRISON. On August 3, 1883, the writer first met R. L. Harrison. We had come straight out from England and, meeting our guides at Martigny, drove to Orsiéres, whence we toiled, all untrained, up endless zig- zags to the then new Cabaned’Orny. Next morning, having crcssed the two Cols, we arrived at Lognan in the mid-forenoon, and found ourselves welcomed by an unknown man with a genial clean-shaven

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106 In Memoriam. face, who treated us as if we had becn his friends for years. We profited by his counsel in selecting our menu, and agreed that the Asti and Seltzer cup was ‘topping.’ And thus commencéd a friendship which continued on mountain and on plain, in good fortune and in bad, in sickness and in health, until a few weeks ago, when, after a second paralytic seizure, R. L. Harrison passed away, mourned by all who knew him. _ A better and a truer friend no man ever had. - He came of a family of cricketers. Two of his brothers played for Oxford, and he himself captained Uppingham in its palmy days, when A. P. Lucas, W. 8S. Patterson, and D. Q. Steel were members of a now historic eleven. In boyhood also he acquired a fine technique with fiddle and bow, which, aided by his perfect ear, placed him later on in the foremost rank of amateur violinists in London. As a soloist he was excellent, but as a leader of quartets almost unrivalled amongst amateurs in the eighties. He was the fortunate possessor of a magnificent Stradivarius and—as he learned to his surprise when the admirers of Joachim offered a fancy price for it (£50)—of the best Tourte bow extant. As a solicitor and a member of the firm of Waterhouse & Co., Harrison was well known in legal circles, and he attained a dis- tinguished and honoured position in his profession. As a mountaineer he was eminently safe and good; and many are the expeditions in Lakeland, Norway, and the Alps, which the writer made in his genial company. His constant good nature and high spirits, his ready wit, and his surprisingly humorous ejaculations, made him the prince of companions on the mountains. To the Alpine Club he rendered excellent service for many years as auditor; and among our members he leaves many sorrowing friends, with whom his kindly nature will ever remain a cherished memory. C. WILSON. C. A. WERNER. (Capt. 6th attached 2nd Rifle Brigade. Born January 22, 1877. Killed in action, May 9, 1915.) My last letter from Charles Werner was dated ‘in billets 7.5.15.’ He was ‘trying in vain to get away from the pervading smell of horse lines and read the ALPINE JOURNAL.’ Two davs later, in the dawn, he took his company into action in the first line of the attack on the Aubers ridge. He was carrying among other things his ice-axe, for having decided that it would be a useful tool in modern war he had had it sent out to him a few days earlier. I doubt whether it came into use. They never got very far. He was wounded more than once by machine-gun fire, and brought into a captured trench late that night by some Germans who gave them-

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_In Memonan. 107 selves up. He was already dead, and when our men had to fall back in the night the wounded alone could be got away. That is the story as it can be pieced together from the narratives of privates ; but that may not be really what happened. There is no official ‘evidence. He and his ice-axe were last seen by a subaltern, who by chance was like Werner a King’s man, just before the attack began, moving away under fire through a hedge towards the German lines. After that nothing is certain except that he never came back. | He had been about two months at the front and the mountains had been a good deal in his letters—partly because boots and food, map and compass, the stars and hard work at daybreak, are important factors common to mountaineering and campaigning. There were also the references to plans for climbing when it should all be over; ‘ but I think,’ he wrote once, ‘ the expeditionary force will be worn away and most of us with it, before the time when the New Army can finish the job.’ I fancy he had never much expecta- tion of coming back. | Werner was not, I should suppose, what would be called a great climber. He was certainly not a mountain bigot. If only one holiday a year had been possible, the mountains would have taken their turn with the sea, cities, and a score of other interests. He seldom practised on Gable or Lliwedd at Easter. More likely he would be found in the Greek Islands, off the coast of Dalmatia, in Paris, or walking alone over the Pyrenees through the republic of Andorra. Physically he had nearly all the qualifications of a first-rate mountaineer, but he took no special trouble to develop them. On rock he could get onto anything that he could grip, though I doubt whether he would ever have acquired the balance of the perfect cragsman. On névé and glacier he had excellent judgment, but he had not the good iceman’s handiness with his tool. Very powerful, a fine boxer, gymnast, and football player, and a magnificent swimmer, he seemed quite incapable of fatigue. He was ready at any time to carry any weight, and he could do continuous, heavy, cross-country climbing, with only one day off in a fortnight, in a pair of peasant’s boots, which fitted so badly that most of his puttees were wrapped about his feet. When in the mountains his mind ran on the big things, whole ranges and river systems, rather than on slab-routes or cracks. He loved a new valley and to find out what the far side of the hill was like. In the early days of the Club he would have stood in the first rank of explorers, for he was insatiably inquisitive and full of resource. The Alps themselves and their languages he had known from a child, thanks to many holidays spent with Swiss relations, and he handled mountain-folk perfectly. He was curious too in dialects and customs, interested at least as much in the people as in their hills. We climbed together for fifteen years, on and off, and neither his temper nor his nerve ever failed. We

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108 In Memoriam. differed a good deal. He was given to notions of his own and was a stubborn defender of his opinion. That decision about the use ‘of an ice-axe in war was characteristic. Had I been there, there would have been great argument. at Werner’s official career is simple enough. Dulwich to 1896; King’s, where he was a scholar, to 1901; Harrow ever since. - At Harrow he sometimes worked on the classical, sometimes on the modern side. Though he was an unusually successful schoolmaster he was never quite sure that it was his right profession. Nor were some of his friends. There had been an offer, at the time he first went to Harrow, of a post in Nyassaland, and I think he regretted it now and then. He used to say that some kind of work, civil or military, on the North-West frontier of India was his ideal; and that was the sort of place in which I could best picture him satisfied throughout life. The risk of becoming a pure schoolmaster was one of his pet horrors. ‘He will have to be careful,’ a man said to me who knew all about it, ‘ for he is such an extraordinarily good one.’ Certain places in the Alps we always avoided, because they were said to be filled from the public schools. In others he would run his eye round the table at our first meal and mutter: * Mark of the beast, third from the bottom on the right.’ He’ belreved he could tell a schoolmaster at sight, though I have known him brand with the mark a barrister and, what is no doubt more excusable, an eminent Professor of Botany. Of late years soldiering, which he took up with immense keenness, a journey to Uganda, and some private matters had made him more and more restless. He was the only schoolmaster I ever heard of who got leave from his Head to start for Africa at mid-term on about four days’ notice. Recently he wanted to join one of Wollas- ton’s New Guinea expeditions—I fancy it was the one which the war has spoiled—but the plan collapsed. I cannot think that if he had come through he would ever have gone back to Harrow. Soldiering suited him perfectly. He had been attached, during school holidays, to various battalions in the years before the war and hoped for a Special Reserve commission at the start. We were together in Cornwall then with a big party of friends. - He applied, was not accepted, and went back, reluctantly enough, to make sand forts with the clildren and catch crabs until wanted. In war or peace he was happiest among children. It was a point of honour with him to conquer them all, especially little girls. Tf every other device failed he used to make, with an envelope and a pocket-knife, a wonderful paper bird which pecked crumbs. This always succeeded. I have met that bird in the oddest places. Created, quite irregularly, at table d’hote it has thawed a whole tableful of French people who had been a little cold towards four wet Englishmen dining in their sweaters. Three generations of Norsemen, old Nils, Ingebrit Nilson, and Nils Ingebritson, have slapped their thighs and cried with joy at it. It wasn’t made for them though, but for three grubby little people with yellow curls,

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Presentations to the Alpine Club. 109 Solvei, Hjérdis, and Aslaug, who had taken refuge behind the wood heap when we slouched into the farm and had to be conquered before bedtime. The War Office kept Werner for half a term at Harrow in the autumn of ’14, and then he got his commission in the 6th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade and went to Sheerness. He set his heart on the 2nd Battalion. ‘ Our besetting anxiety,’ he wrote, just after he had crossed; on March 23, ‘has been lest we should be posted to some other regiment. I feel about the 2nd Bn. as one might feel about a valley one had chosen for one’s summer headquarters, just bythe map and without knowing it.’ He got there, by the usual stages. And from that valley, within a few weeks, he went by pe : ridge at Aubers into the new county: J. H. CLAPHAM. PRESENTATIONS TO THE ALPINE CLUB. BY Mr. Henry F. Montagnier : Photographs of : | Hans and Christian Grass, of Poateeeind. The same with a ’ German traveller—possibly an early portrait of Dr. Paul Giissfeldt. ~ Abraham Ambihl, an old-timer of Pontresina. Nicolaus Miller, an old-timer of Pontresina. Franz (Weisshorn) Biener, about 1911.' Breithorn Biener, about 1911. Peter Knubel, in 191], a very striking portrait. The same about 1890. Aloys Pollinger. Josef Moser, about 1911. Peter Taugwalder, the survivor of the Matterhorn accident, specially taken in 1916. Josef Marie Kronig,? born in 1838. Specially taken in 1916; the ‘lad . . . engaged as porter,’ who ‘later in the day, although by no means a first-rate hand... did his very best,’ of Messrs. T. S. Kennedy and Wigram’s first ascent of the Dent Blanche with J. B. Croz in 1862. Augustin Gentinetta, the well-known Zermatt guide, taken | in 1916. A group in front of the Monte Rosa at Zermatt about 1885, including Messrs. Groves, Townley, Carteighe, Church, Abney, 1 We regret to hear of his death at Zermatt in September. * Mr. Whymper gives his name as Johann (‘Guide.to Zermatt,’ 15th edit., p. 18). The Johann Kronig (p. 28) of Whymper’s attempt on the Matterhorn in 1862 was apparently an older man,. | probably one of the guides of Mr. Llewelyn Davies in 1858, |

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110 The Alpine Club Inbrary. Cunningham, Lammer, Lorria, Eckenstein, Alexander Seiler I., ~ Jost, Josef Imboden, and others. Stephan zum Taugwald, as cure of Tasch, died 1907; one of the earlier Zermatt guides. Johann zum Taugwald. Matthaéus zum Taugwald. Stephan zum Taugwald (an earlier portrait). - These three portraits are reproduced from a family group in the possession of the son of Matthaus, an ex-trooper of the 2nd Cavalry U.S. army. The three brothers were among the earlier Zermatt guides, and followed immediately J. B. Brantschen and Peter Damatter, who were employed by Forbes. By Dr. Dibi: Copies of the only known portrait of Pfarrer Johann Josef Imseng, born June 6, 1806, at Saas-Fee, drowned in the Matt- mark-See, July 5, 1869. By Professor Dr. EK. Hugi, of Berne : A portrait of his grandfather, F. J. Hugi, the physicist and Alpine traveller, from the painting by Dietler in 1829. By Mr. and Mrs. H. W. Forster: A very interesting lot of old photographs from the collection of the late Miss Walker, including F. EK. Blackstone, A. W. Moore (3), G. E. Foster, E. R. Whitwell, Bradshaw Smith, Horace Walker (2), Trueman, C. E. Mathews, G. S. Mathews, Ambrose Short, H. B. George (2), E. Whymper (June 1864 and August 1865), James Heelis, N. Krubel, M. Anderegg (several), Bennen, Almer, Frank Walker, G. H. Strutt, F. Gardiner, T. and 8. Middlemore, Thomas Cox, Wellig, R. B. Heathcote, Wm. Mathews, F. F. Tuckett (several), F. Dévouassoud,* Mr. and Mrs. BE. P. Jackson (group), C. and L. Pilkington and E. Hulton (group), and others. The best thanks of the Club are offered to the donors. THE ALPINE CLUB LIBRARY. The following additions have been made since September 1916 :— Club Publications. Akad. Alpen-Club Bern, x/xi Jahresbericht 1914-1916. 1916 19. 9x6}: pp. Records death from an avalanche of Daniel Willi while leading a military patrol over the Saflischpass in November 1915. New ascents described are :— W. Baumgartner, Piz d’Annarosa, Lorenzhorn Abstieg i. Stiden: O. Gurtner, Kanzel-Lauterbrunnen Wetterhorn: Frau Wyss, Froschkopf. * Mr. Freshfield writes: ‘On the whole, with some misgiving, I think it is probably Frangois ’ [in the late fifties],

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The Alpine Club Library. 111 Akad. Alpen-Club Ziirich. XX. Jahresbericht fiir das Jahr 1915. -1916 82 x 6: pp.30: portrait of Dr. R. Weber. The new ascents described are :— -@. Miescher, Torrento Alto, N. ridge. N. Morgenthaler: Finsteraar-Rothorn, traverse N.E. ridge and S.W. ridge, May 15. ‘The tour is recommended as a short con- necting tour between the Oberaarhorn and the Finsteraarhorn huts.’ Hinteres Fiescherhorn by the S.E., May 16. ‘Shorter and more interesting than the usual route over the Fiescher-plateau. Recommended only when snow in first-class condition and early in the morning before the sun gets on the wall.’ Kammilistock by S.E. Alpine Club of Canada. Canadian Alpine Journal, vol. vii. Banff, 1916 9 x 6: pp. vi, 128: maps, plates. The articles are :— A. P. Coleman, Mt Tetragona. A first ascent in Labrador. The peak is 4700 feet. ‘The peaks of the Torngats rise almost straight from the sea... They are as rugged and often as difficult to ‘climb as most mountains in the Rockies. . . There is a charm in their remoteness and desolation that must attract the explorer. Virgin peaks, such as they are, may be counted by the dozen, and there are many fine rock climbs, but the glaciers are too small to be of much importance to the mountaineer. The rocks are usually very sound.’ W. E. Stone, Climbs and explorations in the Purcell Range, southern Selkirks, in 1915. Mt Ethelbert ; climbs on south fork of Horse Thief Creek, Mts ~ | St Peter, Delphine, etc. : 3 J. W. A. Hickson, Experiences in the Canadian Rockies in 1915. Mt Moloch, Mt Goodsir. P. A. W. Wallace, Elusive Mt Moloch. ©. A. Richardson, Ascent of Mt Black Douglas. E. W. D. Holway, First ascent of Mt Edith Cavell (formerly Mt Fitzhugh). A. P. Coleman, The building of the Torngats. A. O. Wheeler, Some meteorological phenomena of the Canadian Rockies. ‘The cloud-burst worked upwards and we were enveloped in it. . Things began to move; single stones came leaping from above and, missing us by inches, shot down the snow-slope. The single stones became fusillades; rock falls crashed all around; what had been streams when we ascended were now roaring torrents and we realised that the mountain had run wild .. We descended as rapidly as possible, and by the time the bottom of the slope was reached the storm was over. . . The mountain was a great white mass; piles of hailstones lay everywhere; sheets of water were coming down the slopes and pouring over the ledges; torrents were raging down the gullies and loosened masses of rock were still falling. I had never seen a mountain run wild before and the sight was one I shall never forget.’ ' Mary L. Jobe, Mt Alexander Mackenzie (Mt Kitchi). ‘ Mt Robson is higher and more spectacular but nothing on it to equal the danger of the treacherous snows and rotten cornices of Mt Alexander Mackenzie. ..It is the culminating northernmost peak of the Canadian Rockies.’ H. E. Forster, Memoir of the late Harold W. Topham, | In memoriam Sir Sandford Fleming. Appalachian Mountain Club. Huts, White Mountains. [1916] 6 x ay: PP. 6: 10 plates: :

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112 The Alpine Club Library. Appalachian Bulletin, vol. 10, no. 1. October 1916 On page 8 is recorded, during an Alaskan trip, ‘Icebergs fell with much noise from the Taku Glacier, at the blast of the steamer’s whistle.’ —— Appalachia, vol. 14, no. l. | December 1, 1916 In an article on Climbing Clubs in America, the following are mentioned, with dates of foundation :— 1716. Tramontane Order. This would appear to be the earliest climbing club. It was founded by Governor Alexander Spotswood: ‘the insignia was a golden horse-shoe bearing the inscription, ‘‘ Sic jurat transcendere montes,” which any gentleman able to prove that he had drunk His Majesty’s health upon the summit of Mt George in Virginia was entitled to wear.’ 1863. Alpine Club of Williams- 1907-9. Vancouver Mountaineers town. . ing Club: became 1873-83. White Mountain Club, 1909. British Columbia Moun- Portland, Maine. : taineering Club. 1875-8. Rocky Mountain Club, 1907. Mountaineers, Seattle. ~ Colorado. 1912. Colorado Mountain Club, 1876. Appalachian Mountain Denver. Club. 1913. Timpanogos Club, Utah. 1892. Sierra Club. 1914. Mount Baker Club, 1894. Mazamas. Bellingham. 1901-4. Mt Whitney Club. 1915. Hoquiam Club, Wash- 1902. American A.C. ington; Trails Club, 1906. A.C. of Canada. ; Oregon. 1906. Rocky Mountain Climbers : Club. r Fédération d. Sociétés pyrénéistes. Bulletin pyrénéen. 20c¢ année, nos. 127-~ .. 136. Janvier 1915-Décembre 1916 10 x 64: pp. 336: maps, ill. Among other articles are the following :— F. Ramsauer, Les Pyrénées dans la littérature de antiquité. Trans. from D. Alpenzeitung with added notes. Légende d: tous les cols qui vont de France en Espagne par Roussel. Annotée par M. de Saint-Saud. Fayon, Le panorama des Pyrénées vu de Pau. L. Gaurier, Etudes glaciaires dans les Pyrénées. Rayssé, Le Pic de Brasscil en Ariége. — Le Pic des Trois-Seigneurs. G. Ledormeur, La région de Migouélou. J. Bepmale, Du Cap Figuier au Cap de Creuz. A. Meillon, La Vallée de Cauterets, 1909. P. Rondou, La toponymie de la Vallée de Baréges. B. Malan, Maucahéra, Pic d. Trois Conseillers, Pic Long. L. Le Bondidier, L’ascension au Vignemale du Prince de Moskowa. Reprinted from C.R. Acad. d. Sc. t. 7, 1838. — Ascension & la Maladetta par Franqueville et Tchihatcheff. T.’s account reprinted from C.R. Acad. d. Sc. t. 21, 1842. J. Lataste, Le Pic Long. 7 G. Caccia, Vers le Pique de Méde. Mazamas. Mazama Local Walks. Fall Schedule. 1916 34 x 5}: pp. ll. | Norske Turistforenings Aarbok for 1916. 9 x 6: pp. v, 259: ill. Contains :— | E. Damsgaard, H¢ifjeldskilgpning og fjeldruter for skil¢pere. F. Schjelderup, Streiftog nordpaa. 7 Eilert Sundt, Den f¢rste vinterbestigning av Aconcagua.

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The Alpme Club Lnabrary, 118 Oe.T.C. . Oasterreichische Alpenzeitung. Geleitet von Hans Wédl. 36 u. 37 Jahrg.—1914, 1915. Nr. 897-912 : 913-924. Wien, 1914,1915. 103x7: pp- xvi, 263: iv, 168: ill. | This furtnightly publication was suspended between July 20 and December 5, 1914. In 1915 it was published monthly in a reduced size: its pages being largely devoted to notices of members of the Club in connexion with the war. . The contents are, for 1914 :— | Julius Kugy, Die Kaltwasser-Gamsmutter aus d. Kaltwassertal: Ost. u. Nordwand. Alb. Findeiss, Eine Winterhesteig. d. Zugspitze. Egon Hoffmann, Weisse Berge: Bilder aus dem Hochgebirge. O. Schuster, Reisewinke fiir Kaukasusfahrer. G. v. Radio-Radiis, Eine Ersteig. d. kleinasiatischen Olymps. Sepp Plattner, Neues aus d. Presenella. Franz Nieberl, Aus dem Rofan. G. Renker, Die Berge in d. Musik. R. Léschner, Winterfahrten in d. Dolomiten u. in d. Rieserdernere- gruppe. : Various first ascents and other ascents. The compiler of this list was with other soldiers buried by an avalanche on the Ortler early in 1914. . F. Obexer, Eine Ueberschreitung d. Mte Rosa v. Macugnaga n. Zermatt. H. Kiene, Piz Lasties: erste Ersteig. ii. d. Siidostwand. Neue Touren in d. Rofangruppe. O. Schuster, Die Kwisch-Gruppe. G. v. Saar, Der Daumling im Gosaukamm. U. De Amicis, Italienischer Grat u. Wand d. Matterhorns. K. Plaichinger, Der Civetta-Nordgrat. Ferd. Horn, Auf d. Montasch ti. d. Schluchten d. Westwand. A. Deye, Die Fleischbank-Ostwand. aoe Pfannl, Der Alpinismus u. d. Krieg—dieser eine, wahrhaftige eg. First Ascents described are :— L. Enzenhofer, Aig. d. Entréves ti. d. Siidwestgrat: H. Reinl, Schar- wandeck, Gamsriesenturm, Flachkégel, Zahringskogel: A. Deye, Kreuzwand ii, d. Siidostgrat, Karwendelkiipfe N. n. S., Paternkofel Abstieg ii. d. Siidostgrat, Passportenkopf ti. d. Nordgrat, Alphorn u. d. Nordwand, Tofana di Fuori ti. d. Nordwestwand: H. Eichhorn, Rofan-Ostgipfel ii. d. Nordostwand, Haidachatellwand ii. d. Siidost- wand, Dalfazerjoch ti. d. Ostwand: A. Steinmaier, Freyaturm w. d. Nordostwand, Vorders Kopfwand ti. d. Nordwestkante : S. Platiner, Caré Alto ii. d. Siidgiat, Busazza ii. d. Westgrat: HE. Weinberger, Cima Cercen v. Westen: £. Gutmann, Flimspitze, u.s.w., Sam- naungruppe: H. Kaufmann, Karnitzenturm ii. d. Ostwand. The contents for 1915 are :— Arthur Lenhoff, Die Absperrung d. Berge. Juristische Bemerkungen z. Glocknerfrage. Reprinted from Jurist. Blatter, Nr. 25, 1914. Th. v. Snoluchowski, Wintertouren in d. Ostkarpathen. Die neuen Touren in d. Ostalpen d. J. 1913. G. Kiinne, Die Ententalsp. in d. Hohen Tatra. A. v. Martin, Krieg u. Alpinismus. O. Bleier, Neues aus d. Cadorischen Voralpen, 1913. H. Schneck, Die Kriegsschaden d. Alpinen Vereine. The following first ascents are described :— G. Renker, Cime Rossa Westgrat, Bergseeturm, Mitt]. Kaltwasser- karsp.: H. Dilfer (killed in fighting on December 1, 1914), Kleine ~ Halt, Kesselhogel-Siidwand, Odla da Cisles Siidwand: O. Herzog, VOL. XXXIL—NO. CCXIV. | I

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114 The Alpe Club Lnbrary. _ Schiisselkarsp. Siidwand:, LZ. Schifferer, Stadelhorn Siidwand : H. Feichiner, Kleineishorn, N. n.8.: S. Stiger, Armkarwand West- wand, Grosswand Westwand, Saule: J. Baumgartner, Tieflimauer Siidwand, Admonter Reichenstein Nordwestwand, Kabling West- wand, Elferkopf, Cima Bagni Nordwand, Neunerkéfele Siidwand, Altensteinsp. Siidgrat, Morgenalpensp. Siidwand. Russian Alpine Club. Bulletin nos. 1-15. February 1911—October 1915 8} x 52: about 14 pp. each number (in Russian). Ascents in the Caucasus, including first ascents of Ortsveri, Balik-su- bashi, Mykal-tau, Kzgem-bashi, Gidan-tau, etc. Notes on climbing generally and on alpine literature. S.A.C. Jahrbueh. 50. Jahrgang 1914-1915. Bern, 1916 10 x 7}: pp. viii, 440: maps, plates. _ The articles are :— C. Tauber, Durchquerung d. nordalbanischen Alpen im April 1914. H. pooue, In der Albigna. Cima d. Largo, P. Baccone, Forcola di Sciora, Cima di Cantone, -. Gd. Castello. W. Derichsweiler, Aus dem Valsertal im Biindner Oberland. A. Specken, In d. Sextener Dolomiten. L. Meyer, An der Nordseite d. Dent Blanche u. d. Weisshorns: Arolla-Zinal-Zermatt. QO. Frey, Bilder aus Val d’Hérens. Zinal nach Evolena: Tal v. Evolena: Combe de Ferpécle : Tal v. Arolla : Col de Bertol : Col d’Hérens. H. Dibi, Die Gebirgstriangulation in d. Schweiz. Finsteraarhorn, Dufour. pitze, etc. — Alpine Ungliicksfalle 1914 u. 1915. — Zur Erinnerung an Melchior Anderegg. A. Bahler, Die franzdsische Invasion in d. Ormontsthialern in 1798. Les variations périodiques des glaciers dans les Alpes suisses. 35/6. Rapports, 1914/15. -—— Clubftihrer durch die Walliser-Alpen. Band III. Halbande a. und b. Verfasst von Dr H. Dibi. : 1916 63 x 4: ill. a. Vom Theodulpass bis zum Schwarzenberg- Weisstor. pp. xxiv, 195. b. Vom Strahlhorn bis zum Simplon. pp. viii, 185-381. ' These are the first parts of the whole guide to be published. ~_— Pfannenstiel, Ziirich. Septenniums-Bericht, 1909-1916. 82 x 52: pp. 32: plates. 1916 The section was formed from the small Alpenklub Okenia, founded in Zurich in 1904. — Sektion Uto. Ratgeber fiir Bergsteiger. Ziirich, Orell Fiissli (1916) 2 vols.: 72 x 5: pp. 218: 117: ill. Soe. d. Touristes du Dauphiné. Annuaire no. 40, 1914-1915. 2me série, t. 20. 93 x 6: pp. 205: plates. Grenoble, Allier, 1916 The articles are :— A. Legrand, Au-dessus de Noyarez. Ascent of Dent du Loup by Gueule-du-Loup: and of Pyramide de la Buf by north aréte. F. Frederici, Dans le Vallon des Etages, 1913. Various ascents. Panorama from Téte des Fétoules and plate of Téte des Fétoules from Téte de Malacombe. H. Ferrand, Le Sirac: Le Pic d’Olan, son histoire, son acces. Histo.ical articles. Plates. Table générale des matiéres des 20 Annuaires de la deuxiéme série ——e 1895-1915. - Grenoble, Allier, 1913 ; 94 .x 6: pp. 158. Svenska Turistforeningens Arsskrift. . 1916 83 x 54: pp. viii, 450; plates. Contains :— J. W. Sandstrém, Vinterturen i Lappmarken.

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~ — The Alpine Club Library. 115 New Works. Camsell, Charles. The unexplored areas of continental Canada. In Geogr. Journ. London, vol. 48, no. 3. September 1916 94 x 6: pp. 249-256. Christien, Ernest. Sur lalpe. Illustré par Albert Gos. Préface de M. Emile Yung. Genéve, Edition Atar [1916] 74 x 5: pp. xv, 233: ill. A very pleasantly written book on climbing in the Alps. Chapters on the Finsteraarhorn, Matterhorn, Weisshorn, Lyskamm. Coolidge, Rev. W. A. B. The history of the Col de Tenda, Reprint from English Historical Rev. v. 31, nos. 122-3. April, July 1916 92 x 64: pp. 1938-223: 380-405. Presented by the Author. D’Auvergne, Edmund B. Switzerland in sunshine and snow. Collins’s Wide World Library, no. 29. London and Glasgow, Collins [1916] - 6 x 3%: pp. 250: plate. Davis, W. M. The Mission Range, Montana. In Geogr. Rev. New York, vol. 2, no. 4. October 1916 10 x 7: pp. 267-288: plates, diagrams. Douie, Sir James. The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province and Kashmir. 7} x 5}: pp. xiv, 274: maps, ill. Cambridge, University Press, 1916 A good geographical handbook. A number of mountain views. Durham, Rev. W. E. Summer holidays in the Alps, 1898-1914. 104 x 63: pp. 207: plates. London, Unwin, 1916. 15/- net van Dyke, John C. The mountain. Renewed studies in impressions and appearances. London, Laurie [1916]. 6/- 74 x 5: pp. xvi, 234: plate. Galloway, Capt. C. F.J. The Call ofthe West: Letters from British Columbia. 84 x 5}: pp. 328: plates. London, Unwin, 1916. 12/6 net The Geographical Journal. Vol. 48. July to December 1916. 93 x 6: pp. viii, 555: maps, ill. London, R.G.S., 1916 Among the articles are the following :— July: F. K. Ward, Glacial phenomena on the Yun-nan-Tibet frontier. Aug.-Sept. A. Stein, A third journey in Central Asia, 1913-16. Sept. C. Camsell, Unexplored areas of continental Canada. . Dec. E. Teichman, Routes in Kan-su. Hayden, H. H. Notes on the geology of Chitral, Gilgit and the Pamirs. From Records, Geol. Surv. India, vol. 45, pt. 4. 1915 103 x 7: pp. 271-335: plates. Italy. La guerra: vol. 1. In alta montagna. Dalle raccolte del reparto fotografico del Comando Supremo del r. esercito. 13 x 94: pp. 61 (94 photographs). Milano, Treves [1916]. L. 3.50 A most interesting collection of plates. Low, Sidney. Italy in the war. London, etc., Longmans, 1916 74 x 4}: pp. xii, 316: maps, plates. This work on a visit to the Italian front is full of interest to mountaineers, as the fighting has mostly been at very high altitudes. The Alpini naturally have played a considerable part. ‘Many are the epic little combats and miniature campaigns of stratagem and surprise that are waged betwecn small parties of the Alpini and the Tyrolese riflemen, mountaineers like themselv:s. . . . Often the duels turn on the possession of one of those stout log huts or chalets with which the German and Austrian Alpine Club has thoughtfully strewn these wildernesses. It now appex.rs that many of the huts have been placed on sites of tactical value, which suggests that the Vereine have had other interests besides those of sport and scientific investigation.” The preparation and the advance has presented very special difficulties. ‘Trenches, traveises, sunken roads, of what may be called the orthodox pattern, could hardly be dug. Boring machinery often replaced the spade; and the upward path was gained in a succession of mines and deep galleries protected

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116 The Alpine Club Library. by stone-built breastworks. The enemy's shrapnel and high explosive ~ broke with deadly effect on the bare rock, and they scattered flakes and splinters of stone which were more dangerous than the flying bullets and fragments of shells. Earthworks could not be made, for there was no earth except what the Italians brought with them in sandbags and hand-carts.’ ; ‘The Alpini attacked [Monte Cristallo] armed with ropes, climbing- irons, and rock-drills. For a week they worked at the escalade, ignored by the Austrians. ... The pioneers drove rings and iron pegs into the wall of rock, and from day to day mounted higher, while their comrades followed up the ladder they had made.’ Most of the Italian fighting has been like this, upwards. The book is well worth reading. Morgenthaler, Hans. Ihr Berge. Stimmungsbilder aus einem Bergsteiger- Tagebuch. Ziirich, Orell Fiissli [1916]. Fr. 2 74 x 5: pp. 144: ill. . Reid, H.F. Variations of glaciers, 19-20. Reprint from Journ. Geol. Chicago, vols. 23-4. Sept.—Oct. 1915: July—Aug. 1916 9} x 62: pp. 548-553 : 511-514. Rinehart, Mary Roberts. Through Glacier Park. Seeing America first with Howard Eaton. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1916. 75c.. 734 x 5: pp. viii, 92: plates. : A peeent account of a camping trip with a large party through Glacier Park. Rod, Edouard. L’Ombres’étend sur la Montagne. London, etc., Nelson [1916] 6 x 4: pp. 288: col. plates. Sierra crest and canon comprising Crater Lake National Park, Mount Shasta . respectfully dedicated by the Southern Pacific Co. 14 x 10}: pp. 32, plates. San Francisco, 8. Pacific Company, 1916 Fine plates of Mt Shasta etc. Stein, Sir Aurel. A third journey of exploration in Central Asia 1913-1916. Reprint from Geogr. Journ. London, vol. 48, nos. 2-3. 94 x 6}: pp. 61: maps, plates. August, September, 1916 Tauber, Dr C. Auf fremden Bergpfaden. Ziirich, Orell Fissli (1916) 8 x Bf: 513: ill. | y. Tschudi, Iwan. Der Tourist inder Schweiz und Grenzen~ebieten. 35. Aufl. neu bearbeitet von Dr C. Tauber. Bd. 1. Zirich, Orell Fiissli, 1916 6 x 4: pp. xl, 193: maps ete. United States: Department of the Interior. 9 x6: ill. | Washington, Gov. Print. Office, 1916 Sequoia and Gen. Grant National Parks, pp. 48. Mesa Varde National Park, pp. 46. : Rocky Mountain National Park, pp. 24. Glimpses of our national parks, pp. 48. Forests of Crater Lake National Park, pp. 38. Wanderbilder. Ziirich, Orell Fiissli [1916] 7h x 5: ill. "114-116. Lugano und Umgebung v. J. Hardmeyer. Neu bearbeitet v. Dr Ed. Platzhoff-Lejeune. pp. 125. 318-320. Bilder vom Vierwaldstatter-See v. Alfred Ryffel mit einem Begleitwort v. Isabelle Kaiser. pp. 12. | 394-325. Die Arth-Rigi-Bahn v. Dr A. Schaer. pp. 38. 363-6. Die Furkabahn von Else Spiller. 339-340. Der Uetliberg und die Albiskette v. Gottlieb Binder. pp. 66. Bd. 1. Von Brig nach Andermatt u. Gdschenen. pp. 50. 2. Von Disentis nach Andermatt u. Géschenen. pp. 52. White, James. Altitudes in the Dominion of Canada. Commission of Con- servation. (2nd ed.) Ottawa, Mortimer, 1915 94 x 64: pp. xxiv, 603: maps. (Supplement.) Dictionary of altitudes in the Dominion of Canada (2nd ed.) Ottawa, Mortimer, 1916 93 x 64: pp. xii, 251. ee

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The Alpine Club Inbrary. 117 Older Works. Aflalo, F..G. Behind the Ranges : Parentheses of travel. 8} x 6}: pp. ix, 283: plates. London, Secker (1911) Bransby, James Hews. A description of Llanberis and the Snowdon district. 7 x 44: pp. 112: ill. Carnarvon, Rees, 1845 Durand, Sir Edward. Rifle, rod, andspearin theeast; being sporting reminis- cences. London, Murray, 1911 83 x 54: pp. xi, 200: plates. Fairbanks, Rev. A. Notes on the Bel Alp. n.p., n.d. 62 x 44: pp. 12. Presented by the Author. Gardner, Mrs. Alan. Rifle and spear with the Rajpoots: being the narrative of a winter’s travel and sport in northern India. 92 x 7}: pp. xvi, 336: plates. London, Chatto and Windus, 1895 Hodder, Edwin. John MacGregor (‘Rob Roy’’). Popular edition. 74 x 5: pp. xiv, 338: ill. London, Hodder, 1895 Presented by Sir Martin Conway. Johnson, Clifton. Highways and byways of the Rocky Mountains. New York and London, Macmillan, 1910 [7.e. 1913] 74 x 5: pp. xiv, 280: plates. Jordan, Wm. Leighton. Essays in illustration of the action of astral gravita- tion in natural phenomena. London, etc., Longmans, 1900 8} x 5¢: pp. 179-180, The ends of the Cordillera de los Andes. _ Presented by the author. Royal Geographical Society. Proceedings. | 1883-1892 94 x 6: maps, plates. -_ Contains the following, inter alia :— 1883. B. Lovett, Northern Persia in 1881 and 1882. R. B. White, Central provinces of Colombia. 1884. W. W. McNair, Visit to Kafiristan. 1888. A. Houtum-Schindler, Demavend. Work of M. H. in Tibet in 1885-6. D. W. Freshfield, Suanetia: Caucasus: Conservative action of glaciers. 1889. J. Thomson, Atlas Mountains. W. S. Green, Selkirk Range. A. F. Mummery, Caucasus. H. W. Topham, Glaciers of Alaska and Mt St Elias. ‘J. Bellamy, Cockscomb Mountains, British Honduras. H. M. Stanley, Albert Nyanza and Victoria Nyanza. Lt. Stairs, Ruwenzori. 1890. Col. M.S. Bell, Route from Peking to Kashgaris. — W. Macgregor, Mt Owen Stanley. D. W. Freshfield, Caucasus. H. M. Stanley, Emin Pasha relief expedition. H. Meyers, Kilimanjaro. 1891. H. W. Seton-Karr, Alaska. Col. Pevtsof, Russian expedition to Central Asia. KE. G. Ravenstein, Gedge’s journey to Uganda. Grijimailo, Tian Shan oases. G. P. Baker, Basard-Jusi district, Daghestan. A. E. Pratt, Eastern borders of Tibet. Col. Tanner, Himalayas. H. Schlichter, Ptolemy’s topography, Africa. H. W. Topham, Selkirk Rarge. 1892, St G. Littledale, Pamir from north to south. D. W. Freshfield, Central Caucasus. F. E. Younghusband, Pamirs. de Déchy, Observations of glacier movement. E. Gedge, To Mount Kenia.

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118 Alpine Notes. Emin Pasha, Expedition to Lake Albert Edward. C. W. White, Sikkim. C. Lapworth, Heights and hollows of earth’s surface. W. M. Conway, Karakoram expedition. J. T. Walker, Dauvergne’s travels in Turkestan. F. D. Lugard, East coast to Uganda. F. W. W. Howell, Orefa Jékull. Selous, Percy. Travel and big game. London, Bellairs, 1897 10 x 64: pp. 195: plates. Willson, Thomas B. Norway at home. London, Newnes (c. 1910) 74 x 5: pp. xi, 228: plates. . | Items. Photograph. Grindelwald and Wetterhorn. 9 x 11. Presented by Dr Buss of Grindelwald, taken by him. Postage Stamys. N. Z. 2}/7. blue: view of Lake Wakatipo; Ecuador, un sucre, black: view of Chimborazo. ALPINE NOTES. *‘BautL’s ALPINE GutpE.’ Vout. Il. THE WerstTERN ALPS.— Copies of the new edition (1898) of this work can be obtained from all booksellers, or from Messrs. Stanford, 12 Long Acre, W.C. Price 12s. net. ‘Batyi’s ALPINE GuIDE,’ THE CENTRAL ALPS. Part I.—A new edition (1907) of this portion of ‘ The Alpine Guide,’ by the late John Ball, F.R.S., President of the Alpine Club, reconstructed and revised on behalf of the Alpine Club under the general editorship of A. V. Valentine-Richards, Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, can be obtained from all booksellers, or from Messrs. Stanford, 12 Long Acre, W.C. It includes those portions of Switzerland to the N. of the Rhone and Rhine valleys. Price 6s. 6d. ‘BaLu’s ALPINE GUIDE,’ THE CENTRAL ALps. Part IT.—A new edition (1911) of this portion of ‘ The Alpine Guide,’ by the late John Ball, F.R.S., President of the Alpine Club, reconstructed and revised on behalf of the Alpine Club under the general editorship of the Rev. George Broke, can be obtained from all booksellers, or from Messrs. Stanford, 12 Long Acre, W.C. It includes‘ those Alpine portions of Switzerland, Italy, and Austria which le S. and E. of the Rhéne and Rhine, 8. of the Arlberg, and W. of the Adige.’ Price 7s. 6d. Map oF THE VALSEStA.—Some copies of the Map issued with the ALPINE JoURNAL No. 209, and of the plates opposite pages 108 and 128 in No. 208, are available and can be obtained from the Assistant Secretary, Alpine Club, 23 Savile Row, WwW. Price for the set (the Map mounted on cloth), 3s. 7

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Alpine Notes. 119 Tue ALPINE CLUB OBITUARY.— Style, Montague (1861). Fairbanks, Arthur (1873). | Harrison, Richard L. (1883). Barrington, R. M. (1886). Arbuthnot, Gerald Archibald (1896). ADDENDA AND CoRRIGENDA TO VoL. XXX. p. 233. The portrait of Mr. Hornby dates from 1868. p. 274. The plate is from a photograph by Dr. Inglis Clark. p. 280. Peter Bischof or Bischoff was born in 1777. §8.A.CJ. 1. 315. p. 299, line 19, read Hoole. He and Mr. Secretan, both now dead, were members of Lloyd’s, and, it is interesting to learn, retained to the last their interest in mountaineering matters. p. 300. The portrait of Lord Wentworth dates from 1870 or 1872. p. 324. Mr. Llewelyn Davies died on May 18. p. 330, par. 6. Mr. Freshfield’s exact words were: ‘ We have displayed Llewelyn Davies, who, by conquering the Dom in 1858, secured for himself a cathedral our President may well envy.’— ‘A.J.’ xxiv. 54. p. 331, line 29, read Crowder (Major T. M. Crowder, a constant travelling companion of Tozer’s. See ‘A.J.’ ix. 463). p. 340. By a very unfortunate oversight, Dr. Inglis Clark’s fine picture of the Valoiet Peaks, reproduced in this instance more for its artistic interest, is reversed. For topographical interest it should be looked at in a mirror. Tue New Dama Hot on the slopes of the Moosstock (2450 m.) has now been completed by the Pilatus section. It is about two hours above the Géschener Alp and serves a fine series of expeditions, some of considerable difficulty. One of the finest is doubtless the traverse of the Dammastock to the Rhone Glacier, whence the Grimsel can be reached by the Nagelisgratli or, still better, the Handege by traversing the Thieralplistock to the romantic Gelmer-See. Major Gask’s note in ‘ A.J.’ xxv. 181-3 should be consulted, and the district is very fully described with sketches of routes in the Urner-Alpen Guide published by the 8.A.C., as well as, of course, in The Climbers’ Guides series—vol. Grimsel to Uri-Rothstock. - Tue ScHONBUHL PATH has been greatly improved at a cost ‘of about £450, contributed mainly, it is understood, by Dr. Alexander Seiler and the other members of his family concerned in the manage- ment of the Seiler hotels. THE REFUGE Sotvay, near the old or upper Matterhorn hut, is now completed. It will be remembered that it is intended and permitted to be used, solely, as an emergency refuge.

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120 Alpine Notes. THE LoweR MATTERHORN OR HORNLI Hut.—This hut, which has been under reconstruction for a considerable time, will be ready for use in the 1917 season. CLUBFUHRER DURCH DIE WALLISER-ALPEN (CLIMBERS’ GUIDE TO THE PENNINE ALps).—Vol. III., in 2 parts, of this new Climbers’ Guide, covering the country from the Théodule to the Simplon, has just been published (in German). The price of the volume (to members of the 8.A.C.) is 5fr. 15c. Post free from the Questor of the respective section. The book is so well furnished with route-marked illustrations that a very scanty knowledge of German suffices for its use. The volume from the Col Ferret to the Théodule is in a forward state. A full review will appear in the next JOURNAL. A few copies of Vol. III. have been sent over and can be obtained from the Asst. Editor, Alpine Club, price 5s. post free. THE OriaIn oF C.P.—These letters on the platform at the end of the 8.W. aréte of the Grépon have usually been described as the initials of the guide Pierre Charlet (Kurz, ‘Guide de la Chaine du Mont Blanc,’ 2me édition, p. 185, footnote). Whether there was a guide of that name I do not know, but the initials are those of the surnames of the guide Jean Charlet (dit Straton) and of his companion, the porter Prosper Payot. M. Charlet, in the seventies, was in the habit of climbing frequently en amateur, and made, as mentioned lately in the JouRNAL, the earliest known attempt on the Aig. du Géant. In his attempt on the Grépon by the C.P. route—likewise the first recorded attempt by any route—he states that he and Payot “sommes montés jusqu’au pied de la Vraie Aiguille,’ and that he marked the initials on a rock on the descent. M. Charlet is of course best known for his conquest of the Petit Dru in 1879—a very brilliant piece of work. He is still full of vigour, and actively engaged on his farm at Argentiére in the Chamonix Valley. He was born in 1838, and is thus in his 79th year. THE History or South AFRicAN MounTAINEERING.—Mr. G. F. Travers-Jackson gave a lecture at Capetown in September last of which the following is an abstract, for which we are indebted to the columns of the Cape Times :— ‘The early history of mountaineering in this country naturally centres around Table Mountain, for it was left to Count Antonio de Saldanha, who was sent out by the King of Portugal on a voyage of discovery, to place his feet on the then virgin summit of the symbolic sentinel of South Africa. It was in 1503 that Saldanha landed in Table Bay, and, anxious to get his bearings and a more intimate knowledge of his surroundings, decided on an ascent of the mountain. This he did, accompanied by the necessary caravan of porters, &c.,

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Alpine Notes. 121 with arms, as in those bygone days the mountain was infested with various wild animals. The route taken was by way of the gorge now known as Platteklip; but, unfortunately, early records are some- what meagre in a fuller description of this first African mountain exploit. _ ‘Then, many years later, in 1615, Sir Thomas Herbert informs us that, for their recreation, seamen used to make the ascent. In 1674 a Dutchman named Willem ten Rhyne made an ascent. The route is not mentioned, but I presume it was also made via Platteklip. In 1771 B. de Saint Pierre, with a party of Hollanders, also made the trip. Andrew Sparrman, in 1772, made the ascent from the Constantia side, as far as the lower plateau. But the person who- seems to have been a veteran at the craft in those days was Dr. Thurnburg, the Swedish botanist, for between 1773 and 1776 he had made no fewer than fifteen ascents and by four different routes, greatly adding to his store of botanical knowledge. ‘In 1797 probably the first lady to make the ascent was Lady Ann Barnard, who did so with a party of friends from the Castle. Then, in 1800, Robert Semple made three trips to the summit, and mentions cases of mountaineers being overtaken by dense fogs. Burchell, who went up with a party in 1811, mentions a case in which an officer fell over some ledge and lost his life. Little is known of the earlier ascents of the country peaks, for, apart from the laudable professional work of the first surveyors, mountaineering was not indulged in for the mere pleasure of the sport, and we to-day are the poorer by the absence of any such records. * Toverkop (Witch’s Head), that mysterious dome situated in the Klein Zwartberg, and some five miles north-west of Ladismith, is an outstanding landmark among our Cape mountains. The summit (7225 feet) is composed of a massive square dome (some 350 to 400 feet), and has been split in two by Nature, forming two summits, known as the Western and Eastern Pinnacles. The fissure between - them is 60 feet wide at the top, tapering down to 10 feet at the base. The sides all around are sheer, and appear to offer but scant foot or hand holds. .'The Western portion is the more difficult; and the Eastern, though less so, has a fair amount of cragwork. ‘In 1850 a party led by a Mr. Ziervogel made the first attempt on this stronghold, but were defeated by bad weather, in which some of the party nearly lost their lives. It was then essayed by various surveyors, but with no success. In 1885 a resident of Ladismith, Gustaf Nefdt, was successful in planting his feet on the virgin summit of the western pinnacle—the more difficult one. He and his party camped near the base, and while his companions were still sleeping Nefdt departed for the climb. At the commence- ment of the actual rockwork he discarded his boots, and was successful in scaling the first sheer pitch, some 50 feet in height. This brought him into a narrow crack. Negotiating this, a small platform of rock was reached, and he was now at the base of another chimney, the top of which landed him on a rock-strewn ledge, from

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122 Alpine Notes. which he had only to work round to the actua) summit. A beacon was built, and he deposited one of hissocks therein. Only a moun- taineer can realise with what feelings he stood there alone and surveyed for the first time the majestic panorama from his elevated pedestal. The descent was made by the same route, and he told me that he jumped some ten feet from the last pitch to the grassy ledge below. On rejoining his party his joy was somewhat blighted because they refused to believe his story. However, nothing daunted, he agreed to make a second ascent, and this was done two weeks later before some twenty witnesses, and in addition he with the help of a rope managed to get two of the party up. He then recovered his sock and threw it down to the others below as proof of his bona fides ‘The summit was not climbed again until 1906, when, accompanied by a cragsman from Ladismith, I made the ascent by an entirely new route on the Laingsburg side, Nefdt’s original route on this occasion being covered with ice. The mountain was next climbed by four members from Cape Town, and has not been done since. It may be mentioned that the actual climbing encountered on the Laings- burg side is longer than on the original route. Previous to 1892 the Great Winterhoek (6840 feet), near Tulbagh, was looked upon as the highest peak in the Western Province, but this conviction was dispelled when some members from Worcester and Cape Town made the ascent of Matroosberg, which, after several careful measurements having been taken, was found to be 590 feet higher, and therefore took premier place as regards height. ‘In 1889 a party of ladies and gentlemen from the Gardens made the ascent of the Table via Platteklip, and while on the summit a dense fog came over and they lost their bearings, with the result that they had to spend the night on the mountain and make the best of the situation. Next day, however, the mist cleared slightly and they were able to find their way down, being none the worse for their novel experience. It was soon after this event that a party of gentlemen gathered at Kamp’s Café, in September 1891, with the intention of forming themselves into a club. Dr. R. Marloth was in the chair, and various proposals were discussed. The result of this meeting was the foundation of our Mountain Club. A small committee was appointed to frame a set of rules and a constitution. One of the first useful works to be carried out was the making of a line of stones along the top of the mountain from Platteklip to Maclear’s Beacon. The purchase of an ambulance stretcher and necessaries was among its first assets. ‘With the birth of the club the exploration of Table Mountain and country peaks from here to Kilimanjaro, several heights in Katanga, and around Kambove in the Congo Belge has been carried on with ever increasing energy year by year. °1894 marks the red letter year as regards the rock-climbing branch of the sport, as it was in this year that the first ascents were made of Saddle Face, Silver Stream Ravine, Left and Right Face.

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Alpine Notes. 128 and Kloof Corner, by Messrs. Jim Searle and party. Every succeeding year saw new routes and variations of original ones added to the now formidable list of routes to the summit, and some of these have even passed through the three stages, which are an inaccessible climb, the most difficult climb, an easy day for a lady. Then the country peaks, with the early ascent of Matroosberg, have been climbed by various routes, and one by one have fallen to the bag of eager mountaineers, until some 167 summits in all have been climbed. There is much still to be done, especially in Basutoland and the Drakensberg. ' ©A large number of exceedingly beautiful slides were afterwards shown. Many of the views showed Table Mountain in various guises and moods. Then there were pictures of Devil’s Peak, of typical mountain flora, of the Somerset West and Stellenbosch, Frenchhoek, Wellington, Tulbagh, and Hex River mountains. Particularly interesting were some of the snow scenes, which were quite Alpine. One photograph, taken while a blizzard was raging, might have been mistaken for the Polar regions. The slides of flowers, which were coloured, with one exception, evoked loud applause, as did some sunset and cloud effects round the Peninsula.’ — In a subsequent letter in the same paper Mr. J. H. R. De Smidt added the following interesting particulars :— ‘An ascent was made in November 1768, by Rear-Admiral John Splinter Stavorinus, who was in the service of the States General. The route chosen was via The Gorge, and its description reads somewhat quaintly to-day : “. . . Farther on (the way) began to be more steep, running along a narrow ridge of the mountain, which ended about halfway up abruptly against the side of a precipice. This the inhabitants of the Cape call The Krantz, or ‘Wreath.’ . .. This ridge was formed on either side by corre- sponding steep and profound hollows. On the right hand, murmuring ever the pebbles which abounded in the hollow, ran a rivulet, whose source was at the summit of the mountain, and which supplies the town with water. The ridge was almost overgrown with underwood, which was formerly the resort of wild beasts. . . . Hitherto the ascent was not very difficult, but the path now began to be very precipitous, and so narrow, that it was sometimes not above two feet broad. . . . On our left we had a wall of steep rocks, heaped, as it were, in masses upon each other, and on the other side a deep chasm, into which it was both tremendous and dangerous to venture alook. In climbing up we had to hold ourselves fast by the shrubs . and the labour and fatigue of the ascent generally obliged us to take breath whenever we came to a place that allowed us leisure. The higher we came, the more difficult we found the path, so that we had in the end much to do to hold fast by the shrubs to prevent our falling down from the dreadful height and being dashed © to pieces.” Proceeding, he speaks of ‘‘ the sharp stones and angular

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124 Alpine Notes. irregularities, which greatly added to the difficulty of the ascent. If one of these was loosened, many others followed it, and rolled away from under the foot, threatening to hurry the unwary traveller down the abyss with them.” _ *The descent he describes as even more dangerous and difficult than the ascent, “ being sufficient to make the steadiest head giddy. The least false step was much more dangerous than before, for while we were clambering upwards, we could secure ourselves by holding on to the bushes, but now we could not do so without going backwards, which, indeed, we were sometimes obliged to do... .” _ © Another account of an ascent, made in the year 1845, by a party which also made the discovery of a buried bottle containing a document which described a previous ascent on February 25, 1803, and quoted interesting historical facts in connection with the Colony, at that time about to be handed over by Great Britain to the Batavian Republic. | © Coming to later days, we have the unique feat, recorded i in a Cape journal, in March 1897, by which an ardent mountaineer succeeded in the ascent of Devil’s Peak, Table Mountains, and Lion’s Head on the same day. The Johannesburg Hotel, Cape Town, was the starting and finishing point of each climb, and pacemakers accom- panied the climber in each case. His time-table was as follows: (1) Devil’s Peak and back, 2 hours, 55 minutes; (2) Table Mountain and back, 3 hours 55 minutes. (Note.—The climber suffered from attacks of cramp during this ascent.) (3) Lion’s Head and back, 2 hours 15 minutes. A most creditable performance indeed ! Total given as 9200 feet.)’ _ Tue Cropa pa Lago.—It will be remembered that this mountain, now one of the favourite ascents from Cortina, was first ascended in 1884 by Baron R. Eoétvés, led by Michel Innerkofler—a feat which caused at the time a great sensation. They were followed immediately afterwards by the two Viennese guideless climbers, Emil Zsigmondy and H. Kéchlin. - In the same year the ascent was repeated by Mr. T. W. Wall— well known for the first ascent made with the Rev. A. H. Stocker of Lliwedd by the N. face—with the Cortina guide, A. Lacedelli. Mr. Wall has kindly sent to the JouRNAL a letter to his father, dated Cortina, August 7, 1884, from which the following extracts are taken : ‘TI hired as guide A. Lacedelli, a famous Gernsjiijer ouamderea the best guide here, although he is forty-nine years old—and yester- day at 4 A.M. we started, the weather being beautiful. . In three hours we reached the rocks and had breakfast. The rocks at first were fairly easy, and all through afforded excellent hold. I soon demanded to be roped, and in about an hour, work of fairly difficult climbing up a long chimney, we halted to leave there our ice-axes and provisions. . . . Started again up the same chimney.

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Alpe Notes. - 125 In about 250 feet Lacedelli went up a really terrible place, the worst’ I have ever known. It was on the face of the mountain, not in the chimney, and was terrifically steep, about 60 feet long. He took about 4 hour doing it, and in the middle he wanted to give the mountain up altogether. ... The plucky fellow made another effort and got to a good standing place. . . . From there to the top was magnificent climbing, not easy by any means, but not so bad as the one spot. We went up chimneys, went round ledges... . At last we got up at 10.10. . . . After 45 m. on the top we came down again and for 24 hrs. Lacedelli used the rope for himself [doubled]. . . . We got to the dreaded place I have mentioned, and neither he nor I liked it... . “‘ With two ropes,” he said, ‘it could be done—mine is not long enough. I will see if there is another way.” So we went off more to the right, and behold there- was a beautiful chimney, leading a long way down—this we went down. ...I remember in two places 1 found beautiful little caverns where I waited for Lacedelli to come down, his approach being announced by showers of stones. Then we turned to the left by a ledge and came upon our provisions which we left in the morning. The rest was easy. In another hour we got off the rocks. . . . We got into Cortina at 5 p.m... . So I had a fine day’s work. Lacedelli says it is the most difficult mountain he ever has been up, and I am not sure which is the hardest—this or the one in Wales.’ | | The Mauvais Pas is a traverse between the two chimneys by which—roughly speaking—the top is reached. Apparently it is not the one now generally followed. Signor Sinigaglia, in his book, * Climbing in the Dolomites,’ p. 133, says that we ‘ kept too much to the right of the principal chimney and only with serious difficulty gained the proper route much higher up.’ In the same passage he writes that these ‘deviations were found by Mr. T. W. Wall, rather against his will, indeed, in his ascent with the guide Lacedelli.’ I don’t know what grounds Signor Sinigaglia may have had for inserting the words ‘rather against his will.’ I am glad to have this opportunity of stating that he was quite mistaken, as the extract from the letter now published goes to prove. T. W. W. DEATH OF M. Rostistav AFANASIEFF.—The ‘ Rivista ’ announces, on the authority of Dr. Ronchetti, that M. Afanasieff met with a fatal accident in July last, in the course of an expedition among the mountains of the Val Teberda in the Western Caucasus. M. Afanasieff is well known as the author of a climbers’ guide to the Caucasus, ‘100 Kaukasus-Gipfel,’ published in Munich in 1913. This book was the first to collect and summarise in a very con- venient and workmanlike form the extremely scattered records of mountain expeditions in the Caucasus. In the very modestly

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126 Alpine Notes. — written preface the author gives much useful information, while the book itself is invaluable to the intending traveller. The Alpine Club, through some of its best-known members, is so intimately connected with the exploration of the Caucasus that the death of a valued coadjutor cannot fail to arouse its deep regret. THE FirscHer GuacterR.—The Rev. F. C. Bainbridge-Bell writes to Capt. Farrar: ‘I was much interested in reading your notes on the Fiescher Glacier, for I descended it with Christian Bohren and an Engelberg porter in 1897. I have not kept any notes of the expedition, but I retain a vivid recollection of it, as the difficulties of the successive icefalls impressed themselves on my mind. * We were going from the Grimsel to the Eggishorn; we stayed the night at the hut on the Oberaarjoch, and climbed the Oberaar- horn the next morning.. As it was a fine day and we had plenty of time, Christian suggested that it would be interesting to attempt the descent of the Fiescher Glacier, as it had not been done for some time. We kept to the right side of the glacier during the whole of our descent ; we found it very broken, and at one point where we were faced by an impassable crevasse we were forced on to the right bank, which we reached by a small chimney. We returned to the glacier almost immediately, and finally left it at @ point somewhat below the path to the Eggishorn Hotel; we i iui up the bank, and finally struck the path which led to the otel. ‘I cannot say definitely how long we were on the glacier, but we did not take long over our ascent of the Oberaarhorn, and we reached the hotel in the late afternoon. I was very much struck with Bohren’s icemanship.’ An Earty Ascent or Monte Rosa.—Mr. F. 8. Goggs sends us a copy of the following letter : ‘Monte Rosa, Switzerland, 12 noon, Friday, Aug. 28, 757. ‘My pEAR Mr. Gati,—Here we are on the top of Monte Rosa, 15,500 feet above the sea. The view is extraordinary—lItaly and the Tyrol and its lakes and towns on one side, and the whole of Switzer- . land on the other. It is more than a fairy scene. We started at 2 this morning. ‘ Yours truly, ‘R. Ines.’ AN IRRESISTIBLE INviITATION!—‘ Cher Monsieur et Collégue, O Clubiste! plus ou moins clubistant, ami des régions arides ou se dressent les pics altiers et les coupoles de neige éclatante, ou commensal des sapins qui ornent les croupes paresseuses de notre

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Alpine. Notes. 127. Jura, ton Comité te prie 4 diner le samedi 2 Décembre, 4 7 h. $ du soir. | ‘Comme le voyageur fatigué, qui laisse avec bonheur tomber pour quelques instants le sac qui lui meurtrit les épaules pour gotiter un peu de repos et pour se délecter du frugal repas préparé dans l’hospitaliére cabane, abandonne aussi pour quelques heures le fardeau des soucis et des tristesses de l’heure présente. Viens reprendre quelque force, morale et physique, dans la compagnie de tes pairs et te retremper dans la chaude et douce atmosphére de la camaraderie clubistique et de la fumée des pipes. ‘Au Nom pu Comirk.’ Sepp INNERKOFLER.—From the 0.A.Z. just received it appears that he was shot dead on July 4, 1915, in attempting with four comrades to dislodge a party of Alpini who were holding the Patern- kofel. The attempt was made by the N.E. Kamin and his body lies on the N.E. face, 150 feet below the summit. Sepp had previously distinguished himself in several skirmishes, and by laying the telephone wire up the N. face of the Kleine Zinne and had been awarded two medals for valour. No doubt particulars of his mountaineering career will be available in due course. THE Zsiamonpy Hot was set on fire by shell-fire and burnt to the ground in July 1915. Mr. Puitpotr’s Worp ‘TRALT’ (A.J. xxx. 238).—M. Paul Montandon is good enough to point out that the correct word is trolt, from a patois verb irdlen = to roll something with the hands (or feet). From THE AUSTRIAN ALPINE Paprers.—The numbers of the Journal of the Austrian Alpine Club from January 1915 to September 1916 have now been received. Among the better-known members the following casualties are recorded : - Dr. Heinz von Ficker, the Caucasian and Central Asian traveller, lieutenant, fortress artillery, captive balloon section, served first in Servia, then in Galicia. On the surrender of Przemysl he at- tempted to escape in a balloon, which, however, was forced to descend, when he was taken prisoner by the Russians. Dr. Giinther, Frh. v. Saar, taken prisoner by the Russians and interned in Siberia, recently exchanged. Dr. Oskar Schuster was arrested in Russia on the return journey from the Caucasus and interned. Reported suffering from malaria. Dr. Richard Weitzenbéck, joint author of the ‘ Mont Blanc Fihrer ’ published by the Austrian Club, and a very distinguished moun- taineer, lieutenant 7th Infantry, was slightly wounded at Lemberg

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128 Reviews. - and subsequently killed on December 19, 1914, at Jablonica, in the Carpathians, aged 32. Lieutenant Eduard Pichl, the Dolomite climber, a former president, of the 0.A.C., was severely wounded in 1914, in the arm, in Galicia, and taken prisoner by the Russians. Herr Hans Holzgruber, member of the Committee of the Austrian Club, volunteer, was killed in the Carpathians in March 1915. __ Dr. Fritz Edlinger, Oberleutnant, was killed in Galicia in May 1915. : Herr Karl Kirchhof, lieutenant 3rd Tirolese Sharpshooters, was killed in Galicia in March 1915. Herr Hans Dilfer, probably among the very best of the young Munich climbers and well known for his desperate climbs on the Totenkirchl and other peaks of the Kaisergebirge, was killed on June 15, 1915, before Arras, serving as volunteer in the Bavarian army, aged 22. Dr. Jené Serényi, the well-known Hungarian mountaineer and authority on the Hohe Tatra, was killed on the Italian front on July 14, 1915, aged 27. He had been awarded the silver medal for valour. THe Epwarp Mepat of the Second Class has been awarded to Mr. GEORGE Sana, a well-known member of the §.M.C. and the A.C. for great presence of mind and courage in rescuing two munition girls at a fire caused by an explosion at an Explosives Factory.—Times, January 1, 1917. REVIEWS. Summer Holidays in the Alps, 1895-1914. By W. E. Durham, Prebendary of Exeter, Member of the Alpine Club. T. Fisher Unwin. 1916. Price 15s. net. For the necessarily middle-aged reviewer the most comforting facts about the story of Mr. Durham’s summer holidays are that he began them—if his references have been rightly calculated—when he was about forty; that he put into the years between forty and fifty-six not, it is true, very much fancy work or many new routes but activity enough for most men between four-and-twenty and forty ; and that he is quite reasonably sanguine of a fresh start when the world drops on to its feet again. He wrote the book out of his old diaries because he was hungry for the Alps, in the hope that some other hungry people would turn it over and have their memories stirred. Your professional critic might say some rude things about it. There are a shocking lot of misprints. There is one page on which gare is twice spelt with two 7’s. The u’s in Dévouassoud Gaspard’s name (fine fellow ; I wonder if he is still alive ?) both become n’s twice over, and the last a in his surname becomes an 0. These are samples.

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Reviews. 129 - To boil down all his old diaries successfully is a terrible strain on any man’s literary resources, and, as the professional critic would put it, “we cannot honestly say that Mr. Durham’s resources show no trace of strain.’ But there—these are small things if the author’s aim isreached. And Mr. Durham has stirred his reviewer’s memories deep. He made his first serious ascents in the Engadine and in 1898: I also. (Only, thank God, I was well under forty.) Hans. Grass the younger was his first guide: he was mine too. The Dent Blanche from Arolla in 1901 was the first great peak of the Central Pennines for reviewed and reviewer ; and both lit their pipes on the. summit without protecting the match. In 1907 they both fought doubtful weather within sight of the calotte of Mont Blanc; with these differences—that one wasin June, onein September; that the elder and better sportsman tried the Brenva route and fell off splendidly, while the more cautious junior was kept from the mere Dome route by his guide’s fear of avalanches. If they never met, in this or any other year when their lines on the map crossed, it is because Mr. Durham’s generous five- or six-week season seems to begin about June 20 (and so to have its snow-line between the knees and the middle), while my beggarly inside of a month has- often run into September, but never touched July, and so knows comparatively little of full couloirs and snow-burdened summit tidges ; barring of course years like 1910, when the Furka roadside in August was as patchy with snow as a Norwegian foreground, or August 1913, when Mr. Durham would have found the Oberland much as he knows it. | One result of his early seasons was that Mr. Durham got plenty of climbing in 1914, before the ugly day when Christian Jossi went to join his battalion, and then had to lend his Herr five hundred francs—the virtue having gone out of cheque-books—with which to get away from Lausanne. Other results of course are that Mr. Durham gets the flowers and the polite landlords ; but then—not to let the case for a good month go by default—has he seen the cows come down, or the September grapes hanging across the streets in Chatillon ; has he eaten baskets of autumn fruits in the market place of Aosta or crossed the Col de Collon to his favourite Arolla on dry crusts and one-third of a tin of pressed beef among five, because he came to Prarayé by moonlight—at the world’s end, as it seemed—and found the patron gone and the food with him ? Even the Riffelalp is tolerable in the third week of September, and Chamonix on the day the cooks and chambermaids started down for Aix or somewhere was wonderfully attractive ten years ago. This flux of memories is a tribute to Mr. Durham. . | There are many fine climbs and no end of jolly days in the book. It is not surprising that the people at the Montanvert were sceptical when Mr. Durham came back from climbing the Aiguille Verte by the great couloir in very good time for tea. The pace is witness enough to Jossi’s strength and snowcraft and his com- VOL. XXXI—NO. CCXIV, K

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130 | | Reviews. panion’s ability to play up to him. There is a traverse of the Meije in bad conditions, very well told, and finely executed and many resourceful bits of snow work in June and early July. As a story perhapsthe best is that of a long cloudy wandering on the snow-fields near the Col de Bertol, ending at the wrong pass, and crowned by @ moonrise through the mists on the Arolla glacier; though the failure on the Brenva and many small and pleasant adventures are all good reading. For those who want to know what memories the book will stir, it may be said that there is no dolomite or Austrian Alps in it, nothing in the Tédi country, nothing south of the Mont Cenis line ; plenty of Central Pennines, Graians and Oberland. J. H.C. Camp Craft: Modern Practice and Equipment. By Warren H. Miller, Editor of ‘Field and Stream.’ With Introduction by Ernest Thompson Seton. THis book is addressed by an American to Americans, and Americans of a particular class. To an English reader much of its interest lies in the fact that it displays with remarkable vividness the large part played in the holiday life of Americans belonging to that class by ‘camping.’ One comes across traces of this elsewhere. It has left its mark on current literature, and supplied the leit-motif of more than one magazine story. Here one gets to the very heart of the matter. Camping in this sense, as a pursuit extensively practised, is unknown in England, and indeed in Europe, where the precise conditions necessary for it scarcely exist. These are, briefly stated, extensive tracts of country, not very remote from great cities, but roadless, uninhabited and unappropriated, and provided by nature with unlimited timber and water, and a plentiful supply of game. The simplest and severest way of playing the camping game is to sally forth on foot, alone or with a single companion, into a wilder- ness of this character, carrying thirty-five to forty-five lb. weight of tent, sleeping-bag or blanket, cooking kit, provisions, &c., together with a rod or gun, an axe, and minor accessories, and to see how long you can go on, supplementing your stores with what you can catch or shoot, and with such fruits, vegetables &c. as you find growing wild. Those play the game best who can carry on longest, and with a minimum of discomfort (this point is essential). One gathers that three weeks is a good record for a solitary woods-cruiser, and a strong player would cover a lot of ground, and change his camping- place frequently, though not necessarily every night. This is not exactly Mr. Miller’s way of putting the matter, but it represents pretty accurately the underlying idea. There are, of course, many extensions and modifications of this, all depending ultimately on whether and to what extent any form of transport, other than one’s own shoulders, is available. To drive a' wagon into the woods with

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Reviews. 181 the materials for a permanent base camp, from which shorter trips are made on foot, would seem to fall within the rules. Mr. Miller opens with a rapid sketch of seven Camping Scenes: (1) in the Appalachians, the easy, beginner’s, country ; (2) in the sterner regions to the North, Maine and the Eastern provinces of Canada; (3) onone ofthe great Atlantic bays (here transport is by boat, and the difficulties of the game rather evaporate); (4) onalong river trip ; this is the only kind of prolonged nomadic trip practicable in the East, where the one form of transport available, besides back-packing, is the canoe.! Then we take a great stride westward to (5) the Rockies, and (6) a region vaguely described as a thousand miles southward, which would seem to be the country of Clarence King, and conclude with (7) Alaska, and the Arctic or semi-Arctic wilds of Northern Canada, where transport means sledges and dogs. The book, however, is really concerned with Nos. 1 and 2, blended with 4. No. 7 reappears fleetingly in connection with problems of tent- warming and foot-gear; two short chapters on No. 5 are devoted mainly to the rudiments of what may be termed horse-craft and to the mysteries of the diamond hitch ; Nos. 3 and 6 vanish altogether. Mr. Miller writes—and this is one of the strong points of his book— almost wholly from first-hand personal knowledge, and it is in the Eastern States that he is really at home. Here he has tried every variety of the camping game, from solitary back-packing to spending a summer in the wilds with a friend and their respective wives and children. His other strong point is that he has for his subject a very genuine enthusiasm. It has led him to make endless experiments with all the articles that play a principal part in the game—tents, sleeping-gear, cooking kits &c.—experiments which he has carried out himself with his own hands, partly for economy’s sake, but largely also, one may be sure, because only in that way could he satisfy his craving to reach the utmost limit of efficiency. The statement of his views and conclusions exacts, and repays, careful and attentive reading, but it is far too detailed to be dealt with here. One may observe in passing that those of his readers who have travelled in the Canadian Rockies will probably think that he unduly depreciates the teepee. A large portion of the book—all excellent and to the point so far as we can judge—is occupied with food and its preparation. This will surprise no one who has had even the slightest experience of . camp life, but the extensive range taken by the subject of camp fires is rather unexpected. ‘There are a whole series of camp fires,’ and Mr. Miller enumerates no less than ten kinds, all of which are fully described later, but this ‘ does not begin to exhaust the subject,’ for a good fireman must know what woods are serviceable and the reverse foreach kind. Then comes a list of five-and-twenty or thirty trees, classified from this point of view, with the comment that ‘a 1 Cf, A.J. xxvi. 354-55.

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182 Reviews. knowledge of how to identify the above trees, with or without the leaves, is the minimum of forestry that anyone should take into the woods in his mental kit.” Well may Mr. Miller say that the subject of camp cookery is a vast one. There are some good hints on emergencies of various kinds, and other matters, but perhaps too much space has already been bestowed on a work which is not addressed, in any direct sense, to climbers. Yet the impulse which drives a man to becomea ‘ woodser ’ has a good deal in common with the one which sends him to the mountains, and in regions outside the Alps at any rate a mountaineer would be more generally efficient if he were a good ‘ woodser ’ as well. Somehow this volume sets one thinking that two or three summers in one’s younger days spent in acquiring Camp-craft as expounded in it, instead of devoting them to ball-games, or sport, or even climbing, would have constituted a valuable addition to one’s education. The Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol. vii., 1916. TuHE season of 1915 was productive of some interesting exploratory expeditions in at least four different regions widely separated from each other. Among them the place of honour is very properly given to that veteran pioneer Dr. Coleman, who broke new ground with a vengeance, by the ascent of a glacier-clad peak in the Torngats. One wonders how many people were aware even of the existence of this range. It is situated on the Atlantic Coast of Labrador, in the extreme North, thirty miles or thereabouts from Cape Chidley ; it is 1300 miles N.E. of Toronto as the crow flies, but to reach it required a forty days’ journey of 4000 miles by rail, steam, motor- boat, schooner, and finally, an Eskimo skiff. His peak, which he christened Mount Tetragona, is about 4700 feet, and he subse- quently climbed three other summits, about thirty miles to the S. of Tetragona, one of them over 5000 feet. The most considerable previous ascent in Labrador was that of a peak in the same neighbour- hood called Mount Faunce, about 4400 feet, in 1900. Dr. Coleman gives no particulars of the later climbs, and one could wish that this interesting paper, dealing with an unmapped, and almost untrodden region, had been considerably longer. A short geological description of the Torngats is given later, in the Scientific section of the volume. ' The exploration of the Purcell Range? is proceeding apace. An excellent and very graphic paper describes two short but success- ful visits to 1t by a large party of both sexes, of which the first resulted in the conquest of Mount Ethelbert, situated in a very picturesque and attractive part of the range, not previously visited by mountaineers ; during the second no less than six summits, at the head of Horse Thief Creek, only one of which had been 1 See A.J. xxx. 363.

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Reviews. 188 previously climbed, were reached in the course of three consecutive days. The party included Mr. and Mrs. A. H. MacCarthy, who are the happy possessors of a ranche near Wilmer, within one or two days’ easy journey of this delectable country; Mr. H. O. Frind, like Mr. MacCarthy, a member of our own Club; and the indispensable, ever-victorious Conrad Kain, whose record of new ascents must be one of the longest and most remarkable held by ‘any guide now living. Miss Jobe organised a second expedition to the Big Mountain in the Far North,? which has now been finally christened Mount Alexander Mackenzie. She was again under the guidance of Donald Phillips, who with two other members of the party made a very determined assault on the peak. He reached the final aréte, which was heavily and dangerously corniced, and after making some progress, was constrained by clouds and a gale of wind to abandon the attempt, when the summit appeared to be only about 100 ft. above them. His decision was unquestionably a sound one, but it was very hard luck. Miss Jobe describes Alexander Mackenzie as a magnificent peak, ‘ undoubtedly the culminating northernmost peak of the Canadian Rockies,’ and estimates its height at not more than 11,000 ft. Its low snow line, and towering superiority over all the neighbouring mountains, had led earlier observers to expect that it was considerably higher. On the return journey the party made the second ascent of Mount Bess.8 Mr. Holway, well known as the companion of Mr. Howard Palmer in the exploration of the Selkirks, made the first ascent of Mount Edith Cavell, a peak attempted in 1913 under the name of Mount Geikie *; he then-went up one of the minor tributaries of the Fraser into the country just outside the area surveyed in 1911 by Mr. A. O. Wheeler and made a partial ascent of Mount Longstaff. He reports: ‘a wonderful field for exploration, especially in the big bend of the Fraser.’ In the country adjacent to the line of the Canadian Pacific Rail- way we have accounts of two attempts, the fifth and sixth, on the still unconquered Mount Moloch, and ascents of Mount Goodsir (apparently the third) and of the Black Douglas; the latter ex- pedition was made by a party from the Club Camp at Ptarmigan Lake, of which the usual official account is given later. Other items of interest are articles on ‘Some Meteorological Phenomena,’ by Mr. Wheeler; on Harold Topham, by Mr. H. E. Foster, his companion in the Selkirks in 1890; a list of members 2 See A.J. xxx. 362. - 3 See A.J. xxvi. 14 and 396. From Miss Jobe’s description I think the route followed was practically the same as that of the first party. The height of this mountain seems to be 10,500 ft. plus the height of the snow-cap. A. L. M. 4 AJ. xxvii. 368.

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184 Reviews. of the Club engaged on Imperial War Service; and In Memoriam Notices of three remarkable men: the veteran Sir Sandford Fleming, Honorary President of the Club, Dean Robinson of St. John’s College, Winnipeg, and Major Stanley L. Jones, President Elect of the Club, who died of wounds last year, leaving behind him a very noble record of which his colleagues may well be proud. * * * * * * * * Reference may be suitably made here to a passage in an article in the latest volume of ‘ Appalachia ’ on the Mountaineering Clubs of America, where the writer mentions what must surely be by far the oldest of Climbing Clubs. The honour of having originated ~ it rests with Governor Alexander Spotswood, who ‘ just two hundred years ago, in 1716, founded the Tramontane Order, the insignia of which was a golden horse-shoe bearing the inscription “ Sic jurat transcendere montes” [Query, Sic juvat transcendere.. . ?], which any gentleman able to prove that he had drunk His Majesty’s health upon the summit of Mount George in Virginia was entitled to wear.’ ‘A Considexation of the Possibility of Ascending the Loftier Himalaya.’ By A.M. Kellas. The Geographical Journal. Vol: xlix. (Jan. 1917) p. 26. In the ‘Geographical Journal,’ January number, will be found a most interesting paper by Dr. A. M. Kellas, on the possibility of ascending the highest mountains in the Himalaya. At the present time the highest recorded ascent is that of the Duke D’Abruzzi in the Karakoram range, a height of 24,600 feet. Dr Kellas himself has been as high as 23,180 feet on Pawhunri. ' The paper is far too full of important material to be adequately dealt with in a review. Those who are interested in the subject will find in the paper itself not only a mass of interesting material, but at the same time all the facts put in a clear and convincing manner. Dr. Kellas has gone into the whole question in a thoroughly scientific way, and has considered the Physiological and Physical difficulties that beset mountaineers when they attempt high ascents. The paper is certainly the best up-to-date statement of the compli- cated problem of what exactly conditions the possibility of climbing at very high altitudes. Dr. Kellas starts with the problem: “Could a man in first-rate training ascend to the summit of Mount Everest (Tibetan Chomo Langmo), 29,140 feet, without adventitious aids?’ And one is not disappointed to find that he concludes with the words: ‘ It is highly probable from the data cited that a man in first-rate training, acclimatized to maximum possible altitude, could make the ascent of Mount Everest without adventitious aids, provided that the physical difficulties above 25,000 feet are not prohibitive.’ In the paper the difficulties of ascending to great altitudes are con- sidered from two points of view: I. Physiological and II. Physical.

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Reviews. 185 I. Physiological Difficulttes—He points out there is no doubt but that the physiological difficulties are of a very high order, due chiefly to the deficiency in the supply of oxygen. The oxygen supply at the top of Mount Everest is only one-third of that at sea level. It is of course the oxygen in the air that maintains life, the hemo- globin in the blood being oxidised in the lungs to oxy-hemoglobin, which being carried to the tissues gives up its oxygen, thus main- taining life. This process is a reversible chemical reaction, and can be expressed by the equation— Hemoglobin + Oxygen = Oxy-hemoglobin. In the lungs the oxygen is combined with the hemoglobin, and in the tissues the oxy-hemoglobin is decomposed, yielding up its oxygen, so as to bring about all the oxidation reactions that are necessary for life. Insufficient supply of oxygen, therefore, strikes at once at the root of capacity to do work, or in other words to ascend to high altitudes. How fundamental respiration is in maintaining life is at once seen when the fact is grasped that unconsciousness would take place in less than a minute if an indifferent gas such as pure nitrogen were breathed, and death would follow in a few minutes. | Dr. Kellas attacks the physiological problem by four methods :— ' (1) Consideration of the physiological effects recorded during high balloon ascents. ' (2) The results obtained in air chambers by varying the pressure. (3) Observations and experiments of physiologists at sea level and at moderate altitudes—up to 15,000 feet. (4) The effects of minor Himalayan ascents up to the highest recorded, viz. 24,600 feet. , The deductions from the results of balloon ascents, and from the breathing rarefied air in special chambers, both prove conclusively that air alone at one-third of an atmosphere pressure (i.e. top of Mount Everest) would hardly keep alive anyone who was un- acclimatised to high altitudes, but that air enriched with oxygen would easily maintain life during rest, or moderate work, at 29,000 feet. A balloon ascent was made in 1901 to a height of about 35,500 feet: oxygen was inhaled. In an air chamber where a mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide was breathed, the experi- menter was for a short time under a pressure of 120 mm.: this pressure corresponds to approximately 50,000 feet above sea level. The observations and experiments of the physiologists that Dr. Kellas quotes are perhaps the most interesting part of his paper, but at the same time they show how complicated the problem is, and how necessary is further experiment before final deductions of a conclusive kind can be drawn. The effect on visitors to the summit of Pike’s Peak, 14,109 feet (where there is a cogwheel railway to the summit), is discussed,

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186 Reviews. and the fact quoted that mountain sickness 1s of very frequent occurrence. All recent experiments have clearly indicated that Paul Bert was correct in his statement (as far back as 1878) that the cause of mountain sickness was simply want of oxygen. But although casual visitors to the summit of Pike’s Peak often suffer from sickness, a few days’ residence on the summit entirely does away with all the symptoms ; in other words, the body has become acclimatised to the low air pressure or the want of oxygen. The manner in which the oxygen of the air is carried to the interior of the body and there made use of has already been mentioned. The oxy-hemoglobin of the blood has been largely experimented on by the physiologists. It is obvious that a study of the pressure conditions under which hemoglobin respectively takes up and gives off oxygen, would help one to understand the physiological difficulties of respiration at high altitudes. Diagrams are given showing the dissociation curve of oxy-hemoglobin in water and in blood at 39° C. (blood temperature). If the dissociation curve of oxy-hemoglobin in water is taken, only a trifling difference in saturation with oxygen for an alteration of altitude of nearly 16,000 feet is found—a difference that should not cause serious effects. But if the dissociation curve of oxy- hemoglobin in blood be taken, a quite different value is obtained : it is much lower, and at once accounts for Bert’s suggestion that oxygen deficiency was the exciting cause of mountain sickness. There are many factors that affect the action of oxygen on hemo- globin—temperature, presence of carbon dioxide (an acidic body), and other acids such as lactic acid, and the presence of salts. The influence of all these disturbing factors has to be taken into account. For instance, the blood acidity ‘is of far more vital importance than might at first sight appear. The automatic regulation of the process of respiration depends upon the quantity of carbon dioxide in the blood.’ The carbon dioxide in the blood acts (being an acid) directly on the respiratory centre in the medulla oblongata, nerves from which control the muscles of respiration; but at high’ altitudes the quantity of carbon dioxide in the blood diminishes. But fortunately acclimatisation at high altitudes is accompanied by Increased acidosis of the blood, otherwise fainting would be one of the serious dangers that the mountaineer would have to reckon with. | Another set of observations made by physiologists and others is: of particular interest, viz. that ‘the number of red blood-corpuscles : and the quantity of hemoglobin in the blood increase in due propor- | tion to each other.’ This of course is of great importance (for there_ is no doubt that the number rapidly increases when higher altitudes - are reached), and also at first sight easily explained by supposing . that nature accommodates itself to a new environment. ‘Much’ more work however must be carried out before its exact ene is understood.’ The normal number of red corpuscles, per cubic allies: at

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Reviews: 187 sea level is about 5,000,000. The inhabitants of the Pamirs, who live permanently at a height of over 13,000 feet, have a normal blood count of 7,595,000,1 and Europeans (in the expedition of the Indian Survey to the Pamirs in 1913 for the linking together of the triangulations of India and Russia) so far accommodated themselves to their environment (about 13,000 feet), as to possess a blood count of 7,402,000. Obviously, therefore, this multiplication of the oxygen- carriers in the blood, which also means increase in the amount of hemoglobin, is of paramount importance in the problem of the capacity for work at high altitudes. It seems to be the chief means of accommodation by the body to cope with the rarity of the air. There is no doubt that a large number of new red blood- corpuscles are grown, but at the same time it is almost certain that the blood also merely concentrates itself by transudation of part of the plasma through the capillaries, consequently producing an increased number of corpuscles per cubic millimetre. Another physiological observation that may be of importance is the secretion of oxygen by the: alveolar epithelium. Experi- ments on Pike’s Peak have shown that the secretory action of the lung epithelium is adaptable to high altitudes, and that ‘ the arterial oxygen pressure in acclimatised subjects was invariably far greater than the alveolar pressure, whereas in new-comers it was about the same.’ Another physiological observation is that at high altitudes moderate exercise increases the pulse-rate to a greater extent than at sea-level. This of course would be beneficial. Two interesting curve-tables are given showing the ‘ variation of alveolar oxygen pressure with altitude’ and the ‘ dissociation curve of oxy-hemoglobin in blood,’ together with the heights ‘of some of the most notable mountains, ranging from Scafell to Mount Everest, and plotted so as to show the saturation of the blood with oxygen corresponding to the alveolar oxygen pressures at their respective summits. | Coming to No. II., the ° Physical difficulties,’ there is not much new to be brought forward. Dr. Kellas points out that many of the most magnificent of mountains, K,, Makalu, the Gusherbrum Peaks, Nanda Devi, Rakaposhi and others, present such physical difficulties ‘that climbers will probably not attack them at present. He con- siders, however, that peaks such as Kamet, Nanga Parbat, and Kanchenjunga look possible of ascent; and he is well qualified to judge, for he has been to all of them. He also includes Mount Everest with these last three, but, until. facilities are given by the Nepalese Government, access to Mount Everest is impossible. Dr. Kellas’s paper is a most valuable contribution to our know- ledge of the effects of high altitudes on the human body, and his 1 It is worth noting that one carrier in the party who seemed inadaptable to high altitudes had a blood count of only 5,760,000.

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188 Correspondence. arguments clearly show that, taking all the facts at our disposal, the answer to the question, Is it possible to ascend, the lvuftier Himalaya ? undoubtedly is in the affirmative. Mountaineers, how- ever, if they wish to conquer the highest mountains of the world, must make haste, for in the aeroplane we have a new and powerful engine for exploration; whether an aeroplane could, for one glorious hour, sit on the summit of Mount Everest, and then swoop down safely like an eagle from a crag to more hospitable climes, is a question that remains to be answered But, as far as our present knowledge goes, physiologically it would be quite possible. The satisfaction of such an ascent would be immense, but it would be of a totally different kind from the joy of the mountaineer who, after weeks of struggling in sunshine and storm with the great mountain, had ultimately conquered. CORRESPONDENCE. ULRICH LAUENER. Dear Capt. Farrar,—I read with very great interest the account of Ulrich Lauener and of his Fiihrerbuch in the last ALPINE - JOURNAL. It appealed specially to me because on my first visit to Switzerland, with my life-long friend and comrade, Dr. Robert Spence-Watson, in 1861, we found Ulrich Lauener in his home at Lauterbrunnen disengaged, and had the privilege of his services for two or three days, from Lauterbrunnen, by Miirren, the Sefinen- thal, the Kienthal, the Dindengrat, and the Oeschinen-See, to - Kandersteg, and then on to the Gemmi, on which he was obliged to leave us. We never had his services afterwards, because when we got to Chamonix it was our good fortune to have allotted to us, from the Roll of Guides, J oseph, Marie Claret, who was our guide, companion, and friend for nearly thirty years, taking us up Mont Blanc by the * ancien passage ’ in 1865 and Monte Rosa in 1866. I can remember as if it were but yesterday how our good Joseph, on the ‘ ancien passage,’ pushed us on ‘ Allez, messieurs, allez, vite, vite!’ I should imagine that the descent by the ‘ ancien passage ’ is usually made at a killing pace, since as the day advances, there 1s, I imagine, always a risk of falling ice. In the old days we regarded it as something almost immoral to spend two nights in the same bed (Sundays, of course, excepted). But as you get older you settle more into centres and headquarters. I should say, moreover, that the increase in rock climbing and the searching out of difficult routes, apart from their ultimate or practical object, has the tendency to make one cover Jess ground and to work more in detail from a centre. John Ball’s dicta as to the objects of climbing mountains and crossing passes are now, I fear, out of date.

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The Galerie Route on the Matterhorn. 189 Though now in my 82nd year and debarred from further climbing, I was able to keep it up vigorously to my 75th year and to record up to the very last ascents of 12,000 ft., my headquarters for the last 15 years being Fionnay, in the Val de Bagnes, and my excellent guide Maurice Bruchez, of Chable. It has been a great pleasure to revive old memories. | IT am, yours faithfully, Henry T. MENNELL. PS.—I had entertained a faint hope that some record of our engagement might be found in the Lauener ‘ Fiihrerbuch,’ and through the kindness of Dr. Claude Wilson, in whose hands it was, I have been furnished with the following copy of the entry in the ‘Buch, ’ 55 years old: | ‘Ulrich Lauener has come with us by Mirren over the Diinden- grat &c. Being unwell, we had to part with him on the Gemmi, to our great sorrow. ‘We believe him to be a first-rate guide, and know him to be a most excellent and kind companion. _ ©RoBERT SPENCE-WATSON, 7 Newcastle-on-Tyne. ‘Sept. 10, 1861.’ HENRY TuKE MENNELL, Newcastle-on-Tyne. THE GALERIE ROUTE ON THE MATTERHORN. In the last JouRNAL it is stated that Mr. Leighton Jordan’s ascent in 1867 was by the Galerie (Grove’s route) and the descent by Maquignaz’s face route. It would, however, appear from further conversations with Mr. Leighton Jordan that his ascent was also by the Italian face. In our earlier conversations I do not seem to have been sufficiently explicit to make it quite clear to Mr. Leighton Jordan that the Galerie route which, as he quite correctly states, diverges at the Col Feélicité from Maquignaz’s route (which keeps throughout to the Italian face), traverses the entire Tiefenmat- ten face so as to strike the Zmutt aréte. Mr. Jordan was originally under the impression that the Galerie route, which he knew only by the name of Grove’s route, after a short traverse on the Tiefen- matten face returned to the Italian face and so gained the summit —hence the discrepancy. He is however now quite clear that he was never off the Italian face until he reached the summit, and he is therefore the first traveller to make the ascent of the Mat- terhorn by a purely Italian route. The Tiefenmatten face is of course on Swiss ground. It will be readily understood that in 1867 the guides who had opened the Galerie. route were not very likely to tell very much to competitors, as Mr. Jordan’s guides, the Maquignaz, were, and Mr. Jordan’s impression is thus readily accounted for. Above the Col Félicité, so far as the cliff where the Echelle Jordan

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140 ' & Proceedings of the Alpme Club. now hangs, Mr. Jordan’s lines of ascent and descent appear to have coincided. He tells me when in the ascent they got to the ledge below the Echelle a rope from Maquignaz’s previous expedi- tion was hanging above them but more to the left (W.). On the descent this rope was moved to the left (E.) to probably the place where the Echelle now hangs and where the cliff is lower, although no doubt steeper. Probably other minor variations were made between the Echelle and the summit. Mr. Leighton Jordan’s explorations were evidently very con- siderable and virtually make him the first traveller to traverse the mountain as well as to make the first ascent by a purely Italian route, and I may state with confidence that he now knows more of the Galerie route than any traveller who has not known the supreme satisfaction which one feels in treading it. J. P. Farrar. ee pee ee —-- es BE = —— — PROCEEDINGS OF THE ALPINE CLUB. THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING of the Club was held in the Hall, 23 Savile Row, W., on Monday, December 11, 1916, at 8.30 P.M., the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Pickford, President, in the Chair. The following candidates were balloted for and elected members of the Club—namely Messrs. A. B. Bryn, G. L. Corbett, N. E. Odell, and the Rev. T. H. Philpott. : The PRESIDENT, in accordance with the provisions of Rule 29, declared the following gentlemen to be duly elected for 1917 :— As President, Captain J. P. Farrar, D.S.O., in place of the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Pickford whose term of office expires. As Vice-Presidents, Mr. George Yeld and Lieut.-Colonel E. L. Strutt. As Honorary Secretary, Major G. E. Gask, R.A.M.C., F.R.CS., in place of Mr. C. H. R. Wollaston, who retires. As Members of Committee, Messrs. J. H. Clapham, W. T. Kirk- patrick, Claude A. Macdonald, H. W. Belcher, Major J. P. Somers, Lieut.-Colonel A. H. Tubby, C.M.G., M.B., F.R.C.S., M.S., and the Rev. W. C. Compton and Messrs. W. H. Ellis and E. B. Harris in the places of Mr. J. E. C. Eaton, Major G. E. Gask, and Lieutenant C. F. Meade, who retire by effluxion of time. It was proposed and seconded, and carried unanimously, that Messrs. G. E. Howard and R. S. Morrish be elected Auditors, to audit the Club accounts for the current year. In declaring the election of Captain Farrar as President of the Club for the coming year, the PRESIDENT said :—I wish to congratu- late the Club upon the election of Captain Farrar as President. _ His qualifications for the post cannot be better expressed than in the words used by Sir Edward Davidson three years ago: ° Captain Farrar’s practical experience and knowledge of mountaineering are unsurpassed by those of anyone now living, and his acquaintance

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Proceedings of the Alpine Club. 141 with the last developments of the modern school of rock-climbing, both at home and abroad, is certainly unequalled by any English- . man.’ I wish to adopt these words as my own, and I think it is obvious that the Club is to be congratulated that its President should be one possessing such qualifications. Captain Farrar, said: Gentlemen,—My modesty compels me to disclaim some of the much too kind things the President has said about me. You have done me a very great honour, for it 1s a high honour to be chosen to preside over a Society like ours, which has well and honourably earned the place it holds in the mountaineering world. I am not going to make to you any protestations of loyalty and devotion to the Club—we are all loyal, we are all devoted to the ‘incomparable’ Club. Mr. President, there are drawbacks to my new position. The principal one is yourself and your nineteen predecessors—small wonder that I feel considerable trepidation in the anticipation of carrying the mantle so worthily borne in the past. Still I know that I shall always be certain of the support and of the forbearance of my good friends and comrades. My new office places me in a somewhat anomalous position. As some of you know, I have had the honour to assist Mr. Yeld with the ALPINE JOURNAL now for some years past. The inexorable Honorary Secretary tells me that I am to continue to do so, so long as Mr. Yeld will have me—so that the exquisite position is con- ceivable that the Editorin York may wax fat and kick, and chastise with rods the inoffensive, long-suffering Assistant Editor in London, whereupon, Mr. President, on and after the first of January, it will be in the power of the new President in London, and it may quite well fit in with his inclination, to chastise with scorpions that self-same truculent Vice-President in York. Sir Epwarp Davipson said: The agreeable duty has been assigned to me of proposing a vote of thanks to our retiring Honorary Secretary, Mr. Charles Wollaston, for the excellent and distinguished . services, which he has rendered to the Club during the last five ears. * The Honorary Secretary of the Alpine Club, though he is dis- creetly unobtrusive in public, is in many ways its most important officer, and is the real power behind the Presidential throne. For myself, I am glad to take this opportunity of acknowledging my great debt of gratitude to my old friend for the manner in which he presided over me during the last two years of my Presidency. I find some difficulty, however, in saying all that I should like to say about him in his presence and moreover I know that it would be distasteful to his modest nature were I to attempt to do so; but, after all, ‘ good wine needs no bush,’ and it is very certain that the year in which Charles Wollaston first saw the light was that of a * Comet ’ vintage. It 1s unnecessary hefore this audience to attempt to gild refined

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142 Proceedings of the Alpine Club. gold or to paint the lily: we all of us know and deeply appreciate his great services to the Club, as I am sure we shall show him by the way in which this motion will be received. I beg to propose that the most hearty thanks of the Club be given to our Honorary Secretary for the great and devoted services which he has rendered to us during the past five years. . Mr. E. A. Broome said: I have much pleasure in seconding the resolution. Mr. Wollaston has served us as Honorary Secretary considerably longer than the average term, and he has latterly had very little assistance in the work owing to the absence of the Assistant Secretary. I am sure that you will agree with me in saying that he has steered our barque most skilfully through very troublous times, and we are all most grateful to him and are sorry indeed to lose him. | The vote of thanks was carried unanimously. Mr. C. H. R. Wo..aston, in returning thanks to the members, mentioned that during the five years that he had served as Hon- orary Secretary he had been invariably treated with great kindness and forbearance by the officers and members, and that such success as he might have attained in carrying out the duties of the post was in a large measure due to the invaluable assistance he had received from the Assistant Secretary, Mr. F. Oughton, now serving in H.M.’s army. The PRESIDENT announced that during Major Gask’s absence at the front on military duty Mr. C. H. R. Wollaston had, at the request of the Committee, consented to act as Honorary Secretary. The PresIpENT then delivered the address reported in the present Journal. Mr. G. YELD said: I believe it is the traditional duty of the Senior Vice-President to propose the vote of thanks to the out- going President ; 1t1s therefore my pleasant task to-night to ask you to give a very cordial vote of thanks to Lord Justice Pickford for his services to the Club in the onerous and honourable office of President. We have been accustomed to expect much from our Presidents, and we have not been disappointed. They have been men dis- | tinguished in many of the highest walks of life, and our retiring President is no exception to therule. Ifthe measure of our gratitude were to be reckoned by the time which our President has given to the Club, in the midst of the numerous and exacting duties of his high position, it would have to be greatindeed. It is great indeed ; though I hope he has sometimes felt that it has been to him a recreation and refreshment to come amongst those who love the mountains as he does himself, and spend a pleasant hour in climbing a great peak, or crossing old passes in Godley company, or discussing ‘Gait and Style’ with an accomplished literary leading guide. He has presided over our meetings with the ability, geniality, and kindly consideration for everyone which we expected from

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Proceedings of the Alptne Club. 148 him, and the Committee owes very much to his varied knowledge, discretion, and acumen. No President has ever held his position in such troubled years, nor had so many times to lament the loss of distinguished members of the Club—many of them on the Field of Honour. He is the only President, I believe, who has been denied the pleasure of presiding over those annual festivals which had up to the beginning of the war for so long closed our Alpine year, and at which the Club was wont to entertain so many and so distinguished guests. He would surely be justified in saying ‘Fortune has not been kind to me, good friends’ ; and if he adds ‘But let not that deprive me of your loves, Or of your good report,’ I will assure him on behalf of all of you that he holds the highest place in our appreciation and regard, and that we are deeply grate- ful to him for all that he has done for the Club. I beg to move that a most cordial vote of thanks be given to the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Pickford for his services as President of the Alpine Club. Mr. E. A. Brooms, in seconding the vote of thanks, said: I cordially agree with Mr. Yeld’s remarks. Lord Justice Pickford has indeed made us an ideal President. He has missed no Com- mittee Meetings and only one General Meeting (and then he was away ill) during his term of office, and he has kept us all in order when we needed it. My only regret is that during the Lord Justice’s term of office there has been no Annual Dinner; he would indeed have been an ideal chairman. I am sure the Club will agree with me that, unlike each other as our retiring and newly-elected President may be in some ways, there is a strong resemblance in this, that one has been and the other will be most emphatically ‘the right man in the right place.’ Sir Epwarp Davipson puae As the immediate predecessor of the President, I desire to associate myself most heartily with all that has been so well said by Mr. Yeld and Mr. Broome. Three years ago the Club conferred on him the greatest honour in their power, and he has, by the unfailing wisdom, dignity, and courtesy with which he has presided over us, amply vindicated and repaid the trust then reposed in him. The interests of the Club during these, in many ways, most sombre and trying times, could not possibly have been safer than in his hands, nor have its members ever been more united than under his genial Presidential sway. He has alluded, in the most interesting valedictory address to which we have just listened, to the honours and decorations which have been conferred on members of the Club during his term of office, but he has, for obvious reasons, passed over a great honour

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144 Proceedings of the Alpine Club. conferred on himself which we have all of us welcomed with pleasure and delight. We rejoice sincerely and most heartily congratulate our President on his appointment as a Lord Justice of Appeal and on his becoming a member of His Majesty’s Privy Council, and we wish him long life and health to enjoy these distinctions and others that may yet be in store for him. I beg to support the resolution. Mr. G. A. SoLLy, in supporting, said that although the resolution had been proposed officially it meant much more than that, and that he was sure every member of the Club would join in it most heartily. He knew that the election of the President three years ago had been particularly welcome to the strong Northern contingent of the Club, who remembered that he was a resident in Liverpool when he began his climbing and remained in close association with that city until his appointment as a Judge of the High Court. He wished also to refer to the death of Miss Walker, to which the President had alluded. As a neighbour he had had the privilege of constantly seeing her during her long illness. His last visit was within four weeks of the end. She had then seemed particularly bright, and he had quite hoped to see her again. She constantly talked of the Alps and of the Alpine Club, and although her memory went back more often to early in the ’sixties, when she. climbed so much with her father and brother, Frank and Horace Walker, A. W. Moore, and others, and the two great guides, Melchior and Jakob Anderegg, she was always warmly interested in hearing of the younger generation, and of all the doings of this Club. She had really been a great climber, and, when her brother was Presi- dent, a speaker at a Club dinner very happily referred to her as ‘that charming lady who, but for our stern Salic law, would long since have been President of this Club.’ She was probably the first lady to make a series of big expeditions in the High Alps, year after year, and within five seasons, ending about 1864, her list of expeditions would have formed a very good qualification for a candidate even at the present day. Her house in Liverpool had been for over sixty years a gathering place for mountaineers, and had left with many, happy memories of friendship with a family of unusual charm and culture. . In conclusion, Mr. Solly referred to some verses by Miss Fanny Kemble ! addressed to Miss L. Walker, when she gave up active climbing, and published in ‘Temple Bar’ for March 1889.? The vote of thanks was carried by acclamation, and the President briefly returned thanks. 4 1 There are also some verses by Miss Kemble, entitled ‘ In Switzer- land, 1889,’ in ‘ Temple Bar’ for January 1890. 2 Reproduced with the Obituary Notice of Miss Walker in this number of the JOURNAL.

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pee ALPINE TOURNAN. JUNE O17 Rilled in Action. Dong, Nevile Savage, 5 Sec. Lieut..tuwyal) Mysiners, Aes ty on the Frenchy f cae ae ode, Hopsixson, Major Bay von Mentioned in Pisnatehes, Bavipson, Major Gilbert, A.S.C., January 5, 1917. Addenda and Corrigenda, Dixon, W:S., See. Lieut. RGA. GLOVER, G. T., Lt.-Colonel R.E., BUELE. Mouttnesworth, J. H., Lient. RN. Suappouit, L. G., promoted Lieutenant, RNLYVR, We much regret to learn that le SUN Henri Ths the Chasseurs Alpins, a vetevan of the 1870 war, the w authoritv on the Dauphiné, died suddenty on Fel eae home at Gicres near Grenoble, from tie effects of a fa ! to which his devotion to duty prevented bis giving 1 t os VOL. ANATL—NO. CCAY. F

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THE ALPINE JOURNAL. JUNE 1917, = (No. 215.) MEMBERS SERVING IN HIS MAJESTY’S FORCES. Killed in Action. Dong, Nevile Savage, Sec. Lieut., Royal Fusiliers, killed in action on the French front, March 10. C.M.G. Hopkinson, Major B., AS.C. Mentioned in Dispatches. Davipson, Major Gilbert, A.S.C:, January 5, 1917. Addenda and Corrigenda, Dixon, W: S., Sec. Lieut:, R.G.A. GLoverR, G. T., Lt.-Colonel R:E., B:E.F. HoLuinasworta, J. H:, Lieut. R.N. SHADBOLT, L. G., promoted Lieutenant, R.N.V.R, We much regret to learn that le Capitaine Henri Dunamet of the Chasseurs Alpins, a veteran of the 1870 war, the well-known authority on the Dauphiné, died suddenly on February 7, at his home at Giéres near Grenoble, from the- effects of a fall in the winter to which his devotion to duty prevented his giving proper attention. VOL, XXXI.—NO. CCXY. L

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146 Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. Somr REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS OF AN OLD-STAGER. By WILLIAM MARTIN CONWAY. (Read before the Alpine Club, February 6, 1917.) N Zermatt, on my first visit in 1872, I overheard an habitué lamenting at large the great changes that had taken place there in his time and how the place was no longer the simple mountaineering centre of his youth. He was one of those who had stayed at the curé’s before there were any inns, and for whom ascents of the Gorner Grat, Ober Rothhorn, Hornli, and Mettelhorn had provided almost the excitement of new expeditions. My own generation, when its day began to pass, took up a similar attitude of regret, and I dare say the young men forty years of age or thereabout who are still going strong may in their turn be feeling that Zermatt is not quite what it was to them when they began to climb some twenty years before. Each generation makes of the world more or less the kind of place they dream that it should be, and each when its day is done is often in a mood to regret the work of its own hands and to praise the conditions that obtained when it was young. I cannot entertain the present generation of climbers with aught save reminiscences, but to-day when the only activity worth anyone’s while is fighting, and no one has any tale to tell of recent accomplishment in the mountains, except the mountain fighters whose mouths are closed, a spell of reminiscence may be forgiven by the members of the Club and appears to be frankly welcomed by the officer who has to provide papers for our evening meetings. It was a lucky chance that decreed I should travel out from England on that very first occasion in company with Stogdon, Fred. Pollock, and Walter Leaf, in whose hands I beheld veritable ice-axes, ropes, and so forth—apparatus before only known to me in the illustrations in Whymper’s ‘ Scrambles.’ Stogdon was on his way to join Arthur Fairbanks, an acquaintance of my boyhood, with whom that very summer he made guideless ascents of the Jungfrau, Aletschhorn, and other peaks, to the scandal of the old-stagers. It was Fair- banks in fact who had introduced me to Stogdon, and it is to Fairbanks’ talk about mountains and the chmbing of them

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Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. 147 that I trace on looking backward the ultimate germ of that interest in them which has led me so long and far in the wanderings of life. His recent regretted decease after a career of much usefulness is by me specially regretted to-night. Zermatt revealed itself to my ignorant and very youthful vision just when Dent had made the first ascent of the Zinal Rothhorn from the #. and when Passingham was creating a sensation by what in those days seemed the great feat of ‘climbing the Zermatt giants in rapid succession and each in a single day from the hotel. Even then there still lingered on an element of the eighteenth-century terror of mountains, and the spirits of the damned quite efficiently haunted the Matterhorn and other specially uncanny spots. Those who have experienced both states of mind will realise how great a difference it makes whether you possess a matter-of-fact belief that of course you can reach a certain spot or whether you are infused with a semi-instinctive suspicion that you probably cannot. The latter condition was still common among the guides. . I first met Passingham in the breakfast-room at the old Monte Rosa hotel at 2 o’clock one horribly cloudy and inter- mittently wet morning. He wisely went back to bed but I up the Breithorn, indifferent to weather and all else provided only the ascent could be made, for that was my one chance of ‘ doing a snow-mountain,’ and it seemed as though my life depended on it. In a sense perhaps it did; at all events that day decided a good deal of my future. Contact with Passing- ham unfortunately caused me to imagine that the proper way to climb a mountain was to do it in a day, and it was some years before the fact became apparent to me that the longer you can make a good thing last the better. On the other hand, from the very first, my main interest was not in the climbing but in the scenery and the natural phenomena which Tyndall’s lectures at the Royal Institution had endowed for many with a glamour of romance. Curiosity as to what is round the corner or over the other side of any obstacle is innate in most young folk. To me the Alps were a great pageant and I wished to miss no part of it. Hence clear weather and long halts were great desiderata, and I have. probably spent a longer time on the tops of my mountains in proportion to their number than most of my contemporaries. Except in the ‘ Alps from End to End’ journey and some first ascents which had in them a competitive element, I have seldom climbed in bad weather. The desire to make long halts while completing

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148 Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. our ascents in a single day led Scriven and me to climb at a great pace. We did the Matterhorn from Zermatt and back in time for five o’clock tea, and spent nearly three hours on the top, beside other long halts. | We also climbed the Rothhorn from Zermatt and got back to lunch, and so forth. In two or three consecutive seasons we made most of what are now the usual ascents, including one fondly imagined by us to be a new expedition. We after- wards learnt that it had been done before but not recorded, and that discovery was the origin of the ‘ Climbers’ Guides.’ It was extraordinary how little at that time was known at Zermatt by travellers and still less by the guides about the routes which had and had not been traversed. Coolidge and Davidson were rare exceptions. J remember one evening when a goodly assembly of old climbers was gathered in the smoking- room of the Monte Rosa the question was raised, Which was the Arbenjoch? and not a soul knew. Probably plenty of people blundered over the Fee Pass and thought it was the Alphubel before I crossed it and gave it a name, and the same was no doubt true of the Windjoch. Moreover, the very names of many peaks were uncertain. There was in those days hardly a single Zermatt guide who could have taken a climber to the Balmenhorn of Monte Rosa. If three parties had separately started without collusion for the Old Weissthor I suspect that they might have crossed the frontier ridge at three different points. Such names as Fletschhorn, Nadelhorn, Barrhorn did not accurately define particular peaks, while the Col de Zinal covered various passes all the way round from the Roth- horn to the Dent Blanche. In 1877 I realised this condition of affairs and amused myself accordingly in the following winter at Cambridge in the attempt to clear my own ideas on these and other like subjects. It was a singular greenhorn who approached that study seated on the steps af a gallery in Cockerill’s Building in the University Library near an obscure bottom shelf which held the bound volumes of the ALPINE JOURNAL. I was then unaware that any Alpine literature existed except ‘Peaks, Passes and Glaciers,’ Whymper’s ‘Scrambles,’ the ALPINE JOURNAL, and a few other publications by well-known English pioneers, such as Wills, Hinchliff, and Kennedy. I worked steadily through them all, with some sheets of an early edition of Dufour’s map, and wrote down an abstract in haphazard order of all climbs in the Zermatt district therein recorded. The discovery of Studer’s ‘ Ueber Kis und Schnee’ was a revelation, which presently led to a

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GROUP AT THE FESTI BIVOUAC IN 1878. (SIR MaRTIN Conway, Dr. G. SCRIVEN, FRANZ ANDERMATTEN.)

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Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. 149 very slowly expanding knowledge of what foreign climbers had done, but that I think was the work of rather later days. At all events in 1878 my manuscript abstract in a rather cumbrous volume accompanied us to Switzerland, and if I had not been desperately impecunious, I could have spent a whole long summer capturing one new route after another, for at that time not a quarter of the ascents since made had been attempted, and I was practically the only active climber on the spot who knew with any completeness what had been done and what had not. Scriven and I that year were joined by Penhall, with whom I had been in consultation throughout the winter at Cambridge, and we had made plans which included the ascents of the Rothhorn straight up the middle of the west face, that of the Dom from the Domjoch, and that of the Matterhorn by the Z’Mutt aréte, beside other climbs which were intended to solve a number of topographical difficulties arising out of the insufficiency of existing maps and the in- comprehensibility of climbers’ accounts of their achievements. No one who has not tried will realise how large a proportion, not of the earliest only, but of most nineteenth-century descrip- tions of climbs, are incomprehensible till one has been over the route oneself, or at least been able to examine it from some suitable point of view. Moreover, climbers have mistaken their peak and described as the ascent of point A an expedition which led them up point B. Thus in the ‘ Pennine Guide’ I published a very clear description of the route up the Unter- gabelhorn (a peak I have never climbed), written down from the lips of a man who had just ascended it, led by one of the best St. Niklaus guides, now dead. I will not sully his fine reputation by mentioning his name. They had not been up the Untergabelhorn at all, but a lower and separate peak. It pains me to think of the number of deserving persons who used to be led astray by that description and who sadly wrote to me to record their misfortune ! I have unfortunately never been able to keep an Alpine secret to myself. The mountains then were far too interesting to me to be merely thought about. The result was that amateurs and guides alike soon shared all my information, and many new routes were made by men and guides who would not have been attracted by their novelty but for my manuscript abstracts. The guides used to come and ask me the names of their own peaks, and I think I am at this late date betraying no confidence in mentioning that I was invited to correct the

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150 Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. nomenclature of the Zermatt sheet of the Siegfried map, and did so some time in the eighties, as far as I can now remember. Bad weather frustrated any attempt on the Z’Mutt aréte of the Matterhorn when we hoped to attack it, and we had to go home and leave it untouched, but Alexander Burgener and I had talked of it and of the Furggen aréte, and attention was generally directed both to them and to several other possible climbs which I had discussed with him and others. One was the north aréte of the east peak of the Breithorn, which no one attempted till several years later. In 1879 I- could not go to the Alps at all, so Penhall and Mummery raced for the Z’ Mutt aréte of the Matterhorn, and everyone knows the story. Mum- mery also tried the Furggen aréte, with the result that had been foreseen. My unfortunate habit of chattering about things that had and had not been done led to some contretemps. Thus I named what seemed likely to be an interesting expedition to two different climbers. Both decided to do it, and as bad luck would have it both started on the same day and I believe did it in opposite directions (I forget the details). At all events there was for a time rather a hot dispute between them as to who deserved the credit for the novelty. Another time I got into hot water over the peak which I named the Wellen- kuppe. It used often to be said at Zermatt in those days that the place was badly off for interesting single-day expeditions. Sitting one afternoon outside the old Riffelhaus my eye fell on the Wellenkuppe and I noted the route now so frequently followed. It occurred to me that this was the very thing wanted, if only the peak had aname. As long asit was merely the lower summit of the Gabelhorn it could not expect to be- come popular. The obvious course was to climb and name it. . Lord Francis Douglas was said to have ascended it, but no one knew by what route and no one cared. He was thought of merely as having in that case failed on the Gabelhorn. I afterwards found from an entry in a Zinal visitors’ book that his ascent must have been made from the Zinal side, perhaps up the Triftjoch ridge. I mentioned the new expedition as attractive to a party of climbers then at Zermatt, and a day or two afterward climbed it with Scriven and Parker (now Lord Parker of Waddington). Returned to the hotel, members of the aforesaid party met us with abuse, complaining that I had told them of the expedition, that they had arranged to make it, and that I had robbed them of it! They were not satisfied till another had been placed at their disposal, and I don’t think they ever quite forgave the injury. When the guides asked

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Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. 151 where we had been I replied ‘ Up the Wellenkuppe.’ ‘ Which is the Wellenkuppe ?’ was the next question. ‘ Don’t you know? Why, the lower peak of the Gabelhorn, of course’; and so the name caught on, as did afterwards that of the Stecknadelhorn and several others which found their way on to the official map but no one suspects were inventions of my own. The secret of getting a name accepted is to put it about among the guides and then receive it back from them as one they are actually using ; as long as no one knows where a name originated ‘no one will object. The touchiest place on earth in which to distribute names is in the Andes, but I found all I wanted by correspond- ing means. The hardest work is to find a genuine existing name for a given peak. If you find one you generally find several and have to choose. Thus when my attention was first called to the Nadelgrat—the whole ridge from the Siidlenzspitze (which now they call the Lenzspitze) to the Diirrenhorn—there was only one name along it that any climber or guide could cite, except old Franz Andermatten, and that was the Nadel- horn. It is extraordinary how little people care about a nameless peak. Dent had ascended the Siidlenzspitze but not recorded it nor thought anything about it, though it was the last great peak to be climbed in the Zermatt district, simply because it was thought to have no name. Old Franz told me that he had heard the Nadelhorn and it called the Nord- and Siid-Lenzspitzen. He had also heard it called Stidlenendspitze and Landspitze. I accordingly called it the Siidlenzspitze and sent Graham up it. For the other peaks no certain names were discoverable, so I gave the name Stecknadelhorn to the one next the Nadelhorn, while the Hohberghorn and the Diirren- horn were names vaguely wandering about in the neighbour- hood, and seemed as far as I could gather to be likely to belong to the peaks nowso known. I wrote a paper in the JoURNAL on this ridge, and plenty of climbing about it followed. The Weiss- thor ridge gave a great deal of trouble, but I believe that proper old names were found for all its parts except the Old Weissthor, which certainly was not where it is now placed; but Coolidge has worked out the history of that region far more completely than I ever did and his results are final. Those who have read his late papers on the history of various peaks and passes will realise how vague was the nomenclature of the Alps till maps and guide-books fixed wandering denomina- tions to particular points. I have now altogether forgotten by what stages my manu- script abstract of routes, continually added to from old hotel

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152 Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. visitors’ books, guides’ testimonial books, conversations with climbers and guides, and a widening knowledge of Alpine literature, came to be thrown into an ordered form and pub- lished as the ‘ Zermatt Pocket-book.’ I only remember that during the process I came into connexion with Coolidge, and he helped me to pass the thing through the press—the com- mencement of a partnership that endured for many years and in a sense still endures unbroken and indeed at no time the least unstable. We never disagreed except on the mountain- side, when he wanted to go one way for reasons of history, I another for reasons of topography—a frightful wmpasse! The ‘Zermatt Pocket-book’ had a curious: history. My second oldest friend, Lord Ranfurly, who is here to-night, paid for the publication, and he little thought what a frightful offspring from a literary point of view that little volume was to produce. The sale never repaid the cost. The copies that remained in England were slowly sold off. Those that went to Zermatt were found by me there intact some fifteen years later when I and everyone else had forgotten their existence. The curious situation thus arose that the book, believed to be out of print, was selling second-hand in London for ten shillings and even for a guinea when anyone could have bought a copy for five francs at the then unique Zermatt shop if he had thought of asking for it. The natural conclusion was that if people would pay a second-hand bookseller a guinea for the ‘ Zermatt Pocket-book’ they might as well pay me a like amount for a new and better edition of it, brought up to date. Hence the two volumes of the ‘ Pennine Guide,’ which, as I explained in an insulting preface, were divided at the Theodul Pass, the most inconvenient point possible, in order that Zermatt climbers might be obliged to buy both halves. The ‘ Lepontine Guide ’ followed, written by Coolidge and me in collaboration, and thus the series of ‘ Climbers’ Guides’ was started, and volume after volume followed, in theory edited by Coolidge and me, but in practice by him, my own interests having in the meantime been transferred to other mountain ranges in distant parts of the world, and the Alpine knowledge of a man endowed with a singularly evanescent memory rapidly passing away. I have elsewhere stated and may here repeat that at a date I cannot remember—-it was when Donkin was Hon. Secretary —I wrote to the Committee and offered to present the intended series of ‘ Climbers’ Guides’ to the Club and to edit the series for it. The letter was acknowledged but never answered, and soon afterward the re-editing of Ball’s guide was under-

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Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. 158 taken and the Club committed to what I thought an out-of- date type of guide-book. Translations and imitations of the ‘Climbers’ Guides’ or parts of them were many. Even the ‘ Zermatt Pocket-book ’ was translated by a French soldier who took it with him into a military prison and thus beguiled the tedium of confine- ment. It would already involve some research to form a list of the imitative offspring of the series as a whole, but it will not, I think, be denied that the bulk of existing guide-books to snowy mountains are of the type which the ‘ Pennine Guide’ fixed. Coolidge was always bothering me to bring out a new edition of the Pennine volumes when they in turn had been for some years exhausted, and at last I went to Grindelwald to see what could be done with the help of his wonderful library. I worked through all the publications of all the Alpine Clubs over a dozen years or more and made the necessary abstracts, and the thing looked like an accomplishment till I came to the low levels. It then appeared that the ways to the various new huts and the paths out of the valleys were all undescribed and that the only way to get accurate accounts of them was — by actually walking over them. That was impossible. So I gave Coolidge all the materials and told bim to get another editor to complete the book. He never succeeded. Not- withstanding several appeals, not a single member of this Club came forward to undertake this easiest part of the task, and the book remamed dead. At long last Coolidge trans- ferred all his and my rights and all my MS. notes to the Swiss Alpine Club, who have recently published a volume, to be followed by others, which, you will forgive my saying, it would have been well if this Club had produced. As things are, however, I am content that my friend Dr. Diibi (the other day elected a corresponding member of the Royal Geographical Society—a well-deserved honour) should have stepped in to make available to all climbers who can read the German language the information which I laboriously gathered together. Even at the present late date I am not without hope that the English rights which have been reserved may not remain unutilised. These reminiscences have taken me away from Zermatt and from the mountains. It would be tedious to keep you listening to a tale of old ascents, the lively details of which I have myself forgotten. The feats of those days, moreover, are nothing now when the craft of climbing has been developed to a degree undreamt of in the ’seventies and there are few

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154 Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. big topographical puzzles left. I suppose the kind of climber I may regard myself as representing is extinct. A mountain need not necessarily be regarded as a problem and the climbing of it as the solution. No doubt to accomplish the solution of a difficult problem involving the use of all a man’s powers, whether physical or intellectual, is a delightful experience, and I am not desirous of minimising it. But mountains may be otherwise envisaged. ‘They are beautiful at all times and seasons, and they are intensely interesting. It is possible to climb them for the sake of their beauty and interest, but there is something more besides, and it is hard to define. ‘The first time I saw the snowy Alps (they were the Oberland, beheld from near Berne) there arose within me an intense desire to be on them, to climb to the top, to look down from them and over the other side. I take this to have been a form of that gencral desire for possession which is so energetic a motive in most of us. We in a sense possess the places we have visited. We carry them away in our memories. They become part of us. We own them. It has been said that a landlord pos- sesses his land, but that anyone who has delighted in it owns the landscape. The statement is substantially true. But the sight of a magnificent mountain provokes In modern man, not merely the desire of possession for the sake of its beauty, but the desire of approach for the sake of its mystery. To one who has never been aloft a great snow mountain js full of mystery. It looks like a portion of another world. All its parts are mysterious. It rises we know not how. Its buttresses and hollows, the places where blue shadows lurk, the crests which the sunset dyes, they are far from being self- explained. Ata distance we do not understand their relations, nor can we realise their structure. We are puzzled and in- trigued by them, and the glamour of their beauty at the same time enraptures and bewilders us. Hence I think the powerful attraction that draws us aloft. I well remember the first time I met a man who had just come down from a high peak. He seemed to me then almost like one who had risen from the dead. He had been to the other world and returned. Not otherwise was I myself regarded by the natives, both in the Himalaya and the Andes; as one who had been to the abode of the gods and returned alive. Remember, please, that I am trying after all these years to write down the emotions of a boy sixteen years of age. Probably conditions have wholly changed, and what we then felt was a passing phase. The present generation may be as unable to enter into the state

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Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. 155 of mind thus inadequately described as modern man to grasp the emotions of his prehistoric totemistic ancestors. In that case the younger members of this assembly must forgive my obscurity ; the old ones will understand. When at last the day of days came and we could start for our first climb into the world of snow, we went forth as to a great adventure. Each step revealed the fact about some feature we had beheld only afar off or heard men tell about. But not thus quickly was the new world to be understood. At first it was hard to reconcile the aspect of things when close at hand with their appearance at a distance. That what had seemed a sheer wall was in fact a slope of broken stones, that what had seemed a faint line or crack should be a vast impassable gash extending to the very depths of a glacier, that things which had seemed near together should in fact be far asunder, that what had looked an easy slope should be a wall of ice only to be mounted by experts after hours of toil —these and a countless multitude of discoveries and dis- illusions were not to become instinctively cpa even in a long summer season of climbing. As one climbing season followed another, and we gathered experience and learned to know the look of the same mountain from several sides, and the relation of mountain to mountain, of ridge and valley to mountain-mass, and of the great mountain- masses to one another—as we came so to know some one group of mountains that when we beheld it from afar off it no longer seemed to us a serrated wall, but a deep mass with peak showing over the shoulder of peak, in sequence of depth as well as breadth—we attained a new understanding full of interest in place of the old wonder and multiplex inquiry. For a , time this increase of knowledge was its own reward and we delighted to behold the heights we had climbed, the passes we had traversed, saluting us across great distances, each now known for what it actually was in individual form and relative position to its neighbours. This stage of satisfaction also passed, and some of us began to realise that knowledge was not all pure gain. One day perhaps when a glorious sunset was illuminating a noble peak on whose summit we had recently been sitting, we found ourselves identifying some notch in a ridge as a place we had found difficult to pass, or some sweep of snowfield as the scene of intolerable toil when the heat scorched us almost past endurance, and before we had time to delight in the splendour of the scene, lo! the colour had all gone and the pallor of

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156 Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. night was at hand. And then we awoke to realise that the mountains had for us lost their mystery and that by a great price we had obtained an unwelcome freedom. I think it was that discovery that drove me from the Alps to the mountain ranges of Asia, Spitsbergen, and South America. There at any rate the wonder and the mystery returned in full measure, in spite of all Alpine knowledge and experience. Nothing in them was quite the same as in Europe. Moreover it was impossible in a single season to solve their topographical problems. Every valley we looked up led to the unknown. The great peaks were for the most part frankly maccessible. The huge distances to which on rare occasions we looked forth transcended our powers of instinctive comprehension and so produced upon our minds an overwhelming effect. I still, for example, sometimes feel again the indescribable thrill with which I gazed for the first time up the immense trough of the Hispar Glacier, to the col at its head fifty miles off in a straight line from where I sat, the long river of ice reaching down most of the way. Here once again was an opening into the ‘ other world,’ and the invitation to enter and obtain possession. That emotion lasted throughout our Himalayan year and throughout both our Spitsbergen seasons, notwithstanding all my topographical labours as a surveyor. But in the Andes it was otherwise. There I had to deal with a single range of peaks standing side by side in a long row and learned to know them too well. Before turning my back on them and leaving Bolivia they had become to me a weariness and like a tale ten times told. I remember one day riding along the plateau at their foot and noting some broken stones in the path. One _ seemed a queer colour and I bad it picked up and handed to me, and then the notion came into my head that the big mountain behind was just another stone such as I held in my hand, only bigger, and that in actual fact I might as well labour to set down on paper the shape of the one as of the other. I had been for months worrying myself to find out the shapes of those big rocks away off there against the sky, and what did it matter ? Why should I care which way the ridges ran and how the side valleys penetrated among them? After all it was not really to respond to such questions that the mountains had called me more than twenty-five years before. They had called me as things of beauty and of wonder, things terrible and sublime, and instead of glorying in their splendour here was I spending months in outlining the vagrant plan of them on a piece of paper.

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Some Reminiscences and Reflections of an Old-stager. 157 That realisation ended my mountaineering career. The old flame burst forth again for a little while amid the novelties and sombre mysteries of the dark channels, pallid glaciers, and black forests of the Straits of Magellan and the Land of Desolation, but when I turned my back on them I knew that my climbing days were done, because the desires that had led me on and on were extinguished, the motive power withdrawn. For some years I hardly visited the Alps, or only halted for a week or so among them on the way to Italy, till a whim took me out toa centre of winter sport with mountain surroundings. Ino longer had the smallest wish to go aloft, but the joy of the bright sun- shine, delight in the beauty of the foregrounds of snow, the fine air and the sense of health and general well-being were like drinking good wine that maketh glad the heart of man. So I went again and yet again, and at long last one day I gazed aloft on the Jungfrau and beheld her as I had beheld her with the eyes of a boy—a vision of pure beauty, robed in mystery as of yore. Ino longer cared a rap which ridge had been climbed or whether the face would ‘ go,’ or what the rocks were like, or whether the scratch across the upper edge of the glacier was a passable or impassable bergschrund. The distracting interest of such questions had vanished along with the clear memory of all the Alpine lore of that kind I had once possessed. The over- whelming beauty of the thing seen submerged all other interests. I had learned at last what we all ultimately learn—that it is not by going to the beautiful thing that we attain possession of its beauty, but by staying where we are; that the beauty is not there but here: the beauty of the plains on the mountain-top, the beauty of the mountains down in the valley or away off in the plain, the beauty of the glacier on the ridge, the beauty of the snow-slope on the glacier or hill-side from which it is beheld. And finaly, that there is beauty wherever nature reigns and that a man need not travel far to find it, but that the power to behold it must be once kindled in his heart, as it were, by a divine inspiration. Then beauty will meet him everywhere and will dwell with him and increase its dominion over him till he himself fades away into that kingdom of mystery whence all beauty emanates and where it eternally abides.

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158 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. THe GREAT PASSES OF THE WESTERN AND CENTRAL ALPS. By DOUGLAS W. FRESHFIELD. (Read before the Alpine, Club, March 6, 1917.) ANY—I should be sorry to say how many—years ago when I was a small boy travelling with my. parents, we met Tyndall at the homely inn at Breuil. He had been reconnoitring all day on the Matterhorn. When we sat down to the modest table d’hdte the principal item on the menu was chamois. Tyndall explained that it was the habit of Alpine innkeepers, when provisions ran short, to serve up an old goat in (what he described as) peat-sauce and to call it chamois. It has occurred to me since that this practice may possibly be alluded to in-one of the lines that are taken by some to prove Shakespeare’s personal acquaintance with foreign travel : ‘In the Alps, It is reported, thou did’st eat strange flesh.’ I tell this story to-night because it seems to me exactly to fit the situation. Your Secretary, finding this year his larder empty, has taken to serving up his old goats. Sir Martin Conway, as the younger and less tough, suffered first. And now, as a last resource, I am put on the table. I had hoped to be able to read to you to-night a wholly fresh paper, on the life and times of De Saussure, but the material Mr. Montagnier is most kindly collecting for me is not yet all at hand, and I must therefore fall back on a discourse on Alpine Passes I gave four months ago to the Geographical Society. I am, however, conscious that this Club has to be addressed in a different spirit from that suitable for the groundlings at the lower end of the Row, and I have consequently made considerable changes in detail. I shall venture to begin where Sir M. Conway left off last month. His paper had the perhaps somewhat unusual merit that it set one thinking. It had, he told us, a moral—‘ Don’t make a business of a pleasure.’ There are, he seemed to suggest, a dozen different ways of enjoying mountains. The man is happiest who can enjoy them in most ways. Don’t

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" The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 159 limit your interests to gymnastic prowess, or to ‘times,’ or to researches into minute details of orography, or climbing records. Refuse, therefore, to edit a Handbook, above all, a Climbers’ Guide! Let your motto be ‘ Monticola sum, nihil montani a me alienum puto.’ Cultivate a moderate and temperate acquaintance with the relations between mountains and Science, Art, and History—but keep clear of Hannibal! So you will never have too much of the mountains, but among the trials of everyday life always be able to turn to them for refreshment and support. With the doctrine I have thus far ventured to interpret, I most cordially agree. I have done my best in a humble way to live up to it, as the pages of our JouRNAL may bear witness. But these divagations of a mountaineer are more or less branches springing out of the stem of a climber’s career. The character of the stem itself is apt to be profoundly affected by the soil from which it springs—the inborn tastes and char- acter of the individual. In some of us the passion for heights is coupled with the love of travel. We have been bitten like Io by the gadfly of wandering. Others, among them not a few of the greatest climbers, have been in no sense travellers. Those who are not content without change of scene, who seek untrodden ranges as well as unclimbed peaks—or unnatural routes up peaks already climbed—are, I am conscious, often looked on by the pure and simple peak-hunter as not quite the realthing. Judged by the standard of Zermatt or Grindel- wald, we are eccentrics ; we have, as an Alpine specialist once told me, ‘ dissipated our energies.’ Well, we cannot help ourselves ; we were born so, with an instinct not only to get to the top, but to go round and look at the other side of the objects in our path—and then to hurry on to another object. To the tour of Mont Blanc succeed the tours of Dykhtau and Kangchenjanga. It is doubtless sad and bad and mad, but, oh, how sweet to find oneself philandering with the peaks of Caucasus or Himalaya! And the best of it is that our old Alpine loves never show any coldness on our return. Still, I would not be taken as claiming any peculiar merit for the climber who travels. I pay due homage to the more highly specialised gymnastic qualities of the peak-hunter. He represents the perfect man before whom, as Emerson says, no mountain can stand. I will not hint here that perfection may be sometimes dull. All I would urge is that we accept, perhaps in a slightly varied sense, Virgil’s untranslatable

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160 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. ° words : Quisque suos patimur manes ; that we follow Chaucer’s maxim : ‘Hold the high way and let thy ghost thee lead.’ I hope most of my readers will agree with me that for the average man it is as well not only to see and climb as many mountains as possible, but also to take interest in them from as many aspects as he honestly can. But—and here I come to the end of my argument and to my dilemma to-night—this point of view complicates the task of writing a short paper. It does so even if you want to describe a single climb, much more therefore if you take a general subject. When I undertook to deal with the historical aspect of a few passes I hoped to deal also with their physical features. I wrote several pages, with the result that the paper got first unwieldy and then as condensed and unpalatable as a stale Liebig lozenge. I found I was leaving out the personal touches and incidents that were the only things that I could hope would give it a little life. | When last year I inflicted on the Alpine Club a paper on the portion. of the Alps which forms the Austro-Italian borderland and is included in the field of the present war, it was suggested to me that I might supplement it with some account of the more western part of the chain. I have followed the suggestion, though I have my doubts whether, in the lack of any immediate public interest in the region dealt with, I am wise in doing so. Moreover, in the time at our disposal, it is impossible for me to treat more than a single branch of the subject, and even so I can give only a most superficial survey of topics which would require several volumes to do them justice. I propose, therefore, after a summary sketch of the relation between natural features and political frontiers in the part of the Alpine chain between the Mediterranean and the Orteler group, to limit myself to a selection of notes on the Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. - It is popularly held that in this region, with the conspicuous exception of Canton Ticino, where Switzerland thrusts herself down on the Italian lakes, the frontier corresponds with the watershed. This is the rule, but there are not a few exceptions to it. If we start from the Mediterranean coast we find that France, when in a.D. 1860 she gained the County of Nice, was not content with the old Roman frontier of Italy which ran down to the headland of Turbia, but annexed the district of Mentone and the glens behind it, once dependencies of Monaco.

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central’ Alps. 161 On the other hand, in order not to spoil one of Victor Emmanuel’s favourite shooting-grounds, she left to Italy the headwaters of the Vesubia on the W. side of the range. These are the only divergencies between natural and political boundaries in the Western Alps. To find the next we have to look as far E. as the Simplon Pass; there the pastures and villages above the gorge of Gondo, though on the Italian side, are Swiss. They are Swiss for a reason which will account for most of the irregularities we shall find farther E. A. diffi- cult gorge is a more practical barrier to human intercourse than an upland pasture. | Next we come to the great intrusion of Canton Ticino. From near the Gries Pass, just 8. of the source of the Rhdéne, the frontier of Switzerland diverges at right angles from the main chain and skirts the HE. edge of the Toce basin nearly to Lago Maggiore, which it crosses, then wanders among the foothills, giving all but the N.E. corner of Lago di Lugano to Switzerland, before it strikes N. along the ridge W. of Lago di Como to rejom the Alpine watershed close to the Spliigen Pass. This intrusion may be held to be sanctioned _ by lapse of time. But it had its origin in force of arms. The Swiss—I call them Swiss, for though ‘ Switzerland’ did not form the official name of the Confederation until a.p. 1808, the name was in popular use from the date of the battle of Sempach (1386)—the Swiss Confederates finally occupied their present Cisalpine territories in A.D. 1512 as a payment for military services rendered to the Duke of Milan. Ticino has been at times on a small scale something of an Ireland to Switzerland. But it cannot be said that its inhabitants have shown any desire to share the burdens of the young Kingdom of Italy. They have found practical advantages in remaining Swiss. They are lightly taxed, their military service is never far from home, and their frontier affords some of them almost unique opportunities for a profitable pursuit, reputed formerly to have been the principal industry of my own county, Sussex —I refer to smuggling. E. of the Spliigen, and along the frontier of Graubiinden, we find several minor irregularities. The Val di Lei, though harbouring one of the sources of the Rhine, is Italian. This is because its pastures are owned by peasants of Val San Giacomo. Among primitive peoples the limits of pasture-rights form one of the earliest boundary-lines, and one of the most eagerly insisted on. Fifty years ago the Suanetian communities in the Caucasus continually quarrelled and fought overthem. The VOL, XXXI.—NO, CCXV. M

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162 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. Tibetan claim to the bleak uplands of Lhonak at the back of Kangchenjanga rested entirely on this form of user. Next we find the head of the Bregaglia under the Maloja Pass and the valley of Poschiavo, both on the §. side of the Alps belonging to Switzerland, while the pastoral basin of Livigno, feeding a tributary of the Inn, is claimed by Italy. In each.of these cases the cause of the abandonment of the mountain crest is the same as on the Simplon : a defile near at hand makes a better practical barrier than a broad and easy pass. On the whole, then, we may safely anticipate that no change in the western and N.W. frontiers of Italy will be caused by the present European convulsion. One, happy result may be looked for: a relaxation of the mutual distrust which has made travel sometimes difficult and photography impossible in recent years on the Franco-Italian frontier. I must ask you to accept this as my excuse for being unable to show more photographs of the western passes. I have not ventured to omit some reference to frontiers, because the topic is just now very much to the fore, and is likely to become still more so. But I must hasten to my main subject, Passes. | : From among the various features of the Alps I have selected passes for this reason : they have a double interest, an interest human and historical as well as geographical and local. They are the features by which men are first and most naturally brought into contact with mountains. Consequently they come within the scope both of the geographer and of the historian, and form one of the many links between these two great branches of scientific inquiry. In early ages mountains were as a rule objects of awe and reverence ; they served as links between Man and the Unseen. They were looked on as ‘neighbours of the stars’; they inspired a primitive emotion, which at a later date found articulate and eloquent, if vague, expression in the poetry of Byron, Wordsworth, and Shelley. But in classical times the dweller in the lowlands, the commonplace man when he was in his market-day mood, looked on the greater ranges as an inter- ruptionand a nuisance. To Horace the Alps were tremendous ; the Caucasus was inhospitable. Mountains were obstructions to be avoided, or got round, or over, as quickly as might be. The main object of humanity was to find the easiest way through them—1in other words, to invent passes, and in this we have on the whole been successful.

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 168 The Romans regarded the snowy belt that fenced in Italy from a purely practical point of view. They made roads over it, they built, and ornamented with triumphal arches, military “| St Theodul .% Cofde Colion.x~%*_- , oM. Geneévre °wors, Scale 1/3,000,000 72 3 0 £0 >= Pass towns situated in the high valleys, Susa and Aosta. They furnished the roads with rest-houses and post-houses, where horses could be changed. But they paid little or no attention to mountain scenery. It was not sufficiently humanised for

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164 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. them. The Italian Lakes were, it is true, reckoned by Virgil and Catullus among the glories of Italy, but not until their charms could be admired from under the portico of a villa. No Roman had a word to say in praise of Geneva or Lucerne. The glow of dawn on Monte Rosa found no favour in the eyes of the dwellers at Milan. Monte Viso, alone of Alpine peaks, won a place in classical literature. The Romans kept to the passes and left peaks to look after themselves. At a later date, when the Empire had fallen and its paved roads gone from bad to worse, the dislike of the dweller in the lowlands for the Alps was intensified. Most of the travellers were pilgrims who wanted to get to Rome for Easter. They had therefore to cross the mountains at the very worst time of year, and found the melting snows and avalanches an unmiti- gated nuisance. Divines, averse to the hardships of travel, went so far as to suggest that mountains were an interpolation of the devil in God’s universe. They called the snows Monts Maudits, Accursed Hills; in short, they swore at them. It was the fashion in Roman times to speak of the Alps as the rampart of Italy. They have at all times proved a singu- larly ineffectual one. It was not the Alp but the Apennine, running across the peninsula from Genoa to Rimini, that formed the limit of Gallia Cisalpina. That is why the Rubicon got its fame. Livy tells us how before Hannibal’s time the Western Alps had been frequently crossed and recrossed by Gallic hordes. Hannibal, it is recorded, found tracks and guides ready to lead him through the mountains. On their E. flank again the Alps could easily be turned by invaders approaching them from the valleys ofthe Drave and the Save, and crossing the Carnic or Julian Alps to the lowlands at the head of the Adriatic. And so it has gone on through the centuries: Goths and Huns, Lombards and Franks, Holy Roman emperors, French kings, Napoleonic and Austrian armies have swarmed over their ridges. ‘How often ’—wrote Sir Walter Raleigh—‘have the Alpes given way to Armies breaking into Italie. Yea, where shall we finde that ever they kept out an invadour? Yet they are such as (to speak briefly) afflict with all difficulties those that travaile over them ; but they give no securitie to those that he behind them ; for they are of too large extent.’ The Alpine Passes have served as the neck of an hour-glass; the human sand runs through them easily either way. In the following notes I shall pay no attention to glacier

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 165 passes, or climbers’ passes, or side-passes over spurs and secondary chains. I confine myself to the Great Passes, by which I mean the passes over the main watershed which have been more or less continuously used not only for local purposes but by the peoples living outside the mountains and anxious to traverse them. The Great Passes are the lines on which the traffic across a chain from the lowlands at its feet tends to converge in times of peace, over which the armies tramp in time of war. Their vogue will vary; one or another will come into use according to the changing starting-points and goals of their users, or to the artificial hindrances created by political frontiers and tolls. The making of a paved track and still more of a road for wheels will serve to concentrate traffic and lead to the relative disuse of neighbouring and unimproved gaps. When we begin to go into details we shall see how the Mont Genévre was for the Romans the great W. pass as long as they aimed at the Provincia (Provence) ; how the two St. Bernards came into use when their generals wanted to cross into Central Gaul or to Helvetia and the Rhine basin; and how a little later the Mont Cenis, lower and free earlier in the year from snow than the St. Bernard Passes, was found the most direct and convenient route between Lyons or Paris and Italy. In considering the roads of the Western Alps we have to bear in mind that the track along the sea-coast, the modern Cornice, if practicable, was not made convenient for military traffic until after the subjugation of the Alps by Augustus, who built the monument at Turbia to celebrate it. Some inland route had to be found through the recesses of the range. Now in any map of the Western Alps—that is for my present purpose the part of the range that lies between the Mediter- - ranean and Mont Blanc—it will be noticed that the principal valleys, with the exception of the upper course of the Durance, run more or less H. and W., that is, transverse to the main crest: or line of water-parting. For the people on the W., in Provence and France, there were two great trenches which offered natural approaches to Italy, those of the Durance and the Isére. If you came from Provence or from Spain the Durance would serve, but where the valley made an angle to the N. you might be tempted to keep your direction and get across by a short route to the Piedmontese plain, or you might follow up the stream and use the gap at its head. In one case you would

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166 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. take the Col de Vars and the Col de l’Argentiére ; in the other the Mont Genévre: these are the two great Durance Passes.* If however you came from Central Gaul you would naturally go up the Isére, until you found yourself called on to determine whether you would follow its zigzag course up to the watershed or strike boldly into the narrower but practicable valley of the Are. You had to choose, that is, between the Little St. - Bernard and the Mont Cenis. Now let us fancy ourselves, not Gauls longing to rush Italy, but Romans eager to find a land-route to the Province, or to conquer Gaul. As we sit on the hill above Turin crowned by the modern Church of the Superga we shall see away to the S.. of Monte Viso, where the plain runs wedge-like into the hills (hence the name of Cuneo), the mouth of the valley of the Stura. Right in face, conspicuous and tempting, lies the gap of the Dora Riparia leading up to Susa; farther to the N.W. the opening of the remote valley of the Salassi, Val d’ Aosta. | Now each of these adits corresponds to one or more of those on the W. of the chain; the Val di Stura leads to the §. Durance Pass, the Col de l’Argentiére; the Susa gap leads to the N. Durance Pass and the Are Pass, that 1s, to the Mont Genévre and the Mont Cenis. Val d’Aosta leads to the Great and Little St. Bernard. Dealing therefore with the mountain routes we find that there are two main valleys W. of the chain, those of the Dur- ance and the Isére; leading respectively on the other side into the countries of the Taurini and the Salassi ; and this is what Polybius, as reported by Strabo, knew. He tells us there are four passes in all over the Alps, that along the coast, that through the Taurini, that through the Salassi, and then he leaps all the Central Alps and mentions the pass through the Noric Alps. Before we deal with the W. passes ina little more detail, let me summarise my impressions of the state of the tracks in pre-Roman times. Livy tells us that Hannibal’s passage was not a novel feat, that the tribes had been in the habit of crossing to and fro. Livy also tells us that the Keltic tribes passed down Gaul till they came to lands already occupied and ill- 1 The lower valley of the Ubaye was formerly a difficult gorge. This is the reason for the use of the Col de Vars. All these passes have villages and cornfields a short distance from the top.

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 167 suited for pasture. Then may we not picture them drawn by the fame of Italy, marching up the broad trench of the Durance, until it turned N. and was to all appearance closed by the snows of Dauphiné? Here at the angle they had a choice: they might either turn their backs on the sun and follow the river to its source, In which case they would gain the Mont Genévre, or they might climb over a broad down into the upper basin of the Ubaye (near where Barcelonette now stands), and then with an inappreciable second ascent reach the Alpine watershed at the Col de ]’Argentiére. , When the Romans established themselves on the nearer side of the Alps they had their headquarters at Cremona and Pavia, their main sub-alpine military posts at Turin and after- wards at Aosta. The broad gap from which the Dora Riparia issues, the most conspicuous feature in the view from the plain, would naturally draw Pompey to the Mont Genévre, and Caesar to the Mont Cenis when he wanted to go N. to Gallia, and not to the Provincia, or Hispania. A few years later, when the Salassi had been conquered and Aosta (Augusta Praetoria) founded, the two St. Bernards gave access to the Rhone Basin and Helvetia. Now let us move on and see what Varro, the librarian of Augustus, the most learned man in Rome of his day, an en- - cyclopaedic intellect, has to say about the Passes of the Western Alps. In the-commentaries on Virgil of Servius, a fifth- century grammarian, we find the following fragment of Varro. Its authenticity has not hitherto been seriously questioned. Dr. Smith in his well-known ‘ Dictionary of Classical Geo- graphy’ quotes it in full, with the surprising comment, ‘ a pass- age in which there appears to be much confusion.’ To any one who knows the Western Alps intimately there is no con- fusion whatever in this very plain and intelligible statement. * The Alps can be crossed in five ways; the first next the sea, the second which Hannibal crossed, the third by which Pompey went to the Spanish War, the fourth by which Hasdrubal came from Gaul into Italy, the fifth, which from once having been held by Greeks is called the Grecian Alp.’ Now there is no doubt about the first and fifth of these passes, the Cornice and the Little St. Bernard. Must we not suppose that the other three are placed in their geo- graphical order from 8. to N.? It is, to say the least, a very plausible supposition. If we do so we must identify the

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168 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. remaining three passes with the Col de l Argentiére, the Mont Genévre, and the Mont Cenis. We have abundant evidence that Pompey’s pass was the Mont Genévre. But here my learned and peripatetic friend, Mr. Coolidge, may ask me, Why identify Varro’s passes with these modern passes, when there are a dozen other routes by which the Western Alps can be crossed without danger? I reply, Because the ex- perience of nearly twenty centuries has shown these to be the preferable main routes through the mountains; because they are the passes Napoleon, that most practical of field- geographers, recognised ; because when Brockedon,? more than eighty years ago, published his fine work on ‘ The Passes of the Alps,’ these were the five he selected for illustration ; because they are at this day the only carriage roads across the Western Alps. ; Pohtical and military considerations or frontier difficulties may have tended from time to time to bring one or other of these passes into greater use and prominence, but traffic has on the whole stuck steadily to these five routes whether in the days of Rome, or of Carlovingian emperors, or of mediaeval pilgrims, or of French invaders of Italy. Now the modes of transit have no doubt undergone many modifications between the rude paths trampled by the invading Gauls, the harsh pavés of the Roman Empire, the splendid high-roads of Napoleon, and the tunnels of to-day. But do not imagine the Alps even in very primitive times as pathless. Wherever in mountain regions there are inhabitants and pastures, there are paths. I have found them in the Caucasus, the Himalaya, the Atlas, all over E. Africa, everywhere till I got to the Mountains of the Moon, where the jungle reaches —_— _ - awe a a * T have mentioned Brockedon, and it is proper that we should do him some tardy justice here. His fine work on The Passes of the Alps is too much neglected. He was an artist of merit, a portrait and landscape painter who illustrated his own books, and an energetic alpine explorer at a date when the Alps were little known. His portrait is among those of painters in the Uffizi at Florence. He was responsible for a great part of the early editions of Murray’s Switzerland, Savoy and Piedmont (1838), and he was also one of the founders of the Geographical Society and a member of its first Council. Can any one furnish information as to what has become of the originals of the illustrations to his Passes of the Alps which were “sold to Lord Vernon for 500 guineas’ ? (See Dict. of National Biography.)

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 169 to the snows. The Romans laid down their Strata Romana ; that was the name given in after centuries to the Mont Cenis. Very little improvement was made for 1800 years. The modern pavés throughout the Italian Alps are bad imitations of Roman road-making. We have most of us uttered impatient exclamations while descending under an August sun those endless stony staircases. | It was a long time before any one traversed the chain on wheels. I have little doubt that, when he wrote his grammar while crossing the Alps, Caesar rode in a litter. The English pilgrims in the Middle Ages tramped and suffered. Wealthier people, Popes, Savoy princes and their ladies, rode in litters hung with rich trappings. Ordinary travellers hired chatses & porteurs, rude sedan-chairs. The men who carried these were known both on the Great St. Bernard and the Mont Cenis as ‘ Marrons.’ No one has yet found a satisfactory derivation for the word. Some suggest that these porters were captive Moors, or perhaps natives of the Maurienne. There have been all sorts of wild guesses. Ducange’s ‘ Dictionary of Low Latin’ gives perhaps the fullest information. He tells us that the word ‘ marron,’ as applied to Alpine porters, first occurs in the ninth-century life of the Abbot of Cluny. It was frequently used down to the eighteenth century in the case both of the Great St. Bernard and Mont Cenis. We find it in Montaigne’s Travels ; Rabelais coupled it with gryphons. It was also applied to the outside dock porters at Marseilles and to the irregular brokers who haunted the streets round the Paris Bourse. Here Larousse’s Dictionary warns me that I have been anticipated in an obvious jest. A Parisian wit—it tells us—being on a winter’s day asked by a country friend who these loiterers outside the Bourse might be, replied ‘ They are our marrons glacés.’ The term seems to have been specially applied to outsiders—un- licensed labourers or agents. In the West Indies it was used for runaway slaves or escaped domestic animals, and is there said to come from the Spanish word cimarron, a mountaineer. But the Alpine marrons did not get their name from Spain, unless indeed Hannibal brought it! Is it possible—I too will hazard a guess—that ‘Marron’ is derived from some old Romance word current both in Spain and Southern France ? The Dictionary of the Spanish Academy says that it applies to men, animals, and trees that live in the wilds. In the Pyrenees it is used of cats that have run wild. Have we here possibly the missing link between the ‘Marrons’ vegetable and human—

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170 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. between the forests of the untilled hillsides and the villagers whose cottages nestle in their shade? I should not be surprised if it turned out that ‘Marron’ was in the first instance asynonym for Highlander and then came to be applied to any freelance or interloper.® When carriages came in, they came in first on the Brenner and the Mont Cenis, though on the latter pass they seem to have been taken off wheels and lifted over from Lanslebourg to Susa. De Saussure writes of going round from Geneva with his family by the Brenner in case the Mont Cenis was not open. It does not seem to have occurred to him that there was any intermediate course. Yet we read in exceptional cases of wheels crossing the Little St. Bernard in the eighteenth century. And then appeared the great constructive energy that made all Europe move on, that improved laws, roads, and maps, destroyed boundaries, and brought the Alps for the first time since Charles the Great under one master--Napoleon. His splendid military road of the Simplon I shall refer to later on. Between a.p. 1800 and 1810 he made roads over the Mont Genévre and the Mont Cenis, and surveyed and planned roads across the Little St. Bernard and the Argentiére. The Cornice road had been begun by his orders in 1802, but was not com- pleted until after his downfall. There was hardly a great pass in the Alps which did not echo to the tramp of his armies. The central knot, the St. Gotthard and Glarus Alps, was desperately fought over; the Spliigen was crossed in the snow by Macdonald. I shall now go on to take the passes more in detail, and I must first say something of the maritime pass, the Cornice. The motorist who glides in his own dust along the very modern coast road from Nice to Monte Carlo may deny that there 1s a: pass. But those of us who have driven over the mountain— where at Turbia the ‘Tropaeum Augusti,’ the monument erected in honour of the subjugation of the Alps, still sh ws its Roman strength—know that the old Alpis Maritima was what Lassels would have called ‘hill enough for any. traveller.’ 4 No doubt under the Roman Empire the coast road was fairly * See also Josias Simler et les Origines de VAlpinisme, W. A. B. Coolidge, Grenoble, Allier, 1904, p. 51**, for a lengthy note on the word marrons, citing many instances of its use at different dates. * The Voyage of Italy, by R. Lassels, Gent. J. Starkey. London, 1670.

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 171 well kept, but im mediaeval times, as Dante tells ‘us, the track from Lerici to Turbia had become a proverb for its ruggedness. Our second pass is the Col de l’Argentiére. It has been singularly neglected by modern authors, and I shall conse- quently try to make some amends by giving it more than its due proportion of space here. It was undoubtedly known to the Romans. Latin inscriptions have been found in the villages on both sides of it. But it does not figure in the Itineraries that have come down to us. As a consequence it has for the last eighty years—since Brockedon included it in his ‘Passes of the Alps ’—frequently been ignored by historical writers. Dr. Scheffel, a recent German writer,® even goes out of his way to give reasons why no pass was wanted, or found, in the broad interval between the coast and the Mont Genévre. I do not think these reasons satisfactory. He alleges the very easy nature of the Cornice road. In winter, it is true, the coast road is not liable to be blocked by snow. But at any other season the perpetual ups and downs of the Roman track, a veritable switchback all the way from Albenga to Nice, rendered it far more arduous than an average alpine pass. Dr. Scheffel goes on to discredit the Roman origin of Cuneo and Saluzzo, forgetting, surely, that many Roman inscriptions in both of these towns are recorded 1 in Mommsen’s ‘Corpus Inscriptionum.’ ® The first mention of the Col de 1’ Argentiére 1 in post-classical literature is found in a- Provencal poem, ‘La Vida de St. Honorat,’ attributed to the thirteenth century. It narrates the flight of the Saint from Vercelli over the Alps to the Iles de Lérins opposite Cannes. He is described as ‘ climbing by a narrow path and gazing on a lake on the top of a mountain. The Mount of the Argentiére in the wild forest ’"— ‘Par un cendier estrech EK reguardan al puez a som d’ una montagna : El Mont de Il’ Argentiére en la forest estrayna.’ ® Die Verkehrsgeschichte der Alpen. Dr. Scheffel. 2 vols. Berlin, 1908-1914. ¢ IT pass over the Col di Tenda because it leads not into the County of Nice (now the Department of the Alpes Maritimes) but into the seaward glens K. of Turbia, and, as Mr. Coolidge writes, ‘has been chiefly useful to the local lords.’ See Mr. Coolidge’s articles in the English Historical Remew, vol. 31.

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172 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. Passing on to A.D. 1415 we find evidence of the traffic across the Col de l’Argentiére. In that year the magistrates of Larche, the village nearest the pass on the W., were heavily fined for not maintaining the poles that served to mark the track in winter, and twelve years later those of Vinadio suffered similarly for neglect in the repair of a bridge. In the fifteenth chapter of his ‘ Historia sui temporis ’ (1533) Paulus Jovius writes : ‘The Argentarian Alps join the Cottian; among t'e Ancients they were less celebrated because the narrowness and frequent roughness of the roads render them scarcely passable for pack-horses or carts. By: the Argentiére those who are going by Avignon and Narbonne into Spain usually cross into Provence.’ Note the last sentence—it was the pass for Spain. Paulus Jovius tells the story of Francis the First’s passage in A.D. 1515 before the Battle of Marignano, and Sismondi © has dilated on it with an utter lack of geographical knowledge. Francis:had with him an ‘incredible number’ of carriages and powder-waggons, 72 large cannon and 800 smaller pieces drawn by 5000 horses. The N. passes were in the hands of the enemy. The host marched from Grenoble up the valley of the Dréme, crossing to that of the Durance. At Embrun they rested and revictualled. Thence they set out with five days’ provisions to traverse the Alps. They forded the Durance at Guillestre and crossed the Col de Vars to the upper Ubaye. At St. Paul they halted for the night, while the Rocher de St. Paul, a steep and exceedingly rotten cliff overhanging the gorge of the river, was made passable for cannon by blasting. In this hamlet, nearly 5000 feet above the sea, Francis gave a great supper to his captains, and here also he wrote a letter to his mother, Louise de Savoie, which has come down to us. It is crude in grammar and spelling, but not without schoolboy force in the simple description of the difficulties that have been overcome, and how bored the Grand Maitre has been at having to dismount and walk so much. Next day they traversed the Col de l’Argentiére and camped on the Italian side. They had further difficulty at the Barricades, but on the third day from Guillestre the defile was overcome and the army issued into the smiling open valley of the Stura, which Brockedon truthfully described as one of the fairest scenes in Piedmont in a passage which may recall Livy’s phrase in the narrative of an earlier military adventure.

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 178 Indeed the coincidences between this march and that of Hannibal stand in no need of pointing out : the provisionment in the Durance Valley, the passage of the river by a ford, the difficulties at the Rock, the Barricades met with on the descent. But I will not plunge to-night into the interminable discussion on Hannibal’s Pass. In 1590 Charles Emmanuel of Savoy visited the pass, and in a letter to his wife described the mountain as one of the most beautiful, and the lake on the top THE ASCENT TO THE COL DE L’ARGENTIERE FROM LARCHE. as one of the most charming he had seen, a very surprising and creditable sentiment for the date. The Col de Vars and Col de l’Argentiére were again in a.p. 1692, 1700, and 1744 crossed and recrossed by armies. The story of the last campaign is told by the Marquis de St. Simon. In this the Barricades were turned by sending troops by a circuitous track over the hills. When we come to later days, we learn from the Marshal de Pezay that in a.p. 1775 the Col de l’Argentiére and the Col de Vars were both practicable ‘for carriages of every de- scription.’ But there can never have been more than the rough country road which remained till the end of the nineteenth

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174 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. | century. We find Napoleon ordering a high-road over the pass with the title of ‘Route Impériale de l’Espagne en Italie.’ But his road was not made until the end of the nineteenth century. In modern times the Col de l’Argentiére has been primarily a peasant’s pass. Such obstacles as it presents lay not in crossing the watershed, which is a flat meadow with a lake, Lac DE LA MADELEINE AND COL DE L’ARGENTIERE LOOKING TOWARDS FRANCE. but in the defiles on either side. The traveller by the modern road has difficulty in realising its former terrors ; but Brockedon, a capable witness, is emphatic as to their reality even in the last century. This is his description of the gorge on the EK. side, in the valley of the Stura : * After passing the village of San Bernardo, the traveller enters a fearful defile called the Barricades. The road is carried along a shelf of rock above the river cut out of the precipices which darken and overhang the ravine and present an almost impregnable barrier to the passage of the valley.’

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 175 And Professor Spenser Wilkinson quotes Bourcet, a famous French military writer, as instancing the Barricades as‘a typical example of a position which a small force may hold against a whole army. On the French side the Ubaye below Barcelonette plunges into a wild ravine. This used formerly to be avoided by the passage of a grassy ridge—the Col de Vars, 500 feet higher than the main pass—leading to the Durance. The ascent to the Col de l’Argentiére from the point where the Col de Vars track joins the Ubaye is so slight that in point of fact the route is hardly to be reckoned as a double pass, resembling in this respect the combination of the Julier and the Maloya. On both passes villages and cornfields are found within a few hundred feet of the summit ridge. The Col de la Traversette (9679 feet) under Monte Viso is noteworthy for the tunnel pierced a few feet below its top in a.D. 1480 by Louis XI. of France and the Marquess of Saluzzo in order to promote trade between France and Italy. But it is too lofty to be used except under political exigencies, and is not a great pass. The story of the Mont Genévre might occupy my whole time. It was the great Roman Pass to the Province, made by Pompey and improved by the local kinglet who gave his name to the Cottian Alps. We have full details of its stations in the Itineraries. It was at one time peculiarly the French Pass, the Alps N. of it on both sides being till recently possessions of the House of Savoy. In the twelfth century a pope and an emperor crossed it. Charles VIII. and Louis XIII. used it. But it could not compete successfully for general traffic with the next pass on our list, the Mont Cenis. The Mont Cenis is the most direct route from Central France into Italy. Its disadvantages were the steepness of the track above Susa on the Italian side, and the narrowness of the Arc valley, which is very liable to spring avalanches. The pass is not mentioned in the Itineraries, and there is a lack of local evidence of regular Roman use, though Roman remains have been found at St. Jean in the Maurienne. Gibbon thought Constantine crossed the pass in a.p. 312 ; but this is unproven. It is incredible, however, that the Romans for generations should have garrisoned and adorned Susa without discovering that one of the easiest passes of the Alps lay within a day’s walk of their quarters. Again, long before the sixth century, in very early Christian times, the Maurienne was both ecclesi- astically and politically connected with Turin. This fact

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176 =The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. is surely sufficient circumstantial evidence that the two sides of the chain were connected by an easy and frequented pass.’ The first mention by name of the Mont Cenis is when Pippin crossed it in a.pD. 756. It became the favourite route of the Frankish kings, and, when they wanted to pass the Western . Alps, of the Holy Roman emperors. Pious pilgrims and Court ladies had adventures on it. They were taught to glissade on skins, or toboggan, from the top down to Lansle- bourg. Sometime in the eighteenth century an English party found the experience so delightful that they spent several days at Lanslebourg in order to enjoy it over and over again. They surely deserve fame as the precursors of Winter Sports. The pass had one military disadvantage. The defile below Susa was in the days before cannon very defensible. It was called the Gate of Italy. Charles the Great thought it worth while to send half his army round by the Great St. Bernard in order to be sure of taking the Lombards in the rear at this spot. Note that on all the W. passes the military defence of Italy was not on the watershed, but in a gorge on the Italian side; on the Argentiére that of the Barricades, on the Mont Genévre and Mont Cenis that of La Cluse, on the two St. Bernards that of Fort Bard. In much later days many men of letters sought Italy by this route ; to mention only a few, Coryat, Montaigne, Rousseau, Gray, and Johnson’s friend, Mrs. Thrale. Perhaps the most entertaining account of the passage is that of Coryat the Elizabethan traveller, the guest and butt of the wits at the Mermaid Tavern. He took about six hours from Lanslebourg to Novalesa, the great monastery above Susa. He rode up, but had to walk down, where ‘for the spaca of 7 miles’ he ‘continually descended headlong.’ ‘ The waies were exceeding uneasy. For they were wonderful hard, all stony and full of windings and intricate turnings of which I think there were at least 800 before I came to the foot. Still I mst many people ascending and mules laden with carriage and a great company of dun cattle driven up the hill with collars about their necks.’ After his return Coryat threatened a certain ‘ vilipendious linendraper’ with an action for belittling his Alpine feats. I should have given the side on the evidence of linendraper. 7 For an account of the early connexions of the Maurienne with Susa and Turin see an article, “ The See of Maurienne and the Valley of Susa,’ by R. L. Poole, English Historical Review, vol. 31, No. 121.

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 177 Mrs. Thrale’s (or rather Mrs. Piozzi’s) reflections on the passage of the Alps are not without interest, for she catches the sentiment of the eighteenth century on the turn. She lays down that in a mountain country ‘horror constitutes beauty.’ She finds that ‘such tremendous appearances inspire a satisfaction that there is something great to-be seen on earth’ and proceeds to a rather elaborate piece of word- painting of Savoyard scenery, while she declares that ‘the Italian side of the Alps is an astonishing journey and affords the most magnificent scenery in nature.’ Here we see traces of the beginning of the change in the mental attitude of the literary world towards mountains, of the fever which was to break out more fully in the beginning of the nineteenth century in the romantic poets, and was even to seize at odd moments on unexpected victims such as Charles Lamb. Coleridge’s hymn to Mont Blanc is well known; less familiar is the following passage from one of his letters. I have abbreviated it some- what : “TI never find myself alone within the embracement of rocks and hills, a traveller upon an Alpine road, but my spirit careers, drives, and eddies like a leaf in autumn. .. . I think that my soul must have pre-existed in the body of achamois-chaser. The simple image of the old object has been obliterated, but the feelings, the instinctive habits, and incipient actions are in me, and the old scenery awakens them. The farther I ascend from animated nature, from men and cattle and the common birds of the woods and fields, the greater becomes in me the intensity of the feeling of life. Life seems to me then an universal spirit which neither has nor can have an opposite. I do not think that it is possible that any bodily pains could eat out the love of joy, that is so substantially part of me, towards hills and rocks and steep waters; and I have had some trial.’ ® To realise this picture of the philosopher and opium eater of Highgate Hill as the inheritor of the instincts of a * chamois- chaser ’ requires some stretch of imagination! But the love of mountains has, I think, seldom been more feelingly expressed, and the passage seems worthy of being brought before the notice of our providers of Alpine snippets. | The Little St. Bernard was a convenient cut from the Cisal- pine to the Transalpine dominions of the House of Savoy. It links two great valleys, those of the Isére and the Dora Baltea. It had a hospice on the top, but its Importance seems at any - rate after Roman times to have been more local than inter- ® Cottle’s Reminiscences of S. T. Coleridge and R. Southey, 1847. VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXV. N

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178 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. national. It could not compete with the Mont Cenis when that route had become established. For one thing it holds the snow later in the year owing to its greater height and more northern position. It did not become a carriage road till a.p. 1861, but the old track was so good that in 1824 Brockedon was able to get a light carriage over it on its wheels. Its literary fame has come from the fact that Brockedon, Dr. Arnold, Bosworth Smith in this country, and Mommsen in Germany—lI mention only a few out of many names—have proclaimed, I cannot say argued, it to be the Pass of Hannibal. As I said before, I am not about to plunge into this old-world controversy. I shall not attempt to persuade you that I know the pass which Hannibal crossed. But I do know a pass he did not cross, and that is the Little St. Bernard. This can be shown on the evidence of Polybius alone. No ingenuity can force his description of the descent into Italy to fit in with the long defiles of the Val d’Aosta.® But let us dismiss Hannibal and get on to the Central Alps— what we call nowadays the Swiss Passes. For my present purpose I shall abandon the division between the Western and Central Alps (the Simplon) adopted by our former President, Mr. John Ball, in ‘The Alpine Guide,’ and treat the Pennine chain as part of the Central Alps. In this region there were in the earliest times no great roads of national migration or commerc3 such as the Durance Passes in the Western Alps, or the Brenner, Auf der Plécken, and Birnbaumer Wald in the Eastern Alps. Look for a moment at any good map of the Central Alps. The feature that must first strike the observer in this part of the range is the parallelism of the great valleys to a doubl2 chain. It is a ridge-and-furrow arrangement with interruptions. Unless you go in through the gap of the Rhone at St. Maurice, or that ‘of the Rhine near Ragatz, you see at first no way of getting ‘from the plains of Switzerland to Italy without crossing at least two passes. Closer examination reveals the spot where the Reuss pierces like a needle the northern ridge and leads to the St. Gotthard. But for centuries this gap remained prac- tically impassable owing to the gorge of Schéllenen. Here then you have the three main lines of approach settled, but the actual point in the ridge to be crossed has varied according to local obstacles and local conditions—physical and political. ® See on this question Hannbal’s March through the Alps (Spenser Wilkinson ; Oxford, 1911) and Hannibal once more (D. W. Fresh- field ; London, 1911).

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 179 The Rhone Pass par excellence was at one date the St. Bernard, later the Simplon. Minor snow-passes, the Col de Fenétre, the St. Theodul, and the Monte Moro or Antrona Pass were from time to time brought into use, but mostly for local traffic. Do not run away with the idea some writers seem to have that because a pass is not in the classical Itineraries it was wholly unknown or untraversed. It may be a help to realise what the state of the Alps was in early Roman times if we compare it with the state of a newly conquered region like the Caucasus fifty years ago. There were not a few passes in the Central and Western Caucasus known to the Russians, and occasionally used for military purposes, which were not to be found in their official Itineraries, and were ignored by general geographers. The Great St. Bernard has a varied story. The Romans had a garrison at Aosta and another at Octodurum, now Martigny. At Agaunum, now St. Maurice, the gate of the Valais, where ‘a key unlocks a kingdom,’ the Theban legion is said to have been decimated for refusing to pay divine honours to their emperor. Fugitives from it, according to legend, supplied those queer saints with water-buckets and sore legs who figure in faded frescoes on the walls of wayside chapels. They were the evangelists of the Western Alps. The Romans as thelr empire grew needed a direct pass to Helvetia and the Rhine, and they habitually used the Great St. Bernard. They built on the top a temple, or a shrine, to the local deity Jupiter Penninus, and they erected a hospice at St. Pierre, or Peter’s Castle as a monk of Canterbury calls it, on the N. side. The Romans provided such refuges at fixed distances on most of their main Alpine roads. After the break-up of the Roman Empire the Val d’Aosta fell not to the Lombards but to the Burgundians, and the frontier of Italy was not on the Alps but in the sub-alpine gorges at Fort Bard on the St. Bernard and Aviliana on the Mont Cenis. The ‘pass was in constant use. In the eighth century Bede tells us many English nobles and common folk, men and women, made the pilgrimage to Rome. Some of them may have met, in the winter of a.p. 801, the Jew Isaac leading an elephant as a present from Harun al-Rashid to Charles the Great, surely the first of his race since Hannibal to cross the Alps. It seems to have been Charles the Great’s favourite pass, and many Holy Roman emperors trod in his footsteps. Our king, Canute, who himself in a.p. 1027 crossed the Alps, remonstrated with pope and princes against the extortions to which our

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180 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. pilgrims and merchants were frequently subjected in the gorges of the Alps. From the ninth and tenth centuries onwards the Great St. Bernard was much favoured by British and even Icelandic pilgrims. They utilised the waterway of the Rhine as far as Basle, and then crossed the W. of Switzerland by the Roman road passing Aventicum. At Vevey they prayed in the church of St. Martin, the patron saint of travellers, for a safe passage of the Mount of Jove. Thence they followed the narrow road along the lake shore past the walls and towers of Chillon—lucky if the lord of the castle happened to be at home and amusing himself by watching out of his window the troops of passers-by. Then, we read, Count Aymon (he lived about A.D. 1840) would invite the pilgrims to food and drink and bestow alms and clothing on the needy. And so they came to the great monastery of St. Maurice, where they admired the gifts left by famous men of old who had safely passed the mountains, the golden jug of Charles the Great and the precious locket of St. Louis. The monastery of St. Bernard (founded in A.D. 1008) had some curious connexions with England. It, owned the Chapel of Romford and the Hospital of Ilavering in Essex, which was bought from it by William of Wykeham and presented to New College, which I believe still holds it. , Our countrymen did not enjoy the passage of the Alps ; one of these tenth-century pilgrims put mto the documents he drafted the followimg imprecation: ‘May he who breaks this covenant be tortured by the bitter blasts of glaciers and the Pennine army of evil spirits.’ But they were still more afraid of the Saracens who infested all the western passes, the freebooters who had found a footing in Provence. Very few of the Englishmen who frequent the Riviera have explored their lair, Fraxinetum, now La Garde Freinet, on the crest of the Montagne des Maures. On a crag projecting from the skyline some seven miles to the N. of the natural harbour of St. Tropez, and overlooking on the other side the broad valley which slopes down to Fréjus, the freebooters established their eyrie. All that remains of it are a few walls and cisterns cut deep into the natural rock. Hence their bands went out to sweep the passes of pilgrims, or to pick up and hold to ransom a fat abbot. They got as far as the Great St. Bernard and even farther, into Graubiinden; though in some of the chronicles it is difficult to distinguish their raids from those of freebooters, Hungarian and others, from the N. or E.

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 181 We may dismiss the legend which assigned to the Saasthal names of Alphubel and Mischabel an Arabic origin. There was once a professor of Arabic in one of the universities of, shall we say Laputa, who thought Distel Alp might also be Arabic—he found in it a corruption of words meaning ‘the haunt of an eagle.” The donkey who carries up the herds- man’s packs to the Alp might have furnished him with a simpler derivation. As to Pontresina and Castel Mur in Graubiinden, one is an Italianised form of the Romansch Punt Raschuns (Pons Rhaetiae), and the other marks the Roman station ‘ Ad Murum’ on the Italian side of the Septimer, where a wall, still existing, served to mark the frontier of Praegallia (Bergell) and bar the entrance to Italy. The Saracens were finally driven back seawards about A.D. 970. A few years later St. Bernard of Menthon founded the monastery on the top of the famous pass and substituted his name for that of Jupiter Penninus. After the tenth century, when the danger from freebooters was removed, and the passes of the Western Alps resumed their place as roads to Rome, the Great St. Bernard became a frequented commercial route, and the monks and their famous dogs found plenty to do in the winter, and still more in the dangerous spring months. I must hurry over its later story, quoting only a few scraps of curious detail quarried by the late Signor Vaccarone out of the accounts in the State archives at Turm. From these we learn that in the fourteenth century bales of English wool passed in quantity through Martigny, and paid an impost per bale for the maintenance of the road as tar as Riddes. Travellers and their guides were also taxed. The mhabitants of St. Rhémy were granted an exclusive right of acting as gsuides—a sort of forerunner of a Guides’ bureau. Laster presents were sent across the Alps to the Court of Savoy. The Bishop of Sion sent on one occasion twelve marmots, the Prior of Chamonix in a.p. 1375 twelve baskets of what is described as ‘most exquisite butter.’ This is notable as an early proof of the easy relations of Chamonix with the outer world. The ‘Signori’ of Val d’Aosta sent still more mixed presents to their sovereigns; the Countess at the same date received some barrels of tha muscat wine of Chambave and several bears, the Count a number of bouquctins. One more note. In January a.p. 1484 Amadeus the Pighth, anxious to assist his general in an attack on Chivasso, suc- ceeded in sending a heavy piece of artillery, a bombarda, over

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182 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. the Great St. Bernard, thus anticipating by centuries the feat of Napoleon. In May a.p. 1800, before the snows had fully melted, the monks saw a strange sight—Napoleon and his army on the way to Marengo. Fighting was going on in the Maritime Alps and on the Genoese coast between the French and Austrians, and Napoleon having collected his army at Dijon was able to mislead the enemy and burst from an unexpected quarter on their flank into Piedmont. Some historians have disparaged this feat. Those of us who have crossed the Alps in May, or even in June, by one of the Great Passes and have been tilted out of our sledges into soft snow-beds will not think so lightly of it. I possess a medal of the time, in which Napoleon is represented as breaking the rocks not with vinegar but in a Jovelike way with flashes of lightning. On the reverse is the head of the stately Josephine. In fact Napoleon, in place of leading the way, seems to have waited three days at St. Maurice until his vanguard had safely reached Aosta. More- over, in place of caracoling over the Alps on a charger the hero rode a led mule. History might have missed this detail but for the circumstance that Napoleon showed his gratitude to the animal’s leader by conferring on him a pension. It is curious that the Great St. Bernard was one of the last additions to Alpine carriage roads, the new road having been completed only in the present century. I pass on to the tracks other than the Great St. Bernard between the Rhone Valley and Italy. For centuries the St. Bernard found no rival among the possible passes of the Pennines. The Col de Fenétre, the Collon, and the St. Théodul, all glacier passes, might be crossed by peasants, pedlars, or refugees, but they were never more than byways. None of them are difficult, but on the two latter crevasses may be met with. Consequently we gather from Simler’s ‘ Descriptio Val- lesiae’ that already in the sixteenth century Zermatt had learnt the use of glacier guides, ropes, alpenstocks, and snow spectacles. | The St. Théodul was from a.p. 1538 known as par excellence the Glacier Pass, Gletscher Mons, or Monts Roeses. Roesa or Ruize is the Val d’Aostan term for a glacier. It is used in De Saussure’s ‘ Voyages.’ As in so many cases the name of the pass slowly got itself attached to the mountains about 2 T Principi di Savoia attraverso le Alpi nel Medievo (1270-1520) ; Torino, Via Alfieri 9 (Club Alpino), 1902.

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 183 it, and finally to the highest of them; hence we have our Monte Rosa. Roman coins going back for six centuries from A.D. 400 have been found on the crest. It was fortified in A.D. 1688 to prevent the Waldenses returning by it to their native villages. Far more important passes were the Monte Moro and the Antrona Pass leading, like the Simplon, from Canton Valais to Domo d’Ossola and Lago Maggiore. They were rough mule- paths, but the first to the E. of the great ice-barrier of the Pennine Alps, the longest continuous ice-field in Central _Europe. They were superseded by the Simplon. There is no satisfactory evidence that the Simplon was used by the Romans. The gorge of Gondo on its southern side was a formidable obstacle. Until relatively recent times what traffic there was avoided it by a second pass leading from the head of the gorge through Val Bugnanco to Domo d’Ossola. The path, before Napoleon made his road, is described as a dangerous track. It served, however, as a useful trade route, and De Saussure, who crossed it, speaks of it as a good mule: road, though narrow in places. The first hospice on. it was built in a.p. 1234. To the commercial importance of the Simplon as a road to Milan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the stately house of the Stockalpers at Brieg bears witness. Evelyn gives us an interesting account in his diary of his passage on horseback mm a.p. 1646. It is worth noting that he crossed in spring and not in autumn, as owing to an interpolation Dr. Arnold was led to think. The error led Dr. Amold into speculations on a change in the climate of the Alps which had no solid foundation. Napoleon, who found once enough for the St. Bernard, made the fortune of the Simplon by his new road, and from his day it has eclipsed all the other passes between the Mont Cenis and the Brenner as an easy way to Italy. Farther E. the route of the Grimsel and the Gries, a double pass, carried some ‘traffic from Canton Bern into the Milanese, and bands of hungry peasants trooped over it in years of famine from the Vale of Meiringen to buy meal for their families. There was a vague but general impression in the Middle Ages and down to the eighteenth century that the St. Gotthard group was one of the loftiest parts of the Alps. The logical ground for it was that the great rivers, the Rhone and the Rhine, have their sources there, and that rivers flow downhill. Its wild character may have helped. Near it, as in a sort of No Man’s Land, many Bishoprics met—Chur, Constance, Milan,

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184 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. Novara, Como, Sion, and Lausanne: KE. of it was Germania; W. Gallia. Before a passage was established from N. to S. there was a certain traffic across it from EK. to W. by the Ober- alp and Furka, to which Andermatt and Hospenthal owed their origin. It was doubtless) by these passes that the German-speaking colonies, which established themselves in the Upper Valais and in the heads of some of the Italian valleys, found a way westwards. I have already pointed out the natural advantage of the St. Gotthard in its enabling a traveller to take a straight course through the Alps from Basle to Milan without crossing more . than one mountain ridge. But this advantage was for centuries more than counterbalanced by various obstacles. The shores of the Bay of Uri were practically pathless; this perhaps helped to keep off armies and emperors who travelled with . troops of horsemen. There was a more serious obstacle in the gorge below Andermatt. So formidable was it that the Urseren Thal was for years attached to the Convent of Disentis in the Vorder-Rhein Thal, and only later became part of Canton Uri. Before the Urner Loch was pierced in a.p. 1707 all traffic had to pass over a wooden gallery, the Strebende Briicke, the spray-washed balcony confused by Schiller with the original Devil’s Bridge. It is not till the beginning of the thirteenth century, A.D. 1236, that we hear of traffic over the St. Gotthard, and from that time forward the traffic was almost entirely commercial. The merchants of Lucerne, who had previously gone round by Chur and the Septimer, began to use it as a road to Italy. The rise of the St. Gotthard corresponds with the growth of Bern in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the commercial rise of Milan after the peace of Constance. It was pre-eminently the Milanese Pass. The pasturages on the top and the southern slope belonged to the Archbishop of Milan, who in a.p. 1481 enlarged a hospice for travellers that had been founded about 1830. Then in the fifteenth century the Swiss got hold of Val Leventina and, after some reverses, made good in a.p. 1512 the conquests which they hold to this day as Canton Ticino. In the Napoleonic wars this region saw some of the bitterest mountain fighting between the French, Austrians, and Russians. The St. Gotthard was not made into a proper carriage road till a.p. 1820; but in the preceding century, in a.p 1757, De Saussure met an Englishman on the top who had succeeded 1 See Mercurius Helveticus, J. J. Wagner, Ziirich, 1688.

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 185 in driving or lifting a light carriage over it. This Englishman was Charles Greville, the father of the Diarist. The exploit cost him £24; the services of eight men as well as four horses were found necessary. About the same date the annual traffic over the pass amounted, we are told, to 40,000-50,000 travellers, 7000 tramps, and 150,000 animals. Its railway is now by far the most stupendous example of modern mountain engineering in Kurope. The next pass to the St. Gotthard, the Lucmanier, the Pass of the Great Forest, Lucus Magnus, leads from the head of the Vorder-Rhein Thal to Bellinzona. The famous convent of Disentis was its starting-point. It sank in commercial import- ance as the St. Gotthard rose. But it had been from early times a frequent route of the Holy Roman emperors on their way to Italy. It was crossed by emperors in a.p. 965, 1004, 1146, and 1186, and again in 1481. But it was the Abbot of Disentis (a Prince of the Empire) who did most to keep it open by building hospices on the mountain, and in a.p. 1780 started a wheel road. The Abbey was ruined by Napoleon, and the road was not completed for ninety years, till a.p. 1871. The San Bernardino (named after the Sienese saint) was only occasionally used. It was first called ‘Mons Avium,’ and may have been known. to the Romans. MHorace’s choice of an appropriate epithet for the source of the Rhine—lutewm (muddy) —looks as if some Roman had been near the spot.!*_ The last two passes lead to Bellinzona and Lago Maggiore. The remain- ing passes of the Grisons all concentrate on the head of the Lake of Como. The difficult gorges of the Hinter-Rhein rendered the Spliigen less serviceable than the Septimer. But it was well known to the Romans, and in the Middle Ages. Leonardo da Vinci in his notes gives some amusing details of a trip he made towards it. In the Val di Chiavenna, he tells us, there are deer, bouquetin, chamois, and terrible bears, but you have’to climb on hands and feet to catch them. From anile to mile there are good inns and good living at four soldi the reckoning, and up at the head of the valley—this is on the ascent of the Spliigen— waterfalls of 700 feet which itis a 12 The received text reads: ‘* Defingit Rheni luteum caput,’ and the commentators suggest that the minor poet to whom Horace is referring showed his bad taste by hbelling the source of the Rhine, which they imagine to be, like most sources, clear. But‘ defingere’ is a verb found hardly anywhere else in the classics. ‘ Depingit ’ would seem to me a reasonable emendation.

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186 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. pleasure to see’ ; no doubt the fall of the Madesimo, which the old road passed under. _ The passage of an army under Marshal Macdonald in the winter of a.p. 1800 was one of the most daring feats of the French forces in the Alps. The modern carriage road through the Via Mala and over the pass was not completed till a.p. 1828. The Spliigen 1s one of the passes that illustrates well the formid- able barrier made by gorges and how long they remain impene- trable. Some of its traffic is said to have gone over a second high pass into a side glen of the Vorder-Rhein in order to avoid the Hinter-Rhein defiles. The most direct pass from Chur to Chiavenna is undoubtedly the now neglected Septimer. It found a rival in the, for travellers from Lago di Como, more circuitous Julier. The two passes are practically of the same height ; that both were in use in Roman times the name of the hamlet in the Oberhalbstein where their tracks rejom, Bivio, affords sufficient proof. But neither is shown in the Peutinger Table, and only one of them is mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary. This gives the distance between Admurum (Promontogno) and Tinnetio (Tinzen) as XV miles. In fact, the distance by the Septimer is about twenty-five Roman miles. A second X may have been dropped out. By the Maloja and Julier the distance is nearly double. The latter route involves going round two sides of a triangle in place of along the base. The Julier was probably used chiefly. in combination with the Bernina. Dr. Scheffel, however, is at pains to maintain the paradox that the Julier was the older and more frequented pass. His principal argument, the finding near the top of a hoard of Roman coins, seems inconclusive. A similar discovery has been made on the St. Théodul, which was certainly not the first or favourite Roman pass over the Pennine Alps. In the Middle Ages the Septimer ranked with the Great St. Bernard and the Brenner as a pass for emperors. It was under the special patronage of the Bishops of Chur, | who derived a revenue from its tolls. One of them used his. position at the Imperial Court to obtain a prohibition against travellers using any other pass in this region! The unfortunate traveller over the passes in the Middle Ages was met at every turn by tolls and taxes on his goods, levied by bishops, con- vents, or counts, and this naturally led to his at times using byways. The natural advantage of the Septimer lay in the fact that the only bad gorge on the N. side could be easily turned by climbing over the braad low saddle of the Lenzer Heide, The

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The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. 187 track over the Alpine crest constructed in a.p. 1390 still exists, and in its present ruinous condition provides one of the most objectionable paths for foot-goers in my knowledge. The reason for its disuse 1s that when carriage roads were called for the Julier, a pass known but apparently little used in Roman times, was preferred. It fulfilled a double purpose as a means of access to the Engadine and as a road to Italy, for in the absence of any ascent on the N. side of the Maloja the Upper Engadine serves simply as a landing halfway down the stairs to Lago di Como. The Maloja, I may note here, is interesting geographically (or morphologically as the scientists say) as the best instance of what a recent German writer calls a valley-pass penetrating the entire chain. The great longitudinal valley of the Inn is continued by the much lower trench of the Bregaglia, and sepa- rated from it by nothing but a grassy bank. The nearest approach to this feature in the Alpine watershed is the mound in the Pusterthal which divides the headwaters of the Adige and the Drave. © In the Middle Ages the Julier was used mostly as a through route in connexion with the Bernina and the passes of the Bergamasque Alps, of which the chief were the Passo di San Marco and the Aprica. These, when the Spanish occupied the Milanese and had a castle at the head of the Lago di Como, enabled travellers to avoid their dominions and ‘ pop up,’ as Lassels says, at Brescia. . In the E. of Graubimden, in the Livigno district, there are quite a number of passes which I must leave out of considera- tion, though some of them are not unknown in military history. They cross relatively low grassy ridges, but are defended by intricate valleys and gorges. The next important pass is the Umbrail Pass or Wormser Joch. It was frequently used during the great days of Milan in the sixteenth century by princes and merchants. It was the direct route from Tyrol by the Inn Valley and the Vintsch- gau to the Lago di Como by the Val Tellina. It was only in A.D. 1820 that it was superseded by the 800 feet higher and adjacent Stelvio. At that date the Austrians wanted a direct military access to the Milanese, and, since Switzerland owned the Miinster Valley N. of the Wormser Joch, had to take their road over a loftier ridge, the highest carriage pass in the Alps, 9055 feet. When you read in historical works of the passage of the Stelvio in early times you may, as a rule, take it that the Umbrail Pass is intended. |

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188 The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. Here I touch on the limits of the Austro-Italian frontier. Let me refer in conclusion to what seems to me one of the main features in the story of the Passes. In the beginning they were few and far between, but as Roman roads decayed and the Empire broke up, as frontiers and custom duties and road dues multiplied, and greedy nobles and bishops exacted tolls, they became more numerous. Merchants looked out for the cheapest and safest, and not necessarily the shortest road. When all tracks were bad there was not so much to choose between. But when roads for wheels were once estab- lished, traffic again became concentrated, so that you find the. carriage roads of the nineteenth century practically reviving the Strata Romana of the first century. | And what about the twentieth century ? I confess I have felt a certain sadness in preparing these few and imperfect notes, which in no sense pretend to be a history of the Passes.¥ For to write of the Alpine Passes seems, as it were, to compose an obituary notice. Will they soon be no more, superseded by horrid, if convenient, tunnels? The old diligences are being taken off. No more, as a rhymer has it:: ‘No more the jangling post-chaise plies Across St. Gotthard’s frozen ridge ; The De’il grown older, grows more wise, He burrows where he built a bridge.’ No longer shall we climb slowly among the pines and water- _ falls into the keen mountain air, then plunge down the long zigzags to the chestnuts and the trellised vines and the campanili and the little untidy brown towns, every stone of which speaks and smells of Italy. We shall be carried lke sardines in a box from one Palace Hotel to another. A single lifetime has done it. JI can remember sixty years ago, when a dozen diligences started from in front of “ The Three Kings ’ at Basle. Then for a generation we lost the approach to the Alps, the wonderful vision of the snows from the Jura. But time brings for the aged its revenges and compensations. When, like some of my contemporaries, we grow stout and in the words of the Public Orator can ‘only climb the Gornergrat and are rather proud of that,’ there is still a resource left to us. Do not #3 For fuller details I would refer the English reader to the works of that indefatigable student of Alpine history, Mr. W. A. B. Coolidge. See in particular The Alps in Nature and History. Methuen. 1908.

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DEFILE OF LE BARRICATE. VAL STURA., SCENE NEAR SAMBUCO, NEAR PONTE BERNARDO, VAL STURA. From RroeKrrnon’s Paccrea

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S. Puntedi Valsoera. N. Moncimonur. Bocchetta dei Ronchi. R.L.G. Irving, photo, FROM THE COLLE DELLE UJE. | ..Colle delle Uje. .. Piccola Uja. . Grande Uja. . Gialin, R.L.G. Irving, photo. CIARDONEY GLACIER. FROM GAP N.E. OF SCATIGLION.

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Through Val Soera. 189 scorn the motor. It will enable you not only to revisit the Alpine Passes, but to approach them, as our ancestors did, through the stately avenues and vineclad hills of Central France and the idyllic landscapes and picturesque mediaeval townlets of the Swiss lowlands; it will help you to ramble at leisure over the sunny hills of Savoy and to enjoy once more the famihar beauties of Val d’Aosta and the flower-decked meadows of the Col de Lautaret or the Dolomites. - TorRouGH VAL SOERA. By THE EDITOR. ERHAPS it may not be altogether superfluous to explain . the position of Val Soera. If a climber leaves Cogne for Noasca or Locana he may go up the Valnontey and crossing the Col de Grandcrou descend the Val di Noaschetta to Noasca or passing the Col Monéi reach Locana by the Val Piantonetto. Should he desire to follow a more easterly route the Valeille and the Col Teleccio will bring him into the Val Piantonetto and so to Locana. All these routes are well known and fairly often used, but there is a yet more easterly passage of which this paper 1s to speak. The traveller may traverse the 8. Sengie Col and either cross the Ciardoney glacier to the Colle delle Uje—in which case he will find himself above the eastern branch of Val Soera—or cross the same glacier westwards to the Valsoera glacier, and he will then stand at the entrance to the western branch of Val Soera. To reach Locana he descends Val Soera and then rounding the ridge between that valley and the Val Piantonetto into the latter valley joins the route of the Cols Monei and Teleccio and drops down on Pere- becche and Locana. On August 17, 1918, I started with Benjamin Pession, of Val Tournanche, from Cogne for the southern Sengie Col. Though the air was crisp and the voice of the torrent insistent, yet the subtle glamour of the moonlight made our progress almost like the involuntary movement of a dream. But when I became thoroughly awake as the mule bore me up the steep zigzags above Lilla I began to dream in earnest of how the beautiful day should be put to good purpose. As to the tramp of three hours up the Valcille, I used to think

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190 Through Val Soera. that it prepared one for the day’s work: then I labelled it the seasoning to the day’s pleasure, as the mustard is to the beef: then I took it as inevitable: lastly I said, ‘ Is there no “corpus vile” to do it for me?’ Hence the mule which carried me from 2.40 to 5.80. The path towards the end of the Valeille became gradually less and less practicable for the mule, owing to the damage done by storms, and so at 5.80 I dis- mounted: and said good-bye to the mule and his ruddy and very good-natured owner. We then went on slowly over slopes of moraine and snow to the flat part of the Valeille Glacier and had breakfast in welcome sunshine. The many couloirs in the cirque at the head of the glacier were full of snow. Then, after roping, we made for the southern Sengie Col. Benjamin had a considerable amount of step-cutting, mostly in hard snow, with an occasional small patch of ice. So to the Col. Just as we started down to the ' Ciardoney Glacier, which was as white and beautiful in reality as it had been in my memory, I looked back at the three Saints. Andrew and Orso were almost as imposing as Peter. We crossed towards the Colle delle Uje, casting our eyes in passing over our routes of 1912 on the Piccola Uja. -As we drew ‘near the foot of the pass I examined the ascent with some excitement. Would it be easy snow, in which case I should not get a rest without calling for it, or ice, which would please me better, for then I should enjoy leisure and arrive on the pass quite fresh—and then I should perhaps be able to carry out the scheme of which I had been dreaming and which was now beginning to crystallize in my mind. The ascent, though short, is steep, and Benjamin’s axe sounded pleasantly to his Monsieur as he made a model staircase. When we reached the Colle there was the view which I longed for—the vast promontory of the Maritime Alps with clouds in slowly moving waves—glorious in the extreme. The near ‘plain was hidden by grey-pink vapour. The view from the Colle delle Uje looking across the Ciar- doney Glacier towards the N.W. is striking. The three Saints are imposing and so is the Ondezana. If not in scale, yet in stately bearing they will compare with more famous groups. Mr. R. L. G. Irving, who knows the ground well, writes to me of this corner of the Cogne Mountains: ‘ There is some special attraction about that little bit of country. It strikes one as a rare combination of virgin soil and friendliness. Usually the unexplored parts of high mountains are uncommonly hostile, to judge by accounts in the ALPINE JOURNAL.’

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Punte di Valsoera. . Grande Uja di Ciardoney ..Piccola Uja di Ciardoney a 3 Fs vo Rok: Sty Bele? 6 aro ; R. L. G. Irving, photo. FROM BOCCHETTA, SOUTH OF SCATIGLION. (Not Bocchetta di Ciardoney.) Levanna. Piccola Uja ai Ciardoney. Becco di Valsoera. ..E. Levanna. .. Levanetta ..Central : ‘ ! ! 1 i ’ ’ ' ' ‘ 1 oa te R. L.G. Irving, photo. FROM GRANDE UJA DI CIARDONEY.

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Ondezana. Gr. St. Pierre. St. André. St. Ours. i t t : : i i ' cae ' Le ' a | 4 R.L. G. Irving, photo. FROM GRANDE UJA DI CIARDONEY. Becco di Valsoera. Ondezana. R L.G. Irving, photo. FROM PUNTA (N.) DI VALSOERA.

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Through Val Soera. 191 Then, when Benjamin remarked that we might take off the rope, as there were no crevasses in the snow-field before us that filled the end of the eastern arm of the Val Soera, my joy was complete.! To know when to relax discipline with safety is one of the attributes of the satisfactory leader—it is also one of Benjamin’s gifts. Did he not once allow me to descend a couloir of 3000 feet without the rope and behind him ? Twice on that descent I think I accepted help, but I am sure we got down much more quickly than if we had been roped and without any serious risk. Where traveller and guide know each other completely there is liberty ! So we descended while four chamois chased each other about for our amusement. We then made for the gap between the Punta di Val Soera ‘(N.), first climbed by Messrs. Irving and Tyndale in 1912, -and the Punta di Val Soera (58.), first chmbed by 8.8. P. Viglino ‘and V. Paglieri on September 8, 1911, when they also crossed from W. to E. the pass between the two Punte di Val Soera and gave it the name of Bocchetta dei Ronchi. Having reached over slabs—but enjoyable slabs—the Bocchetta, from ‘which the Viso was a splendid sight, we went up Mr. Irving’s peak and found his cairn. Then I endeavoured to persuade Benjamin that the proper thing for us to do was to descend into the western arm of the Val Soera, for 1 had now resolved to make my way to Locana if it were anyhow possible, and -so gain a knowledge of the wildest of all the valleys that lead down from the main mass of the Gran Paradiso Group to the Val d’Orco. Those of Broglio, Ciamoseretto, Noaschetta, and Piantonetto I knew well, and had even descended the Val d’Eugio, the stoniest of stony glens, but no Enghshman, so far as I was aware, had ever traversed Val Soera. When Benjamin agreed, I led down—Benjamin occasionally 1 A topographical note is perhaps advisable at this point. Val Soera at its head is divided into two bays: the eastern is bounded by the ridge which runs from the Moncimour to the Gialin, and then from that peak to the Grande Uja di Ciardoney. From the last- named mountain another ridge runs to the Piccola Uja from which springs the southward running ridge containing the Punte di Val Soera. The western bay is bounded on the N. by the spurs of the Piccola Uja and the Ghiacciaio di Valsoera; the aréte containing the Punte di Valsoera before mentioned forms its eastern wall ; ‘while the ridge which runs southwards from the Becca di Val Soera (formerly known as the Scaigoun or Scatiglion) encloses it on the W. The Bocchetta dei Ronchi is between the two Punte di Valsoera,

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192 Through Val Soera. shouting directions from above, but I mostly followed my own devices, as of course I could see details which he could not. I kept as much as possible in a sort of cut in the cliff with an overhang here and there to get shelter from stones if they fell, and there was evidence that they sometimes indulged themselves that way. I made as much haste as possible, and only recollect one troublesome place where I had to cross a slab sideways. At the end of the steep part there were several colonies of Primula, which I took to be pedemontana. We then came to a wilderness of great blocks—a distressful and detestable region, where I began to tire a little, but a brief halt to take off the rope set me right, and eventually we got clear of the blocks and the moraine and sat down to a meal, where a suspicion of turf began, and a few linarias and ranunculi refreshed the eye after the stony monotony of the big blocks from which we had just escaped. Moreover, the stream from the glacier at the head of the valley —the Ghiacciaio di Valsoera of the new map—made a pleasant shimmering and murmuring of water. When, after a halt of nearly three-quarters of an hour, we went on, I felt that with three passes behind us Locana would surely be reached. By and by, on looking back at our Col in waves of mist and sunshine, it gave us the satisfaction of seeming of amazing size and height. We then came to the Val Soera chalets among the bleakest and dirtiest surroundings, and my companion was so horrified at the unclean and unkempt appear- ance of the herdsmen that he said: ‘ No—nothing could induce me to follow such a calling. I would sooner seek the plain and take my chance.’ These were strong words for Benjamin to use, for I have no doubt that he holds with Mrs. Browning : ‘ Hills draw like heaven And stronger sometimes, holding out their hands To pull you from the vile flats up to them.’ Poor fellows, they were civil enough, but their surroundings must militate sorely against cleanliness in dress. It would almost appear that if the man who feeds fat oxen should himself be fat, he who tends dirty cows should himself be dirty. If dirt were trumps what hands they would hold ! The whole basin looked weird, wet, and storm-beaten. There were stretches of cotton grass which showed a ghostly white, but shivered sadly as though they found themselves forlorn and friendless in a hopeless world. Matthew Arnold said

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Through Val Soera. 193 of Holland ‘ you live in a constant smell of ooze, at least in summer,—hot ooze when in the sun, cold ooze when you go . under the trees.’’ Here there are of course no trees, but the wind does the refrigerating for you. I cannot help thinking that this valley, like La Bruna, must be a favourite haunt of mists and storms. A mediaeval traveller would certainly have thought it an abode of devils, or at least an antechamber of Tartarus, but Stygian as it is near the chalets it must not be forgotten that Valsoera leads also after much turmoil to Elysium, or what is equivalent to Val d’Orco. After passing to the right of the chalets we came to one of the most curious places I have ever seen. The path led across bare rock, sometimes comparatively steep, but easy to walk upon when you got used to it, as the surface was rough. At the beginning of the traverse Benjamin walked below me to ‘field’ me if I slipped, but this precaution was soon recognised to be unnecessary. Below us was the Val Soera Lake—a large sheet narrowing at its southern end, deep blue, silent, unruffled, as if its waters were gathering strength for the work they will have to do hereafter. I could not help wondering how the cows managed to cross such country as the path led us over, and Benjamin said that accidents must happen occasionally. Before we got to the Bubna Lake (in older maps called -Balma) the path was not so bad, though not altogether easy to find, but after we left that lake we came to a place where the path appeared to mount to the right, yet the map seemed to indicate that it went to the left. Benjamin made for a bridge over the effluent of the lake, but I called him back, for I was sure we had not to cross the stream. We then continued by the stream round a projecting mound or knoll. When we had turned the corner we saw the path above us to the right and to reach it had to take to a brook, a feeder of the lake effluent. We found a precarious passage through the little gorge of the stream, though it seemed that nothing short of a miracle could save us from falling into the water. The miracle happened, and, escaping immersion, we safely reached the proper path. Here we found perhaps the finest Dianthus neglectus I have seen. This beautiful little mountain flower is peculiarly plentiful in the valleys opening on the Val d’Orco from the N. On the wild rocks above the Val Soera Lake a Campanula which I cannot name (it reminded me a little of Zoysi and excisa) was beautiful, and in many spots, especially among the VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXV. O

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194 Through Val Soera. slabs, quite abundant. The common harebell occasionally grew side by side and emphasised the rich colour of its small but handsome relative. There seemed, when the two grew close together, a touch of red in the unrecognised variety which attracted one’s attention at once. Eventually, after passing three groups of chalets where there were a considerable number of civil people and a certain variety of harmless dogs, we came to the descent—steep and in many places fringed and even embowered with hazels—to the Val Piantonetto, which we reached at 8. Giacomo. There are divers varieties of paths which prove irksome at the end of a long day, but none more destructive to boots and good temper than one paved with rough cobbles. The memory of previous tribulation on this particular path was offensive, but in no way exaggerated the reality. To slip off one cobble and grind your foot against the next moves even the meekest to speak unadvisedly with his lips. Still we ‘knew now where we were, so on we went. The dusk soon began to close in upon us, and when just below 8. Lorenzo we came to a bridge the question arose were we to cross it or not ? Memory said ‘ Cross,’ Prudence said ‘ Consult the map.’ So Benjamin, after laborious research in the depths of his sack, solemnly produced one of those bits of candle which are so dear to guides, and though it did not throw its beams far yet 1t enabled me to decide that the bridge must be crossed. Then the dusk deepened, and the stream by the path-side sometimes usurped its neighbour’s territory, but I was now happy as we splashed through the trespassing waters for I knew we were not far from our Elysium. Then the moist evening air became heavy with the varied fragrance that always fills the side glens immediately above Val d’Orco at the fall of night —and this excited me like a new enthusiasm. So we stumbled down the wooded slope into the moonlight and the main valley just above Perebecche. We here seemed to be in an enchanted country. The moon that had siniled on our setting out now looked down graciously on our coming in, the fresh-cut hay in the meadows by the Orco gave out an all-pervading scent, and by and by, as the road drew away a little from the loud Orco, the fern-bordered brook on our right sang a pleasant song of youth and freshness in the pauses of its great neigh- bour’s hoarse music. It was 10.80 when we entered Locana. There we sought for beds at the ‘Three Partridges,’ but a gloriously attired damsel affirmed positively that that hostelry was full. Politeness forbade us to contradict a lady, but we

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Through Val Soera. (195 could not suppress our unspoken incredulity. Falstaff would have said stoutly, ‘If this house is full, call me horse,’ and perhaps have been shown into the stable, but we retired ignominiously, there was not even a hayloft offered us. Then eventually we found kindly treatment and clean beds “at a eafé kept by a man and his wife who had lived some time in Wisconsin, in U.S.A., and spoke English well. A sweet-scented, large-blossomed white Plantain Lily garnished the balcony of my room, and in the wooden gallery of a house opposite was a fine specimen of Lilium speciosum. One always notices fresh flowers in Val d’Orco; my previous re- collections are of carnations and scarlet geraniums. The next morning one sad disappointment befell us. “T'was all in vain we searched the shops and stalls for such peaches , as we had found on our previous visit. Some of the virtue of the very sunshine seemed to disappear with our vanished hopes of peaches. A public automobile took us to Pont at a charge of 2 francs 50 centimes for the two of us. The road in some of the hamlets was so narrow that the motor only just found room to pass. In fact one was reminded of the York tradesman’s answer to Sydney Smith when he said that Coney Street was so narrow that there was not room for two carriages to pass: ‘ Oh yes, Sir, thereis an inch and half to spare.’ The most vivid memory of that ride that remains with me is the flight of such goats as were in or near the road as we appeared. They seemed to regard the automobile with terror, and, bolting through fences as soon as they caught sight of it, seemed to make over the hills and far away ! Pont Canavese was crowded with people attracted by a cattle fair and its attendant excitements. We found another automobile at the railway station which soon took us up the beautifully wooded valley of the Soana to Ronco. I observed one curious sight at Pont: where the crowd was densest the swallows seemed to be busiest. They flew very low, some- times actually between the heads of the people, with an air of positive enjoyment and blithe freedom very delightful to watch. Often as I have traversed this valley it always seems to disclose new beauties. In'' one place on the way children offered bunches of cyclamen, whilst I noticed in a garden fine tiger lilies and hollyhocks. At Ronco we had lunch, not at the Grand Hotel Soana, but at a humbler inn, and then we walked up to Campiglia. When we reached the Albergo Reale at Campiglia I took

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196 Through Val Soera. a rest, and whilst I slept rain began and soon showed what a difference wet weather makes to such a place. Like many another hostelry with the same lordly title, the royalty is but an unsubstantial pageant. The awning let in the wet, the air became cold, the children grew refractory, the hens attempted refuge and research in the dining-room. I began’ to wonder what I should do if the rain continued all night— and on the 17th the weather had seemed settled for good ! When I talked to Benjamin: ‘Ah,’ said he, ‘if the rain had caught us at the Val Soera Lake where should we have spent last night?’ And when we discussed Val. Soera he summed up his judgment of it thus: ‘The good God has never passed by that route, nor the Saints, pas méme Judas.’ ‘There was at the inn an itinerant musician with a big con- certina, who, accompanied by his brother, a boy of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, had spent a whole day in trying to find a pass to Cogne and failed. Inspection evidently satisfied him that I must have music in my soul and yet be fit for stratagem, for he played all the time I was at dinner and then, when he thought that the music must have mollified me; appealed to Benjamin if I would allow himself and his brother to accompany us in the morning. Of course I agreed, for I was sorry for their wasted efforts and for the boy’s weariness and whatever route we took no difficulties were to be anticipated. I asked Benjamin what the man was. ‘A musician, he replied, ‘from la basse Italie. He wishes to live without working. Next year he will have to begin his service in the Army. ‘Then,’ with a smile; ‘he will learn what it is to fetch and carry, and obey orders.’ Next day mist troubled us all the earlier part of the morning, and a heavy rainstorm caught us before we reached the pass. The only sights of interest that we came across were an ouzel in the torrent and a fine Saaifraga longifolia in an inaccessible position as usual—sights which I had seen there before. Just below the place where we crossed the ridge one of the strangest sights possible was given to us: a stone avalanche came down the snow, and little stones ran all about in an almost comic way, looking as harmless as rabbits. My respect for falling stones is very great, and nothing but the evidence of my eyes could have made me believe that they could be so innocuous. We were really in no danger whatever, but the musician was deeply impressed. When we got to the other side of the ridge—I do not think we crossed any recognised pass—we came to a steep snow-slope. Benjamin cut five

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Through Val Soera: 197 or six steps whilst he held the boy by the hand. The boy slipped two or three times, but Benjamin’s grip was retentive. Then he started to glissade. I felt sorry for the musician, who had never been on snow before; and exhorted him to ‘aller seulement.’ When he got to the place where Benjamin had begun his glissade, he halted and watched me as I followed. The encouragement of a tiro was quite a new employment, but I did my best to remove his distrust of the snow. Then I glissaded down nearly to Benjamin, while the man from la basse Italie plunged downward with a rueful face. When he reached me I pointed out to him again that there was absolutely no risk, and that all that he suffered from was want of experience ; so he took heart and we got down to the Lago Miserin. Some dis- tance beyond the lake I stood looking back, and when I turned round our two companions had left us, for which I was sorry, as I meant them to share our lunch. They had shown much natural: courtesy, and I fancy their departure was due to a feeling of delicacy when they saw Benjamin preparing for lunch. I heard the concertina at Cogne in the evening, and afterwards saw them doing what looked like good business in Aosta. After lunch the weather improved and our walk to Cogne was pleasant. After passing Bose and crossing the torrent we saw our ruddy friend and his mule at work in the field. At the sight of us he hurried across the upturned earth, asked after our welfare, and managed one of those pleasant compli- ments which come so naturally to the Italian peasant. I am afraid that the compliment like many another was not quite true, for how can ‘vous étes trés robuste’ apply to a man who shirks three hours’ walking by riding a mule? Then we passed by Lilla. The road from Lilla to Cogne 1s always beautiful ; it is to me, moreover, if I may make a presumptuous comparison, what the Via Appia was to the war-worn legionary returning in triumph to Rome, for have I not come back by it after successful climbing with Alphonse Payot or Ulrich Almer or Benjamin Pession ? The traverse of the Val Soera had always been an ambition, and its accomplishment thirty-four years after my first visit to Cogne was a great satisfaction. Then it was the fulfilment of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ and now it solaces me as ‘A Winter’s Tale.’

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198 Reminiscences of Frangois Joseph Dévouassoud. REMINISCENCES OF FRANCOIS JosEPH DEVOUASSOUD. T the moment of Francois Dévouassoud’s death I was on the point of starting for South Africa with the British Association and consequently was unable to give the time and care I should have wished to the obituary note printed inthis Journat. In particular I had no good portrait at hand. So, now that I find that this slack time in mountain travel is being utilised by our Editor to collect memorials of the past, I am tempted to offer the readers of the ALPINE JOURNAL a few notes on Francois Dévouassoud’s lvret de voyageurs as an accompaniment to a photographic likeness of him, taken when he was about fifty, and a view of the monu- ment close to the church-door at Chamonix erected by some of his English friends. For a more general and adequate sketch of my old guide’s career I must refer to the chapter in Cunningham and Abney’s ‘ Pioneers of the Alps’ (1887), in which I attempted to give some idea both of his exploits and of a character which won the respect and affection of all who knew him. To me and my family he became more and more, as the years went on, a close and beloved friend, whose sympathy could be counted on in all the chances and changes of life. In these Francois would always endeavour, where possible, to take a cheerful view. I can still hear him say, after lamenting that, at seventy, our joint climbs and travels must be over: ‘Mais, Monsieur, nous ferons encore quelques Grands Cols ensemble—n’est-ce pas ?—de l’autre cdté.” The following lines may be taken as an attempted reply to some such expression of impatience on Frangois’ part at the shackles of advancing age, which tied him to the cottage he had inherited from his forefathers and had never cared to alter. Les Barats, the hamlet of which it forms part, lies—I must add—on the shady side of the Chamonix valley, close to the path to Mont Blanc, and for some weeks in mid-winter is cut off from all sunshine. TO F. J. D. Knight-errant of the glacier-cleaving blade, Whose cottage lies hard on the narrow way Trodden in summer by the World at play— The World that hurries home to drive its trade ; Then left to silence in the double shade Of winter and Mont Blanc, where no warm ray Breaks the white darkness of the shortest day, And Spring’s first blooms in Summer’s lap are laid:

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Reminiscences of Francois Joseph Dévouassoud.. 199 Let the frosts bite; they cannot chill the glow Lit by the memories of other years, Embers through which shines the far Syrian snow, Or Caucasus its conquered peaks uprears ; Smokewreaths that frame old friends—young faces too— For old and young find guide and friend in you. Dévouassoud’s ‘ book,’ I must confess, is disappointing, inas- much as it supplies a most imperfect record of his exploits. The reason is that after his journey to the Caucasus in 1868 he put it aside and invited no more entries from his employers. It covers therefore only the first twenty years of an active career of fifty. The first entry is dated June 25, 1849, when Francois was only seventeen! It is signed by two Bavarians. In June 1850 Mr. C. Pritchard makes the first English entry. In that year Francois had several English employers, none of whom, however, ventured above the snow-level. In the years next following, he, as a rule, conducted travellers on the well- known Chamonix excursions, or round Mont Blane and over the St. Theodul to Zermatt. He told me once he was weary of the St. Theodul and tried in vain to get his employers to be more adventurous. The only writer who shows any appreci- ation of his character at this period is Miss Amy Helen Brice. — She writes in 1852 : ‘J'ai été trés satisfaite du guide Francois Dévouassoud ; ]’al fait plusieurs courses avec lui et l’ai toujours trouvé du plus obligeant et prudent et trés gai et amusant. C’est un excellent conteur d’aventures.’ A week or two afterwards the familiar name of A. P. Whateley appears for the first time, followed by W. M. Wollaston, a relation of our late Secretary, and G. V. Yool and EK. L. Ames, both early members of the Club. With the two last Francois crossed the Col du Géant. In 1858 Francois was kept busy crossing the Col du Géant and visiting Zermatt. In 1859 W. R. Bruce and John Ormsby write: ‘Gentlemen making difficult expedi- tions could not have a better guide or a more pleasant com- panion.? The second ascent of Mont Blanc recorded in the book is with ‘ Charles Montague Style (Alpine Club).’ It was made by the Aiguille du Gotiter with descent to Chamonix. In 1861 Mr. Whateley writes: ‘F. J. D. has accompanied me this year in the ascents of Monte Rosa and Mont Vélan, over 1 Unto the Hills. Arnold, London. 1914.

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200 Reminiscences of Frangois Joseph Dévouassoud. the Col d’Hérens, Adler, Alphubel and Lysjoch or Silberpass ’ he adds: ‘I am glad to be able to recommend him as a pleasant companion and a really first-rate guide equally at home men glaciers and rocks.’ In 1862 he made a tour with two Frenchmen whom is used to speak of as ‘ his Counts,’ MM. de St. Joseph and de Beurges, in which they failed in an attempt on the Dent Blanche from the Zinal side, but effected the first passage of the difficult Biesjoch from the Turtmann Thal to St. Niklaus. Shortly after- wards he was with the late C. E. Mathews. Next year with the Comte de St. Joseph he attempted to force a pass at the head of the Glacier de Léchaud. ‘ They reached the top of the second couloir on the left of the Glacier de Pierre Joseph, but thought the descent on the Italian side impossible.’ At the end of the year comes a brief statement in a schoolboy hand (my own) that I found him ‘an able, intelligent and attentive guide’ in the ascent of Mont Blanc. After a brief note by J. Birkbeck, Jr., follow several pages in my handwriting. The earlier ones record my ‘ Thonon to Trent ’ journey and are signed by Mr. J. D. Walker, K.C., Sir Melvill Beachcroft, and myself. Since the only printed record of this tour has long been scarce, I may be excused for giving the entry in full here. ‘Francois Joseph Dévouassoud has been our guide for some weeks on a tour extending from Champéry to Botzen, during which we have traversed much unfrequented country and made many glacier expeditions. * We cannot too strongly express our perfect confidence in him as a careful yet enterprising guide, combining courage with prudence, and we heartily recommend him as a capital companion especially useful in exploring a new country. The following is a sketch of our course from Chamonix : * Cols du Sonadon, de la Reuse d’Arolla, de la Valpelline, Monte Rosa, Alphubel Joch, Portiengrat, Val Maggia, Olivone, Rhein- waldhorn, Madriser Pass, Passo di Ferro (new), Sissone Pass (new). From Pontresina we made the tour of the Bernina, ascending Piz Sella and Piz Palii, thence to Bormio by Val Viola. Between Bormio and Botzen we ascended the Zebru® and Presanella (new) and explored the Brenta Alta. ‘Douetas W. FRESHFIELD,) University ‘J.D. WALKER, | College, ‘MELVILL BEACHCROFT, Oxford. ‘Botzen, August 23, 1864.’ : This should read the Reaipeapitae, of which h Mr. Tuckett had made the first ascent a few days before.

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Reminiscences of Francois Joseph Dévouassoud. 201 Next comes a summary of Tuckett’s prodigious campaign in Tyrol and East Switzerland in 1865, signed by F. F. Tuckett, G. H. Fox, J. D. Backhouse, and Douglas W. Freshfield. Later in the same year Francois was with a party from Trinity College, Cambridge, W. D. Rawlins (now Vice-Provost of Eton), Gerard F. Cobb, and R. B. Townsend. Their chief expeditions were Mont Blanc, the Col du Géant, Monte Rosa, the Lysjoch, the Weiss Thor, and the first crossing of the Brun- egghorn from Randa to Turtmann. They write: ‘Francois has invariably displayed courage, weadenee and skill both on ice and rock; we have found him attentive and pleasant as a companion, whilst his knowledge of English, German, Italian and the local patois makes him most useful as interpreter. To part from him gives us sincere regret, whilst we have real pleasure In expressing our full belief in his high personal and professional qualifications.’ H. B. George follows, and emphasises Francois’ ‘skill in finding his way in the worst weather, as we especially experienced on the Weiss Thor when a local guide of somo reputation was entirely at fault.’ In 1866 he was again with. me and Mr. C. Comyns Tucker. In 1867 he was with the Messrs. Winterbotham. And so his book ends withan entry on a sheet of notepaper written by me at Poti in 1868 after my first visit to the Caucasus, and countersigned by A. W. Moore and ©. C. Tucker. | ‘ Poti, Caucasus. ‘Francois Dévouassoud has been with my friend Mr. Tucker and myself for eight months, during which we have visited Egypt, Syria, Constantinople, Georgia, Armenia, part of Persia and the Caucasus. ‘ During the earlier part of the journey he acted as our travelling servant, in which capacity he proved very useful, and pleased us much by the readiness with which he adapted himself to new circumstances. ‘ At Tiflis we were joined by Mr. Moore and started on the 26th June for the mountains. On July Ist we ascended Kasbek (16,546 feet). We made our way from Kasbek Posthouse to Urusbieh at the base of Elbruz in 25 days, crossing the main chain four times, twice by new and difficult glacier passes. On July 31st we ascended Elbruz (18,526 feet) without meeting with any mountaineering difficulties. We afterwards traversed two of the principal northern valleys (those of the Cherek and Urukh) and returned by Vladikavkaz and the Dariel to Tiflis. | ‘ It is unnecessary for us to repeat our opinion of Francois’ qualities

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202 Reminiscences of Frangois Joseph Dévouassoud. as a guide, but we have much pleasure in recording the cheerfulness and good temper with which he underwent the exposure and frequent hardships, which are inevitable in travelling through an uncivilised country. ‘Dovuetas W. FRESHFIELD. ‘C. C. TucKER. ‘A. W. Moore. © ‘ September 6, 1868.’ In 1868, after our journey in the Caucasus, Francois looked on any further entries as an anticlimax. It is a pity, for much of the most interesting part of his career is left out. We find no record of his many journeys with Mr. J. H. Wainewright. His long journey in Spain with a French gentleman, M. Astrue, his expeditions with the Sidgwicks, with Mr. J. H. Fox and the Rev. F. T. Wethered, with the Miss Pigeons, with Sir Clifford Allbutt, Mr. Coolidge, Mr. T. H. Carson and many others, his later climbs with me in many parts of the Alps, our visits to the Pyrenees, Apennines, Algeria and Corsica, his return to the Caucasus in 1887 are all absent. The point his ‘book’ brings out best is, I think, that from his early days every traveller of intelligence recognises two chief character- istics: Francois’ excellence as a companion as well as a guide, and the prudence which he combined with a very high degree of technical skill in his craft. Many of the writers insist also on his great strength, which was never better put to use than when in 1869 he saved the lives of an eminent member of the Club and Peter Riibi by holding both up after a bad slip when descending the Swiss side of the Col d’Argentiére. Dovaias W. FRESHFIELD. In response to the request of the Editor the following tributes to Francois Dévouassoud’s memory have been sent to him by Sir Clifford Allbutt, Mr. T. H. Carson, and Mr. J. H. Waine- wright. _ It gives me much pleasure to add a few notes to your reminiscences of Francois Dévouassoud. But I regret to say that I can speak only, or almost only, of a personal friendship of many years and of some intimacy, scarcely at all of his brilliant qualities as a guide. My old climbing companion T. 5. Kennedy and I generally took Almer and Ulrich with us, and when for occasional excursions I engaged other guides

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Reminiscences of Frangois Joseph Dévouassouds 208 they were from Grindelwald or the Valais ; or, for the Engadine, Hans and Christian Grass. Moreover, Dévouassoud had his own constant employers. However, I had many a walk with Francois, and visited him twice or thrice at his home, so that my wife and I got to know him well. There was an attraction in his kindly, chivalrous and intelligent manners and character which made him very welcome to women. For instance, I well recall one occasion when my wife and I—she on a mule —went for some excursion or other from Chamonix with Francois. The track by which we returned was rough and steep, and torn by storm waters. The mule was a good one, and safe enough, no doubt; but for the person on him the descent was rather agitating. Francois soon sent the mule bov to the rear, and himself took the animal in hand. In his powerful grip he seemed almost to lift the mule and his rider, and, thrusting his mighty legs to the ground, picked the way for his load, and reduced the slips and jolts to quite a bearable degree. Of what a mountain mule’s back leg slides can be few travellers are unaware. Meanwhile in a soothing voice he kept up a conversation of cheerful and. comforting words: ‘A little patience, Madame,’ ‘ Just a little more, and we Shall arrive,’ and so on; continually chatting, moreover, on various subjects, to draw attention off the discomforts of the path. Thus he turned a long and tiresome descent into quite an agreeable interlude. Many first-rate guides, fine- hearted, trustworthy, devoted fellows, have kept nevertheless a good deal of the peasant about them: Francois, like ‘ Old Melchior,’ was a gentleman born—large minded, chivalrous, and courteous. — : | The first time I met Francois was in the Diablerets, perhaps some forty years ago. Kennedy and I had a week to spare before Almer and Ulrich could join us, so we decided to breathe ourselves by some clambers about the lower Rhéne—the Dent de Jaman, Dent du Midi, Pierre 4 voir, Grand Muveran, Wildhorn, Dent de Morcles, &c. Happily Dévouassoud was disengaged and agreed to meet us at Bex, whence we made the chalets of Les Plans our gite. I see him now vividly, as I saw him first, waiting by the wicket of the railway station, - then a small and rustic shed. At first his big loosely knit frame, his throat swathed in the invariable red handkerchief, did not suggest the great mountaineer. But we soon learnt to know him better. Many a rough scramble we had from Les Plans, and of one of them I will let out a little secret hitherto buried in silence. To this one of our days in the hills,

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204 Reminiscences of Francois Joseph Dévouassoud. a day or part of a day on the Dent de Morcles, Francois did not relish even an allusion. We reached the Dent a litle late in the morning, having scrambled thither over some neighbouring uplands. We ate our lunch on the little glacier at the foot of the mountain, and, foolishly despising our Opponent, waited again a short time. It was too beautiful a day to fuss over. At last, however, we started for the summit, and reached the foot of the pike, when Kennedy and I, leaving Francois to puzzle out the chimneys, sat down on the rocks to enjoy the exquisite view. He was a very long | time away, and as meanwhile light mists were gathering about the tops, and the day wearing on, we sprang up to seek him. We met him coming back to us looking disconcerted ; he reported that there were a couple of jagged couloirs which, being a bit misty, he confessed that he had not found a ready way to negotiate. We joined for a few minutes in the hunt for the trail, but, mist and time warning us, we sped off for home, ampaxtrot! The best of the joke against F. D. was that before starting we had advised him to consult some local porter about any tricks of the route, a suggestion he then received with a scornful sniff. We didn’t mind the defeat in the least, but Francois was very quiet all the evening. He must have dreaded our telling this story to Loppé. I scarcely need say that earlier in the day he would have fought his way up somehow or other. From that day to this I have never bothered my head about the Dent de Morcles ; but now, as I write, I have looked it up in the Club edition of ‘Ball.’ I see there is a trick place between ‘ Nant Rouge’ and ‘ Nant Sec,’ as there is in Moss Ghyll, which in the mist for once in his life baffled Dévouassoud. His language was a good deal milder however than that which, under far more exasperating circumstances it is true, issued from Almer’s mouth when, on what we supposed to be the first ascent of the Blaitiére already in hand, Christian, hauling himself painfully and slowly up the last rock, put his face over the summit to find that—he had taken us up the wrong spikelet! And it was three in the afternoon! The achievement fell to others, but Loppé told us that we had had the stiffer climb, and the worse luck. But when face to face with a big job the gentle-mannered Dévouassoud had a heart of flint. One day when, towards the end of the season, I was in Chamonix, I met Francois,

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Reminiscences of Frangots Joseph Dévouassoud. 205 and after some chat suggested a walk. ‘Good, and whither ? ’ ~ © Well,’ I said, ‘there is no finer walk than the Géant, to the Col and back.’ So that was quickly settled. As I parted from him he added, ‘ By the way, don’t say whither we are going.’ I was a little surprised, but of course said I would be mum. As in the morning we were walking up to the Montanvert, I said, ‘ Frangois, why was I not to say last night whither we were going?’ ‘ Because,’ he quietly replied, ‘we may never get to the Col.” ‘No!’ Isaid. ‘Why not?’ ‘ You have to learn what the Géant is like at the end of a fine hot summer !’ And I did learn; and I learned something more—the splendid icecraft and indomitable spirit of my admirable guide. Time after time in a tight place we looked at each other, almost in despair. But no; at each such moment Francois exclaimed * Mais nous ne sommes pas des enfants,’ a phrase which at every crisis he repeated like a war cry, and seizing his axe and almost hurling himself upon the ice, he again hacked for himself a way to some point of vantage to which he could haul me up, and thence read a little more of the riddle of the great glacier. It was a beautiful sight to see his bold, swift and skilful ice work, his grip upon the slopes, and for so big a man, and no longer young, his catlike activity. I do not feel sure that _ any other guide would have landed me in the same time on the. Col; but to Francois the Géant was home. Still he said he had never known it so difficult, and late in the season the days were getting short. But glorious as was that autumn day—radiant as were the stupendous crags of the Jorasses almost beside us, beyond us the meadows of Courmayeur, and far away the fairy battle- ments of the Valaisan Alps from Combin to Rosa, ‘ nubigenae ’ enthroned in the sky—yet perhaps no day is without its tear. All the way from Chamonix Frangois and I had most carefully nursed two peaches, one for each of us. These mellow beauties lay beside us, cooled and cushioned in the snow, for we had put off the consummation of them to tlie last, when the heads of two tourists from the Mont Fréty peered up from under our feet. And they, who were going no farther, lunched with us. We of course had never thought of eating more than one peach between us, and they in their turn could not dream of depriving us &c., &c.! But, as Christian mountaineers, could we have gone home without sharing them ? Dévouassoud’s courage and firmness of will, perhaps at times amounting to latent obstinacy, may sometimes have

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206 Reminiscences of Francois Joseph Deévouassoud. been perilous; though I believe he neves made any serious error of judgment while in charge of a traveller. Still, on one occasion in 1870, when Kennedy and I were in Chamonix, and found Dévouassoud at liberty, we fixed up the following day for the Monarch. And that evening, in no promising weather, we slept at The Mules. The early morning was surly, perhaps forbidding, but not actually menacing. So we started off, hoping for the best. But the luck was bad: a nasty wind Sprang up with whitfs of sleet, and it was very chilly. We plodded on to the Grand Plateau, when, during a short rest, K. and I looked doubtfully at each other ; but: Francois refused to meet our eyes. So we trudged on. Again Kennedy and I exchanged looks, and I did more: I hinted at return. K. smiled a little sourly and said ‘ Well, we came out to enjoy ourselves!’ However, in another ten minutes we plucked up courage to face Dévouassoud. He was very angry. He scoffed at our soft hearts, and, rejoicing in his native elements, adjured us to come on. We had to withstand him to his face, and when I found that my feet were losing sensation, he rapidly altered his mind. In a twinkling I was on my back, my boots off and Francois chafing my feet with snow. That hour my poor toes have never forgotten ; and since, on every frost, have kept.the habit of reminding me rather keenly of it. Of course retuyn was now decided upon; but I believe Francois—polar bear as he was physically—never wholly for- gave us. We-had shown the white feather. But he was partly reconciled when the sad news came down that on that day, but little later, a large party of guides and tourists— eleven in all—were in a tourmente swept into oblivion, from or near the Mur de la Cote. The last time I was at Chamonix was when, in place of our late President, Bishop Browne, I unveiled in Couttet’s garden the memorial stone to Charles Mathews. Thence I wandered up to the churchyard to visit the last resting-place of Frangois, the old and dear friend of so many of us. And I looked wist- fully down the little busy street for the well-known form, the friendly hand, of him who was no more. Yet, after a happy and successful life, was he not happy still in his rest ?—in the midst of his people, who sometimes had vexed him, large minded man and good citizen as he was, by the little straits and meannesses of local politics, yet after all in the midst of his own people, and of those mighty hills which he had loved so well. Tuomas CLIFFORD ALLBUTT. enema amen neces ame

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. Rx iN ~ 2" eb 7 - + % | \ Hho PER XL ANNGS SPECTAIO Ne TANT VIRTUTIS. MEMORIA 1 DEMPLIM PERDERETIA KUNE LAPIDEM NONRLILEE EX AMIEIS WIS SAPE TER ALPUM_ Jue OT CAUEASS IVES DuxTRgT POREN DURE CURAVERYNT MONUMENT TO FRANCOIS J. DEVOUASSOUD IN THR CHURCHYARD, CHAMONIX.

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Reminiscences of Frangois Joseph Dévouassoud. 207 Among the contents of recent numbers of the JouRNAL some of the most interestng have been the extracts from the Fiihrerbiicher of Ferdinand Imseng and Ulrich Lauener. They contained not only much mountaineering information, but also personal details of which many will be glad to have a record. The series is, I learn, to be continued in this number in the shape of extracts from the ‘ Livret de Guide ’ of Francois Dévouassoud. As one who knew Francois well during many years, I wish to add a word as to the impression produced on me by a man who was in some respects one of the most remarkable characters among a generation of great guides. I first met Francois at Zermatt in 1867. In that year I was a member of a party which did a good deal of high mountaineering in the Monte Rosa country and the Graian Alps; but Francois, who was otherwise engaged, could not come with us. In 1869, however, he was our guide both at Zermatt and Chamonix; and in several subsequent years I was fortunate in securing his services. In 1874 he was with Comyns Tucker and myself in Tyrol, when we made the first ascent of the Federer Kogel (now called the Rosengarten Spitze), an expedition which was described by Comyns Tucker in an interesting paper in the seventh volume of the ALPINE JOURNAL (pp. 109, 345), and was always referred to by Francois as one of the most difficult rock-climbs he had ever accomplished. We climbed the peak by a route which, as far as I know, has never been repeated. Later in the same year we did some climbing in the Primiero Dolomites, where on one occasion we were benighted, and spent several hours on a shelf of rock high up in the wild Val Pravitale. One of the most vivid memories that comes back to me from that year is the sight of Francois tending the small fire which we had succeeded in lighting at our bivouac, ~ while a briliant moon ht up the huge boulders round us and the lofty cliffs which shut in the valley. In 1883 Francois accompanied H. A. Beachcroft and myself in Piedmont during a month of wonderful weather, in which we were fortunate in making the ascent of Monte Viso and the Ciamarella under almost perfect conditions. One day we were joined by Coolidge, who had not long before been exploring with Freshfield the various routes which are claimed to have been followed by Hannibal in his passage of the Alps. Fresh- field’s well-known article, since expanded into a book, appeared, I think, in the number of the ALpinz JouRNAL which was pub- lished in August 1883 (‘ A.J.’ xi. 267-800). I had the number

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208 Reminiscences of Frangois Joseph Dévouassoud. with me, but Coolidge had not yet seen it, and he was very curious to know which route had been finally accepted by Freshfield. | | I cannot pretend to give a detailed account of the many expeditions in which Francois accompanied me; but I have delightful memories of climbs with him in the Pralognan district of Savoy and among the rough peaks which overhang the Val Maggia. Others have spoken of the skill and coolness displayed by Francois in meeting mountaineering difficulties: I prefer to | speak of his charm as a companion. He had travelled widely and was exceptionally well informed. But he had other qualities of a different kind. In the course of the above wanderings I[ have seen Francois under all kinds of conditions. I have seen him in fair weather and foul. I have passed the night with him under the stars or in the most uncomfortable of shepherds’ huts. On no single occasion did Francois fail to show a tact, a courtesy, and an unselfishness which are only too rare among us. I always looked on him as one of Nature’s gentlemen. | | : Tuomas H. Carson. _. My first meeting with Francois Dévouassoud was more than forty years ago, when he and his brother Henri guided my brother (the late Mr. Benjamin Wainewright) and me up Mont Blane one October day in the early ’seventies. After that I had for many years the great advantage of his services, as guide, companion, or courier, sometimes on the higher moun- tains, sometimes on the lower hills and valleys in Tyrol or those surrounding the Italian lakes, or in the beautiful country between the lakes and the Alps. As guide, he was strong, capable and efficient, with a wonderful and most extensive knowledge of the mountains and passes in Switzerland, France, Tyrol and Italy. He was also a very useful courier, as he spoke French, some English, and Italian. Of German he only spoke a few words, and those pronounced with a very French accent. He knew the best places to stop at and the best way of getting to them. He was, moreover, a most pleasant com- panion, full of interest in many subjects—botany, geology, art. On the mountains, in the valleys, in storm or sunshine he was always the same—kindly, thoughtful, considerate—_ never thinking of himself, but only of the safety or comfort

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Reminiscences of Francois Joseph Dévouassoud. 209 of his charge. I never knew him out of temper or heard him say an unkind word about anyone. One morning going up the Disgrazia, the guides (old Hans Grass and Francois) had a dispute about a distant snow peak, Hans Insisting that it was Mont Blanc. Francois, turning to me, remarked ‘If; it makes the poor man happy to think he sees the Mont Blanc, it is no matter ; but, my dear sir, it is the Grand Paradis.’ Sometimes, when things went wrong, or if I was irritable with him, he would say in his quaint English, ‘My dear sir, take a patience : it is the life.” His fidelity and devotion to his old friends and patrons (especially to Mr. Douglas Freshfield, with whom he made so many journeys and notable ‘ first ascents ’) were touching. He had a great respect for D. W. F.’s walking powers, and often said to me ‘Miss Freshfield he do run very fast.’ He was apt to turn ‘Monsieur’ into ‘ Miss.’ With such great gifts Frangois’ modesty and deference were perhaps extreme. If one asked him ‘ What shall we do, Fran¢ois ?’ his reply would be: ‘ My dear sir, you know very well; you are the master.’ One evening at Cadenabbia I said to him ‘ Why, Frangois, I have not seen you all day.’ He answered ‘Ah! my dear sir, you have the good society: you have no want for me—I am only little man’! But this deference was for off-days. Of course when on the mountains he led, without consultation, by the best routes. On the Piz Languard one day, not very long before his death, he said ‘My dear sir, I am a happy man to-day, for I have your good society, the day ‘is fine and we have a beautiful view; but I am also a sad man, as I think I may never see it again.’ And so it proved.- I asked him one day what he did in winter. ‘ My dear sir, Ido smoke my pipe and do make the politique (read the papers).’ I could recount many of his quaint sayings, but the foregoing may give some idea of his nature. I have missed him sadly, knowing that I shall never meet his like again. His type 1s rapidly dis- appearing, if it has not already disappeared, from.the ranks of the guides, though happily there remain many splendid men and climbers in those ranks. I think that somewhere Mr. Freshfield has written that ‘ Francois was one of Nature’s gentlemen ’—a most apt description of that charming per- sonality ! J. H. WAINEWRIGHT. VOL. XXXL—NO. CCXV. | P

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210 The Roththal Fuce of the Jungfrau. Tur RotutHuaL Fack OF THE JUNGFRAU. By J. P. FARRAR. HE causa causans of this paper is my friend the Rev. T. H. Philpott. In the course of our—to me—very interesting correspondence over ‘Hornby and Philpott’ (‘ A.J.’ xxx. 230 seq.), I became quite fascinated with the history of this face of the Jungfrau, of which the Silberhorn may be said to form part. The name of my friend, M. Paul Montandon, ought to appear as joint author of this paper, for without his untiring assistance it must have fallen far short of its present relative completeness. To him in particular I aim indebted for all the illustrations. Just as the historically interesting side of the Matterhorn is the Val Tournanche face, so this Roththal face of the Jungfrau claims the pride of place, inasmuch as it was also the first to be attacked by the chamois-hunters living at its foot. The parallel can be carried farther, for it was another face of the Matterhorn which first yielded a route to the summit, and it was not until over fifty years after the Jungfrau had been ascended that the secret of this Roththal face of the mountain was unravelled. It 1s generally accepted that the Jungfrau fell, on the very first attempt, to the travellers Joh. Rud. and Hieronymus Meyer, with the Vallaisan guides, Joseph Bortis and Alois Volker, who in 1811 made the ascent from the 8. or Aletsch side. But years before this the indefatigable hunters of Lauter- brunnen had been busy spying out the weak places in the great wall dominating their home. Doubtless the wild and unpro- ductive nature of their native valley made these Lauterbrunnen men into keen hunters, while the wider and more fertile basin of Grindelwald offered an easier means of livelihood to 1ts inhabi- tants ; so that we need not be surprised that—as I showed in my paper on Lauener (° A.J.’ xxx. 280)—there were famous moun- taineers like the Laueners and the Bischoffs in Lauterbrunnen at a time when no man in Grindelwald was known to fame. In the same paper I mentioned (* A.J.’ xxx. 284) an attempt on this Roththal face of the Jungfrau by two Lauterbrunnen men—Peter Bischoff and Christen Lauener—who immediately at the entrance of the Roththal ‘ bore to the left up the rocks, by which also a few years earher two Englishmen hoped to ascend the Jungfrau.’

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The Roththal Face of the Jungfrau. 911 Now in a periodical, ‘ Miszellen fiir die Neueste Weltkunde,’ of August 27, 1808, there is an account—of which my constant coadjutor our Hon. Member Dr. H. Diibi has been good enough to have made a typed copy for the Club Library—of a passage of the Tschingel Glacier from the Lauterbrunnen Valley into the savage Gasteren Thal, made in July 1808 by a certain L. ' with nine companions. Among them were two men who had accompanied Herr Rud. Meyer, who, so L. states, crossed the pass in 1790. When high up on the glacier ‘ opposite to us rose the majestic Jungfrau, on which the chamois-hunters show us clearly the slab up to which they had so far got ; but they did not consider it at all impossible to ascend their summit if provided with the needful to spend a night in the high glacier regions.’ In what year this attempt on the Jungfrau was made is not stated ; but as Bischoff was only born in 1777 it cannot refer to the attempt made by him and Lauener ; in any case, it was not later than 1808. It may refer to the attempt by the two enterprising Englishmen mentioned by Hugi (‘ A.J.’ xxx. 284), and the description seems to refer to some route on the rock face between the Rothbrett and the great splayed buttress up which the now usual route to the Hochfirn lies. In my Lauener’ article I mentioned the att2mpts by two Englishmen, Mr. Yeats Brown and Mr. Frederick Slade, in 1828, as well as Hugi’s journey into the Roththal in 1829. ' here is, then, a great gap in the history of this face ; but in 1860 we find MM. Gosset and v. Hallwyl set out to attempt it, with the guide Johann Bischoff of Lauterbrunnen, by a route on which, he asserted, his father (the already mentioned Peter, at that time aged eighty-three) had once, out hunting, attained a great height, enabling him to conclude that the ascent could be completed. Weather beat them; but on June 25, 1863, v. Fellenberg arrives 1n Lauterbranaen with the same intention, and sends for Ulrich Lauener, ‘ this athletic six-foot figure, this northern giant with blue eyes and golden beard, the darling of all heaven- storming Englishmen,’ under whom Bischoff willingly agrees to serve. They slept at the Stufensteinalp. The weather next day only allowed them to reconnoitre, but they reached by a some- what roundabout way the Strahlplatten, as the inclined water- or ice-polished slabs at the foot of the Rothbrett are called. Proceeding straight upwards (line 8 in photograph), Lauener climbed with great skill the first cliff, eighty feet high, pretty

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212 The Roththal Face of the Jungfrau. much in the line of the waterfall which is seen in the photo- graph as falling over it, and pulled up his companions after him. They proceeded some way farther, seeing nothing to stop them except perhaps the final steep rocks just under the main Rothbrettgrat. Bad weather drove them down to Lauterbrunnen, when on the afternoon of the 27th who should turn up but ‘a young, fair man whom, from the glacier-tackle he carried, I at once re- cognised as an English Clubman, followed byathick-set sunburnt man with black hair and fiery black eyes, armed to the teeth with glacier-tackle.’ It was Charles Edward Mathews and Melchior Anderegg, ‘ der beritihmte Metringer.’ Two a.M. on June 29 saw the combined party, under a full moon in a cloudless sky, sally out from the Scufensteinalp. By six the Strihlplatten were reached—the cliff overcome by the same manoeuvres as before, ‘ Anderegg managing to swing himself up the slabby rocks with great speed,’ and the little snowfield above it gained by 8.30. Melchior then went ahead by himself, while the others followed, roped. They bore rather to the right, but, just under the lowest gap in the Rothbrettgrat, turned to the left, when Melchior led up a difficult slab inclined 40° and 40 feet high. This took a quarter of an hour, and in ten minutes more they were on the aréte and looked down to the Wengernalp. It was 11.10. Melchior declared farther progress impossible owing to a vertical step in the aréte which could not be turned, ° as on the one side was a terribly steep slope of névé and on the other impassable rocks. | They planted a flag, left a bottle with their names at the point gained, and, leaving the aréte at 12.15, were back at the Stufensteinalp at five. It fell to Melchior the following year to revenge his defeat : not, indeed, by scaling this face, but by turning it by means of the great couloir leading to the Roththalsattel. The tale has been well told by R.S. Macdonald in ‘ A.J.’ 11. 161-168. Enght years later great imprudence in the same couloir cost the life of Bischoff, one of Melchior’s companions of 1863. Dr. Diibi, an indefatigable explorer of this face, with Chris- tian and Peter Lauener, made a safer variation of this route in 1873 by climbing the rocks of the west bank of the couloir, which was crossed high up (°8.A.C.J.’ ix. 129-1381). In 1881 the same climber, with the guides Peter Lauener and Fritz Fuchs, attacked the great splayed buttress, up which the

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The Roththal Face of the Jungfrau. 2138 now usual route lies. He first gained the so-called inner or S.W. aréte of the buttress, by which the ascent is now always made; but in uncertainty, lest they might be cut off higher up,+ the party traversed horizontally so as to gain the so-called outer or W. aréte forming the 8. bank of the Silberlauitobel. He thus made the first route—a safe one even if not quite direct—from the Roththal to the summit of the Jungfrau— completing the work started in the early part of the century (‘S.A.C.J.’ xvil. 278-286). The exact line of Dr. Diibi’s route was so ttle understood— he has now been good enough to indicate it on one of the illus- trations to this paper—and the reputation for difficulty and danger of this Roththal face was such that when in the autumn of 1885 it was reported that an easy route up it had been discovered by a Lauterbrunnen hotel-keeper, whose previous experience was limited to mountains like the Schilthorn, with four local guides, incredulity was rampant. The route les up the so-called inner aréte of the great buttress direct to the Hochfirn, and can be followed without difficulty. There remained now only the completion of the Fellenberg- Mathews route of 1863. It was not until September 24, 1887 (or twenty-four years later), that Sir H. Seymour King, with the —IJ will not say better—guides Ambros Supersax and Louis . Zurbriicken, gained at 9 a.m. the same gap in the Rothbrett- grat, where they found the bottle, and added their own names. ‘Supersax, by a bold traverse on the N. side, managed to turn the vertical step which had defeated the Fellenberg-Mathews party of 1863, and, going strong, the party reached the Silberliicke at 4 p.m., and were finally forced to bivouac just above the Roththalsattel. The tale has been well told in ‘A.J.’ xiv. 31-87, and note, p. 38. A further possible route on this face is the ascent to the Silberliicke,but it would have to be made up the Silberlauitobel,? as the wide couloir leading to the Silberliicke is called. This is swept by ice from the hanging glacier seen at its head, and would not be followed by a mountaineer. There may be SO ee ee — 1 The great rock at the junction of these 8.W. and W. arétes, as Dr. Dibi correctly surmised, gave the leader, Hans v. Allmen, of the party of 1885 much trouble before he succeeded in climbirg it. "In the Siegfried map the name Silberlaui is quite incorrectly applied to a tongue of the Roththalgletscher.

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214 The Roththal Face of the Jung frau. another route lying between the regular route and the Roththal- sattel couloir. I do not know—and it is fairly certain to be dangerous from stonefall. Finally, there is one more expedition to record—the reversal of Sir H. Seymour King’s route of 1887—by a very strong Swiss guideless party, MM. A. Mottet, Franz Miller, and O. Tschanz, on August 14, 1910. <A short note of this appears in ‘.8.A.C.J.’ xlvi. 284; but M. Auguste Mottet, a Captain in the Federal Service and at the present time in the foremost rank of Swiss mountaineers,? while his two companions are also first- rate men, has had the kindness to give to M. Montandon for the JourNAL further particulars, which the latter has been good enough to translate into English : ‘The party left the summit of the Jungfrau at 6.30 a.m. on August 14, 1910. There were 12 to 16 inches of fresh snow and bad conditions till far down. Above the Silberliicke they “abseiled ’’ once. Liicke, 8.30 to 9. Up to the summit of Silberhorn good going. Top of Silberhorn, 11 a.m. They now turned downwards towards the Rothbrettgrat. First, there was some hard and very steep névé, then came ice—even steeper, but allowing good step-cutting, as it could be done in an oblique direction, this being a broad flank. Afterwards the route narrows to an aréte—first of ice, but not steep, then by and by of very friable rock. No gendarmes. This rock aréte is 4 to 14 metres broad, and consists of small cubes. However, it is possible to descend upright. At 3 p.m. the party reached the famous place where the Rothbrettgrat,4 coming to | an end near the summit of the Rothbrett, overhangs, forming a practically vertical pitch. Ambros Supersax, the leader of Sir Seymour King’s 1887 party (“A.J.” xiv. 81-88) circum- vented it by a traverse onthe north. The wall down to the gap is 84 metres high, and there appears no possibility of climbing it direct. On the north flank of the aréte, however, there is along the face a good “ band ” or ledge, 12 to 16 inches broad, the approach to which only requires some determination. From this ledge the climb up to the aréte does not look very difficult. The aréte above the overhang is about 5 metres wide and nearly level. T'wo of M. Mottet’s party were let down * He has done, without professional assistance, such expeditions as the Z’Mutt-Matterhorn, the Viereselsgrat-Dent Blanche, the Breithorn from the Schmadrijoch, and the very difficult Engelhérner climbs. * See note on the illustrations.

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The Roththal Face of the Jungfrau. 215 over the pitch, and the last man, with some difficulty, found then a crack—somewhat above the edge—into which a piton could be driven. It held fast—at least in the direction required —allowing him to let himself down with Kletterschluss. ‘At the foot of this memorable and historic spot, in the gap, they found—as did also Sir Seymour—an old-fashioned big bottle with a large aperture, left by E. von Fellenberg, C. E. Mathews, Melchior Anderegg, Ulrich Lauener, and Johann Bischoff, on June 28, 1868, on their attempt to force this ridge * {“§.A.C. Jahrbuch,” i. 315-835). The names were still intact, and the 1910 party added theirs.5 ‘They now left the top of the Rothbrett, and had to find a way down to the Strahlplatten (vide full-page illustration).® First they turned to their left over slabs, which is one of the most difficult places of the whole tour. It is mentioned by Fellenberg (‘“‘ Jahrbuch,” i. 331), as well as by Sir Seymour King (‘‘ A.J.” xiv. 32), and it seems, therefore, that there is no other way to get off the Rothbrettgrat. Here an eagle— no doubt the one whose nest at the foot of the Schwarz Monch cliffs is so well seem from Miirren—sailed over them, coming quite near, seemingly, with a fond hope of throwing them down and making a feast of them. It is perhaps the first time that tourists experience this particular danger. ‘At times there may be snow on this “ Platte.’’ Endless zigzags then brought them down to the lower ledges, there being as a rule only one place where it was possible to descend, and much time being lost in searching. As a last difficulty a waterfall had to be negotiated (mentioned by Fellenberg, ‘‘ Jahrbuch,” 1.324),and at 8 p.m. they atlast reached the Strahl- platten at the foot of the Rothbrett wall, where they passed the night in their oiled-silk sleeping-bags. From the top of the Rothbrett they wore Kletterschuhe and found this a great ad- vantage. On this part of the descent there was very little snow. Karly in the morning there will be less water, but perhaps more ice. As for difficulty, there is little difference going up or coming down here, but in the latter case the orientation 1s much less easy, requiring more time. ‘Sir Seymour King’s times were 104 hours from the Strahl- platten to the top of Silberhorn, two of which were taken up ®* Thus the names have been there for forty-seven years (cf. AJ., xiv. 38). It is earnestly to be hoped that no climber will interfere with this historic relic. * The line marked is actually that of their descent,

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216 The Roththal Face of the Jungfrau. by the overhang. The Swiss party required 9 hours for coming down. It will, no doubt, always be a difficult and very arduous expedition.’ It will be scen that there is practically only one route up this great Roththal wall which can be called fairly easy. Had not the reputed inaccessibility or extreme difficulty of this face deterred climbers from visiting the neighbourhood it cannot be doubted that, given the opportunity, one or other of the brilliant suides, which in days gone by Lauterbrunnen produced, would have not let over seventy years pass before the now regular route was discovered. The illustrations will, Ihope, clear up to my readers—as they have done to me—the intricate topography of this, whether from an historical or a mountaineering standpoint, very interesting and doubtless least-known side of the great Oberland mountain. My note on the picture of the ‘ Silberhorn from the N.,’ in ‘A.J.” xxx. 244, requires modification. I used the term Schwarz Monch in the wider significance of old days (‘8.A.C.J.’ i. 382, and the earlier editions of the Federal map), when it covered the whole of the rock mass forming the great outpost buttress in which the N. aréte of the Jungfrau ends. M. Montandon is good enough to remind me—as is indeed set out at length in ‘The Bernese Oberland,’ vol. i. part 1. Mew edition, 1909)—that the name Schwarz Monch properly belongs to a great black rock-tooth which stands out on the W. face of the chiff facing Miirren, the name Stellifluh being applied to the mass itself culminating in the summit forming the apex of the chff projected against the triangular rocky face of the Rothbrett.? It will be seen that Sir H. Seymour King’s route by the Rothbrett aréte gained that aréte high up, much on a level with the apex of the Rothbrett. The aréte has never been followed from its foot at the left-hand (as you face) corner of the triangular Rothbrett itself—if indeed that route is possible. " The Stellifluh and Schwarz Monch are well seen in the panorama from the Mannlichen accompanying. S.A.C.J. x. |

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Photo Paul Montandon. THE ROTHTHAL FACE OF THE JUNGFRAU. FROM THE SPITZHORN, 2,214 m. Photo F. Beck. THE ROTHBRETT. FROM THE STELLIFLUH, 2,718 m.

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Photo Wehrli, A. G. THE ROTHTHAL FACE OF THE JUNGFRAU. FROM OBER-STEINBERG.

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The Roththal Face of the Jungfrau. 217 A Note on the Illustrations. THE explanation of the figures on the full-page illustration, taken from Ober Steinberg, is as follows : 1—1 is the great triangular face of the Rothbrett. 2—2 are the. water- or ice-worn slabs, called the Strahlplatten. 3. The line marked is that of the descent of M. Mottet’s party in 1910, and it may be taken generally to indicate the Fellenberg- Mathews and the Sir H. 8. King line of ascent in 1863 and 1887 respectively. . It should be noted that the photograph is taken from low down and thus gives to the whole face a much less steep appearance than it in fact has. 4-4 is the Silberlauitobel. 5—5 is Dr. Diibi’s line of ascent by the so-called outer aréte, to the foot of which he traversed from the lower (6) on the so-called inner aréte. | 6—6 is the regular line of ascent, the aréte being reached at the lower (6) from the other side. 7 is the Rothbrettgrat, reached at the point shown, which was then followed over the false Silberhorn to the true Silberhorn which lies off the main aréte. 8 is the Silberliicke, which has only been reached from the other side. . 9 is the summit of the Jungfrau, the snow-cap just below it bearing the name Hochfirn. 10 is the great couloir leading to the Roththalsattel. 11 is the Lauinenthor. M. Montandon’s photograph of this face, taken from the Spitzhorn 2214 m. N. of the Ober Steinberg, is an admirable picture of the ensemble of the great face from the Stellifluh to the Lauinenthor. The remarkable picture of the Rothbrett, with the white sum- mit of the Silberhorn on its left and the slabby Strahlplatten im- mediately below it, is from a photograph taken from the Stellifluh, 2718 m., by M. F. Beck of Thoune, to whom my best thanks are tendered. | It was at the foot of this face that Messrs. Hornby and Philpott bivouacked in 1865. They rounded the foot of its left-hand edge next morning and hurriedly crossed under the overhanging glacier so as to gain the aréte on the extreme left, of which only the upper part is visible in the picture.

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218 Historical Documents.- —I1I. HistoricaL DocumeEnts.—lLII. THE FUHRERBUCHER OF MattHaus ZuMTAUGWALD (1825- 1872); JoHann ZumMTAuGWALD (1826-1900); SrEPHAN ZUMTAUGWALD (1833-1907). HESE three books have been acquired by Mr. Henry F. Montagnier after long-continued search and presented to the Club. From an historical point of view they are of supreme interest.! They are the carliest original documents of the kind dealing with the ascent of the great peaks of the Zermatt Valley as distinguished from the crossing of two or three passes leading out of that valley which up to then had satisfied the aspirations of the comparatively rare travellers. The three brothers lived long enough to see the little, hardly known, village become the greatest mountaineering centre of the Alps and to witness the development of high mountaineering into a passion of which the English mountaineer was for a long time the principal devotee. The Englishman who has once known the call of the great mountain will look upon these books with reverence. He will remember that the torn, stained pages record the im- pressions of men, the founders of this Club and still great names with us, fresh from the trrumphs of new ascents, burning with the selfsame energy and enthusiasm that he also has known. He will not forget the pride of the young guide in his preciously-cared-for book, and he will venture to hope that the archives of the doyen of Alpine Clubs are not the most un- suitable place for the battered old volumes or that their owners would feel other than glad when their records rest safe in the reverent care of the successors of the men who first built up the great craft of Alpine guide. The brothers came of a family long established at Zermatt which counted even priests and chaplains among its members (cf. ‘P.P.G.’ 1. 197). Sons of a certain Hans Joseph Zumtaug- wald, village shoemaker and occasional guide, they may be said to have been the earliest regular high-mountain guides in the Zermatt Valley. Their predecessors such as Peter Damatter, or Thamatter, as Ruden gives it, born 1788, Johann Brantschen, born 1794, and his brother Joseph, born 1801, 4s Nothing can possibly be of greater interest than old Fiihrer- bicher. They are the very Bibles (‘ Biblia sacra ’’) of the mount- ains.—The Rev. F. T. Wethered. |

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JOHANN STEPHAN MATTHAUS THE BROTHERS ZUMTAUGWALD FROM OLD PORTRAITS.

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920 Historical Documents.—ITTI: scarcely attempted, independently, greater expeditions than the Weissthor, and were too old by the time the passion for high ascents developed to take a leading part. Matthéus was born at Zermatt on February 10, 1825, and seems to have been an enterprising young fellow, for Professor Ulrich tells us that in August 1848 he found him and another young Zermatter, Stephan Binner, at Saas ‘engaged on a journey of discovery,’ having crossed the Weissthor to Macug- naga and the Moro to Saas, whence they accompanied Ulrich’s party as volunteers, making on August 10 the first ascent of the Ulrichshorn and the first passage of the Ried Pass to St. Nicolas. Ulrich must have thought well of him, for the next day we find the party, Ulrich, Johann Madutz, his regular guide, and Matthéus Zumtaugwald, bivouae ‘in den Gadmen’ below the Gornergrat, whence on August 12 they gained the Silbersattel. They ascended the snow wall of the face of the Monte Rosa, but on reaching the rocks Ulrich remained behind while the two men, ‘armed with rope and hammer .. . in einer guten halben Stunde ’—a very elastic period—reached the ‘ dstliche Erhebung ’ of the summit ridge : which I consider can be nothing else than the second summit of the Monte Rosa, known formerly as the Ostspitze but now fixed by the Siegfried map with the totally inappropriate name of Grenzgipfel, since it is certainly not on the watershed between Italy and Switzerland. Matthaus was one of Wills’s guides in 1852 (‘ Wanderings,’ p. 190), but we know little more of him prior to the opening page of his book. Issued by the Society of Guides of Zermatt, it bears the date July 4, 1858, and certifies him as ‘I Klasse’ and the date of his birth as February 10 [1825]. Bound up with the book are some pages from two older books, the first entry in which is dated August 25, 1852. It refers to a passage of the Weissthor to Macugnaga on that day and adds: ‘ He is known in Zermatt as the best guide over this difficult pass.’ He crosses the pass again on August 29, and on September 2 we find the earliest English entry signed ‘ A. G. Day, John Muller,’ also of the same pass. Karly in 1853—the date is not given—we find a note of ‘excursions round Zermatt’ and over the ‘Cervin pass’ bearing the signatures R. C. Heath, James Atkins and— Alfred .Wills, London, who, though then only twenty-five years of age, was quite an Alpine veteran, as his Swiss travels commenced in 1846. In August 1854 Matthaus at last found

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The Fihrerbiicher of the Brothers Zumtaugwald: 221 an Englishman keen to repeat the ascent of Monte Rosa. Mr. Bird’s? short note, undated but between August 7 and 19—the dates of the preceding and following entries—is annexed. They got no further than the Silbersattel. A few days later the brothers Edmund, James Grenville and Christopher Smyth, fired by the majestic appearance of Monte Rosa from the Strahlhorn, renewed the attempt but got no further, if as far, change in the weather compelling retreat. Their guides were Ulrich Lauener and M. and J. Zumtaugwald. On September 1 they were more fortunate and, leaving the Riffelhaus at 2 a.M., reached at noon the summit of the Ostspitze. Their guides were again Lauener, the two Zumtaugwald, and another unnamed. The record of this famous expedition is annexed, dated the same day. On September 6, 1854, Matthius and Johann cross to Saas by the Adler, taking the Strahlhorn en route, their travellers being ‘ Fred* Townsend, Edward C. Stuart Cole,’ who write : ‘ We found them attentive, careful and sagacious guides. Better guides cannot, we believe, be had in Zermatt.’ On September 11 we find Mr. E. 8. Kennedy’s note (repro- duced) of his ascent of the Ostspitze. We know from ‘ Mont Blane and Monte Rosa’ by Hudson and Kennedy that on Sept- ember 8 Kennedy, with the two Zumtaugwald and Albrecht, had got within 60 feet of the summit, which was however only attained by one of the guides—inferentially Johann Zum- taugwald. Success came three days later, when his companions were the two Zumtaugwald and one Benedict Leir, a comet waiter. . He was followed on September 18 by KH. L. Awse with Matthaus and Stephan Zumtaugwald. His note is reproduced and is interesting as giving the number of Matthaus’s ascents— four—which would be in 1848, and with the Smyths, Kennedy and himself in 1854. On July 31, 1855, the first ascent of the Dufourspitze itself was made by the new route from the W. by Charles Hudson, Grenville and Christopher Smyth, Birkbeck and Stevenson with Ulrich Lauener and ‘ three other guides from the neighbour- hood of Zermatt.’ They are not named and there is nothing in Matthaus’s book to show that he was one of them. Be that as it eae on eens 18 we find a note signed by 2 His fuller account was reprinted in A.J. xxii. 489-90. His ‘ Héchste Spitze ’ is the Ostspitze, and the reference is to the ascent of that peak by Madutz and Matthdus in 1848.

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999, Historical Documents. —I11. Charles W. St. John, 94th Regiment, certifying that he had that day made, with Matthius Zumtaugwald and Joseph Brantschen, the ascent of Monte Rosa, from the summit of which he had seen the iron cross on the Zumstein Spitze. ‘He was most skilful and active in assisting me over the difficulties near the summit.’ In July 1856 he accompanies ‘Sigmund Porges’ up the Monte Rosa and ‘Henry Trower and William Longman of London’ over the Théodule. In August: he and Johann ascend the Monte Rosa with a M. Lavanne, and he crosses the Weissthor with ‘ W. E. Matthews,’ Oxford. On August 13, 1857, he acts as chief guide up Monte Rosa to Mr. Richard Forman and his daughter, Miss Emma C. Forman, the first lady to reach the summit; and a few days later we find the record of an ascent of the Cima di Jazzi and of Monte Rosa over the well-known signature, in pencil, ’R. W. E. Forster’ of P.P.G. fame. On September 17, 1858, Dr. Theodor Mannheim mentions ‘my second ascent of Monte Rosa’ with Matthius and his brother Stephan. Matthius’s® enterprise 1s shown by an entry signed, on August 1, 1859, ‘ Joseph H. Fox, A.C.,’ that he had ‘accompanied me voluntarily over the Tnift Pass.’ Ascents of Monte Rosa follow: on August 23, 1859, with J. Guthrie Smith; on July 16, 1860, with Chas. D. Robertson, Lt.-Col. R.E.; on July 26, 1860, with Sir T. Fowell Buxton and party; on August 24, 1860, with W. and H. Salmond ; on August 10, 1861, with J. C. Kennedy. In 1861 ‘Thomas Blanford, A.C.,’ makes with him the ascent of Monte Rosa and crosses the Lysjoch, then new to Matthiéus: ‘ his knowledge of the mountains and passes round Zermatt is complete.’ | My friend Mr. H. T. Mennell will recognise the following : ‘We have been up the Cima di Jazzi and over the Théodule ? His brother Johann crossed this pass with Hinchliff and Zacharie Cachat about August 25, 1857, and was reported to have crossed it with Mr. K. A. Chapman of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Cachat probably in 1855 or 1856. We unfortunately know extremely ttle of Mr. Chapman’s expeditions. He appears to have been one of the most enterprising men of his day. (See also Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, by Hudson and Kennedy, p. 130, and Ueber Eis und Schnee, 2nd edit. vol. 11. 116, and P.P.G. i. 180, 195-6.)

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” The Fiihrerbiicher of the Brothers Zumtaugwald. 228 with Matthéus zum Taugwald, and like him very much. We are hoping to meet him again. ‘H. T. Mennewy. ‘R. 8. Watson. : ‘Newcastle. | ‘ Septr. 1861.’ In 1862 Matthaus makes what was undoubtedly the greatest expedition of his life—the first passage of the Sesiajoch. The note is reproduced. He was the ‘old Tugs’ of Moore’s narrative. Where Almer led there was of course not much scope for the second guide. The same year he rejoins his old patron, the Rev. J.G. Smyth. They cross to the Valpelline by the Z’Mutt and Zardesan glaciers and to Evolena by the Col de Collon. A few days later‘ W. E. Hall, A.C., K. E. Digby ’ cross with him the Col d’Hérens and the Col des Bouquetins ; finally with W. E. Hall and J. A. Hudson the Col du Géant is crossed on August 24 and the ascent of Mont Blanc made on August 26. ‘ He is a most efficient guide and his cheerful- ness and good humour make him a pleasant companion.’ In 1863 he accompanied Mr. Thomas Whitwell and Christian Lauener over the Weissthor, up Monte Rosa and over the High-Level route, but ‘an attempt on Mont Blane from the Géant [is] frustrated by bad weather.’ Another ascent of Monte Rosa is recorded in 1868 and three in 1864, the second of which is signed ‘C. F. Foster, A.C., G. E. Foster, A.C.’ On August 30, 1864, Mr. James Sheil, A.C., records an ascent of the Dom with M. and J. Zumtaugwald. ‘This was his first ascent to the highest point of the Dom... but he seemed to know the way thoroughly.’ There is an interesting entry dated ‘15 juillet 1865,’ signed ‘Ch. Lory, C. M. Briquet, Ch. Meisel.’ They went by a variation of the High-Level route from Bourg St. Pierre to Zermatt, viz. from the ‘chalets de Valsorey par le Col de Maison rouge, le sommet de la Grafenaire [sic], le glacier de Corbassiére et le Col des Pauvres a Giétroz,’ thence via Chanrion and the Col de la Reuse d’Arolla to Prerayen and over the Cols de Collon, du Mont Brtlé et de Valpelline to Zermatt. They also ascended the Dom. M. Briquet still survives at a great age, but 1s, I hear with much regret, totally blind. If he gets to know of this he may be glad to hear that he is not forgotten by Englishmen who knew of his many expeditions in days now long ago. In 1866 is an entry of a passage of the Alphubel pass signed

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w 924 Historical Documents.—ITI. ‘Francis Balfour, July 8, 1866,’ doubtless Professor Balfour, killed on the Aiguille Blanche. The book ends with an ascent of Monte Rosa on August 12, 1867. Apart from the entries in his Fihrerbuch, there is little to be said about Matthaéus. He seems to have given up guiding and built the little Hétel de la Poste, but died in 1872 soon after it was open, the consequence of a blow on the head received in a fight at Berne which completely upset his mental balance and from which he never recovered. His son of the same Christian name is an ex-trooper in the Second Regiment of U.S. Cavalry. It is not pretended that Matthaus was in any sense a great guide. Men of his stamp in the early ’sixties were completely overshadowed by the great Oberlanders, men of much the same age, Almer, the Laueners, Melchior and Jakob Anderegg, the two Chamoniards Jean Baptiste and Michel Croz, and Jean Joseph Maquignaz and Jean Antoine Carrel of Val Tournanche, all of whom were then in the heyday of their strength ; while in his own village Peter Taugwalder the elder showed enterprise and insight, joined to great executive ability, which placed him only little below the greatest guides of the day. Generally speaking, while there have been thoroughly competent guides in Zermatt itself, not one has stood out by himself or could be said to equal the best men of the day, so that the conquest of nearly all the great summits in the neigh- bourhood fell to be made by guides from other parts. Still, Matthaus was a competent and trustworthy guide, careful of the lives of his travellers and of his own—a good comrade, an agreeable companion. The second brother, Johann Zumtaugwald, was born on January 4, 1826. His book dates only from July 1858, and it is a very remarkable instance of the share taken by English travellers in the exploration of the Alps that from 1858 to 1883 it contains only nine entries not in the English language. We know, however, that he had acted as guide previously, for he accompanied Ulrich’s party in 1849 when they reached . the Silbersattel (Seitenthaler, p. 72). Other expeditions are referred to in footnote 3. In Mr. Whymper’s notice of him attached to the third edition of the ‘Guide to Zermatt,’ from which the portrait. taken by Mr. Whymper in 1898, by the kind’ permission of

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The Fiihrerbiicher of the Brothers Zumtaugwald. 225 Mr. John Murray is reproduced, it is stated that he had made the ascent of Monte Rosa in 1855, from which one may infer he was one of the party of July 31 on the first ascent of the Dufourspitze, or he may refer to his ascent of Monte Rosa with Mr. R. Walters and Mr. C. Blomfield in 1856 recorded in Hinchliff’s ‘Summer Months,’ p. 101, when ‘a promising- — Photo: E. Whymper.} [By kind permission of Mr, John Murray. JOHANN ZUMTAUGWALD IN 1898. looking young fellow,’ Peter Perren, later well known as a good guide, makes his début. In ‘P.P.G.’ i. 195-6 he is also stated to have attempted the ascent of the Dom from Saas with Mr. K. A. Chapman in 1856. We may conclude, therefore, that he was of a very enterprising disposition. The first entry is of an ascent of Monte Rosa with H. J. and H. G. H. Norman, July 16, 1858, and then follows: ‘Johann zum Taugwald accompanied me in an attempt to ascend the Dom de Mischabel. We nearly reached the summit but were driven back by bad weather. I was perfectly satisfied with his care and efficiency as a guide. ‘“Epw” CaYLEy, | ‘England. ‘ July, 1858.’ VOL, XXXI—NO. CCXV. | Q

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226 ; Historical Documents.—ITI. This is the earliest attempt we know of on the Randa side of the Dom, and doubtless the knowledge then gained enabled - Johann to lead the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies to the summit a couple of months later. That same year passages of the Triftjoch twice, the Col du Torrent and the Col d’Evolena, as the Col d’Hérens was then sometimes called, are recorded, and ‘John Ormsby, Wm. R. Bruce ’ cross the Weissthor to Macugnaga. Mr. Llewelyn Davies’ note is reproduced and needs no comment. An ascent of Monte Rosa and a passage of the Adler by ‘Robert Burn, Trinity Coll. Cambridge, Charles A. Prescott, Trin. Coll. Camb.,’ are recorded on August 17, 1859, followed by another ascent of Monte Rosa on August 22 signed ‘ Frederic W. Farrar,’ Trinity College, Cambridge, subsequently the well-known Dean of Canterbury. Two well-known names, ‘L. Stephen, Rob. Liveing,’ follow. I hope the sight of his note of nearly sixty years ago may recall to our veteran member Dr. Liveing many pleasant days. In 1860 there are records of passages of the Weissthor to Mattmark by— . ‘K. Prescot ; T. J. Prout {Oxford ; of the Adler by T. Fowell Buxton, E. N. Buxton, and G. Leatham ; of the ‘ Col de Lyskam’ to Gressoney and back by the Schwarzthor, and ofanascent of the Dom by ‘ E. B. Prest, J. L. Propert,’ both members of the Club ; of an ascent of the Breithorn by Kenelm E. Digby and three fnends ; of an ascent of Monte Rosa by an American climber, as rare then as now, Dr. Luther Parks, Jr., of Boston, U.S. The first entry of 1861 bears the well-known signature of A. W. Moore, followed almost immediately by a note signed by the name of A. Adams Reilly, equally famous in this Club. Both are reproduced. Other expeditions in 1861 were the Adler by— ‘J. W. Clark Trin. Coll. David Powell | Cambridge ’ ; Monte Rosa by G. G. Bollinger of Vevey ; Monte Rosa, the Adler, and the Alphubeljoch by John Campbell and E. Harvey ; the Adler by J. R. King, Merton College, Oxford ; Monte Rosa by Edward B. Bright and ——- Wilbraham. It is in 1862 that we find the record of an attempt—unsuc- cessful though it was—on the Matterhorn that stamps Johann as a man of considerable daring and enterprise considering the

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The Fihrerbiicher of the Brothers Zumtaugwald. = 227 overwhelming impression which that mountain made on the climbers of that day. The note in pencil, fresh as though written yesterday, 1s reproduced as much as a memento of the writer, who is immortalised in Whymper’s pages as the cheeriest of companions—typical, as we like to think, of the A.C. member of that day. The tale has been told at greater length in ‘ Scrambles,’ pp. 90-95 (5th edit.). The same year are records of an ascent of Monte Rosa by John H. Edge and John Edge; of a passage of the Weissthor to Macugnaga by Walter J. Johnson, whence the return was made by the same way with three German travellers of Ham- burg ; of an ascent of the Cima and a passage of the Weissthor to Macugnaga by HK. Latham; of an ascent of the Breithorn and a passage of the Weissthor to Saas signed ‘ Minto, Geo. §. Elliot, Melgund’; of a passage of the Weissthor by Mortimer J. Hunt and H. F. Makins ; of the same, including an ascent of the Cima, by Spericer Chapman, who adds: “I may safely say I never met a man who gave me more the idea of great coolness and presence of mind. He made the ascent of the Mischabel with my brother in ’56 and he entirely satisfied him on that occasion.’ Johann’s great expedition in 1862—probably his greatest— was however the first ascent of the Taschhorn with the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies, Mr. J. W. Hayward, and his own brother Stephan. The note is reproduced. In 18638 there is little of interest. He crosses six cols en route to Chamonix, including the Géant, with J. R. King, A.C., and James Riddell. ‘ Of the 6 passes mentioned 4 were new to him, but he was uniformly equal to his task . . . he is very good at glacier work. . . . Among the séracs of the Col du Géant .. . he acquitted himself admirably.’ A note of an ascent of Monte Rosa bears the signature of a still vigorous veteran—Mr. Frederic Harrison, Lincoln’s Inn. In 1864 he is employed by Mr. C. C. Tucker and Mr. T. H. Carson—who, I feel sure, will not mind seeing their entry of fifty-three years ago once more—and he makes with his old patrons, J. R. King and James Riddell, quite a series of good expeditions—the Col de Tanneverge, Mont Vélan, Cols du Sonadon, de Chermontane (descending the Vuibez icefall), the Triftjoch, the Dom and the Weissthor. His ascent of the Dom with his brother and Mr. James Sheil, A.C., has been mentioned already. | Mr. James Riddell returns in 1865, and with Mr. A. J. Baker they do the Col du Grand Cornier, the Weissthor to Macugnaga, and Monte Leone. ‘He has always proved himself in every

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¢28 Historical Documents.— ILI : way equal to circumstances and certainly challenges the position of a first-rate guide.’ In 1867 a note in very boyish writing records the ascent of the Breighthorn [sic] by one ‘ R. B. Heathcote,’ subsequently and for nearly thirty years an honoured member of this Club ; and there is an entry by Mr. Alvey Augustus Adie which will for a moment, I trust, brush awav the present cares of h's high office and call up memories of happy days. In 1868 there is an entry bearing the signature of a prominent member of the Club, Charles Packe, of ascents of the Dom and Monte Rosa, and over the signature of a former P.A.C.. F. Craufurd Grove, of a passage of the Adler. The same year Henry Chester, killed soon afterwards on the Lyskamm, records ascents of Monte Rosa and the Breithorn and passages of the Weissthor and Col d’Heérens. In 1869 my old general, Lord Methuen—doubtless as active as ever in his command at Malta as he was in the South African days, when hardly had the first shot been fired in the morning than up cantered the general to the advance guard on a pony, the rider’s feet seeming to touch the ground—records ascents of the Mettelhorn, Breithorn, and Monte Rosa. There is little else until in 1875 we find the entry of a passage _ of the Lysjoch, and the book comes to an end with a passage of the Théodule in 1883. Johann continued service in a small way until 1890 and died in 1900. That he was a thoroughly good man the book bears full testimony. I cannot do better than quote the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies in 1858 (‘ P.P.G.’ 1. 196): ‘ Johann zum Taugwald, with whose experience and resources as a guide I was familiar, and whose honest simplicity and quiet good humour make him a very pleasant companion,’ and Mr. C. C. Tucker’s words in 1869: ‘ one of the steadiest guides at Zermatt and possessing perhaps greater local knowledge than any of his compatriots.’ But his book shows that he could also find his bearings when travelling in new districts, and we may fairly class him as in the front rank of Zermatt guides of that day, while in his younger days he showed enterprise and daring that, given more opportunity, might have carried him far. Stephan, the youngest of the three brothers, was born at Zermatt on July 8, 1838. He was intended for the priesthood and ‘ spent the greater part of the year at Brieg preparing to be a priest, and regularly returned to Zermatt for the summer months, to make hay whilst the touristical sun was shining ’ (J. Llewelyn Davies in ‘ P.P.G.’ i. 197). His first cure was

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The Fithrerbiicher of the Brothers Zumtaugwald. 229 that of.Ulrichen, 1866-1877, previous to which time he had been simply a chaplain, and he died in 1907 as curé of Taesch. His book extends only from 1858 to 1868, but Hinchliff tells us that he was one of their Monte Rosa guides in 1856, when ‘ nothing but a tremendous effort of strength and firm- ness on the part of Stephan zum Taugwald saved the whole party from an accident which might have been serious’ (‘Summer Months,’ p. 138)—which would seem to show that, even if ‘he’s not made of the sort of stuff for a leader’ (J. F. Hardy in 1861 in ‘ P.P.G.’ 11. 384), Stephan was still a watchful and competent guide. Professor Bonney mentions (‘ A.J.’ xxxi. 18) making the passage of the Weissthor in 1858 and will remember that Stephan was one of his guides. The entries in 1858 cover only passages of the Théodule and such like, but in 1860 he crosses the Adler with Colonel Chas. D. Robertson, R.E., ascends Monte Rosa with Sir T. Fowell Buxton, crosses the Weissthor twice, one of his employers adding ‘he also speaks English,’ gets as far as the Grands Mulets in an attempted ascent of Mont Blanc frustrated by bad weather, and with ‘ Arthur von Oettingen aus Dorpat Livland’ he again ascends Monte Rosa. In 1861 two ascents of Monte Rosa are recorded over the signatures John Robert Seeley—afterwards Sir J. R. Seeley the historian—and T. W. Jex Blake. ‘Asa trusty, strong, well- educated and most willing guide he is most strongly to be recommended ’ 1s the latter’s remark. On August 19 he acted as guide to Dr. Francis Sibson, a member of the large party led by Hardy which made the first ascent of the Lyskamm. In 1862 he again makes the ascent of Monte Rosa and acts as assistant to his brother Johann on the first ascent of the Taschhorn. A facsimile of the record of this expedition is to be found in ‘ A.J.’ xxx. 328. The book ends on September 18, 1868, with a note signed ‘Simpson Rostron, D. J. Abercromby,’ recording ascents of Monte Rosa and the Cima and passages of the Weissthor and Alphubel. The following year I believe the same travellers made the ascent of the Dom in Stephan’s company. Many of us remember the stout burly figure of the curé who no doubt looked back on his mountaineering days as not the worst of his life. So end the records of good men in their generation to whose care and ability many an Englishman owed much. J. P. Farrar.

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A Flight into Italy. 237 A Fuicut Into ITALy. By R. L. G. IRVING. HREE very weary men entered the Montanvert at the. beginning of August 1914. Only their weariness, the lateness of the hour, and the compassion of the manager had procured their entrance. Montanvert had become like a withered shoot that has been severed from the tree. The sap had ceased to rise from Chamonix ; for France was at war with Germany, and an order had gone out that morning that all foreigners were to leave. The exodus had taken place by rail, motor, carriage, and on foot where other means had been unprocurable. France was going through the terrible days when England—or rather the English Cabinet—was making up its mind. The three men had seen something of her anxiety in the face of a peasant, whose son had been called up, and they had been hurt by the doubt in his voice as he asked : ‘Et PAngleterre, elle va marcher avec nous?’ They werc not even allies, and they must go. To find a hut unoccupied is nearly always pleasant ; to be the only party at a small -hotel confers distinction as well as peace; but to find a great centre like the Montanvert utterly deserted in the middle of the sammer season is suggestive of a catastrophe. The manager himself opened the door, as all but one or two of the staff had already gone. His face did not help to dispel the impression of desolation, but he consented to parley. It is time to introduce the three men. One was an undergraduate ; one had just left school. The undergraduate had walked in the Alps, and had done a little climbing in Wales ; the schoolboy had seen his first mountains two days before, and, considering the shortness of his acquaintance with them, he treated them in a very familiar manner. The third man was not quite old enough, and certainly not wise enough, to be their father, though he received a super-filial respect from the others, whose names were Tom and Dick. The party was not yet complete, as Harry, who 1s a member of the Club, was to join it with another young friend a few days later. The older man has appeared several times as ‘I’ in these pages, and will now continue the story in the first person. The manager offered to let us stay, if we promised to cross direct into Italy or Switzerland the following morning. Only on this condition could our presence be excused, if it became

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To 23 A Flight wnto Italy. known to the nultary authorities. At that moment the only things we cared about were a comfortable seat and dinner, “0 we accepted the conditions immediately. After dinner we had to consider the situation. The Col du Géant was the expedition we had planned for the next day; but our ideas had been modified by having to toil up the path from Chamonix on a sultry evening, instead of resting in a train. We had had a fairly arduous day on the Belvédére, and it was our second day out from England. Every sign known to the prophets pointed to bad weather ; but the promise we had given dis- posed of the one plan that attracted us—a thoroughly slack day. A long troublesome traverse to the Col de Balme was the only alternative to the Col du Géant that could be con- sidered. It was worked out on the map, and discussed in the knowledge that we should reject it. | We were roused, a long time after dawn, on a typically bad morning, calculated to make the most restlessly energetic climber hesitate to start on a glacier expedition. The rain was coming down steadily, the atmosphere was like a blanket. Below the grey, compact clouds the rocks stood out blue-black against the dead-white snow; but we had to fulfil our bond with the manager. He gave us a Ictter for Amsterdam to post in Italy, and in obliging him I hope we did not unwittingly convey information to the enemy. His spirits seemed to rise as we prepared to leave, and he was the only one of us all who succeeded in looking pleasant as he shut the door, and left us facing the wet path and the rain-washed glacier. — It looked a long way, even to the foot of the Tacul. Breaths of more than usually stuffy air met us as we walked over the ice, and checked any inclination to indulge in optimistic prophecies about the weather. By the time we reached the foot of the great ice-fall we were thoroughly wet, and only the necessity of eating something made us halt there for a quarter of an hour. The glacier here was partly snow-covered, and a variety of tracks—all of fairly recent date—were visible at intervals. We ascertained, not out of curiosity, that they did not all provide a way through the séracs, the mist making it difficult to distinguish the good from the bad. This was the one part of the expedition that made us forget our troubles. In going through it we met with some of the compensations awarded to wanderers who have passed beyond the early stages of depression and discomfort which must be faced in setting out on a really bad day. The change from dry to clinging wet clothes is a process that is essentially

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A Flight into Italy. 289 unpleasant ; it 1s a horrible perversion of the use of clothes. But when the rain can do nothing more to make matters worse, the compensations begin. And few scenes in nature appeal so powerfully to man’s love of the mysterious as a difficult glacier on a misty day. Great towers of ice, cut off by un- bridged moats, rise over you with startling suddenness out of the bewildering fog. Heights and depths, disguised in un- substantial yet visible vapours, assume incredible dimensions. A shadowy line that has appeared on your horizon turns in a few seconds into the treacherous overhanging lip of a great chasm, whose nature is revealed by a few feet of pale glassy wall, just visible on the farther side. An eave of soft damp snow hides the wall below you; but a probe with the axe will pierce it and leave a small dark hole, or break off an icicle, whose fall is followed by a mournful tinkle far down im the void below. It is a sufficiently eloquent warning; and you turn back to try another way, choosing it rather by instinct than by method, and half enjoying the way the great white cold-blooded monster, on whose back you are walng: tricks you and mocks you by wrinkling up his skin. But the enjoyment of such games demands time and super- fluous energy. ‘They are not for tired men, who have still far to go. As far as I remember it was between one and two o’clock when we emerged above the ice-fall into a deep track, visibility being low—less than a score of yards. We had been wet so long that the exertion of plodding through the soft snow produced no feeling of warmth. I had little doubt about Dick’s stamina ; but Tom’s strength had given out one rough winter’s day near the top of Crib y Ddysgl, and he had had to be helped down the zigzags. A meagre supply of sandwiches was the cause assigned for his exhaustion—a theory which may have been true, but which did not prevent the memory of the incident suggesting a breakdown in our present and far more serious situation. As a matter of fact he stood the strain as well as any of us. After we had pushed on doggedly for an hour or more, the slopes became steeper and the snow worse. For the first time a voice from behind me asked, ‘Is it much further?’ The imp who was to reveal the future was caught before he escaped from Pandora’s box ; but a near relation of his, Anticipation, flies about freely, and when he is in a gloomy mood he is a most mischievous little fellow. In this mood he is very ready to attach himself to travellers who are crossing a wide expanse

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240 A Flight into Italy. of deep snow, if they are sufficiently exhausted and can see nothing beyond a monotonous white circle of a few yards’ radius. The presence of one or two experienced men behind you on the rope will generally keep him quiet, and the solitary man, when he gets accustomed to him, can coax him into a fairly good temper. If, however, the men behind you are in your charge, and are tired, and of uncertain resisting power, this imp, Anticipation, is at his worst and lets you feel his pull on the heavy swollen rope. How hard he can pull I realised when the rain turned to snow and the tracks became invisible. We must have been nearly level with La Vierge when this happened. For a short time we managed to pick them up, till we lost them completely in getting past some newly opened crevasses. After that the outlook was grim. The point was already passed beyond which an attempt to return to Montanvert, and a failure to strike the Col would equally certainly be the end of us. There is a line familiar to climbers which separates definite - risk, deliberately taken, from the ordinary unforeseeable chances of aclimb. Members of the Club have often crossed it. They have crossed it on difficult rocks, and on ice and snow, especially where there is a danger of falling stones or ice. The crossing is made on rock during a period—necessarily a short period — when the issue is uncertain; it is followed by a relaxation of muscular and, in most cases, of nervous tension. But in the difficulties of the rocks there is an element of personal resis- tance which rouses a man’s pugnacity, and the tactics required to achieve victory absorb his attention. In deep snow the ' period is long, and becomes steadily more trying. The forces opposed to us are intangible and mysterious; we struggle, as we do in a nightmare, against a clinging grip that holds our legs, while we are conscious of the unseen pursuer stretching out his hand to grasp us. There is no distraction for the mind or eye, save an occasional effort to keep the right direction. Each step is like the last: the same heavy pull to disengage the leg, the same effort to advance the foot and transfer the balance, the same depressing loss of height as the boot sinks with a succession of jerks till the thin treacherous stuff is packed tight enough to bear the full weight. And we know that each step is accompanied by a loss of strength. After the tracks were lost the voices from behind came more frequently—‘ Are we nearly there? Pretty cold now, isn’t it ?’—followed by the usual would-be-cheerful reply. The snow- field had already exceeded all estimates of its extent, when

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LA VIERGE—COL DU GEANT. NEAR THE COL DU GEANT.

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A Flight wto Italy. — 241 the clouds parted for a moment behind us and I got a glimpse of the base of La Vierge, and saw that we were still very near the right direction. They closed up again, and we went for- ward with halts required at frequent and dinunishing intervals. | We shouted two or three times, and into my shout I threw the exasperation that is so useful a disguise for anxiety. ‘here was no answer, but it seemed to relieve our feelings. Then, : suddenly, the mist darkened in front of us, and we saw the rocks. We had reached the edge of the glacier, but where ? We groped about for a moment or two, and then within a few yards of us I saw the old hut. I doubt whether we could all have kept going for another half-hour. We stumbled down along the short stretch of easy snow-covered rock to the Rifugio di Torino. For once I did not care how full it was. We could hear the voices, male and female, of an Italian party talking and laughing in the big sitting-room, and a goodly curl of smoke from the chimney showed that the kitchen stove was busy. As we pushed open the outer door, one, at least, of us said ‘ Thank God!’ And I am very certain he was not breaking the Third Commandment. | | There are trials whose ending can be greeted with a jest, and, as alule, they are the most exciting to read of and to experience. It is de régle to seize on the comic element in a critical situation on a difficult pitch, and it is a good way of maintaining morale when one is hard pressed. The wonderful Tommies Bairns- . father has depicted for us greet the results of a hellish bombard- ment, and the miseries of trench warfare, with a jest. It is a defiance of the author of their troubles—the Boche. But set one of these same Tommies in his home by the bed of a sick child, to watch the tide of death creeping hourly closer, he will not greet the ebbing of the tide with a jest: his heart will be too full of gratitude to the Power that has held it back ; a silent gratitude, for the Englishman shrinks from the expression of deep feeling. ‘The climber, who has barely escaped losing his party through cold and exhaustion, may tell you of the warm drinks and the dry clothes that furnished such an acutely — pleasurable sequel to their trials. He finds it difficult to analyse his impressions further. But thus he can mark the way to other memories, memories that prove he has a treasure that will not fail, drawn for him out of his own heart. Our flight was over, in so far as we had crossed the political frontier. But Italy has another frontier, abhorrent though it be to all good Irredentists. It is not crossed till you look for a refuge from the sun instead of from the storm. We VOL, XXXI.—NO. CCXV. R

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242 A Flight into Ltaly. reached this second frontier early the next afternoon, near the village of Entreves. The first fifteen hundred feet of our descent was unexpectedly full of incident, as one of the party abused his freedom from the rope by trying to glissade on legs that were unsteadied by the strain of the day before. The shaking up that resulted therefrom, and the long jog down past the Mont Fréty, gave a meaning to the word repose that Tom and Dick had never known before. They lay down at the edge of a green pasture, under the brown boles of some larches, which made an island of shade in the flood of sunshine that surrounded them. ‘There I shall leave them, and it is there that I like to picture them now. Our party was never completed. War was a_ certainty before the other two expected members of it could leave England. Harry, in spite of a shattered leg of which he has lost some inches, will not abandon our pilgrimages to the Alps, though some of the former ways may prove too rough for us to follow. The other three have accomplished their last pilgrimage. They occupy the shrines that pilgrims honour on their way. One of them never saw the Alps ; but a single short visit, in January, to Pen-y-Pass revealed how he loved to feel the moun- tains round him. His was one of the first of the Territorial Divisions to go out, and he fell in the second battle of Ypres. May England be left some few like him to be her future governors! But they are in haste to die for her. Tom hes in Gallipoh ; Dick in the desert east of the Suez Canal. They would one day have been members of the Club. No one who had been with them the evening we came down from the Matterhorn could have doubted they would uphold its best traditions, not even the cynic, whoever he may be, who once described the route we took as the ‘line of bottles.’ For their sakes I have recorded this modest expedition, be- cause 1t would have given them such pleasure to read of ther doings in the ALpinz JournaLt; and because their mountain romance, short and simple though it was, is worthy of a small place among its records. And I have written for my own sake, too; lest I should one day be found to have forgotten the weariness that is turned into joy, or the greeting of those who, side by side, have seen the day born and die upon the hills. I have been asked to give the names of the three young soldiers referred to: ee Sevecinee,

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In Memoriam. 943 William Humphrey Hollins, Second Lieutenant, Notts and Derby Regt., 8th Batt. ; won the Brackenbury Scholarship for History, at Balliol, December 1913; killed near Ypres, June 1915. Thomas Darwin Overton, Lieutenant, Lincolnshire Regiment, 6th Batt.; Scholar of New College ; killed near Cape Helles, July 1915. Richard Thomas Cyril Willis-Fleming, Second Lieutenant, Hants R.H.A.; killed at Romani, August 1916. IN MEMORIAM. ALEXANDER RIVINGTON. 1837-1917. WE regret to announce the sudden death on February 17, from pneumonia, of one of the oldest members of the Alpine Club in the person of Mr. Alexander Rivington, of ° Hollydale,’ Tarring Road, Worthing. Mr. Rivington was the second surviving son of the late Mr. Francis Rivington of the well-known publishing firm of Waterloo Place. Mr. Rivington had been wonderfully active up to within the last few days before his fatal illness, and though he would have reached the age of eighty in March, he still greatly enjoyed walking for many hours a day. He was elected a member of the Alpine Club in 1861, and in his early days had done much climbing in Switzerland, and has written many articles, etc., on the subject. He was the author of a book (now out of print) entitled ‘ Notes on Travels,’ published in 1865. He still took a great interest in the Club and all matters connected with climbing, and it was only lately that he had been in correspondence with his friend, Mr. Arthur O. Wheeler, Secretary of the Alpine Club of Canada, on various points. Mr. Rivington leaves a daughter and three sons, one of whom, Lieut. Kenneth Rivington, is at present invalided home. Mrs. - Rivington, his widow, we regret to say, only survived him nine days. FREDERICK WALLINGFORD WHITRIDGE. Mr. FREDERICK WALLINGFORD WHITRIDGE was elected a member of the Alpine Club in 1884, after some seasons of active work in the Alps—chiefly, I believe, in the Oberland, with Christian Almer as his leading guide. He married a daughter of Matthew Arnold, and always maintained a close relation with England, which he visited at least twice a year. After his marriage, he exchanged

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244 In Memortam mountaineering for sport in Scotland, and rented the same moor in the neighbourhood of Pitlochry for about thirty years. He also had a house near Tring. As an influential and much trusted lawyer he had to spend his winters in New York, so that he was unable to take much advantage of his membership of our Clab— to his great and often expressed regret. He was a very well-known character in New York. His pamphlets on the political situation, published at long intervals, attracted great attention, and were written in a trenchant and caustic style, rare in such literature. During the later years of his life he was president of one of the great surface railroads in New York City, and dragged it up from bankruptcy to prosperity. During that process he came into frequent and always victorious contact with the Public Service Commission and with the unions, and his controversies with them, whether in the public press or in the law courts, added to the gaiety of the city. He greatly annoyed the labour party by boldly asserting that the men employed were his servants, and he was the servant of the public. I think he invariably succeeded in carrying through his decisions. The Public Service Commission brought countless actions against him and lost them all. When the War broke out he stood forth strongly on the side of the Allies, and his little book, ‘What one American thinks about the War,’ was a great help to the Allied cause in the United States, and was widely circulated. His son, with his parents’ full approval, came over and enlisted in our army, presently obtaining a commission in the Artillery. He fought at the front in France for about two years and won a Military Cross. Whitridge was an admirable talker, a splendid companion, and a man of great ability. He filled the office of special Ambassador to represent the United States at the wedding of the King of Spain, and if he had lived and his party had returned to power it is more than possible that he would have been accredited as the represen- tative of the United States at the Court of St. James’s. Martin .Conway. * MAJOR OSWALD ERIK TODD, 5th Gurkha Rifles. 1879-1916. HIMALAYAN mountaineering and exploration has received two grievous blows, during the present war, in the loss of the cousins Oswald Erik Todd and Morris Slingsby. Slingsby died a soldier’s death in Mesopotamia. ‘Todd’s end was tragic and, indirectly, no doubt due to the same cause through the agency of a severe sun- stroke. His career though short was varied, and included active service in South Africa and again on the Indian Frontier during the Zakka Khel expedition. In peace time he had served in Burmah, India, and, latterly, in the North-Western Frontier Province at the station of his regiment—Abbottabad. Todd was of exactly the type to be successful in Himalayan exploration, and his perform- Lee

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In Memoriam. 245 ances during his short tour in the Lahoul Himalaya pointed him out as the man from whom great things might be expected. Short and strongly built, he was the type which begins at its worst and is always improving : the hardest work seemed to leave him a better man, while lack of comfort—inseparable from the Himalayas—had no effect on him whatsoever. He learnt his mountaineering under the very best of instructors—-namely, his uncle, Cecil Slingsby, as also did Morris Slingsby his cousin and companion. Before coming to India he had done a certain amount of travel in Norway and a good deal of scrambling in the English hills." His life in Abbottabad took him continually into the hills, and his leave was invariably spent in the mountains. He knew the Kaghan Valley and its mountains fairly well, and had some fine scrambles among them both with his friends and with men of his regiment. Kaghan is a first-class training ground for the greater Himalaya. There are few great problems, but the sub-alpine scale is very large and therefore distances are great. Todd’s most remarkable expedition was no doubt this tour in Lahoul. We had almost decided on this trip during the summer of 1910, which we spent in the Oberland together, our guide then being the Heinrich Fuhrer who accompanied us in the Himalayas. I having long leave had preceded Todd ; but he on his arrival found me hors de combat with a damaged shoulder ; in consequence all his climbs were done with Fuhrer and with his orderly, Chandra Sing, who himself had the makings of an excellent mountaineer. It is sad to think that of the two sahibs and four Gurkhas who with Fuhrer formed our party, the last-named and - I are now the sole survivors. As I have elsewhere written, his successes on Maiwa Mundinoo, on Kundini, and on the unnamed peak which we called Todd’s giant, were veritable tours de force; and I cannot see why men who were able to do such difficult rock and snow work, and at such a remarkable pace, should not, under favourable conditions, reach a height of at least 27,000 feet, or another 5500 feet, higher than the highest to which they attained, especially as under those very strenuous conditions they never suffered from anything resembling mountain sickness. Todd. was of the exact temperament for prolonged mountain travel: never put out, and with a perfect temper, always happy and contented. Weather was about the only thing that affected him—except, of course, the great misfortune of missing a shot at shikar, for he was a very keen sportsman and did his best to combine climbing and shooting. The year after our journey in Kulu and Lahoul, Todd was to join his cousin in his great attempt on Kamet, but unfortunately fell ill at Ambala with some form of blood-poisoning, and had to undergo a serious operation on his leg; later he recovered sufficiently to march up into Garhwal slowly, but was quite unfit for high mountaineering. His cousin’s attempt on Kamet was a most strenuous bit of work, and very nearly

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246 In Memoriam. ended badly for him, as from overwork and exposure he became temporarily paralysed down his left side, and I do not think he ever quite recovered from that tremendous effort. On the outbreak of war, Captain Todd was, from his position in the regiment, obliged to stay at headquarters in charge of the depot of his battalion—work which requires an experienced officer. He was unfortunate enough not to obtain relief until the return of his battalion from Gallipoli in December 1915. He then joined it in Egypt and returned with it to India in the following February. Altogether a great disappointment and grief to so keen a soldier, only partially compensated by the thought that he had carried out his arduous and rather thankless duties to his seniors’ complete satisfaction. His isa great loss to the exploration of the higher Himalayan world, as with the exception of a scientific training he had all the qualities required for such work. . C. G. BRuceE. Few places in Craven or elsewhere have a brighter or a sunnier aspect than Kildwick Vicarage, situated as it 1s on the wood-crowned brow of a steep hill overlooking the grand old ‘ Lang Kirk of Craven,’ the broadened valley of the Aire, and lofty, undulating moorlands beyond. | Here was Oswald Erik Todd born on July 8, 1879—his father, the Rev. Herbert Todd, then being the vicar of the parish. Erik, the third son, inherited from both of his parents his bright sunny nature and adventurous spirit, which all who knew him well associated with him. His friends will always treasure the remembrance of his win- some smile, nor can they forget how, the moment he came into a room, a happiness and brightness seemed to enter with him which proved, almost invariably, to be infectious. This was the case both during childhood and manhood. Those of us who have ever shared in the pleasure of the summer holidays of the Todd family in Norway, or elsewhere, have a host of most happy recollections. Never shall I forget driving down _the Romsdal, under perfect weather conditions, with Erik, and his bubbling enthusiasm. I imagined, too, that I knew this grand valley very well before. I was mistaken. In due course he went to Dover College, where he spent about five years, during which he became ‘a leader in athletics, especially in gymnastics, and a highly valued pupil’ of his headmaster—our fellow A.C. member, the Rev. W. C. Compton. He also had the good fortune to become acquainted with Mummery, who was most kind to him. Todd entered Keble College, Oxford, in October 1898, with the intention of taking Holy Orders. During the autumn of 1899 his patriotic ardour turned his thoughts to South Africa, and, with the exception of a couple of days at his home in Craven, he spent the whole of the Christmas holidays at Aldershot and got his first commission

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OSWALD ERIK TODD, 1879—1916.

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NEVILE SAVAGE DONE, 1882—1917.

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In Memoriam. 247 | in the West Yorks Militia. After a few weeks in South Africa he obtained a commission in the regular Army in the East Yorks, and about the end of 1900 he was sent to India in charge of Boer prisoners. Ultimately—thanks to the then Major, the Hon. C. G. Bruce—he was transferred to the 5th Gurkhas, with whom he passed many happy years; and when not on duty became an ardent gardener as well as a first-rate all-round sportsman. Of late years, since his mother’s death, he had spent his long leaves with his aunt, amongst the high and romantic fell country of North- West Yorkshire, which he loved so well. . All who knew Erik Todd deeply mourn his loss, and affectionately treasure the memory of a brave and trusty comrade who possessed an exceptionally lovable nature. W.C.S. NEVILE SAVAGE DONE, 1881-1917. NEvILE Done has written in the JouRNAL his own record of one great season in the Alps, and the world may read what manner of man he was. Some of his comrades have gone before him, and others are embarked on an adventure more perilous than any they dreamed of years ago. One must write of him who never shared with him the joys and toils of the heights, but who mourns a great gap in the circle of friends that the high peaks have brought. Done saw the Alps as a schoolboy, and has written something of his early impressions. His first peak, the Tschingelhorn, must have been climbed in 1907, and in 1908 and 1909 he was the companion of Parkinson in guideless climbs in the Oberland and in the Mont Blanc Range. In 1910 his party worked from the Diablerets through the Oberland to Monte Leone. Election to the Club came in 1912, His last season finished in the Oberland, with three great days in succession on the Nesthorn, the Aletschhorn and the Jungfrau. Amid the fragments of half-forgotten talks, I remember well the impression which the climb with Parkinson up the Italian side of Mont Blanc had made on him, and his keen desire to repeat the crossing when plans were made for the fateful summer in which the peace of the world broke up. As a mountaineer Done was an enthusiast, a safe man on rock and snow, a regular visitor to the fells at home, and one of the soundest school of guideless climbers. A letter from the Front says “He was a very good friend of mine, and will leave a place hard to fill in a little group at the Law Society. In the Alps he was very correct in his methods, as one would expect from his character. He gave the impression of being quite safe anywhere. He used to carry a very heavy sack, much of the contents whereof were at the disposal of the party.’ Done’s photographs were striking productions and

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248 In Memoriam. were often seen at the Club’s exhibitions. As his lecture two years | ago showed, his powers as a speaker and writer were very considerable. Professionally he was highly esteemed, and in everything he touched he showed immense capacity for work and thoroughness. In the early period of the war he threw himself into the Volunteer movement, and gave close attention to the subject of musketry training, doing valuable work as musketry instructor, beside being himself a remarkably good shot. Joining the Army in June, 1916, he passed wid the University of London O.T.C. and the Queen’s Westminsters to a Cadet Battalion and to the Royal Fusiliers. He was gazetted on the day of the February meeting—at which he was present. Within a month he was in France, went up to the Front on the 6th, and was killed on the 10th March during an attack somewhere on the Somme, having already proved himself a fine officer. The sympathy of the whole Club goes out to his widow and his two little girls. We have lost a lover of the mountains, the country another of its finest citizens. HK. E. RoBerts. JAMES ROBERT DENNISTOUN.! New ZEALAND has lost a very keen and able mountaineer-explorer in the death of ‘Jim’ Dennistoun. He was just the man wanted in this country where Alpine Districts are still to be explored, now that the first pioneers are for various reasons unable to continue the work of breaking new ground. For many years the chief climbing has been done in the Tasman District from the Hermitage, excepting one party which has been gaining knowledge of the country round Aspiring. This is partly due to the fact that access to this district is easy, and guides are available, but also partly due to the desire of the majority to ‘do’ something that 1s popularly known. Dennistoun began his Alpine work by pioneering in a little-known locality which would carry no public ‘ kudos.’ He was always one of those men who climbed or explored for the love of the work, and in hopes of adding to our knowledge of the mountains; he never advertised his results. About 1908 he commenced his Alpine career by exploring the headwaters and glaciers of the Rangitata River and with one companion made the first pass over into the Wataroa river on the West Coast. This expedition was a hard experience, only to be appreciated by the few men who have gone into unexplored country W. of the Divide ; its great merit lay in the fact that it was the first piece of Alpine work done by either of the party, and the 1 See also A.J. xxx. 339 (with portrait).

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In Memoriam. 949 only guide they had to help them was a letter of advice from me. The next season Dennistoun organised a party (which I think included a guide) to make the journey from the Rangitata River via the Godley, Classen, and Murchison Glaciers to the Tasman—one of the most interesting expeditions undertaken for many years, and the first one to link up the various districts. Dennistoun altogether made three expeditions into the mountains between the Rangitata and Tasman, during which he made several first passes and first ascents, the most notable being that of Mt. D’Archiac in which he was accompanied by Mr. Earle, A.C. In 1914 the late Mr. King, A.C., was of the party when they made the first crossing of the Terra Nova Pass, a new route from Rangitata River to Godley Glacier. He had arranged to join Mr. King in his ascent of Mt. Cook, but an unavoidable delay prevented him doing so; thus he escaped the accident in which the party were. unfortunately killed. In addition to his pioneer work, Dennistoun made some first ascents in the better known Tasman District, notably Mt. Aylmer, December 1911, and Green’s Saddle (between Mts. Cook and Dampier) from the Linda Glacier in January 1911. His other climbs include Mts. Cook, De la Beche, Minnarets, Elie de Beaumont (second ascent), and the Footstool. His keen interest in working off the beaten track is shown in the two matters mentioned in your short notice of his death—namcely, his solitary climb of Mitre Peak in Milford Sound, a good piece of work, and his trip to the Antarctic on one of Captain Scott’s relief ships. Dennistoun was one of those young enthusiasts in Alpine matters, working for the sheer love of mountains and nature, and not looking for special recognition ; the fact that he had made some addition to our Alpine knowledge would satisfy him even if no big ascents had been made. It was always refreshing to an older climber to meet him and enjoy his enthusiasm, and hear him planning an expedition to break some new ground. Like so many others who have died in this War whom we can ill afford to lose, he has given his life ‘for the mpuire,’ and I am confident he would not have desired a better end. ARTHUR P. HARPER. RICHARD HILL TIDDEMAN. In The Times, February 23, amongst the Deaths there appeared the following notice : ‘ TIppEMAN.—On the 20th Feb., suddenly, at Nottage House, Porthcawl, Glam., Richard Hill Tiddeman, M.A., F.G.S. (late H.M. Geological Survey), of Woodstock Road, Oxford, aged 75... .’ Though I think never a member of the A.C., he was, more or less, associated with relatively early mountaineering in company with

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250 In Memoriam. the late Mr. James Eccles, with whom he made the first ascent of the Aig. du Plan, in 1871. A good many of our A.C. friends have been fortunate in possessing the friendship of Tiddeman, who was a delightful man in every respect, and a devoted lover of the hills. For many years he was actively engaged on the survey of the romantic fell country of Craven, near Settle, Skipton, and over the county border near Clitheroe, in Lancashire. With the late Mr. John Birkbeck, A.C., he initiated the sport of cave-hunting; was closely identified with the scientific exploration of the celebrated Victoria Cave on which he ‘ contributed a report on the physical history of the cave, which is printed in Geological Magazine, Jan., 1873.’ In company with the late Father Richard Sharp, 8.J., he acquired probably a greater intimacy with, and knowledge of, the fascinating limestone scenery of Craven than any other nature-lovers of that grand country of whom I am one. Amongst the natives of Craven there is a wealth of most happy memories connected with the true mountaineer, R. H. Tiddeman, which revive much of pleasure and nothing of the reverse. Wma. CrEcIL SLINGSBY. EMIL KATHREIN. By the death, on November 14, 1916, of Herr Emil Kathrein, the Canton du Valais has lost one of its most devoted sons, a prominent citizen and almost the last of that generation of pioneer-innkeepers who, in the sixties and ’seventies of the last century, did so much to develop the Swiss, and especially the Valaisan, Alpine hé¢tellerie, and so to facilitate the access to the great mountains and accom- modate the rapidly growing stream of mountaineering tourists and climbers. In a relatively short time Herr Kathrein gained a world-wide reputation as a fine type of his class, the old-fashioned Swiss land- lord. This fame lasted for over forty years, and these few lines of recognition from an old climber, who had only too rarely, alas! the benefit of his personal acquaintance, may not be out of place. Kmil Kathrein was born in Brigue on January 14, 1847. He received such education as was available in the colleges of his small country, and was introduced at an early stage of his life to his future calling by two remarkably good teachers, his sister and her husband, Herr Alexander Seiler, the great promoter of Zermatt’s welfare. After some collaboration with them, and his apprenticeship being completed, he purchased in the autumn of 1871 from Herr Anton Wellig the Hotel Jungfrau at the foot of the Eggishorn (commonly called Hotel Eggishorn). This well-known establish- ment was built by Wellig in 1856, and managed by him. Iremember sleeping once under his roof, literally, as, when I arrived one evening

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In Memoriam. 251 in July 1866, very tired, after a long tramp from Blatten in the Létschental over the Létschenliicke and the top of the Eggishorn, he assigned me to the topmost floor, assuring me that I should sleep quietly and not be disturbed by his English guests, who were called very early for the Jungfrau and Finsteraarhorn. He was a queer little man, I remember, very busy and not unkind to a poor beginner, as I was then. ° But I shall not speak of Wellig. Herr Kathrein began innkeeping at the Eggishorn in the spring of 1872, when he was only twenty-five years old. It was a heavy FRANZ WELLIG. task for so young a man, but Kathrein was up to it. ' By his energy and ability, his fair dealing in business, his courteous behaviour to all his guests, he won his way and kept his establishment in a flourishing state till the day of his death. Notwithstanding the rapidly increasing number of a belle clientéle, the simple mountaineer was always heartily and warmly welcomed by Kathrein, and felt at home, even when the house was full of more pretentious guests. I well-remember two delicious days of rest at Kathrein’s in July 1881, after crossing the Jungfrau from the Rotthal hut to the Concordia hut. How pleasant were the chats with Kathrein in his bureau, whenever the management of a big house full of tourists,

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252 In Memortam. the conversations with these, the uninterrupted va et vient of guides, porters of wood, provisions and household things, of mule-drivers and postmen, left him free a moment! Once he left me there for half an hour alone, giving me plein pouvoir to answer in his name all the queries of clients that might come in meanwhile. How he laughed at the mistakes I had made, when I reported afterwards! And how his eyes twinkled with fun when he told me of that youth of the Prince de Joinville’s _ family whom Kathrein observed leaving the hotel surreptitiously {[Photo: H. F. Montagnivr. Emit KatHren. at dark, running down to Viesch to—well, to see a friend—and stealing in again before dawn! But I shall also not forget his kind admonition to a sturdy porter not to overdo himself with work and to take care of his health above all, or the tender nursing given by the hotel people, Madame Kathrein foremost, to a sick guide of mine, who had fallen ill with erysipelas during our above-named expedition. In the year 1887 Kathrein bought the hotel on the Riederalp. A little inn had been erected there in 1861, to serve as a link between Belalp and Eggishorn, but now it was enlarged and used especially as a more quiet place of sojourn for families and pensionnaires. And so widely spread was the reputation of Herr Kathrein’s excellent

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In Memoriam. 958 hotel-keeping that he was engaged by the Currie line of Cape mail steamers to manage from 1895 to 1897 their new important Hotel Mount Nelson, in Cape Town. - Tn order to facilitate the access to the great summits to be climbed from the Hotel Jungfrau, Herr Kathrein in 1877 arranged with the section Monte Rosa S.A.C. to build the Concordia hut. He paid two-thirds of the cost, superintended the building of the hut, and, with a subsidy from the S.A.C., maintained the hut in as good a state as the distance from the Hotel Jungfrau allowed. The new hut was a great advance on the Faulberg cave, arranged by Wellig in 1865, but in 1892 Herr Kathrein found it necessary to build the Pavillon Kathrein close to the hut. Finally, in 1908, the section Grindelwald 8.A.C. built a new and larger hut, close to the old, on ground conveyed to it without any charge by Herr Kathrein, who also bore a part of the cost. On this, as on other occasions, Herr Kathrein showed himself disinterested and loyal to the Swiss Alpine Club, a course which has not always been fully recognised. - More than once he was called to do much service in case of accidents, especially in 1887, when six travellers fell victims to a storm on the Jungfrau, and in 1912, when Dr. Andreas Fischer died on the Aletschhorn. Kathrein joined the Swiss Alpine Club (section Monte Rosa) in 1868 and remained a member to the end. In his youth he was an enthusiastic mountaineer. He climbed nearly all the summits surrounding the Concordiaplatz such as the Jungfrau, Aletschhorn, Finsteraarhorn, besides the Bietschhorn, Matterhorn, Zinal-Rothorn, Monte Rosa, Lyskamm, Breithorn, &c. Although his civil carriére was not so brilliant as that of his other brother-in-law, Dr. Felix Klausen, who died on September 4, 1916, as senior judge of the Supreme Court of the Swiss Con- | federation after twenty-five years’ service, Emil Kathrein deserved well of his native town and canton. For twenty-four years (1874-96) he was a member of the conseil communal of Brigue and for twenty-eight years deputy of the district of Brigue to the Grand Conseil du Canton du Valais. He leaves behind him the memory of an upright man, a good citizen, and model innkeeper. Dr. H. Dust. FRANZ WEISSHORN BINER. 1835-1916. ‘HE is a safe and trustworthy guide of a cautious temperament,’ writes the late Arthur Cust, and it is undoubtedly a very true description of Franz Biner’s qualities. He was no Burgener or Imseng in daring ; no Almer or Melchior as leader of a great expedition; but for the ordinary mountain he

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054 In Memoriam. was a sound, trustworthy guide. Probably among all the guides no more unassuming character, or a man more devoted to his employers’ interests, more single-minded of purpose, more faithful of perform- ance, ever lived. He was all his life mainly an Englander-Fihrer ; and his kindly, somewhat shy greeting to his old friends will by many of us not soon be forgotten. The clean, open expression of the old man’s face, with his one eye, is a true indication of his candour and loyalty. He was born in 1835, lived at Zermatt all his life, and died last autumn at his home. As he lay on his deathbed he is reported to have said: ‘I am going to die pretty soon and I can’t take my book with me. It is of no use to me now to show the English gentlemen what a good guide I was; so you can tell the gentleman that if he promises to send my book to the Alpine Club with my photograph he can have it for the price he offers.’ We will not fail to keep the old man’s memory green. The book, smelling strongly of tobacco, is open before me. The first entry is of a passage of the Schwarzberg-Weissthor, and 18 followed by passages of the New Weissthor. A few days later— early in August 1863—he gains the name Weisshorn Biner by acting as porter up the Weisshorn to Mr. E. N. Buxton, who I know will be glad to recognise his pencilled note of fifty-four years ago. A few days later, Mr. J. Birkbeck, junior, certifies that Biner accompanied him as guide up the Weisshorn. On August 24, he ascends the Monte Rosa, and on September 17 is a certificate of his first-recorded engagement: (of fourteen days), bearing the firm signa- ture of John Rigby, with those of Daniel Jones and James Porter, all members of the Club. They crossed the Adler, the Lysjoch, and the Weissthor, on which Peter Perren acted as leading guide ; but on the Col du Sonadon and the Col d’Argentiére, passes of the now most undeservedly neglected high-level route, “ we considered Franz Biner as our chief guide.’ Franz’s first great opportunity comes to him when, in 1864 as second to Christian Michel, he accompanies Mr. E. N. Buxton anda large party, including Tuckett, on the journey to the Bernina and Ortler groups, immortalised in one of the masterly topographical papers by Tuckett, elucidated by panoramas and a map of the Ortler group, that are the glory of this Journal (‘ A.J.’ 1. 385-422). From the old travellers’ book at the ‘ Kronenhof’ at Pontresina, still, as in Tuckett’s time, ° that pleasantest of headquarters ’—hard hit by the War, I fear—Mr. Montagnier has been good enough, by the courteous permission of M. Gredig the proprietor, to make me a copy of a long entry describing the whole of this journey—written apparently by Mr. Buxton, and showing that there was more than one topographer in this famous party. But for the published article referred to, I should have been tempted to publish the extract in full. Returning from this instructive journey, Mr. Buxton and Biner

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In Memoriam. 955 cross the Weissthor, and then with Leslie Stephen and Jakob Anderegg make, on August 16, the first ascent of the Lyskamm from the Felikjoch. The Col du Géant is crossed, and Mr. Buxton winds up the note of the journey in Biner’s book with the words: ‘ The highest praise I can give him is that he was as efficient as I have always known him.’ Biner then makes several ascents, including the Strahlhorn and Monte Rosa. ° He is an excellent guide—strong, careful, and active,’ is the testimony of his employer, Julian Goldsmid. The next entry reveals to us that Montagu Corry (subsequently Lord Rowton) was once a climber—limited, however, so far as the entry goes, to the Cima di Jazzi and the Théodule. | The year 1865 finds him in the service of Mr. Whymper—whose entry is reproduced. This journey is too well known from the immortal ‘Scrambles’ to need further mention here. Then on July 16 the Rev. A. G. Girdlestone writes: ‘ Franz Biner went up Monte Rosa with me yesterday. He cut the necessary steps well.’ A few days later we find him permanently fledged with ‘ Weisshorn ’ as his second Christian name, over the signature ‘ Robert d’Orléans, Duc de Chartres.’ The next year, 1866, is a memorable one for Biner, for we find the record of his first journey with the Rev. Julius Elliott, one of the most enterprising and active English mountaineers of his day. That year they did little, owing to weather ; but in 1867 Elliott, with Biner alone, ascended the Jungfrau, and the Mont Blanc, besides doing other expeditions. Elliott, who, as we know, was noi quite an easy employer, writes: ‘ His first-rate qualities as a guide, his activity, willingness, carefulness, endurance, and instinctive power of solving difficulties on ice or rock, together with his simple and perfectly natural character . . . make his society in a Swiss tour a very considerable addition to one’s happiness.’ I have reproduced in facsimile the certificate of Mr. Elliott’s journey of 1868, for it shows Biner at the height of his powers. On July 27 of the following year, Elliott was killed on the Schreckhorn by rashly jumping, when unroped, from the ice on to the final rocks of the summit—formerly we kept out on the E._ ice-slope, nowadays the aréte is followed all the way from the Sattel. He missed his foowing, lost his axe, and slid, at first quite slowly, down the hard snow to ke dashed to death on the glacier below the Lauteraarjoch. Biner described to me the whole occurrence twenty-five years later. One could see that no later employer had usurped Elliott’s place in his old guide’s affections. There is the following entry, signed ‘ Pownoll W. Phipps,’ who was Mr. Elliott’s companion when the fatal accident occurred: ‘It is my duty to state that Biner was in no way to blame for what occurred, as Mr. 1 See A.J. xxviii. 281 seq. for his portrait and the account of his ascent of the Matterhorn, the first after the accident.

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t p Ten) N t S99 beytrgy'- 2 ry iy dys oh ; & } yr ¥, 77 iv 7 : 3 pura tm | es yrues S 7 ow “7 -S oS ea yf ~ 4 7 “9 eer i zg é- Se 7 read 5 a a 77 aa Shey = ys de oy 44 eae a = K aad oa oa ee ? | nee YS i eeers meee ee ee eens gre yele _ Get 2 as 12 "7 { i * wee ¥~" eo . ea, Se a ee er | e 5 1 “4. aaa eebaetG “ry?) j Paige ge i 2 a . a ? : / : ) toy ie an > yon Pryecss inp alin a J r) Leary, aes 7 ery iL UE AP POY a4 es wy FI > BIMN yy weed 7 | ay ere ey of yt } 4 : . ! / Pr ; ack ont, 7 dad -T1 ‘ - +y eC =f ae A oes ¢ a 774 pe ae : 4 ery yt Wt OW meg ee mete ry 7 7 oh Tee he — aun : : _ r4 J joy yore {7 cae : U f ae wr eres 7G ae see oF etry (oe red sang este Yrs 7 f ft “4 o7>wrreyu: a dae eal 4 “7 ~ +) wv 2 : 4 as i ye ps PA e Ses ta 3927 fo 7 elisa | | barby 7 ae ce a / “yn a paaltaly f ig 77 7 eae yo4 a fe eM 5 cm foes wroweeIs aS , ay _or i caer ae 4 A? : Ue Te TA at yy - ¢ ef Se eel : ae ae q ie PPI YI? - 7 im aed ace — f ae a - a ge aaa e 9 8 z Timo » ne eee an Cn wt Pies vy yey ferry ay FP ea a, ye Kee " . cb a Dae: with ns a + : : Paty Beats coe cali 7 7 poh # f 7s ey 7 - ce MTs 4er0C«Y a + | ad a ne patie oe) aps Iss] ork ta 2e% co le Woe 4 ; Oe erent ve re ee a a ee . VOL. XXXI.—NO, CCXV,

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In Memoriam. | A EM artim —- = cpl al — = ae - oar S ~ om ener ow » at I hoe te dae tae fos nap — | vyepean nef wey yn] , ice aaah 4d, ys Tf? 9 aa fobes 4 Tf 4g | bay BPO FY MCT TT stag 80) Se: Ie bene | io % | om ery py YY at Sd Ltd sya! 17") 14° ; : ig ie V4 "4.7 97) i ind y : [expen aerteadnrnlyicte Fa ae {ip 2 ahd id rey sad 0p ey Mi MT tt 4 uty sid rezenig'P mae ary > Seng ph yig by Urs ve {yes i hy mng yl ty, ’ yprayeg sth | gyre ve pe ue be i) thn. Pe: pyrene gh Fwy fet | 7p Fung | | . —~ ar | OS Si ail — ) , ay fade og moe, See he , i nigdea aie a ee a cate secrete wR Oe FS te Re ete memati” ° eats ie Penne 4 ST 2 a. 47 . t , / Yu>

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In Memoriam. 259 Elliott declined his proposal to put on the rope, considering it unnecessary.” | After leaving Elliott in 1868, Biner continues with the late R. B. Heathcote, who had been one of the Dom party. They traverse Mont Blanc, ascending by the Aig. du Gotter, descending by the Mulets, make, with the late Kenelm Digby and Melchior Anderegg, a new route up Monte Rosa from the Grenz Glacier, traverse Pollux and Castor, ascend the Lyskamm, Strahlhorn, Piz Bernina, Galen- stock, and cross the Adler, Alphubeljoch, Cols d’Argentiére and du Géant, Lysjoch, Schwarzthor, Strahleck, and Tschingelpass. Next year—1869—with the same employer he ascends the Mont Blanc du Tacul, the Rimpfischhorn, the Allalinhorn, the Alphubel, and makes other smaller expeditions. ‘I cannot speak too highly of his qualities as a guide or of his conduct.’ I dare say one of our veterans, Mr. Henry Wagner, will recognise his entry of forty-eight years ago. Thev seem to have got over some country, weather notwithstanding! Two years later—in 1871— they are together again, over the high-level route, and in an ascent of the Jungfrau. In 1871 there is an entry by another veteran, ‘ Moriz Déchy,’ whose death is just announced. Single-handed, Biner made with him the first ascent from the Grenz glacier to the Sattel of the Dufour, described by M. Déchvy as very difficult—much fresh snow. Biner distinguished himself as a rock-climber as well as for his ‘ ausgezeichnetes fast unterbrochenes Stufenhauen.’ By 1872 Biner had overcome his shyness of the Matterhorn, which he ascends with Baron Albert Rothschild and two of the redoubtable Knubels. The following year—1873—he and Joseph Imboden lead Mr. William Knight up the Gabelhorn ; and he and Peter Taugwalder guide Mr. Ralph W. Clutton up the Weisshorn—great expeditions in those days. I venture to reproduce the entry, in 1874, of Mr. Alvey Augustus Adie, secretary of the U.S. Legation at Madrid, 1870-1877, and chargé-daffaires during several intervals, chief of the Diplomatic Bureau in Washington, 1878, and, since 1886, Second Assistant Secretary of State in Washington—in which post he has rendered distinguished service to his country. His duties at the present juncture, onerous as chey must be, will yet, I trust, permit him to cast back his memory to those days of strenuous work forty-three years ago. The same year ‘ Wm. Arnold Lewis,’ Temple, London, destined three years later to perish on the Lyskamm, finds Biner ‘ an excel- lent guide and a very careful and cautious man.’ In 1876 Biner makes, with Mr. Eustace Hulton, the ascent of the Breithorn from the N., and of the Strahlhorn, with the descent of the K. face. In 1877, with Mr. J. E. Lloyd, he crosses many passes in the

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260 In Memoriam. Pennines and makes the ascent of the Grand Combin; and with Mr. Wilbraham Ford ascends the Matterhorn, leaving Zermatt at 10 P.m., and returning in nineteen hours. He ascends the Weisshorn with Mr. J.C. Leman, and the Matterhorn with Mr. and Mrs. J.C. Leman, Alois Pollinger, and two other guides. In 1878 ascents of the Monte Rosa, and Mont Blane, are recorded. In 1879 he guides Mr. W. G. Hutchinson up the Matterhorn, Peter Taugwalder acting as porter, and ascends Mont Blanc with Messrs. Wotherspoon and Bedale. In 1881, with Mr. Wotherspoon, he ascends the Weissmies, Monte © Rosa, Matterhorn and Dom, and the Matterhorn with Mr.F.S. Lalim, and again with Mr. W. H. Bibby. The book ends with an entry by Mr. E. B. Moser, August 31, 1881 ; but Biner continued to climb long after this, and I think was regularly employed by the late Mr. Luttman-Johnson. Another of the old landmarks of Zermatt vanishes with him. He would have been well pleased that the farewell of his friends in the Club should be a record of his work. J. P. FARRAR. MARTIN SCHOCHER. THis well-known Pontresina guide died during the winter, as the result of a very trivial accident when chamois shooting, at which he was a great master. He was about sixty-eight years of age, and was a native of Unterwalden, coming as a young man to Pontresina as gamekeeper to the Upper Engadine Chamois Preserve. Although he can never be called one of the great guides of the Alps, since—except for two or three visits to the Valais, when he did most of the great peaks—he had, owing to the conditions at Pontresina, never left the Bernina range, yet he was eminently a first- class guide and stood head and shoulders above any Engadine guide, past or present—with, of course, the exception of Klucker. No difficult or even severe expedition in the Bernina district was ever undertaken except under Schocher’s lead. He could earn any sum he liked, although the least grasping of men. For many years (1886 to 1906) he was practically every night in summer at a hut where he met his employers, and thus often climbed with differ- ent people on every day of the week, never returning to his house except for bad weather. He related to Colonel Strutt that he had once done twenty-three expeditions in twenty-three days, including the Scerscen-Bernina traverse three times in that period—the last time in two hours from summit to summit, instead of the usual six hours. His greatest expeditions were : 1. With Mr. W. Williams, first and only ascent of the Bernina direct from the N. via the N. slope of Fuorcla— Scerscen-Bernina’—. never repeated.

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FRANZ WEISSHORN BINER, MARTIN SCHOCHER 1835—1916. 1849—1916. 9 a a

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“DER KODERBACHER.” JOHANN GRILL AUS DER RAMSAU, 1835-1917.

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In Memoriam. 961 2. With Prince Scipio Borghese, 1897, first ascent, never repeated, of Piz Cengalo by the stupendous N. face. 3. With Mrs. le Blond, winter ascent of Disgrazia from the Forno hut and back to Maloja. | 4. With Klucker, the first crossing, from N. to S., of the Colle - del Badile—great performance. 3 He also made, in 1886, the first Scerscen-Bernina traverse, although this was practically only a new combination ; also the first ascent of the E. aréte of Piz Roseg. He is said to have done the Bernina Scharte route many times, and he also made the first ascent of the W. face of the difficult Ago di Sciora. He certainly knew more about winter mountaineering than any guide, and had done, with Colonel Strutt in winter, more than thirty ascents of over 12,000 ft., besides numerous lower peaks. He was a very quiet, good-looking man, with a charming smile and gentle sense of humour, and was a most perfect gentleman—like his great friend, old Alois Pollinger.t Gifted with extraordinary strength, his climbing on rocks, though not elegant, gave a sense— as was the case with Alexander Burgener—of wonderful power. He was a slow but fine step-cutter. No man with his incongruous and motley crowd of tourists prob- ably ever took greater risks, and it is hard to say how many accidents he averted; yet none ever happened to any party in his charge. When Colonel. Strutt and he were traversing the topmost N.E. ice slope of Piz Roseg in February, 1899, the leading guide—since killed—paralysed by cold, lost his axe and fell. They held him easily, though there were forty feet of rope out between them; and Colonel Strutt relates that Schocher’s grip of the rope was such that he himself felt no shock, so perfectly managed was it. He was one of the most successful of recent chamois-hunters, a great shot, impervious to heat and cold, neither smoking nor drinking, and eating very little. He was once for a week with Colonel Strutt in the Bregaglia, and, as he was recovering from a severe illness, he was unable to lead or carry much. Colonel Strutt relates that he absolutely refused to take any payment, and only with great difficulty was his wife induced to accept something unbeknown to him—yet some people said he was always out for gain ! He was a wonderful topographer, exceedingly well educated, wrote a beautiful hand, kept excellent diaries, knew the exact height and geographical position—as well as the Alpine history—of practically every peak in the whole Western Alps. He ruled the other guides of Pontresina with a rod of iron, yet they respected and loved him much ; while he went out of his way to be courteous to every foreign guide visiting the district. In the last four years he had practically retired, except for climbs 1 The father of Pollinger also came from Unterwalden.

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962 In Memoriam. with old friends ; and he kept a most successful mountaineering and Alpine sports’ shop in Pontresina, where he leaves a gap that can never be filled. He leaves a large family, the elder members being daughters and the sons are understood to be yet too young to follow in their great father’s footsteps—From Colonel E. L. Strutt’s rough notes, written on Active Service at the Salonika front. He adds: | ‘I cannot find time for more, but wish I could, as I was very fond of the old chap, and there is no one I regret more. My duties alone prevent my writing all that I feel about him.’ ‘DER KODERBACHER.’ JOHANN GRILL aus der BAYRISCHEN RAMSAU. (1835-1917.) Ir is no mere hero-worship, but the outcome of close observation when I express the opinion that the subject of this notice was one of the great mountaineers of his time, that at his zenith in the late ’seventies and early ’eighties there were not more than half a dozen guides in the whole Alps who could be compared to him, not one who could be considered unquestionably his superior. . When one remembers that he was forty-five before ever the opportunity came to show on a greater stage of what sort of stuff he was made, one may well marvel what in more favourable circum- stances his mountaineering career, great as it was, might have been. | : Yet he was born and lived his life in the little sub-Alpine valley of the Bavarian Ramsau, in the principality of Berchtesgaden, the highest peaks about his home but 9000 feet high. Born on October 22, 1835, he seems to have had scant opportunity in his earlier years of making his name as a guide, as the Sommer- frischler who frequented Berchtesgaden had no ambitions in that direction. It was in acting as beater—for the district is one vast chamois preserve of the Bavarian royal house—that Kéderbacher became known as a daring and indomitable cragsman in a country of limestone mountains that need some climbing, which boasted such men as Richard von Lonski and Johann Schider, the famous Bliihnbacher chamois hunters, and Johann Punz, better known as Preiss, the neighbour and junior by six years of Kéderbacher, his friendly rival in brilliant cragsmanship. Preiss, who reminded me in manner and appearance of my friend Broome’s ‘ long Biener,’ was too easy-going and unassertive, so that by fifty, broken down, as he himself told me, by submitting to carry the loads put on him by selfish and inconsiderate travellers, he was

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In Memoriam. | 963 compelled to give up the mountains he loved so well. Preiss, as a cragsman with the advantage of great reach, was fully the equal of Kéderbacher, and a more vivacious and amusing companion, but Kéderbacher possessed the firmness of character, the quick instinctive Judgment and decision, the indomitable determination which must be added to great executive ability to make the great guide. If I had to name one single attribute which defined Kéderbacher it would be his indomitable determination, his Unerschrockenheit. In the absence of climbers, Kéderbacher and Preiss together used to make difficult ascents for their own amusement and instruction. Thus they made the first traverse of the three peaks of the Watzmann, not aS easy as in its present ‘improved’ state, and of the difficult Hochkammerlinghorn, both in 1868. They are said to have made some years earlier the traverse of the Klein Watzmann. Kéderbacher’s earliest regular patrons were Herr Albert Kaindl of Linz and Herr Josef Péschl of Vienna. With the former Kéder- bacher traversed, in 1868, the three Watzmann and made the ascent of the Mittelspitze from the Watzmannscharte—a decidedly diffi- cult. climb repeated the next year with Herr Péschl. Kéderbacher always spoke to me in the warmest terms of the kindness of these earliest climbing patrons, even if sometimes he reflected rather rue- fully that he had done a lot of work in those days for five shillings a day, which was then the locally current wage ! His local reputation was well established when, in 1873, he was: taken by Herr G. Hofmann farther afield to attempt the ascent of the Pflerscher Trihulaun, known as the Matterhorn of the Stubai and reputed to have warded off an attack by an English party with Swiss guides, which in those days was enough to warrant its character. Kéderbacher led his party to the summit without the least check, much to the astonishment of a local guide, and such was the repute still attaching to the defeated mountain that he was retained to make the second and third ascents in 1874 and 1875, the last with his old patron, Herr Péschl. In 1880 he, who hitherto can have never threaded a great glacier, was taken by two Viennese to the Ortler group, where, vractically single-handed, he led his people up the Ortler from the Hochjoch, one of the more difficult routes, mainly an ice climb; he also made the first ascent of the Kénigsspitze from the Suldenjoch, a long climb involving much step-cutting. I should mention that in his own group there is a tiny but much crevassed and steep glacier, a minia- ture Guggi or Mont Tabel, the Blaueisgletscher, said to be the most northerly in the Alps. We can easily imagine that in the Viennese school, then the most active in Europe, in which Zsigmondy, Friedmann, Diener, Hess, Schmitt and others were great names, the repute of the new Matador, as was the favourite expression, grew apace. On May 6 of the following year he definitely established his

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264 In Memoriam. character as a consummate pathfinder by leading, single-handed, Otto Schiick, well known for overdaring ascents such as the Schiick- rinne on the Ortler, up the stupendous E. face of the Watzmann— considered then one of the great problems in the Eastern Alps, which even to-day has lost httle of its character, since of the thirty-four parties who in the twenty-eight years ending 1909 had repeated the ascent no fewer than twenty-six had had to submit to an involuntary bivouac. The vertical height of this face, measured from its actual foot at the Hiskapelle, is over 1800 1 metres—the whole terrain on a great scale, very intricate, rendering the orientation difficult, while the climbing is continuously exacting and not infrequently distinctly difficult. The same year, 1881, Kéderbacher and Hans Grass led Herr R. v. Lendenfeld up Piz Kesch by the S. face and the so-called Keschgrat, while with two Viennese, Herren Jerusalem and Levy, he paid his first visit to Greater Switzerland, making, s7ngle-handed, ascents of the Wetterhorn, Schreckhorn, Finsteraarhorn, and Jungfrau. Ido not know of any guide who at that date, without local knowledge, would have undertaken such a thing. The following summer saw Kéderbacher and Peter Dang] of Sulden, also a very good man known for some great expeditions on his home mountains, at Zermatt, in the service of two brillant youngsters, Louis Friedmann and Carl Blodig. They did the usual big mountains, and finally sent their two men to sit up at the Riffel to watch them repeat the ascent of the Weisshorn! This was too much for the self-respect of Dangl, who bethought him of a proffered engagement from me and fled to me in Paznaun in Tirol. There he found the mountains too low for me, as he cunningly insinuated ‘Das ist nichts fiir Sie, Herr!’ and so we sped away headlong for Zermatt and arrived much pleased with ourselves with the Weisshorn in our pocket. I found that one reason for Dangl’s preference for Zermatt was that the politic Josef Seilei had the ‘Tirolers, who were just beginning to come with their Herren to Zermatt, to dine at his own table. Dangl, with great civility and equal decision, explained to me that I could go to which hotel I liked, but, as for him, he always descended at the Mont Cervin ! There we found Kéderbacher, whose repute by this time was well known to me, and I was rather disillusioned to see the not very imposing figure with brick-red face, long brown beard, rather screwed- up weather-tried eyes and, so far as one could see, only two great eye-teeth, which rendered his enunciation somewhat indistinct. In a way he reminded me of the scarcely more imposing figure of Christian Almer. Little did I know the heart that dwelt in the body 1 The Matterhorn is 1207 m. above the Swiss hut; the Nordend 1512 m. above the Marinelli hut.

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In Memoriam. 265 | or the mountain-craft stored in the wise head—of the one as of the other. He who will may read of Kéderbacher in many a paper, notably in the ‘0.A.Z.’ by Louis Friedmann, the most finished mountaineer of the Austrians of his day, of fabulous speed, and a most informing writer: witness his brilliant monograph of the Ortler group. That winter er engaged to me for three weeks of 1883, and a profound admirer of Kéderbacher, somehow arranged that Blezinger, a Wiirtembereg judge (Amtsrichter), a very charming man long since dead, who had engaged Kéderbacher, should invite me to join forces, leaving the programme to me. Nothing loth, I spent the winter on the programme—one was enthusiastic in those days, and all the world was open and unknown. We had the most villainous weather, and did several of our mour- tains practically twice, often battling with bad weather conditions for endless hours. Our big things were the traverse of the Jungfrau from the Klein Scheidegg to the Eggishorn and the third ascent of the Finsteraarhorn by the 8.If. aréte, of which route I was in later years to become a close student. In those days these were little- known ascents—they were then, and still are, great expeditions. Koderbacher led then, as on every occasion, for let Grass or even Burgener, or whom you will, be of the party—somehow Kéderbacher went without any question to the front and stayed there as a matter of course. As we passed Alpiglen on our way to the Scheidegg our man demanded to know whether the Eiger face, which from there is fore- shortened and does not look very repellent, had ever been ascended We, keen to do the great Jungfrau traverse, were hard put to it to get him away. After the Finsteraarhorn traverse, done in bad snow conditions, high wind and great cold, we rested a day at Egegishorn. Blezinger was out of action with fingers all raw from the cold on the Finsteraar- horn, and Kéderbacher had three or four days before joining another Herr at Zermatt. He came tome and inquired what there was really difficult in Switzerland to do. ‘Was da ware wirklich schwer zu machen in der Schweiz!’ Bear in mind he was forty-eight, past the age of great enterprise, often indeed of great powers. There was an intonation on the word wirklich that made me keen, a# any other young Englishman would be, to meet my gentleman’s fullest desires. I cast round in my memory and mildly proposed the W. or Zinal face of the Weisshorn, which I remembered was described by Conway—a rather exacting judge—as ‘a very stiff clamber,’ taking ‘11 hrs. of climbing.’ It had been done once then, and has been done once in the succeeding thirty-four years. ‘ Gehen wir!’ was hisreply. The next afternoon, after a tearing walk in broiling heat, saw us in that pig-sty of the Arpitetta Alp. We strolled out in the evening to inspect our work. I was simply the ordinary young Englishman, hard to tire, not given to fall or face about, knowing

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266 | In Memoriam. little of routes, but Kéderbacher grunted a bit and seemed satisfied with his inspection. AR ee ee 2 I gave elsewhere at the time an outline of the great climb of the next day. I was the humble follower on the great leader—a passenger—possibly not an encumbrance—contributing nothing to the success of the venture. Such continuous slabs, always demand- ing great care, fine foot work and balance, would be hard to match. Kéderbacher, born and bred onthe Platten of his native Kalk, was not to be denied. | After fifteen hours’ work at 7.45 p.m. the sun had gone down in clouds, A desperate attempt to scale a smooth dos d’dne which succeeded a short mixed snow and ice aréte had to be abandoned through verglas on the rocks. We were both in a precarious position when my leader turned to me—I can hear his quiet words as though it were yesterday: ‘ Ja, es geht absolut nicht—wir miissen zurtick bis auf den Schnee—passen Sie auf. Ich halte Sie nicht!’ We got back—one does not slip in such circumstances. Shrugging his shoulders, ‘ Wir miissen hier bleiben,’ was all he said. We were, about 600 feet short of the summit, at a height of 14,000 feet, and within a stone’s throw of the northern aréte. © § « i'd oi -4-t It was my first high bivouac, and I remember I was rather inter- ested, almost pleased at the idea! Youth is peculiar! With such a leader there could be no thought of anxiety, much less fear. Cut- ting a big step or notch in the icy aréte, we sat ourselves therein on the rope passed round a driven-in axe, our feet dangling free. Thad left behind my heavy mountain coai so as to travel fast and had on a light summer jacket and waistcoat, but very fortunately I carried, for fear the porter should not posi it back to me, a light mackintosh sheet about 6 ft. by 4 ft. used for camping. Of food we had little, some prunes and various scraps mixed up with tobacco from a packet broken in the sack. A treasured half-bottle escaped our benumbed fingers as we tried to uncork it—we greedily ate the coloured snow! We wrapped the mackintosh sheet tightly round us and over our heads, and, tight clasped for warmth in each other’s arms, we watched the fading light. Later we could see a storm raging over the Mont Blanc range; some flakes of snow fell and the wind rose. Then we slept a troubled sleep,- for I remember waking and talking to my companion, who knew not a word of any language save his own not always very intelligible Bayrisch, in English. The moon rose later, but although we poked our noses out there was no suggestion to move until broad daylight at 5.20 next morning. Within an hour we were on the summit by traversing to,and following, the N. aréte. .A tempes- tuous wind and much powdery snow, finally a thunderstorm, made the descent very trying. With throats parched to leather and burning eyes, as yesterday’s work allowed no spectacles, we were not very conversational. On the descent, when off the aréte and plunging down the snow-

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In Memoriam. 967 field, I suddenly stepped on ice—notwithstanding a warning to be careful. Turning instantly on to my face, with the axe-head grinding in, I saw my leader step to one side and, quickly descending a few steps, bend over and neatly lay the rope round a jutting-out stone to avoid a direct pull. The drag of the axe told so that the pull was not great, but not Daniel Maquignaz himself were quicker ! Arrived at Randa, we were much elated to find that we had opened the mountain for that year—but downwards! Before mght we were able to find means to restore our voices and repeat the traverse several times! The casualties were—to Kéderbacher, a‘ couple of slightly frozen toes; to me, a slightly frozen finger-tip ; to both, damaged, torn hands. T gave him a £5 note and a Napoleon, all I had save a few odd _ francs for the home journey. I remember he thanked me exactly as he would have done had it been 500 or 20 francs. He had worked from the splendid pride of endeavour, not for gain. So we departed our several ways—I to the Southern Hemisphere, he, after a couple more years of guiding during which his most- talked-of climb was the direct traverse of the Rother Thurm on the W. aréte of the Bietschhorn, to become the Wirth at the new Watz- mannhaus of the D. und .A.V., under the lower Watzmann summit To judge from casual remarks in Alpine literature, I should say that _ my brave leader fought his master-battle over quite a lot of times, and had often a Dumas in his audiences ! I should not have dealt with the incident at this length had I not, while preparing this note, come across one fantastical account (‘D.A.Z.’ vol. x. p. 192) in which the writer mistakes the N. face for the W. He says we buried ourselves in snow up to the knees and only protected ourselves against sleep and freezing by continually stamping the feet, and that a few hundred metres below the summit we got to an exceedingly steep snow-slope covered with tile-lke Geroll (‘der von Dachplatten gleichendem Ger6ll bedeckt war’). To get to the foot of this slope we are stated to have made a lateral traverse. Gmil [Kéderbacher] ‘klomm von da auf den Knien empor, fand aber nirgends festen Halt im Gerdll, tiberdies war das Kis unter demselben so hart dass der Pickel nicht tief eingerammt werden konnte. Farrar folgte unter freilich sehr fraglicher Unter- stiitzung durch das Seil gliicklich nach. Grill erklarte mir dass diese Minuten die schrecklichsten wahrend seiner ganzen Bergfihrer- laufbahn gewesen seien denn ware Farrar ausgeglitten so hatte er ihn unmoglich halten kénnen und beide waren unfehlbar in die Tiefe gestiirzt.’ I need not remind readers of this JouRNAL that near the summit of a mountain, or for that matter anywhere on it, very steep and hard snow-slopes cannot retain tile-like Geréll, nor should I recommend the novel practice of climbing up Geréll on one’s knees. Anyone acquainted with a forced bivouac on such a face will know that there is most rarely any room to dance about. As for sleeping, I would

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968 In Memoriam. always sleep if the cold and the place would let me. A thoroughly trained and equipped man does not die or even permanently suffer from cold, as I know from a very much worse bivouac at a much greater height, for he no more approaches a state of exhaustion than did we, as our work next day proved. The whole description is mainly imaginary. Few faces that I know are, in the upper part, so clean of Gerdll. No doubt where we turned round we were in a very delicate position, but I take it that Kéderbacher would not have proposed — a very difficult climb to one of whose factor of safety he was ignorant. I never saw him show any trace of anxiety. He was coolness itself. Another account, my friend Paul Montandon tells me, says that K6éderbacher thumped and rubbed me the whole night, and only this saved me from death by freezing. My old friend I dare say would have done this had it not involved his and my certainly tumbling off, and had we not, like babes in the wood, been clasped fast in each other’s arms, intervals of slumber alone disturbing interludes of shivering and teeth- chattering. , Kéderbacher can dispense with stuff like this. He never failed to play his part. We did not meet again until 1892, when, fulfilling a. nine-year-old engagement, I met him and his eldest son at K6nigssee and we made next day the fifth ascent of his famous Ostwand of the Watzmann. It took us nearly nine hours—including few halts—hard going, from the Einstieg at the Eiskapelle, to the summit ridge, and we were a fit party. K6éderbacher himself carried, in place of an axe, an 8-foot pole, which we found several times very useful to push him up holdless slabs. More than once he took off his shoes and climbed in stockinged feet—a practice of his on Platten. Itis a great expedz- tion, besides being a fine climb, of sustained and enthralling interest, and demands considerable knowledge of snow conditions since enormous avalanche banks with gaping Bergschrunds alone facilitate the approach to some of the slabs and are a main feature. Kéder- bacher’s very moderate charge was 50 marks each for himself and his son. The Swiss equivalent would be 150 to 200 francs at leasi. To please me he came along for a few days more, and we did the two Bischofsmiitzen and Dachstein and several summits of the Glockner group. The Kals men are giants in stature, yet at night, as we sat round the table, it was to my comparatively little man that all eyes turned, for his repute was known all over Tirol. He was as great a mountaineer as ever, but somewhat naturally his heart was In his Warthschaft. We said good-bye for the last time at Huben, where the Kalserthal debouches, whence he gained his home by rail via Linz; and I, attracted by the sounding name of the Defereggenthal, tramped all the way to Taufers, nearly dying of inanition and ennui. When we remember whence he came, the following number of his

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In Memoriam: 269 great Swiss ascents—done in fiveor six seasons and often single- handed—is a very remarkable one: Finsteraarhorn 5 Rothhorn . 2 Wetterhorn 7 Lyskamm . ] Schreckhorn 4 Dom : 1 Jungfrau 7 Taschhorn . 1 Kiger : 2 Dent Blanche ] Bietschhorn 1 Mont Blane 2 Gspaltenhorn 1 Aig. Verte ] Weisshorn . 6 Bernina 1 Monte Rosa 1 Tédi 1 Matterhorn 5 He made, in October 1894, several ascents in the Dolomites such as the Croda da Lago and the Kl. Zinne. The portrait of him taken in the early Suites is an excellent one. ‘He always wore shoes and very thick stockings, but for high work his ‘shorts’ and alpenstock were replaced by trousers and axe ; on a mountain his hat was usually tied on by a big red handkerchief. His eldest son was, executively, the equal of his father and was my faithful companion for several seasons in many parts of the Alps, until his father’s duties at the Watzmannhaus became too onerous. He will not have forgotten many a splendid day we had together, whether descending as last man the Bionnassay aréte, on many a similar expedition in the Pennines and Oberland ; in the Dolomites where the local guide promptly resigned the lead, after seeing him once at work ; or in a fortnight’s climbing ramble in the charming Bavarian- Tirolese border- -country where the village maidens, greatly interested in my well-set-up, good-looking lediger Bursch, as I was careful to introduce him, perverted his name into Herr Kellerbach, even into Herr Kletterbock\ He was a worthy son of his father, and he and Daniel, our leader in serious work, with half a dozen words in common, were great companions— Der Daniel ’ was in his eyes as great a master as in mine. The Kéderbacher were a family for whom I had the greatest respect. I do not suppose, Vater Kéderbacher, that you forgot your Englander even after all these years. You leave me memories of splendid days. You will always stand for me as a type of indomit- ableness. You instilled into your party a moral that was half the victory. I shall see you in memory many a time always at the post of responsibility, prudent, calm and collected in danger—a great pilot—playing always the whole man. J. P. Farrar.

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270 The Alpine Club Library. THE ALPINE CLUB LIBRARY. The following additions have been made to the Library since January :-— Club Publications. Alpine Club of Canada. Constitution and list of members. 1917 63 x 44: pp. 33. Appalachian Mountain Club. Bulletin, vol. 9. October 1915—-August 1916 74 x 4%: pp. 139. C.A.F. La Montagne. Revue mensuelle. Vol. 12. 1916 84 x 52: pp. xii, 232 (i.e. 224): plates. This was issued quarterly last year. The paging as printed is in- correct, as pp. 113-132 are repeated and pp. 177-188 omitted. The articles are : J. Escara, Sur la face nord du Mont Aiguille. L. Rouch, Le Cirque du Sisca. P. Chevalier, La Meije, les Ecrins en col, le Col du Clot des Cavales, L’ Aig. mérid. d’Arves. L. Sillan, La Grave, Bréche Gaspard, Col Emile Pic, Barre d. Ecrins, le Valgaudemar, ]’Olan. H. Ferrand, Origine des Bains de St. Gervais. P. Guiton, Valsenestre et Muzelle. It is reported that ‘dans tous les petits coins de la Savoie et de Haute-Savoie, les petits hétels furent complets en aoat 1916’ : and that a dozen hotels would be open in Chamonix in December. In military news the following occurs :— Henri Cuénot, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur et Croix de la Guerre, - ‘s’est offert spontanément, malgré son age, pour monter dans un arbre & l’ctiet de contréler ‘ensemble du tir de son groupe.’ Pierre Lory, president of Isére Section, Croix de la Guerre. Citations: Paul Helbronner, Victor Puiseux. —— Section Lyonnaise. Revue Alpine. The publication of this Revue, which was suspended on the outbreak of war, was resumed in March. C.A.I. Revista mensile. Kedattore: Gualticro Laeng. Vol. 35. 9} x G2: pp. xix, 324; ill. Torino, 1916 The articles are :— A. Hess, La Torre di Lavina, Gran Paradiso. F. Grottanelli, Aigs. d’Arve. A. Roccati, Il glacialismo n. Alpi Marittime. KE. Ferreri, Il gruppo del Servin. L’esplorazione del Ghiacciaio Siachen. A. Ferrari, Traversata d. Passo d. Zebru al Mte Confinale per le Cime d. Forno e d. Manzina. B. Asquasciati, Dalla Maledia al Mte Stella. L. A. Garibaldi, Le Alpi Apuane. F. P. Larsimont, Nuovi itinerari ai Becchi d. Tribolazione, Gran Paradiso. M. Frizzoni, Una nuova via a Roccamelone per la parete N.E. Prima ascensione senza guide,

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The Alpine Club Inbrary. 271 G. Laeng, La Cima Tosa. R. Ballabio, Nel gruppo d. Disgrazia. W. A. B. Coolidge, I] Col d’Hérens nella storia. G. Laeng, Adamello: ascensionin. Valle di Adame en. Conca d’Arno. F. Grottanelli, La traversata d. Barre d. Ecrins. La lotta nazionale nel Trentino e la Soc. d. Alpinisti Tridentini. A. Vassalli, Torrione Magnaghi meridionale. E. Tolomei, L’alto Adige. A. Hess, Le valanghe. New ascents described :— E. Fasana, Colle e Pta Francesco: M. Battista, Il Sigaro, Pta Ber- tani: Mte Cresto parete N.: G. Carugati, Cresta Segantini: G. Scottt, P. Cassandra parete N. : K. Jelinek, Pala Maretta parete Ovest : G. De Petro, Rocca Rossa, Pta Loson, Pta d. Villano, Rocciavré: &. Rollier, Torrione super. d. Palavas: B. Sala, Pizzo di Coca, Cresta Corti: EH. Celli, Torrione ‘ Gen. Cantore.’ Centre Excursionista de Catalunya. Butlleti: 24-26: Num. 228-263. 9} x 64: plates. 1914-1916 Among the contents are the following :— Vol. 24: J. Soler i Santalo, El Pic Bisaurin. Concursos de sports de neu. F. X. Parés i Bartra, La Vall d’ Aran. El Xalet-refugi de la Renclusa. C. Rocafort, En Juli Soler i Santalo, excursionista. J. Elias i Juncosa, Al cim de la Penalara. Vol. 25: | Memoria escrita amb motiu del xxv aniversari de la fundacié del C. E. de C. Memoria dels Concursos de sports d’hivern. J. Elias i Juncosa, La Muntanya de Sicte Picos. Vol. 26: Rius i Matas, Excursié a Andorra. J. Soler i Santalo, La Vall de Gistain. J. Oliveras, Desgracia al Pic d’ Aneto. —-— —— Taula general bibliografica. 1916 94 x 6%: pp. 104. ; Ladies’ Alpine Club. Calendar 1917. 5 x 4: 3 plates. —— Report. 1917 5 x 4: pp. 30. Contains a list of the late Miss Lucy Walker's climbs, 1859-1879. The Mountaineer, vol. 9. Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan. December 1916 10} x 64: pp. 112, plates. Nederl. Alpen-Vereeniging. Kalender 1917. 93 x 6: 53 plates. Rotterdam, Nijgh & v. Ditmar, 1917 Oesterreichische Alpenzeitung. Geleitet von Hans Wédl. 38 Jahrg. Nr. 925-936. 10} x 7: pp. iv, 160. Wien, 1916 Among the articles are :— O. P. Maier, Arktische Berge. KE. Lucerna, Erinnerungen an Paul Oberlercher. G. Renker, Aus den Julischen Alpen. H. Biendl, Vom Alpinismus nach dem Kricge. Die neuen Touren in d. Ostalpen im Jahre 1914, : E. Hofmann, Probleme alpiner Malerei. Rosa Zéhnle, Quer durch die Steiner Alpen. G. Schmidt, Otto Barth gestorben am 9. Aug. 1916. Among new ascents are :— H. v. Pfaundler, Kaltenbachturm, Pulverturm : Fr. Tham, Grésten- berg u. d. N.0.-Wand: G. Renker, Bielschitza, Gamsmutterturm

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272 The Alpine Club Inbrary. ui. d. N.-Kante: ZL. Euzenhofvr, Trogkopel wt. d. Ostwand, Leiterspitze v. N. The Prairie Club, Chicago, 1911. Year Book. 1916 9 x 6: pp. 28. Rules, List of members etc. List of mountain ascents by members in California and Colorado. The Rucksack Club. Handbook. 1917 44 x 3%: pp. 56. Rules, List of members, Library catalogue. Particulars of Club Hut in Cwm Eigiau. S.A.C. Taschen-Kalender fiir Schweizer Alren-Clubisten pro 1917. xii. Jahrg. Redaktion: Dr. C. Tauber. Zirich, Tschopp, 1917 6x4: pp. (x) 236. The Kalender did not appear in 1915 nor in 1916. —— Clubfithrer durch die Graubiindner-Alpen. Verfasst v. F. W. Sprecher und Dr. E. Naefblumer. Hsg. v. Central-Comité d. S.A.C. Bd. 1. 64 x 4: pp. vil, 488: all. Zirich, Tschopp, 1916 —— Supplement-Band. Verfasst v. Dr. Tarnuzzer: J. Braun: Dr. Bener: E. Meisser: C. Klucker. 1916 63 x 4: pp. iv, 161: map, ill. “This second part deals with botany, geology, club-huts, path-marking, ete. —— Clubfiihrer. Gceologische Wanderungen durch die Schweiz. Von Dr. Julius Weber, III. Band. Zurich, Rascher, 1915 G1 x 4: pp. vill, 356: ill. —— Réglements. 1916 74 x 43: pp. 46. Rules for huts, courses for guides, library, insurance of guides, training of the young in climbing, ete. —— Statuts...adoptés... 1910. 1910 8 x 5}: pp. 24. —- Modifications. 1915 8 x 54: pp. 2. —— Basel. Jaheraneneht pro 1916. Beilage: Der Steinadler von Prof. Dr. F. Zschokke. 1917 9 x 6: pp. 68. The papers read before the Section seem to be very varied in subject’ — Ocltlin, Urneralpen, Photography, Aigs Rouges d’Arolla, Patagonia, Geology of the Rigi, Adula, Scotiand, “Alpine” Ex Libris, Meije, etc. —— Si. Gallen. Jahresberichte 1913-16. 1914-17 9 x 6. —— Tourenprogramm. 1917 53 x 441: pp. 4: plate. —_ —— Jugendwanderungen. 1917 53 x 44: p. I. . ; Sierra Club. Bulletin, vol. 10, no. 2. January 1917 93 x GL: pp. 135-267: plates. Articles — J. N. Le Conte, The Sierra Club. A short historic article on origin. C. H. Merriam, To the memory ‘of John Muir. W. Mulford, The war-zone forest of the Kern. J. Grinnell, The Yosemite cony. EK. Tietjens, The sacred mountain of China. Jessie Treat, Kern River outing of 1916. , C. N. Hackett, Via Deer Creck. J. Muir, Studies in the Sierra, 3. Reprinted from Overland Monthly, July 1874. —— Eighteenth Annual Outing. July 1917 5$ x 34: pp. 27.

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The Alpine Club Library. 278 New Books and Articles, Buchanan, John Young. Comptes rendus of observation and reasoning. Cambridge, University Press, 1917. 7s. 6d. net. 84 x 54: pp. xl.: 452: portrait, plates. Among other articles, this contains the following reprints :— pp. 226-32: Size of ice-grain in glaciers. Nature, August 22, 1901. pp. 233-279: Ice and its natural history. Proc. Roy. Inst., 1909 pp. 280-2: Einwirkung v. Strahlung auf d. Gletschereis. Verh. schw. Naturf. Ges. 1910. pp. 283-312: Morteratsch glacier. Scot. Geog. Mag. 1912. : Ice notes from Antarctic Manual 1901. Copies of the original printed articles were kindly sent to the library by the author when published. Durham, Mabel. An unknown Switzerland. Canada’s alpine wonderland, In Wide World Mag. London, vol. 38. March 1917 94 x 7: pp. 519-525: ill. . Europe. Literary extracts from the best books of travel. The scholar’s book of travel. London and Liverpool, Philip [1916] 74 x 4%: pp. viii, 198; ill. Contains pp. 75-106, Switzerland and the Alps, extracts from Ruskin and from Tyndall. Ferrand, Henri. Bibliographie. (Grenoble, Baratier) 1915 9} x 64: pp. 13. Fox, Frank. Switzerland. . London, Black, 1915 8} x 6: pp. x, 203: col. plates. Freshfield, D. W. The great passes of the Western and Central Alps. In Geogr. Journ. London, vol. 49, no. 1. January 1917 9} x 6}: pp. 2-26: map, plates. La Géographie. Bulletin dela Soc. de Géographie. Tome 30. 1914-15 ll x 7. This contains, inter alia: Voites sous-glaciaires observées dans les Pyrénées par L. Gaurier. C. Rabot, Récents travaux glaciaires dans les Alpes frangaises. H. Duhamel, La premiére carte du Dauphiné. Hyde, Walter Woodburn. The development of the appreciation of mountain scenery in modern times. In Geographical Rev. New York, vol. 3, no, 2. February 1917 10 x 7: pp. 107-118: plates. Italy. The war in Italy. Ital. G. H. Photographic Depart. (Milan, Treves, 1916) A portion of this, ‘In alta montagna,’ was noticed in the ‘A.J.’ for February. Jeffers, Le Roy. The call of the mountains. In Scribner’s Mag., vol. 60, no. 3. September 1916 94 x 63: pp. 273-294: 16 plates. Fine plates of Mt Biddle, Mt Assiniboine, Mt Hector, Mt Stephen, Ten Peaks, Mt Temple, Mt Sir Donald, Mt Robson, etc. Selected List of Books on Mountaineering. Revised edition. 6 x4: pp. 46. New York Public Library, 1916 Keen, Dora. Climbing the giant’s tooth, a ‘first-class’ climb in the Alps. In Scribner’s Mag. vol. 60, no. 4. October 1916 93 x 62: pp. 427-438: ill. Kellas, A. M. A consideration of the possibility of ascending the loftier Himalaya. In Geogr. Journ. vol. 49, no. 1. London, January 1917 93 x 64: pp. 26-48: plates. Largely concerned with mountain sick- ness, VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXV. T

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274 The Alpine Club Labrary. Kernahan, Coulson. In good company. Some personal recollections of Swinburne, Lord Roberts, Watts-Dunton, Oscar Wilde, Edward Whymper, S. J. Stone, Stephen Phillips. London, Lane, 1917 74 x 5: pp. 149-188, E. Whymper. A light sketch containing some characteristic storics and remarks, such as :— ‘ My stepson, a lad of twelve, was devoted to him, being especially proud that the greatest of mountaineers was at the trouble of giving him lessons in climbing. Up and down the cliff slopes of Southend, Whympcr marched the lad, impressing upon him the importance of always going at one steady and uniform rate, never, except under exceptional circumstances, forcing the pace or indulging in sprinting ; teaching him to walk from the hips mechanically and machine wise, so that no strain was put upon the heart and lungs.’ ‘ Edward Whymper was not only the loneliest but the. most pathetic human creature I have ever known.’ This is a reprint, with preface, of an article in the Strand Magazine for June 1912. Lucas, E. V. Outposts of mercy. London, Methuen [1917] 62 x 44: pp. 60, plates. A short account of the work of the continacnt of the English Red Cross Society at the Gorizia front. Mitton, G. E. Austria-Hungary. London, Black, 1915 8? x 6: pp. vill, 214: col. plates. Rahn, J. Rudolf. Wanderungen im ‘Tessin. Ziirich, Bopp, 1917 G4 x 4}: pp. 174: ill. Reprint from Wanderstudien aus der Schweiz, 1888. Ruegg, Emil. Rudolf Flaigg, Pfarrer in Altstetten-Ziirich. Sein Lebens- bild. Zirich, Orell Fiissli, 1916 9 x 6: pp. 57: plates. Simplon. The Simplon railway and its connected lines. 7x 5: pp. 120: ill. Lausanne, Assoc. *‘ Pro Sempione ”’ [1916] [1916] 7x5: pp. 116: ill. Switzerland. Die Schweiz aus der Vogelschau. UI. Blatt (Ostschweiz). Basel, Frobenius [1916] From Nauders to the Klausen Pass and from Constance to Brescia. —— Ma Patrie. Calendricr pour la protection des beaux sites suisses. Lausanne, Haeschel-Dufey, 1917 8 x 5}: ill.: 3 days to a page. Views of Swiss scenery. Tolstoy, Leo. The Cossacks, and other Tales of the Caucasus. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. 6 x 34: pp. 371. London etc., Oxford Univ. Press [1916] On p. 20 occurs the following, which is of interest as the story is really autobiographical :— ‘Olenin . . . gazing more and more intently at that snow-peaked chain, that seemed to rise not from behind other black mountains, but straight out of the plain, and to glide away into the distance, he beean. by slow degrees to be penetrated by their beauty, and at length to feel the mountains, From that moment all he saw, all he thought, and all he felt, acquired for him a new character, sternly majestic, like the mountains. ... Beyond the Terek rises the smoke from a Tartar village—and the mountains! The sun has risen and glitters on the Terck now visible beyond the reeds—and the mountains! ... “I have a gun, and strength, and youth— and the mountains !”’’ Older Works. Campbell, W. Canada painted by T. Mower Martin R.C.A. described by Wilfred Campbell LL.D. London, Black, 1907 i x 6: pp. xviii, 272: col. plates. “The numerous coloured plates of mountain scenery are excellent,

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The Alpime Club Library. 275 Hollway, John George. A month in Norway. London, Murray, 1853 63 x 4: pp. vill, 160. Lampen, E. D. CHateau d’Oex. Life and sport in an alpine valley. 74 x 5: pp. xiv, 291: col. and other plates. London, Methuen (1910) Manning, Rev. Samuel. American pictures drawn with pen and pencil. 102 x 74: pp. 224: ill. (London) R.T.S. (1876) Martel, Peter. An account of the glacieres. ... 1744 10} x 8}. A copy of this pamphlet in excellent condition has been kindly pre- _ sented by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin to the Library. Picturesque Europe. In parts as published. 13 x 10: plates. London etc., Cassell, Petter & Galpin (1876-1881) Contains the following, inter alia :— Part 2, pp. 40-57 : T. G. Bonney, North Wales. 17-18, pp. 106-130 ; James Grant, The Grampians. 19, pp. 145-166: H. Schiitz Wilson, The West Coast of Wales: 20-21, pp. 180-194: James Grant, Scotland from Loch Ness to Loch Eil, . G. Bonney, The Lake Country. . W. Hinchliff, The Italian Lakes. G. Bonney, The Passes of the Alps. . Browning, The Cornice Road. . Griffiths, The Pyrenees. G. Bonney, The Bernese Oberland. G. Bonney, Auvergne and Dauphiné. 41-42, pp. 112-134: T. W. Hinchliff, The Lake of Geneva. 42, pp. 135-144: T. G. Bonney, The Frontiers of France. 44-45, pp. 185-214: W. M. Williams, Norway. 49-50, pp. 13-38 : T. G. Bonney, The Tyrol. 52-53, pp. 78-100 : T. G. Bonney, Eastern Switzerland. 55-56, pp. 145-175: T. G. Bonney, The high Alps. 58-59, pp. 225-248: G. F. Browne, The Jura. Pidgeon, Daniel. An engineer’s holiday. London, Kegan Paul, 1882 2 vols.: 72 x 5}: pp. xiv, 342: xii, 342. Ruden, Pfarrer Joseph. Familien-Statistik der l6blichen Pfarrei von Zermatt mit Beilagen. Gesammelt und geordnet von Joseph Ruden, Pfarrer daselbst. Ingenbohl, Waisenanstalt, 1869 74 x 44: pp. 184: plate. Ruppen, Pfarrer Peter Joseph. Familien-Statistik der l6blichen Pfarrei von St. Niklaus. Gesammelt und geordnet von Peter Joseph Ruppen, Pfarrer daselbst. Sitten, Laderich, 1861 7 x 44: pp. vii, 136. Sinai. A journal from Grand Cairo to Mount Sinai and back again. Trans- lated from a manuscript, Written by the Prefetto of Egypt. . 104 x 8: pp. 41. London, Bowyer, ‘1753 Presented by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. Sketchley, Arthur. Out for a holiday with Cook’s excursion, through Switzer- land and Italy. London, Routledge [1871] 64 x 4: pp. 140. Spielmann, M. H. The art of John MacWhirter, R.A. 143 x 102: pp. 24: plates. London, Hanfstaengl (1900) Among the plates are : Loch Coruisk, Welsberg Castle, Pieve di Cadore, ‘The sleep that is among the lonely hills,’ June in the Tyrol, Near 21-22, pp. 215-235 : 26-27, pp. 30-54 : 27-28, pp. 55-77 : 28-29, pp. 78-100 : 32-33, pp. 172-197: 34-35, pp. 229-250 : 37, pp. 1-23 : gHSHHposss Saas Fee. sac Dr. Carl. Die Alpenvégel der Schweiz. 1. Serie. 12 x 93: pp. 2: 15 photographs. St. Gallen, Stolker, 1876 Topffer, R. Premiers voyages en zigzag ...4me éd. Paris, Lecou, 1855 103 x 7: pp. 459: plates. Nouveaux voyages. Paris, Lecou, 1854 103 x 7: p. xvii, 454: plates. The two above have been kindly presented by Miss M. Edith Durham to the Library.

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276 Alpine Notes, Westmoreland. In the Gentleman’s Mag. Library. A classified Collection . from 1731-1868. London, Elliot Stock, 1901 8} x 54: pp. 133-163. Whipple, Lt. A. W. Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, 1853-4. U.S. Senate. Vol. UI. . Washington, Tucker, 1856 114 x 83: pp. 136, 77 etc.: tinted lith. plates. Whymper, Edward. The Alps revisited, Four weekly articles in the Graphic. 16 x 12: pp. 18: ill. London, September 29-October 20, 1894: Presented by H. V. Reade, Esq. ALPINE NOTES. *‘Batt’s ALPINE GuIDE.’ Vou. I. THe WESTERN ALPS.— Copies of the new edition (1898) of this work can be obtained from all booksellers, or from Edward Stanford, Limited, 12 Long Acre, W.C. 2. Price 12s. net. ‘Batu’s ALPINE GuIDE, THe CENTRAL ALPs. Part I.—A new edition (1907) of this portion of ‘ The Alpine Guide,’ by the late John Ball, F.R.S., President of the Alpine Club, reconstructed and revised on behalf of the Alpine Club under the general editorship of A. V. Valentine-Richards, Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, can be obtained from all booksellers, or from Edward Stanford, Limited, 12 Long Acre, W.C. 2. Itincludes those portions of Switzerland to the N. of the Rhéne and Rhine valleys. Price 6s. 6d. ‘Batu’s ALPINE GUIDE,’ THE CENTRAL Aes. Part II.—A new edition (1911) of this portion of ‘ The Alpine Guide,’ by the late John Ball, F.R.S., President of the Alpine Club, reconstructed and revised — on behalf of the Alpine Club under the general editorship of the Rev. George Broke, can be obtained from all booksellers, or from Edward Stanford, Limited, 12 Long Acre, W.C.2. It includes those elige portions of Switzerland, Italy, and Austria which lie 8. and EH. of the Rhéne and Rhine, 8. of the Arlberg, and W. of the Adige. Price 7s. 6d. Map oF THE VALSESIA.—Some copies of the Map issued with the ALPINE JOURNAL No. 209, and of the plates opposite pages 108 and 128 in No. 208, are available and can be obtained from the Assistant Secretary, Alpine Club, 23 Savile Row, W. Price for the set (the Map mounted on cloth), 3s CLUBFUHRER DURCH DIE WALLISER-ALPEN (CLIMBERS’ GUIDE TO THE PENNINE ALps).—Vol. III., in 2 parts, of this new Climbers’ Guide, edited by Dr. Ditbi, covering the country from the Théodule to the Simplon, has just been published (in German). The price of the volume (to members of the 8.A.C.) is bBfr. 15c. Post free from the Questor of the respective section. The book is so well furnished with route-marked illustrations that a very scanty knowledge of German suffices for its use.

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Alpine Notes. 277 The volume from the Col Ferret to the Théodule is in a forward state. A few copies of Vol. ITI. have been sent over and can be obtained from the Asst. Editor, Alpine Club, price 5s. post free. Toe ALPINE CLUB OBITUARY.— Elected. Rivington, Alexander . ; . 1861 ~Woodmass, Montagu. , . 1863 Simpson, W. W. . ; . 1874 Arnold, Ernest Penrose. , . 1874 Hodgson, G.H. . . 1876 Whitridge, Frederick Wallingford . 1884 Aves, Ernest : . 1893 Lyne, C. R. : . 1902 Done, Nevile Savage. 1912 Duhamel, Henri (honorary member) 1916 We much regret to learn that Herr Moriz pe Décuy, the well- known Alpine and Caucasian climber and explorer, author of many articles on Alpine subjects and of a valuable work on the canceanes died on February 8, aged sixty-six. D. unp &. A.V.—The Mittherlungen of February 28, 1917, contain a list of the names of members of that association who have been killed in action, bringing the total up to 2069 since the beginning of the War. ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA.—Vol. xxx. P. 8, line 7 from bottom, for allied read neutral. P. 97, line 7 from bottom, Moore is included in the group in ‘Scrambles’ (5th edit.), opposite p. 248. P. 113, line 1, read Oe.A.C. P. 126, line 3 from bottom, last word, read ow. Mr. FResHFIELD has been elected an honorary member of the RussIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. Dr. H. Dui has been elected an honorary corresponding member of the Roya, GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. Tue Back Grant of the R.G.S. has been awarded to the Rev. WALTER WESTON for his travels and explorations in the Japanese Alps—a district previously unknown to Kuropeans. THE CuTHBEeRT Peak GRantT of the R.G.S. has been awarded to Dr. A. M. Ketras for his explorations and ascent of new peaks in Sikkim, and his investigation of the effects of high altitude. THE Mountain Cius or Sout AFRica, at its annual meeting held at Cape Town in December last, elected as President Dr. B. Hewat, M.P.C., and, as one of its Vice-Presidents, Mr. G. F. Travers- Jackson, A.C. The Gold Badge of the Club was awarded to Mr. K. Cameron in recognition of his efforts to extend the knowledge of the South African Mountains, of his services to the Club, and of

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278 Reviews. his valuable assistance at all times in the general activities of the Club. The Club numbers 365 members, including a considerable number of ladies, and about 70 members have served or are serving in H.M. Forces in the various theatres of the War. The Club supports a section in the Citizens’ Training Association, and does its share of garrison duty in the Cape Peninsula. The Club hut on Table Mountain was used by a large number of visitors. Serious LANDSLIDES aT CHAMPERY took place in December last. The ground was sodden from continual rain for months, and did not freeze. Then came three feet of snow, followed by three days’ warm rain. This was too much for the slopes to stand. A big slide started high above the railway station, carried away half of a chalet and landed in the Buffet de la Gare, the children having to be taken out of the second-storey window. The worst seemed over when another big slide commenced pouring down between Defago’s new hotel and the blacksmith’s. At first the damage was not great, but 1t continued to rain all night, and the slide un- covered some underground springs. Next morning down came the rest of the slope—rocks, trees, and all with a fearful noise. The mud poured right through Defago’s hotel—only finished three days before—even up to the second storey. The damage is estimated at 20,000 francs. Much regret will be felt for the inhabitants, already hard hit by the War. Tue ‘ALPINE JouRNAL.’—A set in original cloth, Vols. I. to XXVIII., fetched at auction in April, £17. REVIEWS. Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpenclub, vol. L, 1914 and 1915. Edited by Dr. H. Dibi. AFTER an interval of two years this new volume is very welcome. It is well got up in every respect, while some of the illustrations by a process called incavo-gravure, of the firm of Brunner & Co. of Zurich, are among the very best things of the kind I have seen. Dr. Diibi is to be congratulated on the production of a superb volume. The advantage of an annual volume over our quarterly journal is a certain convenient uniformity of contents, so that one always knows where to look for a particular kind of article. The mountaineering articles include : Dr. Tauber’s account of a journey in the Alps of Northern Albania in April 1914, starting from Cetinje and visiting places that have become since familiar, such as Prisren and Uskub. A very instructive and charmingly written article by Dr. Hans K6énig on the Albigna group, which my friends Strutt or Claud Wilson are better qualified to review than I am. In 1915 Dr. K6nig’s original plan, modified by the frontier guard, was to send two porters with eight days’ provender from Maloja

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Reviews. 279 to the Albigna hut while he and his friends went to the Cavloccio Lake and spent the night in the Piancanino huts, crossing next day the Cima del Largo and the Bacone to the Albigna hut. This seems to be a good approach to the group. They were however forced to descend to below Casaccia, whence they toiled up the rough footpath to the well-placed Albigna hut. The Cima del Largo and the Bacone were ascended, but an attempt on the Ago di Sciora failed. The journey finished with what must be a very instructive traverse along the aréte Pizzo Scalino, Cima di Cantone and Cima del Castello. With the article appears a sketch map on a scale of 1: 50,000 of the Albigna group, embodying the different nomenclature ‘and measurements, in which the assistance of my good friend Kiucker is fully acknowledged. The illustrations to the article are superb. Herr A. Specken tells a happy, well-illustrated tale of a visit to the Dolomites, with ascents of the three Drei Zinnen. Two articles which deal particularly with well-known districts are Herr L. Meyer’s ‘ On the North Side of the Dent Blanche and Weisshorn,’ and ‘ Pictures in the Val d’Heérens,’ by Dr. Oskar Frey, both superbly illustrated from photographs by the authors. Herr Meyer’s article deals with what he calls the northern route from Arolla to Zermatt. He had in former years gained Zermatt by a middle route, viz. the Col de Bertol and the Col d’Heérens, and by a central route, viz. by the Col de Za-de-Zan to the Aosta hut in Valpelline, whence the Dent d’Hérens was ascended, and Zermatt eventually gained by the Chateau des Dames to Breuil and the Furggjoch to Zermatt, a cross-country journey to be recommended to my young countrymen as a corrective to peak-hunting at Arolla or Zermatt. His northern passage was made by ascending, from the Col de la Dent Blanche, the S. aréte of the Grand Cornier. The view of the N. face of the Dent Blanche, as well as of its Viereselsgrat and its aréte de Ferpécle seen in profile, is of course superb, while across the valley the great W. face of the Rothhorn and the Zinal face of the Weisshorn are a notable feature. The descent was made by the Mountet route to Zinal, whence after a night at Combasana, kept in my time by one of the Theytaz, very friendly but rough quarters, the Col de Tracuit was crossed and the Bieshorn ascended. The descent was made at first by its K. aréte, which however was quitted too soon by its 8. flank, so that a re-ascent had to be made to the Biesjoch. The easy ascent of the Brunegghorn (the view from the summit is highly praised) from the Biesjoch followed, but instead of descending to St. Nicolas, a route unknown to the guide, J. M. Lagger of Morel, the party descended the Turtmann Glacier, exchanging the ice near Pt. 2641 for the rocks of the right bank, a broad scree- filled gully, hard to find, giving access to the glacier below the ice- fall. The right-hand moraine of the glacier tongue was first followed,

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280 Reviews. but the tongue then crossed in a N.W. direction to the left bank, and the good little inn at Gruben gained late at night. Dr. Oskar Frey’s article is mostly taken up with descriptions and pleasing illustrations of the valley proper of Evolena, of the Combe de Ferpécle, and of Arolla, whence he crossed the Cols de Bertol and d’Hérens to Zermatt. The interesting statement is made that the Arolla Glacier has gone back 200 yards in the period 1894-1910, and the suggestion is thrown out that, in the years of maximum advance, 1855 and especially 1820, to conclude from the old moraines, the tongues of the Arolla and Zigiorenove glaciers united 200 or 300 yards above the Hotel Mont Collon. A view of the Vuibez Glacier is given, which would doubtless offer some interesting ice-work. Herr Hans Diibi, son of our honorary member Dr. Diibi, one of the engineers of the Swiss Topographical Survey, gives some particulars of his work. He commences with a very instructive notice of the work of the men who have brought mountain surveying to its present high state. Commencing with Professor Tralles of Berne, who at the end of the eighteenth century, armed with an English theodolite, made ascents for this purpose, and may be said to be the originator of the Federal Survey, mention is made of the work of MM. Henry and Delcros, engineers sent by Napoleon, whose triangulation of 1806 brought in the Finsteraarhorn. They were followed by Trechsel and his assistant, J. J. Frey of Knonau, who made many ascents, Finsler, Sulzberger, Buchwalder and Eschmann, whose “Results of the Trigonometrical Measurements in Switzerland,’ published in 1840, formed the basis of the Dufour map. Particular mention 1s made of the well-known triangulation of the canton of Vallais by Berchtold, the ecclesiastic of Sion. Irritated by the criticism of a religious work issued by him in 1822, he resolved to devote his spare time to the survey of his canton, and measured a base line near Sion. I must refer the reader to Herr Dibi’s paper for details of the remarkable work of the later Federal surveyors, and come to his own work on the Finsteraarhorn and the Dufourspitze. His work on the former in 1913 was to erect the pole and stone- man onthe summit. In 1914 a camp was pitched at the Dejeuner- platz and the triangulation completed in seven ascents to the summit. Interesting snapshots show the difficulties of transport, while a remarkable full-page view of the 8.E. aréte from the summit seems to show the Vorgipfel standing away from the main aréte in a manner that I do not remember. The triangulation from the Dufourspitze, undertaken in the same summer, gave more trouble. The summit was reached in bitter weather, but it was only after the carrier column had been reorganised that the instruments could be got to the top. Work for the year came to a sudden end by the case containing the telescope

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Reviews. 981 of the theodolite making a rapid descent to the Grenz glacier. In 1915 a camp was pitched in some Gerdll near the Satteldohle at an altitude of 3750 m. and in three ascents in splendid weather the triangulation was completed. Towards the evening of one day the atmosphere was so clear that Milan and many towns and villages in the Po basin were clearly visible. An article by Dr. A. Bahler on the French invasion of the Pays d’Enhaut in 1798 deserves careful study. The article which will attract English readers is ‘ Recollections of Melchior Anderegg,’ by Dr. Dibi and M. Paul Montandon. Dr. Diibi’s careful review, with its list of Melchior’s ascents and of all the articles referring to him, will probably remain the most complete record of his career. Dr. Diibi mentions the attempt on the Z’Muttgrat in 1863, which does not seem to be quite authenticated, and it is generally understood that Melchior’s first complete ascent of the Dent Blanche was in 1876—the previous attempts not having succeeded. Dr. Diibi states that Melchior once told him that Almer never ought to have given the signal to advance on reaching the summit of the Col de la Tour noire from the W., by which he committed his party to the terrible descent of its KE. face. M. Paul Montandon’s contribution is a very valuable addition, and is concerned rather with a critical survey of Anderegg’s qualities and powers. He lays very properly great stress on Melchior’s high sense of duty and conscientiousness, which, added to great powers as a guide and an attractive personality, gave him his unique position among mountaineers. A superb picture of Melchior in 1898 by Dr. Hans Brun completes the paper. The most important article from the scientific point of view 18 by Professor Dr. Mercanton on ‘ Les variations périodiques des Glaciers des Alpes Suisses.’ It covers the annual reports for 1914 and 1915. I shall not presume to give even a summary of this valuable paper, which deserves the closest study of anyone interested in glaciers and their ebb and flow. Generally speaking, there is since 1913 a tendency to advance or flow, and some glaciers like the Rhone and the Upper and Lower Grindelwald glaciers have made quite notable advances. The usual full list of New Expeditions and details of accidents are given. A new hut, the Sustlihtitte, has been erected near the Sustenpass to serve the interesting glacier massif comprising the Wichelplank- stécke, the Wasenhorn and the Fiinffingerspitzen, all of which offer good climbing. The long overdue and very necessary im- provement has been made of reserving one sleeping compartment entirely for members ofthe S8.A.C. Sleeping (!) ina club hut is fast becoming a martyrdom to the climber, and there is absolutely no reason why, with its very moderate subscription, the 8.A.C. should not reserve its huts entirely for its members whose money erects

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282 Proceedings of the Alpine Club. them. The Reviews are not so plentiful as usual, owing to the rather verbose Chronik of the sections. M. Paul Montandon’s review of the ‘Climbers’ Guide to the Engelhérner’ is very amusing. Altogether a fine volume. F. PROCEEDINGS OF THE ALPINE CLUB. A GENERAL MEETING of the Club was held in the Hall, 23 Savile Row, W., on Tuesday, February 6, 1917, at 8.30 p.m., Captain J. P. Farrar, D.S.O., President, in the Chair. Captain Farrar, on taking his seat as President for the first time, was warmly greeted by the members present. The following candidates were balloted for and elected members of the Club—namely, Messrs. C. A. Elliott and R. J. Farrer, Lieut.- Col. B. E. M. Gurdon, C.1.E., D.S.O., Mr. R. Lamb, and Captain P. H. Sharpe, R.E. The PRESIDENT announced the deaths since the last General Meeting of the following members of the Club—namely, Mr. Montagu Woodmass (1863), Mr. A. H. Burton (1874), and Mr. F. W. Whit- ridge (1884). He also referred to the telegrams which had passed between the American Alpine Club and this Club, copies of which appeared in the February number of the JouRNAL, and mentioned that one of our members, Mr. N. H. Read, an American elected in 1916, is serving in the British Army as a 2nd Lieutenant in the R.F.C. His father writes: ‘No matter what John Bull thinks of US., every American is for old England.’ Sir Martin Conway then read a Paper entitled ‘ A Paper without a Title.’ A discussion followed and Mr. Douezas W. FRESHFIELD said ; It is difficult in this arctic temperature to collect one’s thoughts sufficiently to make even a few remarks. But I am glad to testify to the pleasure we have all had in listening to Sir M. Conway’s suggestive discourse. What he said about mountain nomenclature specially interested me, for 1 have had in my time something to do with it in different countries. In a popular district names tend to multiply, for whenever a fresh knob is climbed, its conqueror strives to give it an individual existence by putting a name to it. Sir M. Conway has perhaps accomplished a unique feat in not only imposing names of his own invention on Swiss peaks, but in inducing the Federal Staff to adopt them and insert them in the official maps. In the Himalaya I have been less lucky ; the Indian Survey stick to “Mount Everest’ as against any Tibetan or Nepalese title. In the Caucasus, however, I have played godfather to several important summits, among them Shkara, the third (or possibly second) highest in the range. I am very much in favour, in

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Proceedings of the Alpine Club. — 288 fahbieed regions, of leaving the peaks their native names or giving them characteristic names. There are inconveniences in using peaks as personal monuments, even when, as in the Far West, there are no native names to fall back on. Thus when a number of peaks in the Rockies were named after past presidents of this Club, the first ascent of one of them was tersely recorded in the JOURNAL in the following phrase: ‘ Freshfield proved an impostor.’ Before I sit down I may perhaps be allowed to refer to an incident in the search through old hotel-books, instituted in the last year or two, which has so far not been brought to the notice of our industrious Editors. It is in the form of a sonnet, addressed to Sir Martin Conway. It dates evidently from the time when he was President of the Club. It runs—if I can quote it correctly— 'as follows. The medallion referred to is probably that executed by the late Mr. Onslow Ford. On A MeDALLION OF THE AUTHOR OF ‘THE ALPS FROM END TO END.’ When I behold this rampant crest of hair, This youthful mien, so blandly resolute, I feel the captious critic must be mute Before a Knight and President so rare. Great. End-to-Ender, climber past compare, A rolling-stone, on which not moss takes root But trees of knowledge, bearing golden fruit That puffing publishers make haste to share. One year we watch with wonder, while you stroll Planetabling on some peak of Himalay ; The next, we find you rambling at the Pole, Andes, Spitsbergen: where are you to-day ? At home, or off on some new Expedition, Professor, critic, climber, politician. Dr. CuauDE Witson said that there was much in Sir Martin Conway’s interesting paper which suggested comment to those who were more or less his contemporaries. He would confine his remarks to three points. | He believed that Sir Martin was wrong in supposing that his genius for finding suitable names for mountains was not generally recognised. Speaking for himself, he regarded Sir Martin as the one _ person who could always be relied upon to find a suitable and often a beautiful name, and he imagined that this view was widely held. He wished that Sir Martin’s principles could have been applied in the naming of Canadian mountains. Sir Martin had mentioned the Wellenkuppe, a mountain of which he (the speaker) made one of the early ascents, in company with Sir George Savage. In spite of the horrid German tongue, the name was both descriptive

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284 Proceedings of the Alpine Club. and poetical. In the Chamonix district Sir Martin had supplied some excellent names. He would allude to a few in which he had a special interest—the peaks on the ridge running from the Verte to the Moine, and to the Dent de Requin. He had been a good deal mixed up with early attempts on the Requin, before it had a name, and when it used to be referred to as ‘ the peak round the corner,’ and was also known by other unsuitable explicatives. Its re- semblance to a shark’s tooth was instantly recognised by Conway, and accepted by all as the best of all possible names. The Nonne, the Evéque, and the Cardinal were all of them suitable names, which at once caught on. Sir Martin had referred to the difficulty of describing routes accurately. We were all of us indebted to him for the immense trouble he had taken, and grateful for the help thus secured. But some of us had been led astray by the badly described routes, and still more by wrong routes clearly described, and personally he had cursed his “ Conway’ now and then. He had, however, more sym- pathy than was once the case with the writers of these accounts. On the first ascent of the Nonne, when his party traversed it, it had fallen to his lot to write a short description of the route, from memory, and some time after the event. He had felt no doubt that the chimney by which the descent was made could be identified, because he recollected that it was just opposite to the Jardin. But when, some years later, he attempted to lead a party up, they had found, as might have been anticipated, some half-dozen chimneys to which that description would apply, and they quite failed to reach the foot of any oneofthem. It was easy to describe an aréte route, or one by an obvious couloir, but he feared 1t was impossible adequately to describe, without diagrams, an intricate route up a face. Referring to the Alps in winter, he (the speaker) had made a few winter ascents; but it was not for climbing that most of us visited the Alps at that time of year. It was rather to skate and ski and curl, and the proximity of the great mountains was merely an in- cidental joy. But it was only those who knew them in the Summer that could fully appreciate them in winter. There was a view-point on the Miirren side of the Lauterbrunnen valley from which, in winter, when the whole landscape was snowclad, the Mannlichen actually looked higher than the Jungfrau ; and those who only knew the former were quite unable to appreciate the difference between its small snow hollows and the vast ice-fields that lay between the Jungfrau and the Silberhorn. In the summer the majesty of the great mountains was much more obvious, but in both seasons it was only to those who were personally familiar with the upper world of ice that the glory of the mountains was fully revealed. Mr. H. V. ReabE said that he wished to express the deep gratitude which he felt to Sir Martin Conway for the ‘Chimber’s Guides.’ He had never seen the ‘ Zermatt Pocket Book,’ but the two ‘ Pen- nine’ guides came out first when he was beginning to climb, and

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Proceedings of the Alpine Club. 285 those and their successors had been his inseparable companions ever since. To those who tried to do without ‘ guides’ in the ordinary sense, these little books were simply invaluable. He quite understood Sir Martin’s difficulty in interpreting the accounts which people wrote of their climbs, and no doubt this was why he had sometimes found that the descriptions in the guides, though quite clear, were entirely wrong. Of course this would only be where Sir Martin had not himself done the climb. But he sympathised also “with the writers, since he found it very hard to write accurate accounts of his own expeditions. Not long ago, when he and two friends had made a new route on Lliwedd, the three of them spent several hours in trying to write a joint account of it which would reconcile their different impressions, though the whole thing was only some 500 feet of rock. Fortunately he had not felt, like Sir Martin, that mountains lost their mystery and beauty if one knew them too well. He had done some fifty climbs on that face of Lliwedd, but could still find it mysterious and beautiful as he left it in the gathering darkness. If one could feel this of a little Welsh peak, one felt it much more of the great snow mountains. Professor J. N. Collie, Sir Claud Schuster, and Sir Alexander Kennedy also spoke, and the proceedings terminated with a hearty vote of thanks to Sir Martin Conway for his very interesting Paper. A GENERAL MEETING of the Club was held in the Hall, 23 Savile Row, W. 1, on Tuesday, March 6, at 8.30 p.m., Capt. J. P. Farrar, D.S.0., President, in the Chair. The PRESIDENT announced the death, in his eightieth year, of Mr. Alexander Rivington, a member since 1861. He also expressed the great regret felt by the Alpine Club at the news of the death of Monsieur le Capitaine H. ‘Duhamel of the Chasseurs Alpins. A veteran of the-1870 campaign, Captain Duhamel rejoined his old regiment on the outbreak of war and rendered valuable services as chief of the section of Skieurs. Captain Duhamel is well known as a distinguished mountaineer, as one of the early explorers of the Dauphiné, and the joint-author with Mr. Coolidge and M. Perrin of the “ Guide du Haut Dauphiné,’ as well as the author of the well-known map of that district. No one who ever came into contact with Captain Duhamel could fail to carry away the happiest memories of his transparent candour and charm of manner. Mr. Douaias W. FRESHFIELD read a Paper entitled ‘Some Passes,’ which was illustrated by lantern slides. A discussion followed and, responding to a call from the President, Lord Bryce said that he was sure they were all very grateful to Mr. Freshfield for an extremely valuable paper which had touched on many interesting topics and had thrown a fresh light upon all of them. So many topics had indeed been touched on that it was

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286 Proceedings of the Alpine Club. hard to know which of them to select for comment. To the older members of the Club the connexion of each great Alpine pass with history became, as they were less and less able themselves to scale the peaks or to divert themselves by threading labyrinths of séracs upon the glaciers, a more and more fascinating theme for study and reflection. As regards the track followed by Hannibal, he had been inclined towards the Mont Genévre until he had read Mr. Freshfield’s arguments for the Col'de l’Argentiére. He agreed absolutely with what Mr. Freshfield had said regarding the Little St. Bernard. Having traversed it some seventeen years ago, he had then come to the same conclusion that whatever way Hannibal went he certainly did not go over that pass. Not only were the physical features of the route entirely different from those described or assumed in the narra- _ tives of Hannibal’s travels, but it was in the last degree improbable that Hannibal coming from Spain, and it must be remembered that he was coming from Spain and not from Paris, would lead his large army so far up to the N. and away down from the N.W. through the long valley of Aosta into the furthest corner of N. Western Cisalpine Gaul when he had a shorter route and lower passes so much nearer the Southern Rhone valley. What Mr. Freshfield said about the military importance of the gorges below the high passes as compared with the tops of the passes was absolutely true. Those who had - read General Dufour’s fascinating book on Mountain Warfare would remember the stress there laid upon the historical instances which showed that the most defensible positions were well down in the valleys below the watersheds. This truth was admirably illustrated in the ever famous campaign of Suvorov in 1799, when he fought his way with no very great difficulty up the Gothard from Val Leventina, drove the French down the valley of the Reuss to Altdorf, was stopped at Fliielen by the want of boats to reach Lucerne, the French having prudently carried off all the boats, then turned K. and N., crossed the pass of the Kinzig Kulm into Canton Schwytz, was there stopped by the French who held strong positions in the Muota Thal, then turned E. again and crossed the Pragel Pass into Glarus, was once again held up there in the narrow exit from Glarus to- wards the N. by a detachment of Masséna’s army, and finally escaped from an impasse, where his army would have starved, by crossing the Panixer Pass into the valley of the Vorder Rhein, where he arrived pretty late in the autumn with forces terribly reduced. Few Alpine journeys offer more interest to the historian than this one. The present war had been giving a good many examples of mountain warfare all along the line of the frontier between Italy and the territories of Austria in Tyrol, Carinthia and Carniola: and when peace returned many would find it interesting to examine that frontier, probably the most thoroughly fortified as well as naturally strong against which a gallant army had ever dashed itself. So, too, there had been hard fighting on the passes which crossed the frontier between Transylvania and Moldavia on the W. of the latter country,

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Proceedings of the Alpine Club. 287 and on those between Transylvania and Walachia. One of the latter was the Rothenthurm Pass, which reminded him of a time when he was travelling in those regions more than fifty years ago with one whose name they all cherished with affectionate reverence, Leslie Stephen. They were staying for a day or two at Hermannstadt, some eight miles N. of the Rothenthurm, and had projected an excursion to it. When, however, they discovered that the pass was along the course of a river, the Aluta, which here descends from Transylvania into the Danubian plain, Leslie Stephen denied that it ought to be called a pass at all, declaring that name ought to be reserved fora col or joch across a mountain ridge; and his interest in the expedition, which in fact they were never able to take, was palpably reduced. In old days ‘ pass’ used to mean merely a passage through hills, not necessarily over a height. The Pass of Killiecrankie, famous in Scottish history, was, as they all knew, along the banks of the Garry. He would not take up their time by referring to other passes mentioned by Mr. Freshfield except to observe that the Septimer, much used by the Romans, furnished a very Interesting short excursion from the Maloja to those climbers who were waiting there for a fine day to attack the Monte della Disgrazia. | Referring to the slide pictures, Mr. Freshfield had delighted them with his ingenious-idea of taking them from Brockedon’s book, published a century ago. He had been struck by the character of the rock forms as those appeared in the views. He would venture to suggest that they belonged to that type of the representation of rocks which came down from Salvator Rosa. The earlier Italian painters—certainly Titian and Cima—and he thought also the Milan- ese painters who represented the mountains along the great Italian lakes, gave strong sharp outlines to their rock forms, whereas Salvator’s were soft and vague—one might almost say woolly: and that tradition seemed to have survived till Turner, whose eye for rocks and mountain forms was incomparable, began to see and paint rocks as they are, distinguishing the forms of each kind with an eye that might have been that of a geologist. ‘The mention of tunnels by Mr. Freshfield opened a painful subject. They, with the introduction of chains and iron footholds, and, in the deplorable cases of the Pelmo and Terglou, the actual carving away of those rock difficulties which had made part of the charm of a mountain, were subjects really too painful to be discussed in public. Our feelings might be too much for us. He would conclude by again expressing the gratitude they must all feel to one of the honoured veterans of exploration as well as of climbing for a singularly fresh and most instructive paper. r The PRESIDENT, in proposing a hearty vote of thanks, stated that Mr. Freshfield was a standing satisfaction to the Club, and was a model of sustained keenness and knowledge. The vote was carried with acclamation.

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288 Proceedings of the Alpine Club. A GENERAL MEETING of the Club was held in the Hall, 23 Savile Row, W. 1., on Tuesday, April 3, 1917, at 8.30 p.m., Captain J. P. Farrar, D.S.0., President, in the Chair. The PrestDENT announced the deaths of Mr. C. R. Lyne and Mr. W. W. Simpson, members since 1902 and 1874 respectively. He also announced with very great regret the death in action of one of the best of the younger members of the Club, Mr. Nevile 8S. Done, and in doing so said: ‘Most of us remember the charming speech made by Mr. Done at the end of Sir Edward Davidson’s term of office, and it seems but yesterday that his keen alert figure occupied this desk to give us a most interesting narrative of one of his Alpine journeys. ‘Gentlemen, a Club like ours must be prepared to hear with resigna- tion of the death of its older members, many of whom have done good service for the Club, but the death in action of a man like Done, to his family and his friends, must leave an irreparable blank. ‘To my mind he was just one of those men on whom we could safely count to carry on the best traditions of the Club, and his death in early manhood is, I consider, a grievous loss to all who have the interests of the Club at heart. ‘I have already ventured to offer to Mrs. Done, on behalf of the whole Club, our very respectful sympathy.’ The President also mentioned that the Trafoi Hotel, so well known to travellers crossing the Stelvio, has been destroyed by fire. The Acting Honorary SECRETARY presented the Accounts of the Club and the Balance-sheet for 1916, which were unanimously adopted. Mr. J. H. Crapuam, Litt.D., then read a Paper entitled ‘ The Peaks about Slogen,’ which was illustrated by lantern slides. A discussion ensued, in which Mr. G. P. Baker, Mr. Haskett Smith and others took part, and the proceedings terminated with a hearty vote of thanks to Mr. Clapham for his very interesting Paper. A GEeneERAL MEETING of the Club was held in the Hall, 23 Savile Row, W. 1, on Tuesday, May 1, 1917, at 8.30 p.m., Capt. J. P. Farrar, D.S.O., President, in the Chair. -_ The PRESIDENT announced with regret the deaths of the following members, viz. Messrs. E. P. Arnold (1874), G. H. Hodgson (1876), and Ernest Aves (1898). . _ Mr. Epcar Foa then read a Paper entitled “The Campaign in the Trentino,’ which was illustrated by lantern shdes. A discussion took place in which Mr. E. A. Broome and Sig. Commendatore Palliccia, who was present as a guest of the President, took part, and a hearty vote of thanks to Mr. Foa for a most interest- ing Paper was carried by acclamation. Mr. Foa, in acknowledging the vote, mentioned that a number of the beautiful slides shown were the work of Mr. R. S. Morrish, a member of the Club.

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THE ALPINE JOURNAL. OCTOBER 1917. . (No. 216.) MEMBERS SERVING IN HIS MAJESTY’S FORCES. D.S.O. Gask, Major G. E., R.A.M.C., F.R.C.8., ‘for valuable services rendered in connexion with the war.’ | Promotions. _ Strutt, Lt.-Col. E. L., 3rd Royal Scots, promoted Officier de la Légion q@’ Honhear: Belgian Honours. Srrurt, Lt.-Col. E. L., 3rd Royal Scots, eee Gkevaties de Ordre de Léopold. Bucuan, Lt.-Col. J., appointed Officier de l’Ordre de la Couronne. Italian Honour for British Red Cross Rescuer. The King of Italy has conferred the silver medal ‘ For Valour’ on Mr. Geoffrey Winthrop Young, officer, of the First British Red Cross Unit for Italy, ‘in recognition of repeated acts of devotion and courage in rescuing wounded under heavy fire’ on the Isonzo front.— Times, August 20. Mr. Young has unfortunately been severely wounded. Particu- lars will be found elsewhere. | VOL XXXI—NO, CCXVI. U

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290 The Peaks about Slogen. THE PEAKS ABOUT SLOGEN, By J. H. CLAPHAM. (Read before the Alpine Club, April 3, 1917.) F the headquarters of this Club were fixed much North of Trent, I should scarcely dare to stand up and talk about Norway on the strength of one short climbing visit now more than eight yearsaway. Overall that North country Slingsby throws his shadow from the High Craven, and the fervent climbing youth of those parts, who break their milk-teeth on the mill- stone grit of their own hills, are apt to cut their second teeth on the crags of the Jotunheim, and to learn icecraft on the glaciers that come down, glittering and clean, not fouled with Alpine rubble, from the ice-cap of the Jéstedalsbrae. They will babble to you of Stagastolstind, the Slingsbybrae, and Ole Berger the guide, as who should say Jungfrau, Mer de Glace, and Melchior Anderegg. It is because I lived for six years where Slingsby was within reach, Priestman next door, and this same fervent youth all around that I was almost compelled to sample Norway. I speak to-night as a Norway taster, not as a Norse expert. | For our sample district we chose the Norangsdal and the peaks about Slogen, chose them on a theory which I believe was sound. One’s friends generally said the Jotunheim—Stagastol- stind, the Slingsbybrae, and Ole Berger the guide all over again. But fine as that country no doubt is, I could not make out that the crags were much finer than those of Scafell, or the glaciers peculiar in their excellence. Then there was the Jdstedalsbrae—essentially Norwegian, a true ice-cap, a thing one cannot see in the Alps; but one could hardly spend a holiday on it. (Besides I had seen it long ago on a previous visit to Norway, before my enlightenment, when I travelled about on fjord steamers and high roads.) More typically Norwegian we thought were the peaks that spring right from the salt water and the glaciers from whose snows you can at times look out to the open sea. So we went to Oie at the foot of Slogen, very ignorant, having read up some climbs of Slingsby’s in those parts, but having failed to buy even a map of them in Bergen, where we had counted on getting one. By good luck we found at Oie not only a climbers’ book, but Patchell, who has

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The Peaks about Slogen. 291 been in Norway yearly for a quarter of a century or so, and could | tell us of every ridge round about, whether anyone had been on it since Slingsby, or whether anyone had been on it at all. It was Patchell who put us on to the 5.W. ridge of the Smorskredtind, the fourth day after our arrival at Oie. We had come overland, driving against salt rain under the terrible cliffs of the Upper Norangsdal, and by the spot where, that very spring, a rock-fall from the western side had filled the valley with rubble and giant fragments for nearly a quarter of a mile, and had dammed up the river into a small lake. For two days it rained on, and we were cooped up under the clouds. On the third Werner and I—Bennett was off colour—went out and began to accustom ourselves to starting for a climb, in a row- boat at 8.15; to these 5000-foot peaks which were neither Lake district hills nor Alps, and yet so like both ; and to their glaciers, which were sometimes crossed in five and twenty minutes instead of the two hours which a first glance suggested. We had a very good day making rock-routes of our own on the Gjeithorn and Brekketind ; we learnt some geography and had our first taste of a thousand-foot glissade on Norwegian winter snow- beds ; we also learnt what happens when you lose your way in the matted scrub of birch and alder on the lower slopes of Norwegian mountains ; but it was not the sort of day one can well describe. | The Smorskredtind came after it. It is Baedeker himself who says that the Smorskredtind 1s like the Wetterhorn, and I know what he means. TheS.W. ridge, after flattening out, ends in a cliff that breaks away down to the valley. Patchell, if my memory serves me right, knew of only one ascent of this ridge. The ordinary route is by its vis-a-vis on the N.E. Both are easy of access from a high valley that lies between the peak and Slogen. Werner and I had seen ours the day before. It turned out quite as good as it looked. Its lower part had a notched edge, so we avoided it by grassy ledges on the 5S. side, gaining the crest by a long easy chimney which ended at the highest of this group of notches. Then came thirty or forty feet of pretty straight up work, and after that continuous and steep ridge-climbing of the best. Several times it went up so straight that we thought we were getting onto towers and should be forced to descend; but we never were. We only left the ridge once, to turn an obvious tower on cold, wet rocks and up a steep chimney on the N. face. Climbing continued right to the cairn. How long it all was I don’t know. I noticed that on these peaks, where it doesn’t much matter when you

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292 The Peaks about Slogen. - get on or when you get off, one’s watch comes out far less often than it does in the Alps. That day we were out about twelve hours; but this included a descent on the S. side of the moun- tain, the usual fight with the birches on the lower slopes, and a bathe in the Norangsdal to clean ourselves after the fight, at a point where a twenty-foot block of stone—part of the spring fall—stood on end, like a bit of Stonehenge, between the road and the river. At the foot of the Norangsfjord a broad easily-sloping fan of ground, with a clear river running through it, and a level E. and W. valley behind, pushes out into the water and catches abundance of sunshine. Dotted about it are the farms of the village of Urke, some dull-red, others white picked out with yellow, or all ochre-yellow, or the silver grey of old weathered wood. Every one is roofed with green sods laid on birch bark. They lie among little oblong fields of oats and barley and potatoes. By the water are the boat-houses and slipways of the amphibious cultivators. Above Urke is the split peak of Saksa, and joined to it by a low saddle a prornontory, Leknaes, © wooded almost to the top and perhaps 1500 feet above the fjords which it divides. We were there on a hot, still day after the Smorskredtind climb; and on the whole it was the better day of the two. The little fields of the Urke delta were at our feet. All round the ness the ‘wrinkled sea crawled ’ beneath us into the Norangsfjord. The mountains fell away in great sun-lighted cliffs into the water, pale-green in the narrow strip along the shore, blue further out, and wine-dark under cloud at the mouth of each side valley of the Jérundfjord ; for every such valley—why I cannot say—had a little cumulus cloud standing sentinel. We lay there a very long time, eating bilberries and drinking in the glory of the summer : afterwards we pulled home content. The clouds dropped again next day ; they lay, close and dark and hot, from about one thousand to two thousand feet above sea level. We pushed up through them to explore the country S. of Jagta and had our reward. The cloud never lifted all day from the fjords and the valleys; but, above, it was amaz- ingly hot on the ridge that runs from Jagta to Riesenaase—the Giant’s Nose. On the W., the side of the main fjord, the ridge falls in cliffs for four or five miles, cliffs which are split by _ tremendous plunging gullies. On the E., the Norangsdal side, a snow-field, or tiny ice-cap, ends in glacier cliffs above the — tarns of a high valley of pasture, to which they say the cattle get up by an impossible-looking ravine from the Norangsdal.

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The Peaks about Slogen. 298 Due 8. and end on to us, overlooking the pass from the Norangsdal to the Nibbedal, was one of the few peaks which were on our programme, Kviteggen, the White Edge, a great lumbering mountain nearly six thousand feet high, with a steep eastern face and a long easy snow-covered western slope, which gives it its name; for the snow shows up nearly all the way above the eastern cliffs. We ran down that night through the cloud, determined to take Kviteggen next. It is eight or nine miles only up the Norangsdal to the inn on the hause, Fibelstadhaugen ; but we made a day of it. For one thing we had come down the valley in rain, and now it was in sunshine, after midday at any rate. The cloud began to break up when we were under the cliff of Staven—a cliff of four or five thousand feet. We sat to watch it clear. The sun was behind Staven, and he threw a vast indigo shadow far into the mist. The mist, thinning now, was invisible in the shadow of the cliff; but at the top you saw it blowing out into sun- shine, seemingly from nowhere, across a line ruled in the sky. A curious sight. Before we moved on, a few wisps and belts of cloud were all that remained, and we saw the upper pyramid of the Smorskredtind behind and the crested mass of Kviteggen ahead. At Fibelstadhaugen, which is twelve hundred feet above the sea, one felt as one feels in a high chalet after a close Alpine valley. A real drawback to this sea-board climbing in Norway is the moist clinging air of the fjords. Your clothes are always wet, and the drying arrangements at Oie anyhow are not equal to those of Wastdalehead. So Alpine did we feel, that we got off at 6 a.m. in the shadow, to climb the big N.E. buttress that comes down from the corner of Kviteggen to the pass, as Slingsby, our master, had climbed it and no one else much so far as we knew. ‘The ordinary route is up some steep rotten gullies on the N. end of Kviteggen’s ungainly bulk. The ridge route is certainly the only way for climbers and is not particularly stiff. Once or twice we were held up and, like Slingsby, we failed to _ climb the last hundred feet or so direct. We had most difficulty In getting onto the rock ridge at its foot, where it springs off a big green buttress. Our troubles were what you might call Lliwedd troubles—slab, mossy gullies, and ledges covered with bilberry wire and juniper. Above, there were good chimneys and plenty of steep places; but I do not recall any serious check on the upper, and most consistently steep, part of the ridge. On our left, imbedded in the mountain face, were two or three scraps of corrie glacier, one above another, which sent

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294 The Peaks about Slogen. down at intervals ice avalanches that ended in clouds of ice spray. They were very close, but we were always out of harm’s way on the crest. We came in time to the foot of the last step. Its N. side was continuous with the great N. preci- pice of Kviteggen, which had long been on our right—very unattractive. Its EH. side, its front, had a possible crack ; but the whole mass bulged out just at the wrong place, say sixteen feet up. We skirmished on it a bit, and then moved away left and a little down, on the face, until we came to a point where the final rampart was broken and we could force our way up. ‘The notes in my journal, I find, suggest analogies from the cliffs of Scafell; but as this is not the Climbers’ Club I will not press them. Karly next day we were back at Oie, and we caught the afternoon boat for Standal on the Jérundfjord, an attractive village among meadows and orchards of cherry trees. Twelve hundred feet above it, and not more than two miles inland, 1s the watershed, on a heather moor with tarns. Thence a long easy open valley and a good high road run down 8.W. to sea- level and another system of fjords. Some miles down, when you have left the heather and got to the silver birches and the meadows again, on a well-tilled knoll is the highest farm, Kolaas, which will put up travellers and give them what food it has. Patchell had told us of a turreted and unclimbed ridge on the Kolaastind above it, and of the hospitality of old Nils Kolaas and his son Ingebrit Nilsson, to whom we had introduc- tions. So at eight in the morning—your Norseman is not an early riser: he sits up too late in summer—we were off up the road again. When the moor began we turned left on cattle tracks into a big corrie, round which sweeps a ridge of fantastic pinnacles with the Kolaastind on the right—the East. As we came into the corrie—it is paved with great rough slabs, over which poured many streams from the snow above— we prospected our ridge, and guessed that the main trouble would be a final notch and the tower of the actual peak beyond. It was. We were to attack from a lower notch between the last of the pinnacles and the ridge foot. We got there up a chimney at 10.50, and at 11.30, after lunch, the attack began. I started up a scoop in the end of the ridge, climbed some fifty feet, and came down because the rocks were rotten. Trying again a few yards to the right, we avoided the bad rocks, but were held up by a slabby pinnacle on the ridge itself. So we struck along ledges on the 5. face and then turned straight

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The Peaks about Slogen. 295 up it, the wall steepening as we went. It was all very like the opener parts of the face of the Pillar in Ennerdale ; and, as there were no chimneys, would have been unclimbable—to us at any- rate—had not the handholds been well cut in owing to the lhe of the rock. We spent an hour and a half on 350 feet, and were not sorry when we came once more to the ridge, where we expected easier work. But that also went slowly, and we got up less than 150 feet in the next hour. At the hour’s end we were on a tower that dropped forty feet sheer to the final notch that we had marked from below. Across the notch, quite close and perhaps 200 feet above us, was a second tower, not Jagged like the one on which we stood, but steep, slabby, rounded. We believed it to be the peak, and in fact it was, but we could see no way of attack, and no obvious way into the notch; for we did not carry pitons and things. I have often in imagination since fancied that there were ways and I expect there are ; but that day we were unanimous against the assault. We made a cairn and turned back. Somehow we did not want to descend the face, but tried one of a series of immensely long gullies whose heads ran up towards our ridge on the N., or unknown side, gullies which looked as if they would go. But the one we chose was hard to get into. You couldn’t get in at the top because the ridge overhung. The sides too were steep. We dropped a little on a buttress between our gully and the next, and sent Werner down the wall on a hundred feet of rope to. look about him. It was quite practicable, but another hour had gone before we were all at the bottom. ‘We began to go down our gully on snow-slopes and over rock pitches. After a time the mist fell and into the mist the gully-floor broke away in a steep, impossible drop. This was depressing. However the gully was not walled in here so formidably as it had been; we broke out on our left and got without much trouble into the parallel gully beyond. In turn it also narrowed, between cliffs. There seemed an endless series of steep, wet pitches, all requiring care, though none really difficult. At the top of each I peered, rather anxiously I own, over into the fog, to see if the gully-floor continued at a possible angle below. It did. At last the walls splayed out, and we came onto a - broken grassy hillside, after more than four hours, and between two and three thousand feet descent, in that pair of gullies. Their foot was not much more than an hour from Kolaas— that 1s an advantage of these low but respectable peaks—so that having started at eight in the morning we were home by eight at night.

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296 The Peaks about Slogen. Bennett stood out for a second attack on the Kolaastind, from its more accessible E. side, where it maintains an attractive little glacier, in a second corrie between itself and the Setertind. So we took it on our way back to Standal next day. The route” is described, not with guide-book precision, by Slingsby. (It is one of the many advantages of following Slingsby that you always know when to expect a good climb, but you also know: that your climb will not be made fool-proof by too many literary or diagrammatic signposts.) It was a most beautiful climb. We lost our way a bit in the cloud and among the bilberries before noon ; but by 2.45 we had crossed the glacier, met and defeated quite a spirited schrund, and cut a hundred and fifty steps in the snow above, before we could drop the adze. Once on top we went to look at yesterday’s ridge. A full 200 feet below and not 80 away, on the horizontal, was that last notch ; beyond, on its further side, our cairn; to the right our whole gully route, clearly mapped below, and now in sunshine. That was the technical interest. But the real joy of the place was to look out over the foreground of rippled snow, set in rock bastions and turrets, westward, to where the sea isles and skerries lay in the quiet water. We had come for that and we had got it, with plenty of good climbing thrown in. All this time we had never climbed Slogen himself. There are three routes to Slogen. One falls in broken cliffs and inter- minable slabs the whole five thousand two hundred and odd feet into the fjord. Raeburn, I understand, leads up that way ; possibly also a few such Norsemen as Rubenson ; not many other people. Another is by an easy shoulder on the Norangsdal side, screes, a snow-field, and some final rocks; that way those go who want the view only. The third side is far from Oie. Like most things in Norway, Slingsby invented it. You row down the fjord in the morning, to get round Klokseggen, the big wall which runs from the peak along the waterside for miles, and you land about breakfast time—English breakfast time— at Urke. In our case it was at 8.40 on a cloudy Monday morn- ing, August 24. You-go up round the end of Klokseggen, through the birches and alders, into an open heather-scented valley—the Langeseterdal—which runs almost parallel to the fjord, but hehind Klokseggen. The cone of Slogen 1s at its right- hand top corner, so to speak. For two hours that day it was hidden by a cloud roof; but by 11.30 the cloud had gone, and we were on the screes, at 3300 feet. There was no mistaking the big gully which was to take us to the Skar—the col between Slogen and the Klokseggen wall. Its snow fan ran out over the stones. and more than a thousand feet up on the skyline to its

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The Peaks about Slogen. 297 left were the rocks which Slingsby calls ‘ the man and monkey.’ For once a fanciful name was justified. They were quite un- mistakable. We got into the gully at 12.10 and out of it at 2.15. Itis a full thousand feet high, very steep, but not—as we found it—at all difficult. We could not identify a certain big chimney pitch of Slingsby’s narrative. Probably the snow conditions differed. We found the snow had shrunk, so that you could get up all sorts of stiff bits, very uncomfortably, in the wet and dirty trough between it and the wall. When we got to the top, the Skar, a place where you felt you must at once roll off into the fjord on the other side unless you were careful, we rested and dried for twenty minutes before trying the final peak. We found the names of one Norse party in a bottle there since Slingsby’s party of discovery. For 200 feet or so we worked up easy, mossy ledges; and then more complex .climbing began—round the head of an awkward gully and up on ribs and in square, upright corners, or over doubtful blocks. Finally, as the ridges drew together, we crossed to the N.E. ridge and finished on it, steeper and steeper, until it ended in a forty-foot edge straight up to the caim, something between six and seven hundred feet, I should say, from the Skar at the big gully-head. We were an hour and a half at it. A very fine climb, more British than Alpine in flavour, with its lack of glacier, its gully work, and the damp vegetation even of its uppermost rocks. We had hardly got on top and looked across to the Smorskredtind, vague in the mist, and to Jagta rising into a cloud cap, when cloud closed about us also. So there was nothing much to do but run down the easy way to Oie, in time to get a bathe in the fjord: before dinner. That was the end for me. We had only been a fortnight on our climbing ground, but I had to catch the quick boat at Aalesund next day ; and I have never been in Norway since. I dropped Bennett and Werner at Standal again. They went to stay with Ingebrit Nilsson of Kolaas, and tried to learn Norse, catch trout, and shoot ptarmigan. I believe they made some progress except in ptarmigan shooting. Bennett has ‘been back to Norway more than once; he was hung up there for a time in August 1914. If he were here he might add to my story, might even correct it ; but he is in a motor-lorry on Greek territory, and the last mountain he wrote to me about was Olympus seen from fifty miles away at dawn. So I must ask you, Sir, to take my reminiscences uncorrected, and the Club to correct them if it likes. We take what we can get of the mountains these days.

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298 The Campaign in the Trentino. Tur CAMPAIGN IN THE TRENTINO. By EDGAR FOA. (Read before the Alpine Club, May 1, 1917.) (Abbreviated Report.) HN a century has now passed in Italy since the Seven Weeks’ War. During that time the work of unifica- tion has never been regarded as complete, because a portion of essentially Italian soil is still unredeemed. During that ' time, too, strange things have happened ; and perhaps not the least the entry of Italy into the Triple Alliance, to which she remained pledged for more than thirty years. It was brought about by two principal causes—the one temporary, and the other (so far) permanent. The former was the jealousy of France as a Mediterranean power. The latter was the great dread of invasion from the N.—that is to say, from the Trentino—which I will refer to presently. In order to understand the character of the campaign in the Trentino, it 1s absolutely necessary to keep in mind two important circumstances: first, the nature of the terrain, so entirely different from that on which men have hitherto been accustomed to wage war; and secondly, the fact that, from the Italian point of view, the Alpine frontier imposed upon them after the war of 1866 might fairly be characterised as absolutely ‘ wicked.’ : With regard to the first point—in a country which has been well described as ‘so torn and twisted, so channelled by river valleys and sinuous passes, so crumpled into layer upon layer of folded hills, so overlooked and dominated by that colossal background of the Alpine ranges, which thrust their vast black shoulders and their heads of splintered rock and gleaming snow over all the lesser heights before them ’—it is impossible to expect the rules of ordinary warfare to prevail. So much for the Trentino itself. But as you move eastwards along the Alpine chain, when you begin to reach the districts of Carnia and Cadore, Nature seems to relax a little in the severity of her moods, and you are no longer face to face with the same awe-inspiring scenes of ruggedness and grandeur—

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The Campaign in the Trentino. 299 or at least not to the same extent. The Alps of Carinthia form a barrier to the invader, out of all proportion less formidable than that which confronts him in the Trentino. Accordingly, it was (I believe) the opinion of good judges— amply confirmed, as you will see, by events—that the policy of the Italian command, stated in general terms, would be: ‘Hold wn the north, drive to the east.’ But in order to be able to maintain the defensive in the north with any prospect of success, an offensive on a scale of at least some magnitude was of the greatest importance. I do not know whether, when the present frontier in the Trentino was defined after the war of 1866, the grave perils to which it left them exposed were thoroughly appreciated by the Italians. But it seems difficult to believe that they can altogether have escaped their observation. It was not only that you had the great Alpine rampart, with Austria at the top and Italy at the bottom; it was not only that the fertile plains and thriving cities of Lombardy and Venetia lay at the absolute mercy of the invader from the N., but every strategical position, every dominating pass, from the Swiss frontier to the Gulf of Trieste (a distance, I suppose, of not less than three hundred miles), was retained by the Austrians. Moreover, during the fifty years that have passed since Venetia was restored to Italy, every means had been taken by the Austrians to increase the strength of their positions. The forts have been increased in number and power; camps of huge extent have been established ; and every device that ingenuity and resource could suggest has been utilised. When the war came, the necessary materials—roads, guns, forts, trenches—were all at hand. Only the necessary men (at that moment engaged on other fronts) were wanting. In the three weeks’ respite given to them, in circumstances to which I will refer in a moment, they brought to the Alps every available man. | For the past fifty years this great fear of invasion from the N. (in repetition of the inroads of the barbarians of early days) has lain as a weight on all Italian hearts. It helps us to under- stand why Italy permitted herself to be thrust into that unnatural Teutonic alliance which lasted for so many years. It serves to explain why, for many months after the beginning of the war, she maintained a neutrality which she disliked, because she was insufficiently armed. And it enables us to appreciate why, when she declared war against Austria, she. was unwilling, for many months more, to add to the number

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300 The Campaign in the Trentino. of her enemies by a declaration of war against Germany also. That this great dread was not unfounded, the present campaign (in spite of all the precautions which were taken by carrying the war at once into the enemy’s country) has, as you will hear presently, amply proved. But the circumstance that ‘the attention of the enemies of Italy is sufficiently engaged elsewhere has, fortunately, so far prevented it from being to any extent realised. In 1866, however, the Italians were not in a position to raise further objection. They had to take what they could get. Their campaign in that war had not, as we have seen, been altogether a success. Both Prussia, their ally, and the French Emperor, their friend—I think he may not unjustly be looked upon as one of the ‘candid’ order—refused to move a finger to help them. Although they had acquired by the war the great province of Venetia, it had not in fact been conquered, but had been conferred on them as a gift; and what is conferred as a cift you must, under the authority of a familiar proverb, take with all its faults. Moreover, they had become accustomed to the process of building up the nation in the only way in which it could be built up—piece by piece, as the occasion offered ; and they accepted what fell to them from the knees of the gods, leaving the future more or less to take care of itself. When the war broke out, there was but one way with regard to the Trentino in which it was possible for the Italians to act. The Austrian positions must be ‘rushed.’ There must be something in the nature of a surprise attack. Fortunately the bulk of the hostile forces were occupied elsewhere, on the Galician and Serbian fronts. Moreover, there seems no doubt that the Austrian command made the not uncommon mistake of under-estimating the strength of their adversary. But there can be little question that the Italian military autho- rities were terribly handicapped by the unfortunate political events which occurred in Rome.after the official denunciation of the Triple Alliance on May 3, 1915—events which delayed the beginning of hostilities for a fortnight or three weeks, an interval which would have been of the utmost value in starting the Trentino campaign. | The first thing obviously to be done was to block the main roads and principal passes. The chief road of the region is naturally the one running N. and 8. down the valley of the . Adige. But almost equally important are those in the Val Sugana, with its ‘ feeder ’ from the Dolomites through Primiero,

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= = Tee Sia hh R. S. Morrish, photo. CRODA DA LAGO. From the Falzarego Pass. R. S. Morrish, photo. LANGKOFEL. Group from the Pordoi Pass.

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The Campaign in the Trentino. 301 and the road through Cortina connecting the Drave valley with the Carnia district and the remainder of the province of Venetia. There is also an important road in the Vallarsa. On the W. you have the two great massifs of the Ortler to the N., and the Adamello to the 5., with the respective passes, the Stelvio and the Tonale, each crossed by a great road. Finally, to the extreme §. of the region (in the neigh- bourhood of Riva) you have to the W. the road through the Giudicaria valley, and, on the other side of Lake Garda, com- munications by passes over the somewhat lower (although still formidable) mountain groups known as Monte Baldo and Monte Pasubio, on either side of the Adige valley. . The order for the mobilisation of the Italian Army was issued on May 22, and within three or four days both the last- mentioned mountain groups were in its possession. Little or no resistance was offered to their seizure. The advance continued at once: the town of Ala, just a few miles N. of the frontier in the Adige valley, was captured, and a push made towards Rovereto, most of the heights near that town being occupied by the Italian troops. At the same time it became seriously threatened by an advance in the Vallarsa, though this advance did not enable them to capture Rovereto itself, upon the fortifications of which the Austrians had bestowed great preparation ; nor have the succeeding events of the campaign yet accomplished that end. . Beyond question, however, the acts of the Italians in the neighbourhood of the Adige valley in the opening days of the campaign may be said to have brought about a great change in the situation, by freeing them from the immediate danger of an irruption into the plains. | The advance in the mountain ranges round the Adige valley was backed up by another through the Val Giudicaria to the W. of Lake Garda—ground which had been trodden by some of Garibaldi’s troops half a century before. No great progress in the direction of Riva, however, was apparently attempted, owing partly to the physical obstacles which presented them- selves, and partly to the strength of the enemy’s defences there encountered ; but the gateway into Italy was blocked, and with this result, as it would appear, the military authorities had to remain satisfied. At the same time steps were taken to close the gateways of the Stelvio and Tonale passes. A good deal of fighting, more or less of the desultory order, took place in their neigh- bourhood, much of it conducted on the high mountains and

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802 The Campaign an the Trentino. glaciers themselves, ina manner which, as has been frequently pointed out, was unknown before the present war; and in the result the main object may, I think, be said to have been achieved. , An advance was made in considerable force up the Val Sugana, as by the Garibaldians fifty years before; but within about twenty or thirty miles of Trent difficulties, due both to Nature and to man, were encountered of the same kind as near Riva, and the advance appears to have stopped. Detachments of troops, however, sent northwards through the Val Cismone, seized Primiero and San Martino, and even captured Cortina, without serious opposition; though at a later stage there was a good deal of mountain fighting round the Rolle pass, as well as near Cortina. To judge rightly of the situation, one has to keep constantly in mind that a really vital wound could hardly be inflicted on Austria in the Trentino. The fighting has been more in the nature of isolated attacks than of concerted movements on a large scale. The supreme command has clearly shrunk from the huge sacrifice of men which would have been necessary (say) for a direct attack on Trent, or even for an attempt on the enemy’s railway system in the N. One must never lose sight of what I may call the key of the whole position: that the Italian attack in this region had little or no object than to keep the gates of Italy closed. But though there are no big strategic movements to record, it is, J think, impossible to refuse our admiration to the manner in which the campaign, having regard to the almost super- human difficulties encountered, has been carried on. Passmg now to the campaign of last year, it may be said, in general terms, that the Italians succeeded in retaining the positions in the Trentino which the taking of the initiative had enabled them to acquire. But of a general advance, of any real progress, there was no sign. In the view of the campaign which commends itself to me, it seems probable that the Italian command remained content with what had been accomplished in the opening year of the war. The opportunity of testing the correctness of this opinion soon came. In the Trentino campaign of last year, the out- standing feature was the massed attack, in the months of May and June, by the Austrians, who succeeded in penetrating as far as the plateau which les immediately §. of the Trentino border. . | The Austrian offensive had a twofold purpose. It was

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The Campaign in the Trentino. 808 hoped, by a single crushing blow, to end the whole prospect of victory cherished by the Italians, and also to relieve the pressure beginning to make itself felt in the more easterly theatre. Moreover, the desire to revenge what the Austrians chose to consider the treacherous defection of an ally supplied a further strong incentive to the movement. The Austrian general staff were of opinion then that the expedition would not take long to achieve its objects, and that they could spare a sufficient number of men from the Russian front, and return them there afterwards, without running too great a risk. | Accordingly, in the early part of the year, huge numbers of troops were brought from the other fronts, and by the middle of May it would appear that a force not far short of half a million men was massed upon the frontier in the ‘Trentino. The attack may be said to have been concentrated between the Adige and the Val Sugana. It was one less in the nature of an enveloping movement, than a drive at the very centre of the opposing armies. Possessed of the double advantage of great superiority of munitions and of position, the Austrians eventually reached the high plateau on Italian territory known as the Sette Comuni, close to Asiago. They were indeed on the very edge of the plains. The situation for the Italians began to look very critical, and betokened the probability that the invaders might after all make good their dash on- the Italian lines of communication, and even seize Bassano, Vicenza, and Verona. The retirement of the Italians, however, was very gradual. They fought during a whole month what might be described as a rearguard action on a vast scale. The fighting was especially severe at the Buole pass, where the splendid resistance saved Monte Pasubio, and therewith the Italian lines to the S. of that mountain. General Cadorna, the Italian commander- in-chief, in view of the highly critical conditions, took over the command of the Trentino armies; and under his directions a fresh army of reserve was organised and equipped in an incredibly short space of time. About the beginning of June, however, the effort of the enemy began to show signs of exhausting itself; though the immediate causes of the change in the aspect of affairs are still perhaps a little obscure. The Italian counter-offensive was put into operation. ‘At last,’ as the Italian official account puts it, “ broken by thirty days’ uninterrupted toilsome effort, exhausted by the enormous losses he had suffered, discouraged

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804 The Campaign im the Trentino. by the obstinacy and spirit of our defence, the enemy was obliged to abandon the plan which he had so long meditated and prepared, and on the success of which he had counted with insolent confidence.’ The prolonged series of fights which took place on the Venetian plateau have been compared with the battle of the Marne, because they stayed the rush of massed enemy battalions on vital centres. The enemy’s offensive was changed to the defensive. The coup so long and carefully planned had failed; and the Austrians found themselves under the im- mediate necessity of withdrawing a large part of their army —it is known to have amounted to at least half the number of their divisions—to the Russian front. The Italian com- mand determined to do their utmost to prevent this; and by an unresting and relentless pursuit caused the enemy in his turn to undergo the experience of fighting a long-drawn rear- guard action. The chief anxiety of the Austrians was to save their artillery, and in this to a considerable extent they were successful. But it was only at the price of a large sacrifice of men that they eventually reached the line of fortified positions, where they were practically immune from further attack. For the rest, there is not much to tell. The season during which alone serious operations are possible was on the wane ; and this last winter has proved one of the longest and severest on record, both in the Alps and elsewhere. Many attacks were made by the Austrians, in the Adige valley, with the object of recovering some of their positions; but they were not on the whole crowned with success. Dunng the autumn months the Italian strategic objective—as we are informed by the official documents—was, as before, to persist in a certain pressure on the Trentino front, in order to be able to extend the area of occupation to the EK. There is just one point of special interest to us, of which I should like to make mention. One of the principal sources of danger to the troops during the winter was the occurrence of large avalanches, no fewer than 105 of them having been officially reported on a single day. We are informed that the observations of the Meteorological Office attached to the Italian general staff led to the discovery of a direct relation between these occurrences and a special isobaric condition of Western and Mediterranean Europe; and that it thus became possible to organise a special service of urgent telegraphic warnings to the troops—a service which contributed greatly to diminish

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The Records of Attempts on and Ascents of Monte Rosa. 805 the terrible danger to which they were exposed. And I feel sure that you will be pleased to learn that the contribution to this result of the Italian Alpine Club was officially recognised by the Supreme Command. Nor, whilst Iam on this point, can I forgo the pleasure of quoting once more an eloquent passage from the official record. ‘History,’ it says, ‘speaks with admiration of the achievements of small armies, mere handfuls of men, which crossed the Alps during the winter. But there is no example in the past of a powerful army, nearly a whole nation in arms, encamped in the midst of winter in the Alpine zone—from the solitudes of the Adamello to the icy summits of the Dolomites, from the snowy rocks of Monte Nero to the dreary Carso swept by the N. wind. The task of creating satisfactory conditions of life among such difficulties, especially if one considers the compli- cated mechanism of a great army, was a very hard one. But all these difficulties were overcome by a power of organisation at least not inferior to that of any other country.’ Tue RecorpDs or ATTEMPTS ON AND ASCENTS OF Monte Rosa FROM THE ZERMATT SIDE, FROM 1847 To 1860. COMPILED FROM THE TRAVELLERS’ BOOKS OF THE HOTEL MONTE ROSA AT ZERMATT AND OF THE RIFFELHAUS. By HENRY F. MONTAGNIER. HE honour of making the first attack on Monte Rosa from the Zermatt side fell to two French travellers— M. Victor Puiseux, the well-known astronomer who long afterwards became Vice-President of the French Alpine Club, and Dr. Edouard Ordinaire, who had already achieved the distinction of being the first climber to make two ascents of Mont Blanc (see ‘A.J.’ xxx. 180-181). Starting from their bivouac at ‘Ob dem See’ (Ob See, 2992 metres on the Siegfried map) on August 12, 1847, they succeeded, apparently without much difficulty, in ascending as far as the Silbersattel (4490 metres, and only 148 metres below the summit of the highest peak), beyond which they found it impossible to proceed. The attainment of so great an altitude on a first attempt over unexplored glaciers was a remarkable feat, and it is greatly to be regretted that these two distinguished pioneers did not VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXVI. xX

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306 The Records of Attempts on and Ascents of publish a detailed narrative of their expedition.1 The only account of this climb, written by the climbers themselves, © appears to be the following note in the Travellers’ Book of the Hotel Monte Rosa : M. Ordinaire, professeur & l’Ecole de Médecine de Besancon, et M. Puiseux, professeur a la Faculté des Sciences de la méme ville, ont essayé l’ascension de la plus haute cime du Mont Rose; ils sont partis le 12 aout (1847), accompagneés des guides Jean Brantsch 2 1 Professor Melchior Ulrich— who met MM. Ordinaire and Puiseux in Zermatt on the evening of August 13, 1847—recorded a few details of this expedition in his diary; but his notes were not published until 1859 (see Berg und Gletscherfahrten, vol. i., pp. 252- 253). 2 This would be Johann Brantschen, 1794-1866, son of Johann Baptist Brantschen, born 1760 (Ruden’s Familten-Statistik, No. 112). Hirzel-Escher (Wanderungen, pp. 85-98) mentions in 1822 two guides—of considerable experience as one gathers—Johann Baptist Brantschen and Anton Binner. They would be this same Johann, born 1794, or possibly his father, born 1760, and probably Johann Anton Biner, born 1790 (Ruden, No. 86). Johann is mentioned by Engelhardt (Das Monte Rosa- und Matterhorn-Gebirg, p. 74) as his guide in 1848. ‘ He is one of the most esteemed inhabitants of Zermatt ; does a considerable trade in cattle with Piedmont ; 1s better versed in affairs and languages (knows French), and especially more trustworthy as to the names of mountains.’ (Translated.) The comparison is to his younger brother, Joseph, born 1801, Engelhardt’s previous guide. Malkin, in 1843, says: ‘ Jean Joseph Brantschen is also good.’ Ball,in P.P.G.1. 159, mentions in 1845 ‘the older guides, Damat- ter, J. B. Brantschen, and an old hunter of Tasch.’ He, like Malkin, must refer to the same Johann (then aged 51) whom on p. 165 he describes as * an elderly and slow, but safe and steady man,’ as by that time his father Johann Baptist would be 85, if alive. Possibly Ruden omits the second Christian name of Baptist, which the son may have also borne. Joseph Brantschen, the younger brother, 1801-1866, also appears in Desor’s Excursions in 1839. * Plusieurs villageois . . . venaient nous offrir leurs services comme guides.... L’un d’eux nous plait particuliérement 4 cause de sa bonne humeur. II] nous dit s’appeler Joseph Brantschen et nous exhiba un certificat signé de plusieurs naturalistes. ... Je proposai a notre guide de nous faire faire cette course [Weissthor]. Mais il ne voulut pas en en- tendre parler et me dit d’un ton décideé “‘ C’est impossible, messieurs on ne le traverse que pour aller en pélerinage & Macugnaga.”’ ’ Bulwer’s (Extracts from my Journal [1852]) reference— Old Brant-

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1860. 807 [Brantschen], Joseph Tagwalder,? Matthias Tagwalder,4 Joseph Moser: aprés avoir couché en plein air au lieu dit Ob dem See, ils se sont élevés par des pentes de neige entrecoupées de larges crevasses, jusqu’au pied du rocher qui forme le sommet de la chaine. La, bien qu’il ne leur restat plus que 500 pieds environ 4 monter, ils ont reconnu avec leurs guides l’impossibilité de pousser plus loin ascension. Toutefois la vue magnifique dont ils ont pu jouir sur le Mont-Blanc, le Mont-Cervin, la Dent Blanche, les Alpes du Simplon et des Grisons, la vallée de Macugnaga, les lacs et les plaines d’Italie, etc., les a amplement dédommagés des fatigues de cette excursion qui s’est achevée sans accident ; ils croient méme pouvoir indiquer aux voyageurs habitués aux montagnes comme la plus belle course qu’ils puissent faire autour de Zermatt. A year afterwards to a day, Professor Ulrich of Zurich records the second attempt to reach the summit of Monte Rosa by this route : August 12 (1848) bestieg ich unter der Fiihrung des Johannes Madutz von Matt (Glarus) und des Matthias zum Taugwald von Zermatt den Monte Rosa. Ich fiir mich ging wegen des starken Windes nicht weiter als bis auf den Schneekamm [Silbersattel], von welchem aus man in unendlicher Tiefe Macugnaga unter sich sieht. Die beiden andern bestiegen noch die héchste Spitze, die etwa 200-300 Fuss sich tiber den Kamm erhebt. Sie war aber wegen den mit Eis tiberzogenen Steine so schwierlg zu ersteigen, dass es zwei Stunden dauerte, ehe sie wieder zu mir hinunter kamen. Die Héhe selbst ist kaum ein Paar Schuhe breit, so dass man rings von Abgriinden ist. Hochst wahrscheinlich ist dies das erste Mal dass die héchste Spitze des Monte Rosa erstiegen wurde. Meucu. Uxricy, Prof. in Ziirich. In 1849 Ulrich returned to the attack with two friends— Gottlieb Studer and Gottlieb Lauterburg, of Berne : ° August 11 iibernachteten die obigen mit Madutz, Johannes zum Taugwald und Joseph Cronig ® eine Stunde jenseits der rothen schen told us that the Weiss Thor had not been crossed for sixty years previous to the occasion on which he first crossed 1t, twenty- seven years ago, in company with thirteen others ’—1is also to Joseph Brantschen, and indicates the year 1825. 3 Probably Johann Joseph zum Taugwald, born 1798, father of the well-known guides Matthaus and Johann zum Taugwald. 4 Thisis certainly Matthéus zum Taugwald, born 1825, as Matthaius is a favourite Christian name in that family, but unknown in the Taugwalders. 5 Born 1827, brother of Matthius who was occupied elsewhere. 6 A ‘Schaafhirte ’ or shepherd (Seitenthiler, 72).

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308 The Records of Attempts on and Ascents of Kumme am Gorner Gletscher in den Gadmen, brachen den 12 August auf gegen 4 Uhr iiber[schritten] den Gornergletscher und itiber den Gornerhorngletscher hinauf auf den Schneegrat der die héchste Spitze des Monte Rosa mit dem Nordend verbindet. Der frisch gefallene Schnee machte das Hinaufsteigen sehr mithsam. Auf dem Schneekamm [Silbersattel] war die Aussicht gegen N. ganz hell, gegen 8. gebreitete sich ein Meer von Wolken aus, iiber welche hin die Flache der Lombardei etwas sichtbar war. Ein Versuch das Nordend zu besteigen scheitete an dem kalten Wind, es war 1° + Réaum. Das Hinaufsteigen erforderte 7 Stunden, das Hinuntersteigen 34 Stunden. These two expeditions are both narrated in Ulrich’s work entitled ‘Die Seitenthiler des Wallis und der Monterosa,’ (Ziirich, 1850, pp. 67-78), and in ‘ Berg- und Gletscher-Fahrten ’ (Ziirich, 1859, pp. 251-294), as well as in 1849 in the ‘ Mittheil- ungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Giirich,’ 1. 819-20. There is no record in either of the Travellers’ Books of the ascent on August 22, 1857, by the brothers Schlagintweit and their guides, of whom Peter Taugwalder, ‘old Peter’ of Matter- horn fame, was the leader. Their journey is described im their monumental work, ‘Neue Untersuchungen tiber die physica- lische Geographie der Alpen,’ published in 1854. The next attempt was made from the Riffelhaus on August 15, 1854, by Mr. 8. D. Bird (the first Englishman to attack Monte Rosa), who writes but a few lines about his expedition : ‘I ascended the Monte Rosa from this inn to within 100 feet of the summit in company with the guides Matthias zum Tauchwald and Biener brothers. The excursion occupied sixteen hours and well repaid the traveller for his’... [The last line has been cut off. | Mr. Bird published a brief account of his climb in the Jllus- trated London News, xxv. 422, which was reprinted by Mr. Coolidge in ‘ A.J.’ xxiii. 489-490. The brothers Edmund, -J. Grenville, and Christopher Smyth now appear on the scene—the two latter being the first of the future members of the Alpine Club whose names occur in the early history of Monte Rosa. * August 22, 1854.—Edmund, J. Grenville, and Christopher Smyth [from] Visp [to] Chamonix. Attempted to ascend Monte Rosa, but owing to the weather were obliged ’ : [The rest 1s illegible. | September 2, 1854. [The same party.]—After an unsuccessful attempt to reach the summit of Monte Rosa (in consequence of bad

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with first-rate guides. Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1860. 3809 weather) on August 22, we started from this hotel (Riffelhaus) at 2.15, September 1, and arrived at the summit about noon. The last 400 feet occupied 14 hour, and ought not to be attempted except \ THE BROTHERS SCHLAGINTWEIT. On ieft—“Adciph born 1829, murdered at Kashgar August 27, 1857. On right—Hermann, born 1826, died 1882. The view, though somewhat obscured by clouds on the Italian side, was magnificent. We arrived here about 7 P.M. Wetook with us the following guides: Ulrich Lauener of Lauterbrunnen (an excellent Oberland guide, whom we had with

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310 The Records of Attempts on and Ascents of us for a month), Matt. Torquald [zum Taugwald], and his brother [Johann] from Zermatt, and Simon Zybach? from this house, and to their efficient services we attribute our success. Two climbs on Monte Rosa, made shortly afterwards by Mr. EK. 8. Kennedy, although not recorded in the Travellers’ Book, deserve mention here for the sake of completing the list of early attempts on and ascents of the mountain. He set out from the Riffelhaus at 2 a.m., September 8, 1854, accompanied by the guides Alexander Albrecht ® and the two zum Taugwalds, and ascended to a point which he estimated to be about 60 feet below the summit. From here one of the zum Taugwalds set out to reconnoitre. Three-quarters of an hour later he rejoined the party, having ascended to the summit, but the others were too ‘ benumbed and dispirited ’ to continue the climb. On the 11th of the same month Mr. Kennedy returned to the attack, leaving the Ritfelhaus at 2 a.m. with Johann and Matthéus zum Taugwald, the waiter of the inn (Benedict Leir), and Mr. Cholmley—a friend who was apparently accom- panied by his own guide. The party crossed the glacier directly to the place known as Auf der Platte, stead of passing by Ob See. Mr. Cholmley dropped out before they reached the base of the final cone. At 9.45 Mr. Kennedy and Leir, with the two zum Taugwalds reached the summit, where they found a pole bearing a shirt left by one of the Smyths, nine days earlier. A brief narrative of this expedition by Mr. Kennedy, entitled ‘ Recent Ascent of Monte Rosa,’ appeared in the Illustrated London News of October 21, 1854, with a print of the mountain, in which the summit bears a curious resemblance to the Dent de Requin. It reads: ? Dr. Diibi informs me that Simon Zykach was undoubtedly an Oberlander and very probably a relative (possibly a son) of Peter Zybach, the once famous keeper of the Grimsel Hospice (1836-1852). The home of these Zybachs was in Im Oberstein, near Meiringen in the Haslital, where the Christian name of Simon is still frequently met with. 8 Mentioned by Engelhardt in 1851 (Monte Rosa, p. 228) as ‘a capable young man, who was making himself into a guide for the two Visp Valleys.’ (Translated.) Albrecht also accompanied Mr. W. Winter Raffles to the summits of the Weissthor and the Théodule passes and over the Cols d’Hérens and de Collon during the summer of 1854. Mr. Raffles describes him as ‘ exceedingly intelligent fellow but not at all fond of high passes.’ (Zermatt with the Cols d’ Erin and de Collon ; and an Ascent of Mont Blanc. Liverpool, 1854.)

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1860. 311 ‘On Friday, September 8, 1854, I started from the inn on the Ryffelberg near Zermatt, at 2 a.M., accompanied by Albrecht Alexander and the brothers Turgwald ® as guides. We skirted the northern side of the Gorner glacier, and then crossed the glacier itself. The moon was nearly full; and although the sky was cloudless, the great amount of hght allowed but few stars to be seen. Around us was a mass of mountain, snow, and glacier—part glittering in the bright moonlight, part buried in deep shadow. The walk was full of interest and excitement, for even at this early hour the high peaks appeared to be indebted to the dawn of day for a greater amount of illumination. It is possible that this was the result of imagination. We were, however, looking forward with some anxiety to the first indication of sunrise, as from it we should be able to form an opinion as to the probable clearness of the coming day; while our spirits were raised considerably above their customary level—for even had external objects not been a sufficient cause of elevation, there still existed the thought that many hours of labour were before us, and that the goal we had proposed was one which few had attempted to reach, and one in the attainment of which still fewer had succeeded. ‘The morning was extremely cold. The pools in the glacier had frozen during the night to a thickness sufficiently great to bear the weight of a youth; and the whole surface of the glacier and icy pool was coated over with a hoar-frost that sparkled beautifully in the light of the moon, and crunched beneath the foot with that peculiar sound which everyone has experienced on a bright frosty morning in England. After a walk over snow and glacier of eight or nine hours, we reached a point which, to the best of my judgment, is about 60 feet below the summit. Before this, all the guides had expressed doubt and hesitation. Here, however, one of the Turgwalds went on first in order to ascertain whether further ascent were practicable. He gained the summit; but, upon his return, at the end of three-quarters of an hour, we were too benumbed and dispirited to climb further; and were conse- quently obhged to return to the Ryffelberg, much chagrined at the failure. ‘However, on Monday, September 11, I again made the attempt, and was accompanied by Johann and Matthias zum nue as guides, by Benedict Leir, the waiter at the inn a es ® Query, Disrehwala (Zumbangwelay

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812 The Records of Attempts on and Ascents of at Zermatt, an active young fellow, who has been to the summit of Mont Blanc, and by Mr. Cholmley—each of my companions having his own guide. We started at 2 o’clock A.M., and took a more direct and better route, crossing to a spot called Auf der Platte, instead of passing by that called Ob den See. We reached the snow plateau, at the base of the cone, at 8.30 ; but I regretted to find that we had travelled too rapidly, and that Mr. Cholmley had, in consequence, fallen somewhat behind: this lost ground he never recovered. After waiting upon the plateau for rest and food, we com- menced the last climb at 9. This is by far the most difficult part of the whole course. The cone is a very steep rock, about 400 feet in height: its hollows and crevices were filled with hard and slippery ice. It should be clambered up as quickly as possible: to remain stationary, as I did on the first ascent, 18 a fatal error; for so great is the cold that, if the hand (wet with snow) be allowed to rest upon the rock for about a minute, it becomes frozen. Upon the authority of Leir, I may state that ... the last climb of 400 feet required for Monte Rosa exceeds in difficulty any part of Mont Blanc ; it occurs, too, af a time when great exertion is peculiarly trying. We reached the summit at 9.45, and remained half an hour. We planted a red flag upon the pole, in addition to Mr. Smyth’s shirt, which we left still floating in the breeze. I had been fortunate as to weather in many ascents, but 1t had never, I think, fallen to my lot to survey so gorgeous a panorama. The sky overhead and around, as far as the eye could reach, was a glorious deep purple blue. To the south, Italy was partially clouded ; but the sun shining brightly on the masses of vapour, floating at- a depth of probably 8000 feet below us, formed a far more beautiful picture than would have been presented by the uninteresting plains of Lombardy. We gazed down upon the valleys that penetrate to the foot of Monte Rosa, and could trace the stream of the Anza, from its glacier source to the point where it is lost in the Lago Maggiore. To the east, in the far distance, rose the mountains of Tyrol. On the north, we looked down upon the Bernese Oberland, clearly distinguishing, far below us, the summit of nearly every mountain. On the north-west, we could perceive the Jura, and the ridges that rise by the Lake of Geneva. On the west, our mighty rival raised his haughty head, turning toward us (as if in anger at our downward glance), his harshest and most rugged aspect. And far again to the south-west, we saw the towering Mont Cenis, with a

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Monte Rosa from the Zermait Side, from 1847 to 1860. 318 long and unknown mountain range stretching away until lost in a blue haze that we could readily believe to be the Mediterranean. ‘The summit is very remarkable. It is not compact rock, but consists of a number of huge and irregular stones that appear to have been thrown together by the action of some powerful agent. They seem to be partly mountain limestone, and partly micaceous and quartose schist, interspersed with a large quantity of talc and slate. It may be rash to form an Opinion as to the origin of this remarkable cone, and I would therefore only throw out the suggestion that the summit may formerly have been considerably higher and more compact. Numerous and well-known causes of disruption may have worked together, and the time would arrive when the mountain peak would crack and separate up into innumerable masses - of varied shape and size. The cone as now seen would be the result.’ The following year, we find two of the Smyth brothers again in the field with three friends, among whom was Charles Hudson, who was destined to meet with so tragic a fate on the Matter- horn ten years later. July 31, 1855. J.G. and Christopher Smyth.—Accompanied by the following friends, J. Birkbeck, C. Hudson, and E. J. Stevenson, we ascended M. Rosa from this inn (the Riffelberg), and succeeded in reaching the very highest point. This point had not been hitherto attained, for the part of the higher ridge reached [the Ostpitze] by ourselves (Sept. 1, 1854) and by Mr. Kennedy (Sept. 11, 1854) hes eastward of the summit, and 1s found to be twenty feet lower, but this difference is hardly to be distinguished on the spot. This [the Ostspitze] 1s the point which the guides of Professor Studer [Ulrich] reached in 1848 and the brothers Schlagintweit in 1851. The latter part of the ascent is extremely difficult, but the view from the summit amply repaid us for the fatigue and cold of such an expedition. Monte Viso and.the Maritime Alps were distinctly visible. Guides: Ulrich Lauener of Lauterbrunnen, Matthias and Johann Tourquald [zum Taugwald] of Zermatt. In July 1856, the Rev. Christopher Smyth wrote the following résumé of the early history of the mountain in the Travellers’ Book of the Riffelhaus : A few words relative to Monte Rosa and to the various attempts which have been made to reach the summit of that mountain may not be wholly uninteresting to travellers. Monte Silvio—the name now applied by the Italians exclusively to

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314 The Records of Attempts on and Ascents of the Matterhorn—is supposed to have been the original appellation of the entire range, but more especially of Monte Rosa and its culmi- nating point. The ridges of Monte Rosa take roughly the form of a cross, the highest peaks being situated on the northern and southern arms of the cross. They occur in the following order: Nord End, Héchste Spitze, Zumstein Spitze, Signal Kuppe, Schwarzhorn, Parrot Spitze, Vincent Pyramid, Ludwigshéhe. The first four of these are all about 15,000 feet in height. All have been ascended except the Nord End which is probably impracticable. M. de Saussure, of Geneva, in his ‘ Voyages dans les Alpes ’ (Neu- chatel, 1796), first called attention to this mountain. Hespent much time in the Piedmontese valleys examining into its geological and other physical peculiarities. After a careful survey, he estimated its height at something like forty or fifty feet higher than Mont Blanc. This estimation is doubtless too high, and has been accord- ingly corrected by other observers. Baron von Zach makes it 14,196 feet French, or 15,370 feet English. Zumstein makes the height of Monte Rosa 14,460 feet French, or 15,665 feet English ; Schlagintweit, 14,240 feet French, or 15,426 feet English. The first attempts to ascend Monte Rosa were made from the Italian side. Between the years 1817-1822 Parrot, Ludwig von Welden, and Zumstein reached the points which respectively bear their names. Herr Vincent (Georg, a brother of Zumstein 2) also ascended the Vincent Pyramid. Zumstein erected an iron cross on the summit of the Zumstein Spitze in the year 1822. This was visible in 1855 from the Héchste Spitze. He ascertained that the highest point of Monte Rosa was quite inaccessible from the side of Italy. The Signal Kuppe was reached in 1842 by the present Curé of Alagna. The earliest attempt on this side (as far as I can learn) was made by two French professors—Ordinaire and Puiseux—in the year 1847. They slept ona rock at the foot of Monte Rosa, and reached the snow- ridge or ‘sattel’ [Silbersattel], as it is called, which connects the Nord End and Héchste Spitze, about 380 feet below the summit. 1848. August 12.—Professor Ulrich of Zurich, with two guides, Johann Madutz of Canton Glarus and Matthias zum Taugwald, slept at a place named Gadmen, and reached the same ridge. Here the Professor remained taking observations. The guides meanwhile ascended the steep rocks which form the Héchste Spitze and reached a point some twenty feet below the summit. 1849. August 12.—Professors Ulrich and Studer ascended to the snow-ridge. Professor Studer attempted to reach the Nord End, but was deterred by the precipitous nature of the ridge. 1851.--The brothers Schlagintweit ascended the snow-ridge and thence to the point previously attained by the guides in 1848. By very careful observations they made out this point to be twenty- two feet below the summit. To pass from one to the other they

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1860. 3815 considered impracticable. The valuable results of their scientific observations have been published in Dresden. Some three or four attempts followed, but on no occasion was any point gained higher than the snow-ridge. 1854. September 1.—Mr. Edmund, now Captain Smyth (Turkish contingent), Rev. J. G. Smyth, and myself [Christopher Smyth], after an unsuccessful attempt in consequence of bad weather, reached the point previously attained by the Schlagintweits. We considered the precipitous ridge interposing between us and the actual summit, though not absolutely inaccessible, yet very danger- ous. We were deterred, too, from attempting it by the clouds which were rapidly rising from the Italian side. 1854. September 11.—Mr. E.S. Kennedy reached the same point. 1855. July 31.—Rev. J. G. Smyth, with three friends, Rev. C. Hudson, Mr. Birkbeck, and Mr. Stephenson, ascended from the Ryffel Hotel. The guides were pursujng the usual route towards the ‘sattel’ when we, profiting by former experience, determined on trying to ascend the steep snows to the westward of the summit and thus reaching it from the other end of the mdge. Our plan perfectly succeeded, and about 10 a.m. the actual summit was attained for the first time. A small stone pillar was erected as a proof of our success. This route has since been always adopted by the guides. | ; There is httle difficulty in the ascent of Monte Rosa except in the last 600 or 700 feet. Many steps have generally to be cut in two very steep slopes of snow inclined at an angle of 44°. This is followed by a path along a ridge of mixed rocks and snow, far more difficult and hazardous than anything met with in the ascent of Mont Blanc. The view from the summit of Monte Rosa is, in my opinion, superior to that from Mont Blanc. The plains of Lombardy, with its lakes of Lugano, Maggiore, Varese, form a lovely contrast to the savage grandeur of the snowy peaks in every other direction. The Héchste Spitze is composed of mica-schist, with veins of quartz . . [The rest has been cut off}. August 3, 1855. WituiamM C. TemMpPLeR.—With Ulrich Lauener of Lauterbrunnen and Fritz Mentschard ? of Grindelwald, I started this morning for the summit of Monte Rosa. I succeeded in attain- ing the base of the very highest peak, but was prevented from going up to look over by an exceedingly high wind, which my guides thought could not be encountered without great danger, as the last portion of the ascent consists of steps cut by the leading guide in the snowy ice. The rarity of the air was very trying. 10 Friedrich Miitschard, in Liitschenthal, who appears in ‘the 1856 list of the Interlaken district among ‘ Fuhrer erster Klasse,’

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316 The Records of Attempts on and Ascents of August 14, 1855. F. VaueHan Hawkins and H. W. Watson.— Ascended Monte Rosa on the 14th with Theodore Fuchs and Stephan [zum] Taugwald as guides, who gave us every satisfaction. August 15, 1855.—Gestern Dienstag den 14 August (1855), Morgens kurz nach 5 Uhr, setzten sich zwei Parthieen in Bewegung, im ganzen 10 Personen, um den Monte Rosa zu besteigen. Mittags gegen zwei Uhr wurde der héchste Gipfel von allen gliicklich erreicht und Abends gegen 8 Uhr waren alle auch wohlbehalten wieder zuriick. Der Himmel war oben hell und klar und ebenso die nachste ungemein grossartige Umgebung. Der Montblanc, die Jungfrau und iibrige Bergkuppen lagen ebenfalls deutlich vor den Blicken ; elder aber waren die meisten Thaler mit einem Wolkenschleierl iiberzogen! Die eine der beiden Parthieen, zu welcher die Un- terzeichneten gehorten, halte die Briider Peter # und Johannes zum Taugwald zu Fiihrern. Diese beiden wackeren Manner sind mit Recht jedem Bergreisenden als in jeder Beziehung héchst zuver- lassig zu empfehlen und wir glauben deshalb ganz besonders aufmerksam machen zu diirfen. J. J. WEILENMANN,” v. St. Gallen ; J. Bucuer, Gerichtsschreiber, v. Regensburg, Ziirich ; Dr. E. v. Kausier, Archivrath aus Stuttgart. August 20, 1855. KE. Brent Prest, B. St. Jonn Matuews, C. C. EGERTON, and C. F. RanpoLtenx.—Stayed four days in the Riffelberg and were very much pleased with the accommodation afforded by and the attention of M. Seiler. Would strongly recommend the excursion to the Cima di Jazzi. Went to the foot of the highest peak of Monte Rosa with three guides, where the state of the ice rendered further progress inadvisable without a larger number of guides. Up to the foot of the second peak .. . [The rest has been cut off. ] August 25, 1855. K. A. CHapman.4%—Ascended Monte Rosa accompanied by Stephan [zum] Taugwald of Zermatt and two guides of Chamonix. Found Taugwald a most efficient guide and perfectly competent to undertake this duty. My guides from Chamonix .. . Zacharie Cachat and Jean Couttet. September 17, 1855. E. H. Grea.—Started at 4 a.m. for Monte 11 Peter is not a name known to Ruden’s list of the Zum Taugwald family. Either Peter Taugwalder is meant—one of the conquerors of the Matterhorn, who was married to a first cousin of M. and J. zum Taugwald, or Peter may be a mistake for Matthaus. 12 ‘Weilenmann published accounts of his ascent in the Zeitschrift fiir allgemeine Erdkunde, new series, vol. i. 1856, and in his well- known work Aus der Firnenwelt, Leipzig, 1872 (pp. 203-230, ‘ Besteigung der Hoéchsten Spitze (Dufour-Spitze) des Monte-Rosa ’). 13 See A.J. xxxi. p. 222 note.

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1860. 817 Rosa and reached the first summit at 12. Did not go on to the highest (100 feet higher) as it was late and we wished to return to Zermatt. Found it very dangerous and difficult indeed. Day superb. The fatigue from the fresh-fallen snow for four hours of the ascent was very great. September (?) 1855. HE. H. Gree, Cheshire, England.—I started from the Riffel Inn at 4. a.m. Stars brilliant and prospects of a fine day good. Crossed the Gorner glacier at 63. Reached the fresh- fallen snow at 9, and being 4 knee deep the fatigue of walking was very great. I saw Mont Blanc at about 9 o’clock. From 11 to 1 the way lies over the ridges of snow and rocks as sharp as a knife-blade, with tremendous precipices of rock on one side for thousands of feet below, and on the other of snow. A perfect head is necessary, as a slip would be fatal, and each one must manage for himself, as the rope is untied when the rocks are reached. The last 20 minutes is up a ridge of snow at an angle of about 65° to 70°, quite the worst thing of the sort I ever did. The exertion 1s great, as the breathing is affected. It is necessary to cut steps here where the snow is too hard. I reached the summit at 1 o’clock. The view of the whole immense mountain .. . [The rest has been cut off.] September 27, 1855. W.B. Richarpson.—I started this morning for Monte Rosa. There was every appearance of fine weather, but gradually the sky became overcast and our progress was re- tarded by deep snow. At 1.30 we had not quite reached the first. summit, and as it was impossible to see anything I determined at once to descend and only arrived here [Zermatt] at nightfall. Peter Taugwalder was my guide and he seemed to be well acquainted with the route. The charge for a guide is 40 francs and provisions including wine cost 20 francs, say £2 10s. 10d. The guides alone for Mont Blanc if taken at Chamonix cost £16 and provisions about £6, so that this is decidedly the cheaper excursion. I should not recommend any one to attempt the ascent at so late a period in the year as this from the probability of encountering fresh fallen snow and the shortness of the days. . July 7,1856. E.C.[Probably Mr. Edward Cayley who arrived at the ‘ Riffel’ on June 28.|—I started at 14 in the morning and reached the highest point of Monte Rosa at 94, and back again at 24 P.M. Guides, Matthéus and Johann zum Taugwald, both excellent. The snow was in a most favourable condition, both in going and returning, and no steps had to be cut, which accounts for the short- ness of the time the excursion required. The view on the Swiss side was quite clear, but the whole Italian side was covered with a sea of clouds below our feet. July 9, 1856. Siamunp Poraes, Vienna.—Gestern bestieg ich [unter]Fiihrung von Matthius zum Taugwald, Peter Taugwalder, und Ignatz Biener die héchste Spitze des Monte Rosa die ich, da erst um halb 3 Uhr aufbrach, nur 1 Uhr Nachmittags erreichte. Nach

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318 The Records of Attempts on and‘ Ascents of bedeutenden Schwierigkeiten gelangten wir um 4 9 Uhr Abends auf den Riffel zuriick. Den 10 July 1856. July 21-24. StrerHEN WinkKwortH.— Made an_ unsuccessful attempt to ascend Monte Rosa. July 22, 1856.—Justus WETsky. July 21-24, 1856. RicHarp CayLey, St. John’s Coll. Camb., and O. Epmunps, Stamford.—Made an unsuccessful attempt to ascend Monte Rosa. July 29, 1856. EaGLEsFIELD BrapsHaw SmiITH, Scotland, and JAMES PaRkeER, Oxford.—For a second time, the first attempt having been unsuccessful owing to a high wind and clouds. We ascended, yesterday, Monte Rosa, leaving about 4 past three in the morning, and although we spent considerable time upon the rocks above the aréte, and staid # of an hour on the summit, we found ourselves in the hotel at 7 P.M., and not at all fatigued. Our guides were Joseph Brantschen and Pierre Taugwalder, and Frangois George Chanton. The latter a younger man, but most attentive and serviceable. August 4, 1856. Cu. Faisrau, Paris, and ANDREW JOHNSTON, England.—Ascended Monte Rosa to-day. Started at 3.30. Stars bright. Reached summit 11.30. Fine day, but heavy clouds hid the view of Italy almost entirely. Returned to Riffel 4.45 without any fatigue or affection of the breath on the summit. But the last 4 mile or so is so difficult that we could not recommend anybody to _try the ascent for the view, unless settled cloudless weather hold out a better promise than we had. Guides Joseph Brantschen and the three Taugwalds . . . [One line cut off]. [On the same page Mr. Andrew Johnston records a second ascent of wlonte Rosa on August 25, 1882, twenty-six years after the above entry was written. ] August 7, 1856. Witu1am BiackER.—I ascended Monte Rosa, leaving the hotel (the Riffel) at 34 a.m., and reached the summit at + to 12. Returned to the Riffel at 44 p.m. The weather was very fine, and the ascent easy. The guides were Johann [zum] Taugwald* and his brother Francois, with Peter Bohren of Grindelwald. August 16,1856. KE. B. Prest.—Ascended the highest point of -Monte Rosa on Saturday, 16th August. Guides, Etienne zum Taug- wald and another Taugwald. Left Riffel at } of 5 and returned at 4 of 6 p.m. Glorious view, and the ascent presents no difficulties till you arrive near the top. I was also accompanied by Jacques-Marie Couttet of Chamonix, a Chamonix guide, and the first, I believe, who has ever made the ascent. September 5, 1856. D. P. Crook and T. H. Marswauy.—As- cended Monte Rosa to-day. Started from this inn [the Riffel] at 14 Cousins of the better-known Matthéus and Johann. 1° See, however, Mr. Chapman’s entry, August 25, 1855.

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1860. 319 4 a.M. Reached the highest point at 11.45. The day was fine and still, but the Italian side was covered with clouds ; the view of the peaks both of Mont Blanc and the Oberland was magnificent. Our guides were Johann zum Taugwald and Stephan zum Taugwald, and Jean Kronig, an active young fellow—this was his first ascent. The other two are first-rate guides. September 11, 1856. Grorar PERRIN.—Ascended Monte Rosa yesterday, starting at 4.40 and not reaching the summit till 1.45 P.M., nor the Riffel till 8 p.m. Found the latter part of the ascent both difficult and dangerous, both the ice aréte and the rocks being rendered treacherous by much fresh snow, but we had the advantage of calm weather and no excessive heat or cold. A German gentleman who accompanied me failed in getting farther than the top of the great ice-slope, when within little more than an hour of the summit, he being nearly exhausted and the rock difficulties only beginning. Two local guides, Matthaus zum Thaugwald and Antoine Ritz,}® proved themselves worthy of their calling, and of my Chamonix guide, Jean M. Ambroise Simond, it would be impossible to speak too highly. July 13-16, 1857. Dr. Grora Bunsen aus Burg Rheindorf hei Bonn in Rheinpreussen bestieg am 14ten mit seinem Schwager Epwazp BIRKBECK den Monte Rosa beim hellsten und wiarmsiten Wetter. Unsere Fiihrer waren BRANTSCHEN, PETER TAUGWALDER, STEPHAN und Ienatz zuM TaAuGWALD. Die beiden Ersten begleiten uns heute (16ten) tiber das Maiterjoch nach Chatillon. July 31, 1857.—J. Beck,” Strasbourg, with PETER TAUGWALDER and ANTOINE RITz. August 13, 1857. RicHARD Forman and Miss E. C. Forman — We went up the Monte Rosa, starting from the hotel at 2 in the morning, and got to the summit at 14 pP.m., after a very laborious ascent, more so than usual from the new snow which was very deep ; after getting . . . aréte of steep snow you take to the actual ridge. My daughter accomplished the ascent with comparative ease. We are of opinion that the ascent of Monte Rosa is far more difficult. than Mont Blanc. August 20, 1857.—R. W. E. Forster, with MatrHAus zuM TAvUGWALD and PETER BouREN. August 21, 1857.— Eustace ANDERSON alone with PETER BoHREN of Grindelwald. August 27, 1857.—W. F. Barine and J. L. ToMtin, with Ianatz ANDERMATTEN, PETER TAUGWALDER, and Francois CouTtet of Chamonix. 16 Of Blitzingen, Upper Rhone Valley, but at that time attached to the Riffelhaus as guide. ” Jules Beck of Strasbourg (1823-1883), an rel member of the S.A.C. who became well known in after years as a photographer of the high Alps.

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320 The Records of Attempts on and Ascents of August 28, 1857 —CHARLES SCHNEEGANS, Strasbourg, with PETER TAUGWALDER. August 28, 1857.—Cuar es and Robert INGc.is, with three guides, September 2, 1857. T. W. Hincuiirr.—Saas to Zermatt by the Adler. Ascended Monte Rosa on August 28. | September 17, 1857. Joun FIELD, GEorGE K. NaTuan, EDwarRpD G. Mananan (2), J. H. Law, Epear Ricuarp, J. K. J. Hitcuens, ANDREW K. HITcHens, . . . HITCHENS, with JOSEPH BRANTSCHEN, PETER TAUGWALDER, MATTHAUS ZUM TAUGWALD, PETER BINER, JOHAN Kronic, JOSEPH Marie Kronic, Davip Simonp of Chamonix, J. BINER, and P. J. TAUGWALDER. June 6, 1858. Wma. MatuEews.#%—Ascended to within a thou- sand feet of the summit of Monte Rosa, with Peter Taugwalder and... July 16, 1858.—H. J. and H. G. Norman, with JoHANN zuUM TAUGWALD, PETER PERREN, and PETER TAUGWALDER. August 17, 1858.—FRrancis ScAWEN Buiunt, WILFRID Bunt, G.L. Fox, and J. L. Fox, with PETER Bouren of Grindelwald, FRANZ ANDERMATTEN of Saas, and CHRISTIAN LAUENER. August 20, 1858.—Rev. Epwarp OWEN and Rev. Hueu D. OWEN with JosEPH Moser and JosePpH KRonia. August 28,1858. J.F. Harpy, Tuos. W. Hincuirr, L. STEPHEN, and F. P. Koz.—Went up Monte Rosa. August 28, 1858. G. FRanzoni and E. H. Grunpy.—Went up Mt. Rosa within 500 feet of the top. We did not get on, as the guide had not been up before and we could not trust him. September 1, 1858. RoBERT von DER Heypt, Stud. Jur. aus Berlin.—Am 30 August von Chamouni aus hier angekommen, bestieg ich gestern am 3lten zusammen mit einem jungen Amerikaner die Spitze des Monte Rosa. Wir verliessen das Riffelhotel um 3 Uhr Morgens, erreichten um 4 Uhr 35 M. den Gornergletscher, hatten auf demselben um 5 Uhr 20 den prachtvollsten Sonnenaufgang und befanden uns um 5 Uhr 35 am Fusse des Monte Rosa. Seine héchste Spitze erreichten wir um 114 Uhr hielten uns oben eine halbe Stunde auf, waren aber leider von der Witterung nicht allzusehr begiinstigt. Zwar strahlten die héheren Kimme und Spitzen alle im schénsten Sonnenglanze und war die Aussicht auf dieselben eine wahrhaft tiberwiltigende, aber alle Thiler sowie auch die grosse lombardische Ebene waren mit dichten Nebeln verschleiert. Bereits um 54 Uhr erreichten wir wieder das Riffelhotel hatten also zum Aufsteigen 8$ zum Heruntersteigen 54 Stunden gebraucht. Meine Fiihrer waren Moritz Andermatt von Vispach und Anton Ritz von Riffelberg. September 1, 1858. L. W. WiInTERBOTHAM, LEONARD WILBER- FORCE, and ALFRED STERN, Dr. jur. aus Wien.—Ebenfalls an der ee a eee 18 This 1s probably not William Mathews subsequently President A.C., who ascended Monte Rosa in 1856, but W. E. Matthews, Oxford, see A.J. xxxi. 222, who ascended Monte Rosa before 1860, in which year he was elected to the A.C.

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1860. 821 obigen Partie theilnehmend war ich nicht so gliicklich die héchste Spitze des Monte Rosa zu erreichen, sondern musste erschépft, was ich theilweise der Ermiidung, theilweise der Einwirkung der Luft zuschreibe, auf dem Grat d.h. in einer Hohe von 13,800 zuriick- bleiben. Meine Gefahrten hatten nach eigener Aussage noch eine Stunde Steigens. Meinen Fiithrer Joseph Brantschen aus Zermatt kann ich nur bestens empfehlen. September 3, 1858. Frank T. PROTHERO, Gro. B. GETHON, and Sam H. CLtose.—On the 3rd Septr. ascended Monte Rosa. September 3, 1858. GrEorGE MILLER, RoBeErt Liveine, 8. H. Bursury, and Rev. H. Snow.—Ascended Monte Rosa with three guides. Left this hotel [Riffel] at 4.50 a.m., reached the Héchste Spitze at 1 P.M., and returned to this hotel at 6.30 P.M. September 15-22, 1858. M. Cuttocu.—I cannot express how grateful I am to Mr. Seiler and the servant of this house for their great kindness during a stay of a week detained here from the effects of the cold on Monte Rosa. I take this opportunity of warning travellers against Johann and Joseph Brantschen who - accompanied me as guides in an attempt to ascend Monte Rosa. We only got as far as the bottom of the final pyramid, where all farther progress was frustrated through the neglect and unwillingness of both guides and, I must add, the cowardice of Joseph. _ September 17-22, 1858. W. J. MarsHaLty.—From Sion over the Col d’Evolena to this house [Riffel] 14 hours. On the 20th to the summit of Monte Rosa and back in 13 hours, on the 22nd over the Weissthor to the Mattmark See. September 20, 1858.—R. C. HEATH and ALFRED WItts.¥ July 29, 1859. C. MurrR Macxkenzir.—Ascended Monte Rosa. Started at 3.20 and arrived at the Héchste Spitze at 10 a.m., and after resting for # hr. returned to the Riffelberg by 2.15. My guide was Ulrich Lauener of Lauterbrunnen, whom I cannot too greatly recommend. 7 July 30, 1859. JosepH H. Fox.—lI started this morning for Monte Rosa at 4 o’clock, reached the Hochste Spitze at 10.30, returned to the Riffel at 2.50. Guides, Victor and Joseph Tairraz of Chamonix. ~ August 1859. J. Dixon.—Left at 4 past 4, and arrived at 4 past 1 on the summit of the Monte Rosa. Remained there about half an hour, and reached the hotel [Riffel] again at 8. Was accom- panied by Theodore Yuchs of Vispach and Pierre Perren of Zermatt, both of whom I rec. mmend for any similar expeditions. August 13, 1859. FREDERICK WATHEN and WILLIAM Hooper Wadham Coll., Oxford.—Ascended to the summit of Monte Rosa 19 There is a delightful account of this ascent in Sir Alfred Wills The Eagle’s Nest in the Valley of Sixt: a Summer Home among the Alps, London, 1860 (pp. 288-327, ‘ Ascent of Monte Rosa’ ). The guides of the party were August Balmat and Frangois Cachat, of Chamonix. | VOL. XXXI—NO. CCXVI. Y

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$22 The Records of Attempts on and Ascents of Monte Rosa, with three guides. Six or seven Cambridge men had determined to make the ascent the same day, but hung back from fear of bad weather. We rose in time to start at the normal hour, but the fear which the guides entertained brought the time to half-past five before we started. Many have in this volume stated that there is no difficulty before the last 500 feet of rock, but that this last was scarcely practicable ; our experience is the contrary. The last 500 feet are the most dangerous, but by no means the most fatiguing, part of the ascent. The whole way was rendered exceedingly fatiguing for us by the deep snow, in which we repeatedly sank and which concealed the crevasses. We accordingly did not reach the summit till 4 p.M., and it was nearly ten when, we reached the Riffel. The names of our guides were Pierre Tauchwalder and his son, and Jean Cronick [sic] ; these men we heartily recommend to all travellers for their unremitting attentions to the wants and watchful care for the safety of travellers. We especially recommend to favourable notice the young lad of 15,2° who bids fair to rise to rapid success as a guide, if we may judge from the extraordinary development of the guide’s qualities in him at so tender an age. August 28, 1859. Rev. W. G. Watson, F. K. Cook, C. J. Cray, and J. W. CourcH.—Ascended Monte Rosa with Franz Anthamatten of Saas, Pierre Taugwalder and Stephan zum Taugwald of Zermatt. July 7, 1860. NEVILLE GoopMAN and RoBert Dixon WALKER. —Made the excursion to the highest point of Monte Rosa in 14 hours from this hotel [Riffel], it being the first ascent this year. Started at 2.30, arrived at highest point 10.45... [The rest has been cut off.] July 9, 1860. F. Tutoty and J. P. Souttier.—Partis de l’Hotel du Riffel 4 2h. 4 heures du matin le 9 juillet, 1860, nous avons tenté l’ascension du Mont Rose sous la conduite de quatre guides de Zermatt. Cette excursion est extrémement fatigante a cause de la grande difficulté que l’on éprouve a marcher sur les pentes couvertes de neige glacée, aussi conseillons-nous aux personnes désireuses d’escalader le Mont Rose de se munir de crampens ou de faire garnir leurs souliers de gros clous. Nous avons pu, en montant, admirer les montagnes de Chamonix, et l’Immense chaine des Alpes Bernoises, mais & notre arrivée sur la cime du Mont Rose (H6échste Spitze) 4 114 heures, nous fimes surpris par une bourrasque de neige fine qu’un vent glacial nous jetait 4 la figure; des nuages épais s’étendaient autour de nous, et nous dimes redescendre précipitamment sans avoir vu le panorama du coté de Macugnaga. Notre retour fut trés pénible, car la neige ayant recouvert toutes les fissures ef crevasses, nous dimes rester attachés tous & la méme 2 This was probably the first serious expedition made by ‘ young’ Peter Taugwalder, who—with his father and Mr. Whymper—was one of the survivors of the Matterhorn accident six years later. He was born in 1843 and is still alive, but his career as a guide ended some seventeen or eighteen years ago.

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The Early Attempts on Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side. 328 corde jusqu’auprés du glacier du Gorner, ot le danger finissait, tandis que le principal guide Pierre Taugwalder sondait la neige & chaque pas que nous faisions, ou taillait des marches dans la. glace avec la hache. Nous étions de retour a |’Hotel du Riffel a 6 heures du soir.24 July 15, 1860.—C. H. Pitxinaton, New Coll., Oxford, W. L. Ewarp, R. W. Heap, J. A. Hupson, R. M. StepHenson, H. M. BULLER, and Colonel RoBEerRtson.” July 16, 1860.—CuHarLes D. RoBertson, with MaTTHdus and STEPHAN ZUM TAUGWALD. July 26, 1860.—Sir T. FowEe.tt Buxton, Epwarp N. Buxton, and GURNEY LEATHAM, with MATTHAUS and STEPHAN ZUM TAUG- WALD, and MicHEeL Payot of Chamonix. | August 8, 1860.—H. C. Norris, C. M. Sty ue, and R. Macponatp, with ANTOINE Ritz and FRANZ and JosEPH LOCHMATTER. August 13, 1860.%2—J. KE. Mituarp, Davip Pitcairn, Magdalen Coll., Oxford, and J. K. Stone of Harvard College, U.S.A. August 15, 1860.—W. KE. Forster, with CHRIsTIAN ALMER and ANTOINE RITz. August 24, 1860.—Mr. Satmonp, H. Satmonp, R.N., W. SALMOND, R.E., Cumberland.—Went up Monte Rosa on the 24th. Left the Riffel Hotel at 5.45 a.m., back again at 5.45 p.m. Splendid view. Mathé zum Taugwald is a good guide, and Louis zum Taugwald a very good porter. August 27, 1860.—T. G. Bonney and J. C. HawxsnHaw, with Croz of Chamonix. September 4, 1860.—WYNDHAM GIBBES and HENRY FREDERICK AMEDROZ, with PETER PERREN, ANTOINE RITZ, and Moritz PERREN. September 9, 1860.—ARTHUR VON OETTINGEN and SAMUEL BRANDRAM, with STEPHAN ZUM TAUGWALD, PETER TAUGWALDER fils, and JEAN CARRIER. THe Earnuy Attempts oN Monte ROSA FROM THE - . ZERMATT SIDE. HE Club is again indebted to the indefatigable industry of Mr. Montagnier in all matters of Alpine history. He has now rendered available, by the courtesy of Dr. Alexander Seiler, records of the middle of last century, which have an mmportant bearing on the subject of this paper, and are in fact responsible for it. 21M. Thioly published a narrative of this expedition entitled Zermatt et Ascension du Mont-Rose par F. T. 8vo., pp. 34. 4 illustrations. Geneva, 1860. 22 Possibly the same person as the next entry. 23 Date doubtful. Cf. P.P.G. Il. 379.

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824 The Early Attempts on It was formerly } held that (1) Johann Madutz and Matthaus zum Taugwald—guides of Professor Ulrich on August 12, 1848— and (2) the brothers Schlagintweit, with their guides Peter Taug- walder, Peter Inderbinnen, and Hans Joseph zum Taugwald, on August 22, 1851, reached, from the Silbersattel, the Ost- spitze—as the slightly lower E. summit of Monte Rosa is called. By about 1891? a third still lower point on the summit ridge, still more to.the E., was distinguished, and named the Grenzgipfel, from its presumed position on the frontier ridge. There has been considerable confusion over this name, which has not infrequently been applied to the Ostspitze,* notably by the Siegfried map. Later authorities ‘ have held that the point ascended by the two parties named was not the Ostspitze, but the point they call the Grenzgipfel. The ineasurements of the summits—the second made lately by M. Hans Diibi of the Federal Survey, a worthy son of our honorary member—are for— 1. The Dufourspitze, 4638 m. 2. The Ostspitze, 4632°8 m.° — 1 Ueber Eis und Schnee, original edition (1870), ii. 21 and 26; Modern Mountaineering, pp. 31 and 33; Zermatt Pocket-Book, p. 48; A.J. ix. 109. ® Conway’s Eastern Pennine Guide, p. 52; AJ. xv. 493 seq. § In the new Walliser-Fiihrer, or Guide to the Eastern Pennine Alps, lately published by the 8.A.C., under Dr. Diibi’s able editorship, M. Jacot-Guillarmod’s sketch, on p. 92, following the Siegfried map, marks Grenzgipfel 4634 m., in the position of the Ostspitze, which is unmentioned. The Grenzgipfel of Conway and of Alpine Studies is the hump on the aréte, farther to the left or E. and directly under the o in Dufour. There is a similar transposition in the sketches on pp. 102-3. These sketches: show that the name Grenzgipfel in either position is a misnomer, and tend to bear out my contention expressed further on in this paper that it were well to recognise only the Ost- and Dufourspitze as worthy of names on the E.-W. spur of the main chain of the Monte Rosa—on which they stand. * Alpine Studies (1912), pp. 224-9; A.J. xvi. 45-7 (a very inter- esting note by that keenest of veterans, the Rev. F. T. Wethered), and xxiii. 489-90; Ueber Eis und Schnee, 2nd edit. pp. 84-5; Conway’s Eastern Pennine Gurde, p. 56. 5 M. Hans Diibi’s measurement was taken from the summit of the Dufourspitze and must be of the Ostspitze, 2.e. Grenzgipfel of the Siegfried map and of the Walliser-Fiihrer, as the latter would mask points farther E. a a a a a aE ei 2 er ee Se

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side. 325 8. The Grenzgipfel, or point X of ‘ Alpine Studies,’ appears to be unmeasured. These later authorities agree that (8) the brothers Edmund, _J. Grenville, and Christopher Smyth, with their guides Ulrich Lauener, Matthéus zum Taugwald, Johann zum Taugwald, and Simon Zybach, on September 1, 1854, and (4) E. 5. Kennedy, with Matthaéus and Johann zum Taugwald, and B. Leir, on September 11, 1854, did actually reach the summit of the Ostspitze, both likewise from the Silbersattel. The grounds for this later opinion, as to the point reached by Ulrich’s guides and the Schlagintweit party, are, shortly : 1. That from the Silbersattel it is held that the Ostspitze and the Dufourspitze cannot both: be seen, whereas the Ost- spitze and the now so-called Grenzgipfel can. 2. That the Schlagintweits’ measurements gave the differ- ence in altitude between the point they ascended and the higher point to the W. as 7:1 m., which is held to correspond rather to the difference in altitude of the so-called Grenzgipfel and of the Ostspitze than of the latter and of the Dufourspitze. 3. That the appearance or shape of the top of the summit gained agreed rather with that of the so-called Grenzgipfel. 4. That both parties stated that from the summit gained they looked straight down on Macugnaga,* which would apply rather to the view from the so- seal’ Grenzgipfel than from the Ostspitze. ¢ Ulrich’s words, recording what his guides told him, are : “ Gegen Osten [from the summit gained] ist der Absturz nach Macugnaga gegen die 8000 Fuss’ (Berg- und Gletscher-Fahrten, p. 262). (‘ On the E. the steep fall to Macugnaga is in the neighbourhood of 8000 feet. ’) It is worthy of note that in his Seitenthdler, published nine years earlier, he says that he himself from the Silbersattel was prevented by mist from looking down towards Macugnaga, and that the a could tell him little of the view. The Schlagintweits, recounting their own observations, say : ‘Das Thal von Macugnaga, unmittelbar am Fusse des steilen Abfalles des Monte Rosa gelegen gewahrt einen tiberraschenden Anblick ; man erkennt dort sehr hiibsch die Hauser, Baume und Culturen.’ (‘The valley of Macugnaga, situated immediately at the foot of the steep slope of the Monte Rosa, presents an astounding aspect ; Hea recognises there very well the houses, trees, and cultivated and.’) Kennedy also mentions seeing the Anza river from the summit gained by him.

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826 The Early Attempts on No reasons are given by the later authorities for the admission that the two 1854 parties actually reached the Ostspitze. Now, what I think requires further consideration is the following : 1. (a) Ulrich was an experienced topographer, and when he again reached the Silbersattel in 1849 one of his companions was Gottheb Studer ; so that Ulrich’s observations—the fruit of two visits to the Silbersattel—may be taken as being supported by Studer. (b) Ulrich, in 1848, reached the Silbersattel a bit away from the foot of the face leading to the summit aréte of Monte Rosa —1.e. on the side of the Nordend (‘ Seitenthaler,’ p. 69, lines 12 and 18). He gives the altitude of his station as 14,004 Paris feet. In 1849 he appears to have halted on the Silbersattel (which is quite a long ridge), even farther away from the foot of the above face—indeed, on the rise towards the Nordend (‘Ich stand auf dem gegen das Nordend etwas ansteigenden Kamme ’ =‘I stood on the aréte rising slightly towards the Nordend ’) ; for he gives the altitude of his station as 14,081 Paris feet. Moreover, he could see the Zumsteinspitze and the Signal-Kuppe past the end of the above face, and so cannot have been close to its foot, which would have cut off the view.’ It has not hitherto been remarked that on one of his ascents to the Silbersattel his party followed a route close under the Nordend (see sketch taken from ‘ Berg- und Gletscher-Fahrten,’ p. 251), and so had a continuous view of the whole summit ridge of Monte Rosa. Thus, quite apart from Mr. Wethered’s direct testimony (‘ A.J.’ xvi. 46), that the Allerhéchste or Dufourspitze itself (and a fortiory the Ostspitze) ‘ is visible from névé, almost immediately at the base of the Ost Spitze, inasmuch as a man’s hat was seen from the névé to be blown off his head whilst its wearer was on the Allerhéchste Spitze,’ Ulrich’s stations on the Silbersattel must be admitted to have allowed a full view of the whole summiut-ridge, and it would seem difficult to contend that the 7 Dr. Diibi has had the kindness to give me Studer’s original words, describing the situation, in his MS. Bergreisen, vol. vii. p. 107, preserved in the Library at Berne: “Wand der héchsten Spitze noch 300 Fuss itiber uns, nicht als kulminirende Kante des Grates—sondern gleichsam als ein dem- selben quer aufgesetzter Felsenhut, dessen Riicken sich zu beiden Seiten in das tiefe Gletschergehange versenkte. Zur linken der hochsten Spitze sahen wir noch die Signalkuppe hervortreten.’

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side. 827 direct statement of a man of his experience that ‘the peak is formed like an aréte and has two equally high summits con- nected with each other by an ice-ridge,’*® the southern [the eastern is meant andis so given in ‘ Berg- und Gletscher-Fahrten," 1, 277] of which was reached by his two men, applies to the Ostspitze and the so-called Grenzgipfel and not to the former and the Dufourspitze. Describing his 1849 journey, he uses even more definite language (p. 77): ‘The highest peak extends from ESE. to WNW., a good } hour, as an ULRIcH’s ROUTES TO THE SILBERSATTEL (FROM ‘ BERG- UND GLETSCHER-FAHBTEN ’). aréte, with two equally high summits connected by an ice- ridge.’ Moreover, a reference to the photograph from near the summit of the Nordend, given to me by my friend Professor Lampugnani, whose prowess whether as a soldier or as a mountaineer leaves ® Seitenthdler, p. 70. See Swiss Travel and Swiss Guide-books : ‘ I would speak of the two points [Ostspitze and Dufourspitze] as the horns at the two ends of a ridge rather than two teet separated by a gap or chasm, for I could not discover the latter. It seemed to me that the difference in height between the two was almost imperceptible, as several other climbers also have thought.’ —_——.

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828 The Karly Attempts on PLATE X., No. 1, FROM SCHLAGINTWEIT’S ATLAS. Spitze B Spitze A 71 m. niedriger, 4640 m. DIE OBERSTE FELSENKUPPE DES MONTE ROSA. PLATE IV., No. 5, rromM SCHLAGINTWEIT’S ATLAS. daiov PF. 4B LA { 1 } | | ' 44000 SS Schiee-uad Firnlagea auf der ” Wasserscheide xwischen/ denv Macugnaga/_w. dem Gornergletscher 43300 sends Nireaw row 43000 P.Fuse. te: 230M FELSENKAMM DES HOCHSTEN GIPFELS. 1A. Sprtze A pres Hoécusten GIPFELS. 1B. SerrzE B [REACHED BY THEIR PARTY]. 2. Fuss DES FELSENKAMMS AM [SILBER] SATTEL.

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side. 829 nothing to choose between, at once shows that the difference in height of the two former is most noticeable, whereas the two latter appear practically of equal height as described by Ulrich, Schlagintweit, and others. It is held (‘ Alpine Studies,’ p. 225), for reasons not clear to me, that Schlagintweit’s Plate X., No. 1 (reproduced), bears out the view that the two points seen from the Silbersattel, above you, are not the Dufourspitze and the Ostspitze. The illustra- tion must speak for itself and beside it may be set the sketch Grenzgipfel (Point X of * Alpine Studies’). Se oe eee Met Dae eS ny “ : et § ; © Photo.—G. Lampugnani. THe SuMMIT RIDGE OF MONTE ROSA FROM THE NORDEND. (Plate IV., No. 5, of their atlas), now reproduced, of the ‘Felsenkamm,’ showmg the summit reached by them, in relation to the Dufourspitze. This sketch appears to have been hitherto overlooked by the later authorities, and certainly represents the Ostspitze and the Dufourspitze.® 2. The Schlagintweits’ difference in altitude is scarcely more applicable to that of the so-called Grenzgipfel and Ostspitze * Schlagintweit’s Plate VI. (view von der Rothen Kumme) shows their route dotted—close under the Nordend. After leaving the Silbersattel it bends away to the right or W. and reaches the summit B very slightly to the W.

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830 The Early Attempts on than to that of the latter and the Dufourspitze, being probably much too little for the first two and rather too much for the second two. 3. As to the shape of the summit reached by Ulrich’s guides and the Schlagintweit party, their descriptions agree well enough, but they do not agree with my recollection of the summit of the so-called Grenzgipfel, which I have marked on Professor Lampugnani’s photograph, together with the Photo.—Dr. Brun. THE OSTSPITZE OF MONTE ROSA, WITH VIEW OF VAL ANZASCA, FROM THE DUFOURSPITZE. line of ascent from the Silbersattel followed by my party on Sept. 9, 1898. | It will be noted that we arrived onthe aréte at a point between the Ostspitze and the so-called Grenzgipfel. We halted there ten minutes, and went in a couple of minutes to the slightly higher point on the left (E.), which, as the photograph shows, is not on the main frontier aréte, and from whence I could not look direct down into the Macugnaga Valley. I accordingly concluded that if there was such a summit as the Grenzgipfel, v.e. on the actual watershed, it ‘is apparently a grey one ’— 1.e. a level, grey-coloured, flat shoulder to the E. and just below my position. My note is: ‘ Went to highest point on left, but

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Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Stde: 881 not to grey.’1° It may well be doubted on an inspection of the photograph whether there actually exists on the summit ridge any point, reasonably claiming to be called a summit, which sends any of its water to the Val Anzasca. Dr. Taylor is scarcely conscious of the existence of such a: point (‘ A.J.’ vi. 242); and Herr Becker, on his ascent from Macugnaga (‘S.A.C.J.’ xxxix. 80), walks right over it without any mention, as what he calls the Grenzgipfel is obviously the Ostspitze, since from its summit he saw three people on the Dufour summit, whereas the Ostspitze masks the Dufour to any point farther HE. Dr. V. Wessely (‘Zeitschnft D. und Oe.A.V.’ xxxul.) 18 equally unconscious of the existence of any such point, for his ‘ Grenzgipfel ’ is also obviously the Ostspitze since the Dufourspitze ‘in nachster Nahe vor uns als kihner Felsturm aufragt ’ (stands up immediately in front of us as a bold tower). It may be well to get rid of this impostor of a Grenzgipfel and admit only the two old summits of Ost- and Dufourspitze. 4. As stated, even from the so-called Grenzgipfel, reached by ine, there was no view straight down to Macugnaga. We know, moreover, that the slope on that side is far from being a, ‘ preci- pice,’ and has been many times ascended. The photograph of the view from the Dufourspitze towards Macugnaga shows that, even from this point, much can be seen of that valley, and it is obvious that much more must be visible from the Ostspitze, which is fully 100 yards farther in the same direction—1.e. to the E. and by so much the more favourably placed., Now the later authorities admit that the Smyths and Kennedy actually attained the Ostspitze, and Grenville Smyth states distinctly that the point reached by his party was the same as that gained by Ulrich’s guides and by the Schlagintweits’ party. It has not hitherto been remarked that Matthius zum Taug- wald, then aged twenty-three, was one of Ulrich’s guides in 1848, 10 “ Left Silbersattel 4.50 p.m. [We had traversed the Nordend from the Marinelli hut.], took to rocks immediately to right of a slope of snow running up just on right of main ridge [the ridge leading from Silbersattel to main E. and W. summit aréte] to some white rocks. Struck [main summit] aréte close Grenzgipfel, 5.30- 5.40. (Grenzgipfel is apparently a grey one.) We went to highest point on left [of where we struck summit aréte], but not to grey. Ostgipfel, 5.50 (note of Henry Speyer and a bit of old wood, initials illegible). Top Dufour, 6.4.’ (From my notebook, with additions in square brackets.)

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$32 The Early Attempts on Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side. and was also one of the Smyths’ guides in 1854, and must have been the authority for Smyth’s statement. One of the Schlagintweits’ guides was Peter Taugwalder—then thirty-one years of age, afterwards famous for his share in the conquest of the Matterhorn, married to a first cousin of the young zum Taugwald—while one of the others was Hans Joseph zum Taugwald, 31 1798-1855, the father of the young zum Taug- walds. They would certainly know exactly what their cousin and son had done in 1848. Grenville Smyth states! that Matthaus zum Taugwald had ascended the Ostspitze four times, which would agree with his ascent in 1848, on September 1, 1854, with the Smyths, and on September 11, 1854, with E. 8. Kennedy, and on September 18, 1854, with E. L. Ames. These facts make it difficult to contest what was received by the Smyths as a correct statement. The new information now furnished by Mr. Montagnier’s researches, and a review of the facts previously known, would seem to warrant the conclusion that we are hardly justified in rejecting the claim made by Ulrich on behalf of his guides, Madutz and M. zum Taugwald, to have made the first ascent of the Ostspitze, even though he himself remained on the Silbersattel ; still less are we entitled to reject the careful sketch and statement of the Schlagintweits, which, nm my Opinion, can be held to apply only to the Ostspitze. The ascent of the Ostspitze from the Silbersattel was not again made until August 10, 1878, when Messrs. Penhall and Scriven, with Ferdinand Imseng and P. J. Trufier, and the Rev. F. T. Wethered, with Ulrich Almer and Franz Anthamatten of Saas, ‘ascended the rocks to the main summit aréte—with the Grenz Gipfel (Coolidge point X) on our left all the way up (.e. towards the z ‘) and with the Ost Spitze ata very ¢ consider- 11 He seems to have a ilte an arcane cue guide, a as he crossed the Alt Weissthor alone with Adolf Schlagintweit in 1851. Further mention of him will be found in the notice of Mr. Coolidge’s ‘La Storia dei tre Weissthor ’ in this number. 12 See The Records of Attempts and Ascents, &c., in the present Journal. Mr. Ames makes the same statement in M. zum Te ag: wald’s Fihrerbuch. Incidentally one may conclude that it was Johann zum Taugwald who completed the ascent on September 8, 1854, when Kennedy turned back. This Johann appears to have been more enterprising than his brother: witness his attempt on the Matterhorn recounted by Whymper (Scrambles, 5th edit. pp. 94-95). ‘Neither of the brothers apparently ever ascended the Matterhorn.

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List of Travellers and Guides. 833 able distance off on our right towards the W. and then we walked along the main summit aréte to the Ost Spitze and then we traversed the Ost Spitze and soon afterwards the Dufourspitze’ 13 (see also ‘A.J.’ ix. 108-9). Although the two parties reached the Dufourspitze at the same moment, the expedition was conceived and carried out quite independently of each other. Doubtless these expeditions followed the earlier line, which probably aimed at attaining the main summit aréte at its nearest and lowest point, which lies to the E. of - the Ostspitze. This was my line of ascent, and is the more obvious one. Mr. Broome, it will be remembered, made, on August 30, 1904, the ascent of the Dufourspitze direct from the Silbergattel (( A.J.’ xxi. 572). J. P. Farra 3th Re A photograph taken from the so-called Grenzgipfel (Point X of ‘ Alpine Studies ’) looking W. on to the Ostspitze and one of the Dufourspitze taken from the Ostspitze would be of much interest. List OF THE ‘J'RAVELLERS AND GUIDES ENGAGED IN THE EARLY ATTEMPTS ON, AND ASCENTS oF, Monte Rosa FROM THE ZERMATT SIDE, FROM 1847 to 1856. By Dr. DUBL. Point Year ‘| Travellers Guides Eacacuean | : ° : 1847. Silber- Aug. 12. | V. Puiseux. 112.1 Joh. Brantschen, sattel. E. Ordinaire b. 1794. Taugwald, 6. 1798 (or 352, a man of the same name b. 1806). 418. Mathias zum Taug- wald, b. 1825. 254. Joseph Moser, 6. 1818. | : (pp. 305-6). | 417. Joh. Jos. zum 43 From Mr. Wethered’s letter to me of April 16, 1917. 1 The numbers before the guides’ names refer to Ruden’s Familten-Statistik der loblichen Pfarrei von Zermatt.

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884 List of the Travellers and Guides engaged wn the Pee d. Year. Travellers. Guides. | 1848. Silber- {| Aug. 12. | M. Ulrich Joh. Madutz, of Matt, sattel. (p. 307). Glaris. Ost- 418. Mathias zum Taug- spitze. wald, 6. 1825. The : two guides reached the summit. 1849. Silber- | Aug. 12. | M. Ulrich, Joh. Madutz. sattel. G. Studer, 420. Joh. zum Taug- Nordend G. Lauterburg.| wald, b. 1827. attempt. 201. Joseph Kronig, 0. 1831. 1851. Ost- Aug. 22. | A. and H. | 354. Peter Taugwalder, spitze. Schlagint- b. 1820. weit 417. Joh. Jos. zum (p. 308). Taugwald (only got to the Silbersattel). 163. Peter Inderbinen, b. 1821. 1854. | Silber- | Aug. 15. |S. D. Bird 418. Mathias zum sattel. (p. 308). Taugwald, 6. 1825. Brothers Biner, no Christian names given. ‘3 Aug. 22. | E. Smyth, Guides not named. J. G. Smyth, Probably same as on Ch. Smyth. Sept. 1. Ost- Sept. 1. Same Ulrich Lauener, of Lau- spitze. (p. 309 seq.).| terbrunnen, b. 1821. 418. Mathias zum Taug- wald, b. 1825. 420. Johann zum Taug- wald, b. 1827: Simon Zybach, from the Haslital. 420. Johann zum Taug- wald, b. 1827. Mathias zum Taugwald and Alex. Albrecht did not reach the summit. “s Sept. 8. |E.S. Kennedy? * Kennedy got to a point estimated by him to be about 60 feet below the summit, where he remained with the other two guides while Johann completed the ascent. See p. 310.

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Early Atiempts on, and Ascents of, Monte Rosa. 835 Point Attained. | | | | Ost- spitze. Year. Travellers. Guides. 1854. Sept. 11. Same. 418. Mathias zum Taug- wald, 6. 1825. 420. Johann zum Taug- wald, b. 1827. Benedict Leir. Sept. 138. | E. L. Ames. | 418. Mathias zum Taug- wald, 6. 1825. 417. Stephan zum Taug- wald, b. 1833. 1855. July 31. | J. G. Smyth, | Ulrich Lauener. Chris. Smyth, | 418. Mathias zum Taug- J. Birkbeck, wald, b. 1825. C. Hudson, 420. Johann zum Taug- K. J. Steven- wald, b. 1827. son. Aug. 3. | W.C. Templer.| Ulrich Lauener. Fritz Miitschard, of Liitschental (Grindel- wald). Aug. 14. | F. Vaughan | 417. Stephan zum Taug- Hawkins. wald, b. 1833. H. W. Watson’ Theodor Fuchs. (p. 316). Aug. 14. | J. J. Weilen- | 354. Peter Taugwalder, mann, |. 6. 1820. J. Bucher, 420. Johann zum Taug- -Dr. KE. v. wald, b. 1827. Kausler A porter. (p. 316). Aug. 20. | E. Brent Prest| Three guides unnamed. and party (see p. 316) attained ‘foot of highest peak.’ > This party did not reach the summit. See p. 315.

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886 Lust of the Travellers and Guides engaged in the Point ‘Attained: Year. Travellers. Guides. 1855. Dufour- | Aug. 25. | K. A. Chap- | 417. Stephan zum Taug- spitze. man | wald, 6. 1825. ) (py 296). Zacharie Cachat f e Jean Couttet 7 7% ( monix. 3 Sept. 17. | E. H. Greg Guides unnamed. (p. 317) ‘reached the first summit.’ P Sept. —. | E. H. Greg rae ae (p. 317). 5s Sept. 27. | W.B. Richard-| 354. Peter Taugwalder, son(see p.317),, 6. 1820. ‘not quite reached the first summit.’ 1856. ¥ July 7. Kidward Cayley; 418. M. z. Taugwald, (see p. 317). b. 1825. 420. Joh. z. Taugwald, b. 1827. 3 July 9. Sigmund 418. Mathias zum Taug- Porges. wald, b. 1825. 354. Peter Taugwalder, b. 1820. 69. Ignatz Biner, b. 1833. % July —. See p. 318 for 3 attempts. es July 29. | EK. Bradshaw ; 117. Joseph Brantschen, Smith. 6. 1801. James Parker | 354. Peter Taugwalder, | b. 1820. F. G. Chanton. “ Aug.4. | Ch. Faiseau. | 117. Joseph Brantschen, Andrew John-| 0. 1801. ston(p. 318).| The a Zum Taug- walds. _‘ This man came from Aosta, hence the French name. It is now a well-known guide family in St. Nicholas.

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Early Attempts on, and Ascents of, Monte Rosa. Point | ‘Attained. | Year. Travellers. 1856. Aug. 7. _| Wm. Blacker. Dufour- spitze. K. B. Prest (p. 318). 39 Wm. Mathews,! C. E. Mathews. H.S. Cunning- ham, Dr. Carson, Dr. George Lingfield, 93 Montagu Butler, Two brothers Clark, One German. (11 in all.) T. W. Hinch- liff,® R. Walters, C. Blomfield. $3 Aug. (#) D. P. Crook, T.H.Marshall. s (aaa George Perrin 3 gant: 11. | (p. 319). 7 Two Londoners, 337 Guides. 414. Johann zum Taug- wald, 6. 1830. 414. Franz zum Taug- wald, b. 1839. Peter Bohren, of Grin- delwald. 417. Stephan zum Taug- wald, 6. 1833. ‘Another do.’ Jacques-Marie Couttet, of Chamonix. Auguste Simond. Joh. zum Taugwald. | M. zum Taugwald. (In | all 14 guides and porters.) Peter Taugwalder. Aloys Jullen. : Peter Behren-[Perren]. | Joh. zum Taugwald. | S. zum Taugwald. 420. Johann zum Taug- wald, b. 1827. 417, Stephan zum Taug- wald, 6. 1833. 200. Johann b. 1835. Matthias zum Taugwald, b. 1825. Anton Ritz. Jean M. Ambroise §i- mond, of Chamonix. Kronig, Other ascents up to the end of 1860 are enumerated, pp. 319-323. 6 A.J. xxiv. pp. 8-9. Not all reached the summit. § Summer Months, p. 101. VOL. XXXI.—NO. CCXVI.

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838 Zermatt Gurde-families of Zum Taugwald and Taugwalder. THE GENEALOGIES OF AND CONNEXION BETWEEN THE ZERMATT GUIDE-FAMILIES OF ZuM TAUGWALD AND TAUGWALDER. By Dr. H. DUBI. A. THE Zum TAUGWALD. 404.1 Stephan, b. about 1640. 409. Niklaus, b. 1679. | 411. Mathias, 6. about 1724. ts | | | 412. Mathias, 414. Paulus, 6. 1785. 417. Johann Joseph, b. 1782. | b. 1798, d. 1855 ; tt m. 1822 Maria K. Johannes, Franz, Aufdenblatten. b. 1830. b. 1839. Anna Maria, | b. 1819, m. 1841 i .- ee 304. P eter Taug- 418. Matthius, 420. Johann, 417. Stephan walder (‘ Old Peter b. 1825, b. 1827, (priest), of ‘ Scrambles ’), d. 1872. d. 1909. b. 1833, b. 1820, d. 1888. d. 1907. ee ee Well-known guides of the early sixties. See ‘ A.J.’ xxxi. 218 seq. B. THe TAuGWALDER. 349. Johann Joseph, b. 1704. 350. Peter, 6. 1739. 351. Johann Joseph, b. 1776. 304. Peter (‘ Old Peter’), 1820-1888, m. 1841 Anna Maria zum Taugwald. | | | | | Peter (‘ Young Peter’), Joseph, 6. 1845; drowned in b. 1843. the Schwarzsee 1867. * These numbers refer to Ruden’s Familien-Statistik der loblichen Pfarrer von Zermatt. Only the immediate line of descent is given.

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Geoffrey Young, 889 GEOFFREY YOUNG. I HEARD with no surprise that Geoffrey Young had been severely wounded ; he had been asking for it for the last two and a half years, facing the risks of the battlefield with serene steady eyes, not in ignorance but of a set purpose, just as he did the chances of a hard ascent. But when a few days later came the news that, as a last resource, his leg had been amputated above the knee, one could hardly help being profoundly affected by this grievous handicap to the Alpine career of the ‘fleetest of foot of the whole Alpine brotherhood ’ of the day. His good work in command of a Red Cross Ambulance at Ypres in the heavy fighting of November 1914 and up to June 1915 brought him the ribbon of the Order of Leopold, besides a mention, very rarely given to any civilian, in the British Despatches. He was then transferred to the Italian front, where he has served in command of a unit of ambulances for nearly two years. What the Italian Higher Command thought of his services is shown by the award of the coveted silver medal ‘For Valour,’ corresponding to our own D.S.O., in the following order of the day : ‘Sempre fra i primi, con alto sentimento del dovere, con vera abnegazione e disprezzo del pericolo, efficacemente coadjuvé in molteplici occasioni, al soccorso ed all sgombero di numerosi feriti in zone intensamente battute dal fuoco nemico; mirabile esempio a tutti di coraggio e di filantropia.’—‘ Locaztone: Plava: Gorizia.’ Night after night, in the recent fighting, he forced a few volunteer cars up across the face of Monte San Gabriele to the saddle between the crests, while the crest was still in enemy hands, thus getting the wounded from a few hundred yards of the actual battle line. The night he was hit his ambulances got mixed up with a division moving up in support. The Sella di Dol road, a regular mountain road, was blocked with transport under a fiendish fire—-while the road barrage, H.E. shells and shrapnel, fell like a curtain just out- side the road on the steep hillside. Dismounting from his car, he forced a passage through the sheltering troops until he was finally stopped by a new huge shellhole. Starting back to his car, a H.E. shell pitched right on the road beside and just behind him, severely wounding the left leg. Owing to his fine condition and muscular development it was hoped at first to save the leg, but the artery and veins proved to be so damaged that amputation above the knee had to be resorted to. His commandant writes: ‘ He is laying up sober plans for the future based a good deal on the merit of the mechanical limbs available nowadays. If he was to lose his leg he could not have done so in more honourable circumstances, performing his proper duty gallantly within a few hundred yards of the enemy, surrounded by friends, English and Italian ; no mistake made in his subsequent

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840 _In Memorlam, surgical treatment and the highest appreciation shown by our Allies at what he had done both on this occasion and during the last two years while he has lived in the zone of fire. General Capello himself sent to inquire about him and to say that the work of the ambulances had been splendid.’ One does not condole with a man of the strain of Geofirey Young. We who knew him cculd not doubt he would play the man, and particularly lamentable as is this handicap to his matchless activity, he will not complain. : The inwardness of the man blazes out in the words with which one of his first letters, written since the operation, ends: ‘ Now I am ready to get quite as much from seeing for the remaining years how near I can screw myself up to my old standards again. I’m still out for the hills!’ And again: ‘ You will believe me when I say that I am not only not upset by what has happened but I’m glad to have the new fight before me.’ We are proud of this worthy son of the Club. J. P. FARRAR. IN MEMORIAM. THOMAS HENRY PHILPOTT. 1840-1917. In his charming ‘ Memories of an Alpine Partnership of the ’sixties ’ (‘A.J.’ xxx.), Mr. Philpott gave us his Alpine autobiography. I never met him, yet the very many letters we exchanged when his paper was in the making made him to me into a quite familiar friend. There ran, as a golden thread, through all his letters a most unswerving search after accuracy in recounting his Alpine work, an almost painful examination of his recollections and, withal, a certain ioyousness of memory which commanded one’s profound respect quite apart from the vivid interest in his past work and intense admiration for the invigorating enthusiasm of the veteran. Our correspondence was renewed over a paper on ‘The Roththal side of the Jungfrau’ in the last JournaL. Then came on May 29 a letter from Mrs. Philpott, which I cannot forbear to give here: Bowcote, May 28, 1917. ‘Dear Cartan Farrar,—-I feel I must write and tell you that my beloved husband died suddenly early on the morning of the 22nd. He had been ailing for some days, but was about as usual, and on the 21st out in the garden and village quite a lot. I rejoice to believe that the end was as painless as it was quick, and for him no death could have been more desired, his vigour and vitality practically unimpaired to the last. I want to tell you how much

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‘ : ; ed ~~ a ao =— +— Pond > ' CARSON... Te A

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In Memoriam. 341 pleasure you added to the last year or so of his life by the recalling in such a delightful fashion the joys of the old Alpine days and by the correspondence with yourself especially which arose out of it. He came to regard you as a real friend, a truly sympathetic spirit ‘Believe me, with kind regards, very truly youis, ‘Crecrt A. PHILPOTT.’ And so the last member of the great partnership of the ’sixties has passed over. We shall treasure his memory with those of others of our great dead. J. P. Farrar. THOMAS HENRY CARSON, K.C. | 1844-1917. By the death at the age of 73 of Thomas Henry Carson, Lincoln’s Inn has lost one of its most distinguished and valued benchers, and the Alpine Club a devoted and lifelong lover of the mountains. Educated at Marlborough in its most brilliant period under Dr. Bradley, Carson, after a distinguished career at Trinity College, Dublin, where his father, Dr. Joseph Carson, was Vice-Provost, and where he himself was First Gold Medallist of his year in both Classics and Philosophy, was called to the English Bar. Having completed his legal studies in the chambers of the late Mr. Justice Chitty, he soon became known for his great learning, his indomitable courage as an advocate against the heaviest odds and the singular intellec- tual honesty which procured for him the respect and confidence of every judge before whom he practised. His contributions to legal literature were many and varied ; the ‘ Real Property Statutes ’ of Shelford in particular, which Carson practically made his own, and of which he brought out successive editions, was for years, as it still remains, the accepted book of reference for all the subjects with which it deals. He took silk in 1901, and was elected a bencher of his Inn six years later. | Outside the profession his activities were numerous, and the governing body of Marlborough, of which he was a member, and the School Mission at Tottenham, owed much to his wise counsel and continuous and ever-ready assistance, whilst his ready mastery of language made him a most effective and convincing speaker on matters of public interest. : Carson’s acquaintance with the Alps commenced, as did mine, in the year 1863, under the auspices of Dr. Bradley, the future Dean of Westminster. Detained for a few days to captain a school team at Wimbledon, I joined Dr. Bradley’s party in that year at Leuker- bad. Our mountaineering attempts were not ambitious. The Gemmi Pags, an ascent of the Torrenthorn, excursions to the Jardin

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842, In Memoriam. and Grands Mulets, and the tour of Mont Blanc by the low passes from Chamonix to Courmayeur were the chief items. The list closed with the crossing of the Little St. Bernard and a disquisition on ‘ Hannibal’s Pass,’ the conclusions of which may not have been in accordance with recent views, but were, I have little doubt, “ up to date’ in a generation that sat at the feet of Mommsen. Our Sunday at Courmayeur produced what might be called a Serio-comic incident, which still lingers in my- memory. Inquiry was made by Dr. Bradley on arrival (possibly through one of the younger members of the party whose command of French left some- thing to be desired) as to the place and hour of the ‘ English service.’ On the information received, the whole party repaired to the hotel named, only to find in the place of a British chaplaim and the English service, an eleven o’clock déjeiner a la fourchette being administered to the hungry by white-tied waiters. An ignominious retreat to our own hotel followed, where the future dean took his re- venge by inflicting on us in his private room what seemed at the time an unnecessarily large portion of the Anglican Prayer Book. During the ten or twelve years that followed (in six of which I accompanied him either alone or with others), Carson assiduously and successfully explored the Alpine chain from the Monte Viso to the Gross Glockner. It was a period at which mountaineering was still regarded as a legitimate form of travel from place to place, when @ mountain tour was areal perambulation over wide spaces, and not merely the prolonged study of a limited locality, still less the scaling for its own sake of the ‘ overhangs’ of some particular formidable summit, when, in a word, passes predominated over peaks as daily food. Notwithstanding this, a fair share of peaks fell to Carson during these years. He was an untiring and indefatigable pedestrian, a sound climber, with an infinite capacity for taking pains, eminently safe on rock or ice, and at either end of the rope ; nor can I at this moment.recall, during all the years I climbed with him, a single serious slip on his part—a record of steadiness which could be matched, I imagine, by few of our most accomplished gymnasts. To his perseverance and thoroughness in dealing with possibly loose rocks (at times a trial to the patience of less careful companions), discreet witness is borne in the account of the descent of Monte Gleno in chapter vi. of Freshfield’s ‘Italian Alps.’ It was characteristic of Carson’s temperament, both as a climber and a lawyer, to leave no doubtful points unexamined. The following is a list (no doubt incomplete) of the principal expeditions made by Carson in the ’sixties and early ’seventies so far as I can recall them: 1863. Torrenthorn, Grands Mulets, Jardin, Brévent, Crammont, etc. 1864. Strahleck, Col de la Valpelline, Monte Rosa. 1865. Dent de Morcles, Zocca Pass, Tour of Bernina by Cambrena Sattel and the Fellaria and Roseg Glaciers.

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In Memoriam. 343 1867. An all but completed ascent of the Dent’ Blanche under difficult weather conditions. Tour du Grand St. Pierre (first ascent), Col du Grand Ktret (first passage), La Tour Ronde, pass and peak (both for the first time), and within the next six days Col de Miage, Col Ferret, Col d’Argentiére, Buet and Col de Tanneverge, Lysjoch with direct descent to Alagna, Mischabel- joch and Weissthor. 1869. Uri Rothstock, Schreckhorn, Monte Rosa, and Ruitor (these with Freshfield). 1870. (A tour interrupted by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War) Monte Cristallo, Monte Antelao. 1872. Gross Glockner, Gross Venediger, Marmolata, and the Kessel Kogel (second peak of the Rosengarten), first ascent. 1874. Galenstock, Basodine, Monte Gleno (Bergamese Alps), first ascent; Monte del Castello, Federer Kogel (afterwards known as the Rosengarten Spitze), first ascent. Of the years 1866, 1868, 1871, and 1873 I have no record, and as to Carson’s work subsequent to 1874 I cannot speak personally. I know, however, that his activities continued unabated, and in his Memoir of Frangois Dévouassoud, published in the June number of the ALPINE JouRNAL of this year (1917), he mentions the ascent (with H. A. Beachcroft) of Monte Viso and the Ciamarella in 1883. Carson was elected member of the Club in 1867 and served on the Committee from 1890 to 1893. ; In the earlier years of our wanderings we doubtless, like others before and since, exposed ourselves pretty freely to the risks run by imperfectly trained amateurs when not under the supervision of a professional guide. I recall one such experience, which may serve asaspecimen. Arriving alone on the summit of the Zocca (usually, I believe, a simple passage enough) we found the glacier on the N. side cut off, along its whole width, from the lower slopes by a for- midable Bergschrund—nowhere, so far as we could see, choked or _ spanned by any sufficient bridge of ice or snow. The situation somewhat resembled that met with by Mr. Craufurd Grove’s. party on the Aiguille de Bionnassay, and so vividly depicted at p. 321 of vol. ii. of the ALPINE JoURNAL. The obstacle was a sufficiently serious one for a couple of comparative ‘ tiros,’ but it was, after severe searchings of heart, negotiated in much the same way as the similar difficulty was met by Mr. Grove’s party, viz. by a wild leap on to the lower lip of the chasm. The drop I calculated at from 12 to 14 feet, and 1 remember that we went very quietly for the rest of the afternoon. The expeditions to which I have referred are but samples, dry bones, which if clothed with the flesh and blood of daily incident, and interests larger than those of the mountaineer, would show us a man of wide culture, of varied tastes, remembering all he saw, and rejoicing in the recollection.

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844 In Memoriam. Later in life, when compelled by health to make periodical visits to Contrexéville, Carson still, in the intervals of the troublesome ‘course,’ found relief and recreation in the Alps, no longer indeed among the giants of the Pennines and the Oberland, but among the lesser though still considerable heights of Pralognan and the Tarentaise (in some expeditions accompanied by his son, now serving in Flanders), and afterwards amid the pastures and forests of Ried and Berisal. I sometimes think we do not sufficiently realise the solid happiness which the love of mountains and the exhilaration born of moun- taineering bring into the life of the professional man, ‘ halving the sorrows and doubling the joys’ of every one who has once become devoted to them. The love of—nay, the passion for—the mountains belonged to Carson always and in full measure, and the inner light which it brought into his life never became dimmed, and remained with him to the end. C. Comyns TUCKER. CAPTAIN HENRY LAURENCE SLINGSBY, M.C., K.O. Yorkshire Light Infantry. 1893-1917. NotHIne can profoundly affect William Cecil Slingsby without its arousing an instant response among his countless friends in this Club. He has had to bear the loss during the war of two nephews, both brilliant young mountaineers. But now he has to face an. even greater sacrifice in the death of his second son Laurence. His grief is ours. It is a shattering of the brightest hopes for the future. Full of manly vigour, tall (6 ft. 2) and strong, he was a most lovable, considerate and unselfish young man—always joyous-hearted— a first-rate sportsman and always to be depended upon. He seemed to have, if he got through the war, every prospect of a good future - in his profession. Though only twenty-four, he had become an excellent mountaineer, and was already looking forward to going with his regiment to India, where he hoped to carry on the excellent work of exploration and of making ascents in the Himalaya so well undertaken by his cousins, the late Morris Shngsby and Enk Todd. Coming unscathed through the great days of Mons and Le Cateau, he was wounded early in 1915, but on recovery returned to Flanders as Adjutant to his battalion. On the morning of August 11, at 1.30 a.m., the camp was shelled, but not so as to cause much disturbance. Unfortunately a chance shell hit the Hars. mess, killing the Colonel and Major instantly and breaking Slingsby’s thigh. Though severe, the wound was not apparently dangerous,

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CAPT. HENRY LAURENCE SLINGSBY, M.C. 1893 - 1917. Digitized by Google

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ULRICH KAUFMANN.

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In Memoriam. 845 Unfortunately gas gangrene supervened, amputation was resorted to, but he never rallied, and died at 9 P.M. When his life still hung in the balance almost his last words to the sister were an injunction to write nothing to worry his people. To his parents he leaves nothing but proudly happy memories of a gallant and good son, one of those to whom can be well applied the great name ‘un vrai chevalier sans peur et sans reproche.’ Men of like strain live for ever in the hearts of those who held them dear, but in the wider aspect of the future staunchness of spirit of the English race they are an irreparable loss. J.P. F. ULRICH KAUFMANN, 1840-1917. A FIGURE of some note in the Alpine world passed away last spring, at the age of seventy-seven, in the person of Ulrich Kaufmann, the well-known Grindelwald guide, although his name is possibly not familiar to the present generation, as he gave up guiding several years ago. He died on March 25 of pneumonia. Kaufmann does not appear to have made any remarkable expedi- tions in the Alps, although he must have done good work in such company as the Messrs. Pilkington and Mr. Walker Hartley. But he is included amongst ‘ The Pioneers of the Alps,’ a claim obviously justified by the fact that he was the first guide to visit the Alps of New Zealand, making, with the Rev. W. S. Green and Emil Boss, the first ascent of Mt. Cook, and also that he was one of the first guides to climb in the Himalayas, taking part with Mr. W. W. Graham and Emil Boss in the much-debated ascent of Kabru. He always displayed great unwillingness to talk about the expedition, probably from a feeling that he was not sufficiently educated to enter into any discussion on the subject, and he appeared to feel keenly that any doubt should have been thrown on the claim to have ascended Kabru. He was of a peculiarly silent, reserved disposition, but withal gentle, amiable, and unselfish ; always most careful of the comfort and safety of his employer. One small incident which occurred during my first year’s climbing on the descent of the Eiger during a severe hailstorm has always remained fresh in my memory. While cutting down a very steep ice-slope, the hail, which rushed down the mountain-side like a waterfall, loosened above us a large mass of rock which thundered past only a few yards in front of us. Kauf- mann, who was leading, ran up the ice steps and covered my head with his arms, possibly not the wisest thing to have done but indi- cating the thoughtful nature of the man.

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346 The Alpine Club LInbrary. As to his route-finding capabilities, I cannot offer an opinion, as I only climbed with him for the first three years of my Alpine career, but he struck me as a man of very sound judgment, who moreover would not undertake anything he could not carry out. He was a first-rate step-cutter and a good rock climber. In short, he would be classed not as a brilliant but an essentially safe guide. He had a-great reputation in Grindelwald for extraordinary strength, various stories having been related to me of his prowess. He was a very handsome, tall man, of graceful build, and looked what he was—a gentleman. S. 8. THE ALPINE CLUB LIBRARY. The following additions have been made to the Library since April :— Club Publications. Appalachian Mountain Club. Register. 1917 6 x 44: pp. 112. Associated Mountaineering Clubs of North America. Bulletin. May 1917 G6 x 4: pp. 19. The central bureau is at the New York Public Library, where there is a collection of mountaineering literature, photographs, lantern slides, and maps. Mountaineers, Seattle. Local walks, instructions and suggestions. Lodge rules. January 1915 6 x 32: pp. 9. —— List of aes , 1916 10} x 62: C.A.S. Gea Bulletin annuel, no. 25. 1916 8 x 5: pp. 77: plates. This contains : KE. Robert, Dans le massif de la Jungfrau. E. v. Hoff, De Saas-Fee au Cervin. —— Piz Terri. Katalog der Bibliothek. 1917 7x 44h: pp. 12. —— —— Fihrertaxen fiir das Biindner-Oberland. 1915 7 x 44: pp. 14. New Books, etc. Beraldi, Henri. Le Passé du Pyrénéisme. Notes d’un Bibliophile TI. R:mond avant les Pyrénées. Le sentiment de la montagne en 1780. 9 x 54: pp. 292. [Privately printed] Paris 1917 Another volume of M. Beraldi’s fascinating books of brilliant criticism. Like previous volumes it will give pleasure if read through or if opened anywhere by chance and only a few pages be read at a time. M. Beraldi’s books are full of humour and of good scholarship and are never dull. We can quote only one delightful example of the humour of this book. It occurs in connexion with the edition of Coxe’s Switzerland made by Ramond, with his notes thereon.

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The Alpine Club Labrary, 347 Coxe is supposed to say, ‘‘ Sous ma plume, tout se ressemble.”’ “Eh bien !’’—doit répondre en lui-méme Ramond, s’excitant au souvenir du Joch et de Meyringen—* passez-moi la plume...” Bowman, Isaiah. The Andes of Southern Peru. Geographical reconnaissance along the seventy-third meridian. Published for Amer. Geog. Soc., by Holt, New York, 1916 10 x 7: pp. x, 336, maps, plates: ill. Records part of geographic work of the Gale Peruvian Expedition, 1911. Canada: Depart. of Interior, Dominion Parks. A sprig of mountain heather. Being a story of the heather and some facts about the mountain play- grounds of the Dominion. 1914 9 x6: pp. 16: ill. —— Guide to the geology of the Canadian national parks . . between Calgary and Revelstoke. By Charles Camsell. 1914 8 x 5}: pp. 70: maps, ill. Glaciers of the Selkirks and Rockies. By A. P. Coleman. (1916) 9 x 6: pp. 29: plates. : Classified guide to the fish in Rocky Mountains Park. | (1916) 6 x9: pp. 24: ill. —— The Nakimu Caves, Glacier Dominion Park, B.C. 1914 9+ x 5}: pp. 29: map, ill. Reports of the Commissioner for 1912, 1913, 1915. 1912, 1914, 1916 93 x 7: pp. 87, 96, 80: maps, ill. A very interesting set of pamphlets. —— See Macoun, J. M. Ferrand, Henri. Dauphiné, Terre des Merveilles. 93 x 6}: pp. 13: plates. | Pourl’Auteur: Grenoble, Baratier, 1917 Reprint from review En Route, 1 févr. 1917. Furrer, Ernst; Schiilerwanderungen in die Alpen. Schilderung, Ratschlage und Anregungen. Zirich, Orell Fiissli, 1916 7x5: pp. 32: ill. Appears in somewhat shortened form in Alpina, 15 Marz 1917. ~The writer, a schoolmaster, describes a five-days’ holiday with eight boys of 14, in the region of the Glarnisch Hut, living gipsy fashion, for he holds that a holiday for a boy means forgetfulness for the time of everything he is accustomed to at school or at home. This is quite different from the German view expressed in a book that was added a few years ago to the Club Library, ‘ What a school- boy should know for a holiday in the Alps,’ in which it was suggested that the unfortunate child should be instructed at every moment of his trip about the geology and the history of the places he was passing through. The Geographical Journal, London, vol. 49. January-June 1917 92 x 6}: pp. vili, 508: maps, etc. Contains, among other articles : No. 1, January : D. W. Freshfield, The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps. A. M. Kellas, Possibility of Ascending the loftier Himalaya. Nos. 3-4, March-April: W.S. Barclay, S. American railways. No. 6, June: F. Younghusband, Geographical Work in India (Himalayas). . Glaciers. Bericht der Gletscherkommission fir 1915-16. SA. Verh. schw. naturf. Ges. 98. Jahresvers. Von Alb. Heim. 1916 9 x 6: pp. 5. Kavkazskie kurorti. . . Zhurnal, G. 6, no. 3-6. 13 x9: ill. Pyatigorsk, Febr. Mch. 1917 Contains notes on the Caucasus Climbing Club. Kipling, Rudyard. The war in the mountains. Five articles in the Daily Telegraph, London. June 6, 9, 13, 16, 20, 1917

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348 The Alpine Club Lnbrary. Kroeber, A. L. California place names of Indian origin. Univ. Cal. Publns, Anthrop. vol. 12, no. 2. June 15, 1916 10% x 71: pp. 31-69. ‘Bully’? seems a common name for hills, from the Indian ‘ bdli,’ a spirit. Shasta is of doubtful origin. The derivation from Fr. chaste or Russ. chistiseems wrong: probably from name of an Indian tribe or of an individual Indian living about 1850. Yosemite is probably Uzumati, which means a fully grown bear; it is a modern name for the valley. Macoun, J. M., and Malte, M. O. The flora of Canada. Canada, Depart. of Mines, Geol. Survey, Museum Bulletin, No. 26, Biol. Ser. No. 6. 9% x 64: pp. 14. Ottawa, 28 Febr. 1917 ‘The lower parts of the Rocky Mountains are covered with forest, composed chiefly of coniferous trees. .. . Only a small number of shrubs occur... .On the grassy slopes above the tree-line, the vegetation is very rich in species, exhibiting the general characteristics of alpine vegetation .... Higher up grow a number of species which have their homes in the Arctic zone. ‘The Selkirks differ in many respects from the Rockies. While the latter may be characterised as a chain of isolated mountains, the Selkirk range has more the character of a high level plateau from which the peaks arise. For this reason there are, in the Selkirks, real alpine meadows, whilst, in the Rockies, similar plant formations are generally met on steep slopes. With regard to the vegetation above the tree-line, it may be said that the differences between the two mountain systems are chiefly due to differences in moisture supply, the Selkirks being favoured with much more abundant precipitation than are the Rockies. For this reason the alpine meadow associations of the Selkirks extend almost to the snow-line and, for the same reason, a number of high alpine plants, which in the Rockies are characteristic of the bare peaks above the grassy slopes, are not met with at all in the Selkirks. ‘Practically all species found in the Selkirks are found in the Coast range.’ Martindale, C. C. The Life of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson. London, etc., Longmans, 1916 The following,vol. 1, pp.84—87,and vol. 2, pp.171-2, are of interest here :— ‘He would climb, too, with his brothers, in Switzerland, and was found by them to be agile, quick, sure-footed, and entirely intrepid. A really serious accident was experienced by them near Pontresina, without a single member of the party having broken the silence by so much as an exclamation: and once, on the Piz Palu in the Engadine, Hugh’s heart suffered a sharp attack after a long climb from mid- night to 8 o’clock. Reduced as he was by training in order to steer his boat at Cambridge, he did not revive when dosed with brandy, and his brother believed him dead. To all appearances unconscious, his soul was in reality perfectly aware. He thought himself, no doubt, dying, and speculated on what phenomenon of the supernatural would first meet his gaze. The snowy peaks suggested the Great White Throne. Yet.neither fear nor hope, nor other emotion, kindled his soul. He assigns this, in his Confessions, to the general atrophy of his religious sense at the time. Idoubt this explanation. ... The climbing was not forgotten by Hugh Benson, or left unused, when he began to draw on his experience for his work. The Alpine scenery, observed, so to say, from above, is introduced with superb realism into The Lord of the World, and the mechanical technicalities, no less than the more psychological concomitants of a climb, into the Coward. 1912. In August he spent his holiday with Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy Storer at the Riffel Alp. He was thoroughly overhauled before starting, because, Mrs. Storer tells me, ‘“‘ he said he would not come at all if I would not let him climb. He wished to outdo what his

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The Alpine Club LAbrary. 849 brother had done eighteen years before: I hired a very sure guide to take care of him. His heart was pronounced absolutely sound, and he went everywhere, only omitting the Matterhorn, and that because of bad weather just before he had to leave. I never shall forget how like a boy he looked in his alpine costume, with a coil of rope and a pickaxe, and he had all a boy’s enthusiasm. . . .” ‘« Just back last night from Switzerland,” he wrote, “the best holiday I ever had. But the weather was vile. No one did any first-class peak at Zermatt, and I had to content myself with second-class ones—a glacier and rocks generally. I climbed one day with the guide, who was in that accident on the Aletsch ten days before, and who arrived at the hotel blind, and on all fours !! ; .. My heart was in my mouth twenty times at least, with acts of contrition and manus Tuas. But here I am still.” Price, Julius M. Six months on the Italian front, from the Stelvio to the Adriatic, 1915-1916. By Julius M. Price, War-Artist Correspondent of the “Illustrated London News.” London, Chapman & Hall, 1917. 10s. 6d. nett 8? x 54: pp.-xxii, 300: plates. An interesting account of events in the fighting zone to the taking of . Gorizia, illustrated by the author’s sketches. Ruxton, Geo. Fred. Wild life in the Rocky Mountains (1846). Outing Ad- venture Library. New York, Outing Publ. Co. 1916 7% x 42: pp. 303. A reprint of a very interesting book. The Tahoe country. (San Francisco, 8. Pac. Ry. 1916) 9 x 8: pp. 30: ill. . Tarmmuzzer, Chr. Aus Ratiens Natur und Alpenwelt. 94 x 64: pp. iv, 266: ill. Ziirich, Orell Fiissli, 1916 A collection of writings that have appeared in various periodicals. Such as: Streifziige in die Glarner- und Gotthardalpen; An den Quellen der Albula; Die Aversertialer; Camogaskertal; Aus den Bergen von Fetan; Die Scarltiler; Der Piz Lad; Die Seen Graubiindens. yv. Tschudi, Fr. Tiere der Alpen. Schweizer Jugendbiicher, 5. Bd. 7x5: pp. 175: plates. Ziirich, Orell Fissli, 1917 vy. Tschudi, Iwan. Der Tourist in der Schweiz und Grenzgebieten. 35. Aufl. neu bearbeitet von Dr. C. Tauber. I. Bd. Urschweiz und Siidschweiz. 6 x 4: pp. vii, 195-370: maps, etc. Zirich, Orell Fiissli, 1917 Views. Helvetica. Catalogue 60. Genéve, Mincieux, 1917 9x4: pp. 20: ill. Wood, Ruth Kedzie. The tourist’s Northwest. New York, Dodd Mead, 1917. $1.75 nett 74 x 5: pp. xiv, 528: maps, plates. A descriptive guide book to the U.S. and the Canadian Northwest. Much of the history is given and a considerable portion devoted to mountaineering. The book has not the detailed character at all of Baedeker or the Climbers’ Guides, though many details are given. It is unusually readable and pleasant because of the genuineness and the restraint of the descriptions. The language is sometimes amusing for meanings given to words which they do not have in English and sometimes irritating because of the difficulty the English reader has in making out what the writer means to convey by some well-known word used for some new meaning. Though the writer admires Mt Baker, it is referred as to a ‘ glacier-infested region,’ to which the Railway Company ‘routes its passengers by’ such and such a place. One of the mountaineering clubs is said to be re- sponsible for ‘publicising’ the region. ‘The view from the top compensates the rugged ascent.’ ‘Glacier Park is luminously tinted, stupendously cragged, a God-planned and man-improved pleasure ground.’ The book shows that America has waked up

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350 Alpine Notes. to the fact that within its borders it has a vast extent of country of - magnificent and of beautiful scenery. Workman, F. B. and W. H. Illustrations of the ice wilds of eastern Kara- koram. 1917 9 x 64: 133 plates, 2 maps. Presented by the authors. Older Works. Chamonix, Souvenirs de. Genéve, Briquet et Dubois, [c. 1850] 6 plates: 4 x 52: on paper 10 x 13. Lake District. Pictorial and historical guide-to the English lakes. . . . Ward and Lock’s (late Shaw’s). With an introduction by the poet Wordsworth. 64 x 4: pp. xvi, 202: map, ill. London, etc., Ward, Lock (1891) Macpherson, John. The baths and wells of Europe. ... Second edition. 62 x 42: pp. 28-44, Mountain air. London, Macmillan, 1873 The Geographical Review. Published by the Amcrican Geographical Society of New York. Vol. 3. January to June 1917 10 x 62: maps, plates. This contains, inter alia :— January. C. W. Furlong, The Fucgian tribes. A. K. Lobeck, White Mountain region. February. W. W. Hyde, Mountain scenery in modern times. March. C. W. Furlong, Settlements of the Fuegians. W. S. C. Russell, Askja. April. h. Roosevelt, Bowman’s Andes of Southern Peru. July. E. de Martonne, The Carpathians. W. R. Jillson, Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood. ALPINE NOTES. ‘Batu’s ALPINE GuipE.’ Voi. I. THE WESTERN ALPS.— Copies of the new edition (1898) of this work can be obtained from all booksellers, or from Edward Stanford, Limited, 12 Long Acre, W.C. 2. Price 12s. net. ‘BauLi’s ALPINE GUIDE,’ THe CentrRaL ALps. Part I.—A new edition (1907) of this portion of ‘ The Alpine Guide,’ by the late John Ball, F.R.S., President of the Alpine Club, reconstructed and revised on behalf of the Alpine Club under the general editorship of A. V. Valentine-Richards, Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, can be obtained from all booksellers, or from Edward Stanford, Limited, 12 Long Acre, W.C. 2. Itincludes those portions of Switzerland to the N. of the Rhéne and Rhine valleys. Price 6s. 6d. ‘Bau’s ALPINE GuIDE,’ THE CENTRAL Aups. Part IJ.—A new edition (1911) of this portion of ‘ The Alpine Guide,’ by the late John Ball, F.R.S., President of the Alpine Club, reconstructed and revised on behalf of the Alpine Club under the general editorship of the Rev. George Broke, can be obtained from all booksellers, or from Edward Stanford, Limited, 12 Long Acre, W.C.2. It includes those Alpine portions of Switzerland, Italy, and Austria which lie S. and E. of the Rhéne and Rhine, S. of the Arlberg, and W. of the Adige. Price 7s. 6d.

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Alpine Notes. 351 Map or THE VALSESIA.—Some copies of the Map issued with the ALPINE JouRNAL No. 209, and of the plates opposite pages 108 and 128 in No. 208, are available and can be obtained from the _ Assistant Secretary, Alpine Club, 23 Savile Row, W. Price for the set (the Map mounted on cloth), 3s CLUBFUHRER DURCH DIE WALLISER-ALPEN (CLIMBERS’ GUIDE TO THE PENNINE Atps).—Vol. III., in 2 parts, of this new Climbers’ Guide, edited by Dr. Dibi, covering the country from the Théodule to the Simplon, has just been published (in German). The price of the volume (to members of the 8.A.C.) is 5fr. 15c. Post free from the Questor of the respective section. The book is so well furnished with route-marked illustrations that a very scanty knowledge of German suffices for its use. The volume from the Col Ferret to the Théodule is in a forward state. A few copies of Vol. III. have been sent over and can be obtained from the Asst. Editor, Alpine Club, price 5s. post free. Tor ALPINE CLUB OBITUARY.— Elected. Bushell, Rev. W. D. . 1863 Woollnough, Rev. J. B. W. . 1865 Philpott, Rev. T. H. . » 1865 Carson, T. H. ; ; . 1867 Malan, H. N. ‘ : 1872 Mr. CHaRLes PItkineton.— Every gue of the Alpine Club will learn with great regret that Mr. Pilkington had an apoplectic seizure while staying in Mid-Wales in June. Up to now, while his strength is well maintained, the power of speech has not returned. ’ He was, however, well enough to leave for home in September. SCHWEIZER ALPEN-CLUB.— The published accounts to December 31, 1916, give the following information : Total number of members (including 1186 new members). . ° ‘ ° 13,332 Total income inclusive of the gross receipts from the ‘ Jahrbuch’ : ; . £.138,250 = £5,530 The principal items of expenditure are: New huts . : : : : . fr. 25,000 Repairs to huts; furniture, insurance, &e. : . ‘ : . » 5, 14,143 ‘Alpina’ . : : ‘ ~ 4, 12,966 ‘ Jahrbuch,” vol.l. . ‘ . 5, 59,743 Assurance of guides. : ; . 4, 6,901 Rescue arrangements . : ; » 4, 93,974 Various subventions ; » 2,900 Publication of Guide-books . » 1,000 General expenses » 11,102 fr. 187,729 = £5,509

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$52 Review. CorricENDA, VoL. XXXII. p. 176, last line but one read, ‘I should have given evidence on the side of the linendraper.’ p- 184, last line but one, for 1757 read 1775. p. 227, last line but two, for Baker, read Butler. Professor Ker writes: ‘It was Butler’s first season in the Alps —he used to talk about it—how ‘“ Jamie Riddell”’ gave him an ice- axe and took him over the Col du Grand Cornier. They had bad weather and could not do much, but they bathed in the water above Macugnaga. Butler never went back to the Pennines—he was Wrong.’ REVIEW. La Storia dei tre Weissthor. By W. A. B. Coolidge. Translated into Italian by Gualtiero Laeng. Rivista, xxxvi. Nos. 3-7. Turin: 1917. THE history of the various Weissthore is worked out in this article in the elaborate manner which we expect from the learned author. It is not without a touch of comedy. In Plate V. of vol. iv. of De Saussure’s ‘ Voyages dans les Alpes,’ published in 1796, is shown apparently just N. of the Jagerhorn, a ‘ Passage en Valais,’ which the author calls, ‘ Weisse-Grat qui veut dire Porte-Blanche.’ For something like one hundred years ardent climbers hunted for this selfsame passage all along the ridge from the Jaégerhorn to the Cima di Jazzi. The Alt-Weissthor, as it came to be called, possesses even to-day for the mountaineer an engrossing interest. What these climbers discovered may be best studied in ‘ The Passes across the Weissthor Ridge,’ by W. M. Conway, in ‘ A.J.’ x1. 193 seq., with a plate, in which the various lines of passage are marked in red, and in ‘ Neue und alte Pfade in den Zermatter Bergen,’ by Professor K. Schulz, in the Swiss Jahrbuch, vol. xviii., while ‘ Ueber das Alt- Weisstor,’ by Karl Jaksche, in the ‘ O.A.Z.’ for 1911 (with a diagram), is very instructive. A review of the present state of knowledge of the Weissthor ridge, with many diagrams, as well as an elaborate discussion of the various historical points, is given by Dr. Dibi in section ix.— Weisstor-Gruppe—of his recently published ‘ Walliser-Alpen.’ None of the various Alt-Weissthore then discovered turned out to be quite easy and safe. In 1895 it struck a German writer, Herr Liiders, to check the bearings of his Col given by De Saussure ‘a 55 degrés du Nord par Ouest de Macugnaga,’ when it turned out that they indicated, not the position marked in his plate, but the Schwarzenberg- -Weissthor. Thus the real Alt-Weissthor was an old pilgrims’ pass used since the sixteenth century. The discrepancy is easily accounted for. De Saussure, the man of science, would naturally take on the spot the exact bearings of the

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Reviewi | 858 Col pointed out to him during hisvisit to Macugnaga in 1789, whereas his plate would be prepared possibly years later. It is easily under- stood that his recollections may have faded, and that the most likely-looking place should be marked as the ‘ Passage en Valais.’ Mr. Coolidge gives a diagram of the various Weissthore, of which he distinguishes three : (1) Weissthor I.—the Schwarzenberg-Weissthor. This follows for a short distance the crest of the famous Aréte Blanche of the old travellers, and is held by Mr. Coolidge to be the true Alt-Weiss- thor and to have been crossed by pilgrims as long ago as the six- teenth century, while about 1859 it received the erroneous name of Neu-Weissthor to distinguish it from De Saussure’s Col. This Schwarzenberg-Weissthor is now seldom crossed. | (2) Weissthor II., or what we nowadays call the Neu-Weissthor, a much-frequented pass between Zermatt and Macugnaga, which has practically superseded the Schwarzenberg-Weissthor. Professor Ulrich states that two Zermatt guides, M. zum Taugwald and Stephan Binner, on August 8, 1848, crossed the Neues Weissthor to Macugnaga. Mr. Coolidge agrees that this may mean the Schwarzenberg- Weissthor (Dr. Diibi is of this opinion. See ‘ Walliser Alpen,’ vol. iii. A. p. 173), but he considers there may be solid reasons for thinking it was the present New Weissthor. Mr. Coolidge considers that the present New Weissthor was first crossed in 1844 by a chamois-hunter, and was rendered popular about 1856 by the guide-innkeeper Franz Lochmatter of Macugnaga, although the first incontestable passage was that of Professor Bonney and Mr. Hawkshaw on September 2, 1858. Bearing on this I would point out a reference in ‘Aufzeichnungen zweier Hastitaler,’ edited by the late Dr. Andreas Fischer—a book of course well known to Mr. Coolidge. The second part is a descrip- tion by the guide Johann v. Weissenfluh, the younger, of Alpine journeys in 1850 and 1851. In the former year he accompanies a certain Lieutenant Biirki. On August 18 they go up to the Augst- kum or Riffelalp: ‘ Two Vallaisans, namely, Joseph Welschen and Joseph Zdrugwald [sic], agreed to accompany us over the Pass of the Weissthor.... All at once our two Vallaisans who are ahead stand still, and we stand on the brink of a terrible precipice, at our feet, some 10,000 feet below, Macugnaga... .’ The context shows that the place where they stood was on the ridge where either the Mittelthor or New Weissthor crosses it. The guide Joseph Welschen is doubtless Ruden’s No. 365, born in 1809, Presi- dent of the Commune, whileJoseph Zdrugwald may be safely assumed to be Hans Joseph zum Taugwald (1798-1855), father of the three brothers Matthaus, Johann, and Stephan. We find him the follow- ing year as one of the Schlagintweit’s guides up Monte Rosa, and as Adolf Schlagintweit’s sole guide over the Alt-Weissthor. The narrative proceeds : ‘Joseph Zrugwald [sic] insisted that when chamois-hunting about eight years ago he had found here a nearer VOL. XXXT.—NO. CCXVI. 7 2A

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854 Review. crossing ; he climbed from one rocky promontory at this: giddy height, from one shoulder to the other, to force a passage... . The Vallaisan concluded at last that he was mistaken and we decided to follow the route which the previous year Joseph Welschen had taken, and which lay more to the left round a rounded snow-mound. Soon we saw a rock, when Welschen halted and scratched out of a cleft a paper which was still legible and contained the names of the party who had passed the previous year.1. We had the glacier which leads to Saas on the left, and the Macugnaga Valley on the right, which are divided here by a sharp aréte of névé. . . (The descrip- tiontallies without a doubt with the Aréte Blanche of the Schwarzen- berg-Weissthor.) It would thus seem that the present New Weissthor, or possibly the Mittelthor, had been crossed about 1842, as there ‘could be no possible object in Zum Taugwald’s making such a statement unless true, although in 1850 he was not able to find the exact descent. It is indeed a plausible inference that this Zum Taugwald was ‘the dare-devil hunter, ‘‘ Béser Jdger,’’’ who, it was reported to Ball at Zermatt in 1845, ‘had found out a new way over the ridge, but kept it a secret.’ (‘ P.P.G.’ 1. 159-160.) This would also account for his son Matthius’s Entdeckungsreise nach neuen Péssen in 1848, a journey to search for new passes men- tioned by Ulrich, as doubtless his father would have given him some indication of the new route. It would also seem that the Schwarzenberg-Weissthor was sufficiently well known to the guide Welschen, that he made no difficulties about crossing it, and it is possible that passages of 1t were more frequent than is generally accepted.? (3) Weissthor III. This covers the series of passes known under the name of Alt-Weissthor. Mr. Coolidge holds that the first crossing was made by Adolf Schlagintweit and Johann Joseph zum Taugwald on August 27, 1851. But Iam strongly of opinion that the willingness of this experienced hunter and guide to accompany, without a second guide, young Schlagintweit, with whom he had probably only made one previous expedition, denotes considerable earlier knowledge of, if not familiarity with, the pass. How many guides in Zermatt to-day, unless thoroughly acquainted with the route, would, singlehanded, undertake to lead a young, 1 Doubtless Marshall Hall, who speaks of engaging as_ local guide—he had with him Bleuer of Grindelwald—‘“‘ the Herr Presi- dent,” ‘a swarthy brigand-like fellow.’ A.J. ix. 174. 2 In the February A.J. it is intended to publish a series of extracts from the travellers’ books at the Monte Rosa and Riffelhaus of early passages of the Weissthor, which Mr. Montagnier has been kind enough to make, by the courteous permission of Dr. Alex- ander Seiler. . .

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Correspondence. 855 comparatively inexperienced traveller? over any one of the Alt- Weissthors ? Not one, I fancy ; and we may well measure the guide of 1851 by the same standard. It must not be overlooked that chamois-hunting is an ancient pursuit, involving the frequent crossing of passes, if not the ascent of the summits. Ardent chamois-hunters like Jacchini and Lochmatter of the earlier days, Ferdinand Imseng and Alexander Burgener later, did not learn all they knew of the Weissthor ridge when leading travellers over it. I am inclined to think there is a considerable element of truth in the tales of an old and familiar passage 8. of the Cima di Jazzi. Lochmatter’s accounts to Ball, to Conway, to Schulz, are a bit too circumstantial to be founded on fiction. Schlagintweit’s map even marks another passage, different from any of the others. Shortly afterwards Hooker also crosses an Alt-Weissthor. Most unfor- tunately no details appear to have been preserved of this journey, nor do we know the names of his guides, but it is incontestable that a@ passage well known to men in Zermatt did exist between the Jagerhorn and the Cima di Jazzi. I am not prepared to say whether the piety of the pilgrim or the courage of the chamois-hunter first set folk searching for a passage ! It may well be that there were two old passes, used alternately according to existing conditions and the powers of the travellers. Mr. Coolidge lays us under a great obligation by splendid mono- graphs like the present one and the History of the Col de Tenda, to mention the two most recent, which deserve the closest study. The mountaineer who takes no interest in the historical side of his pursuit misses indeed much, and it is in a considerable measure due to Mr. Coolidge’s studies that the development in this direc- tion in recent years is due. It is earnestly to be hoped that these valuable papers will be collected very speedily in a new volume of ‘ Alpine Studies,’ so that. they may be readily available in a convenient form and—may I ven- ture to hope !—in our mother-tongue. | : J. P. Farrar. CORRESPONDENCE. OLD MEMORIES. To the Editor of the ALPINE JOURNAL. Sir,—It is very unusual for an obscure member of the Club to find his name mentioned twice in a single number of the ALPINE JOURNAL, and the fact that my name occurs in this way in the number for October 1916 induces me to write this letter. | * He had previously visited the Alps in 1846, 1847, and 1848: ~

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356 Correspondence. The first reference is in Mr. T. H. Philpott’s very interesting account of his long partnership with Mr. J. J. Hornby. Speaking of the supposed loss of skill resulting from long absence from the mountains, Mr. Philpott relates that in 1890 on the Gross Viescherhorn he overheard Christian Almer comparing my going favourably with his. I certainly heard no such remark, and should have been very much astonished if I had, for I rightly looked on Mr. Philpott as a far more experienced climber than myself, and I felt greatly honoured by his proposal, made at the top of the Gross Viescherhorn, that I should join him in the traverse of the Klein Viescherhorn to the Lower Grindelwald Glacier. On the whole of the climb from the top of the Gross Viescherhorn, over the Klein Viescherhorn, and down the long and steep descent to the lower glacier I was next on the rope to Mr. Philpott and saw no trace of want of practice or loss of sureness of foot; and as to strength and speed I can only say that when the rope was cast off he left me standing. I had myself been absent from the Alps for ten years and had only been seven days in Switzerland when I started for the climb; but I do not think that the ten years’ absence had made me seriously more clumsy than usual. I may add that Christian Almer led the whole day, and did all the step-cutting—no small work with the snow in the condition in which it was, especially during the extremely steep upper part of the descent from the Klein Viescherhorn. The bad weather of July 1890 and the condition of the snow added greatly to the difficulty and fatigue of all expedi- tions. The times of the several smaller and bigger expeditions given in the following list of my scrambles during my twelve days in the mountains that year will illustrate this. A great quantity of new snow was lying even on small peaks like the Schwarzhorn, Similihorn, and Réthihorn :— July 8, Schwarzhorn, 9 hrs.; 9th, Réthihorn and Similihorn, 94 hrs.; 10th, Schwarzegg Hut, 54 hrs.; 11th, Strahlegghorn and Strahlegg Pass to Grimsel, 13} hrse.; 12th, Grimsel to Grindelwald by Meiringen and Great Scheidegg in heavy rain, 11? hrs.; 14th, Nassihorn, 12 hrs.; 15th, Bergli Hut, 11 hrs.; 16th, Gross Viescher- horn, Klein Viescherhorn, and descent to Baregg, 14 hrs.; 17th, Schwarzegg Hut, 5} hrs.; 18th, attempt on Finsteraarhorn and traverse of the Strahlegghérner and down to Grindelwald, 154 hrs. The second mention of my name occurs in connection with the Fihrerbuch of Ulrich Lauener and the ascents of the Eiger, Wetter- horn and Mittelhorn in 1880. The weather in August of that year was very bad. We spent the nights of the 16th and 17th at the Gleckstein Hut and made two fruitless attempts to ascend the Wetterhorn. On the 19th we went to the Wengern Alp, and between this date and the 25th made various unsuccessful attempts on the Kiger. On the 25th we started at 3.15 a.M. and reached the top at 9.55, the mountain being in difficult condition. On the 27th we once more slept at the Gleckstein Hut, and at 3 a.m. on the 28th we

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Proceedings of the Alpine Club. 857 started for the third time for the Wetterhorn and reached the top at 7.15. We left at 7.35 and reached the top of the Mittelhorn at 8.43, regaining the hut at 11.30 and descending to Grindelwald. Ulnch Lauener led all the way up on each occasion, and the times taken under difficult conditions show clearly that at the age of 59 there was little, if any, abatement of energy and strength. I have the most vivid recollection of his constant care, courtesy and cheerfulness. As an instance of his skill and strength I will close with an incident in our descent from the Gleckstein Hut. When we were about half-way across the Platten my second guide, who was then leading, became suddenly ill and declared that he could © not move. I told Ulrich, who was behind me, and he asked me to go down to some lower notches in the rocks so as to allow him to pass. He then joined the other man and, holding him up, took him safely to the end of the Platten. Yours faithfully, Henry W. T. BowYEar. 48 Duke Street, St. James’s, Sept. 11, 1917. THE LATE MR. T. H. PHILPOTT. DEAR CAPTAIN Farrar,—I thank you for your note. I had not heard of Mr. Philpott’s death. I am very sorry to hear it. I am not sure that I should have written my letter at all if I had known, as the first idea of it arose in my mind from the thought that he might be interested and pleased to know the impression that his ‘form’ left on my mind. I had not known Mr. Philpott before I met him on the mountains in 1890, and have had no communica- tion with him since I sent a draft of my note to the ‘A.J.’ upon our expedition for his approval. But I have a very pleasant recollection of his kindness and courtesy to a much younger man and a@ comparative novice on the mountains. Yours sincerely, HENRY BOWYEAR. 48 Duke Street, St. James’s, S.W., Sept. 21, 1917. PROCEEDINGS OF THE ALPINE CLUB. A GENERAL MEETING of the Club was held in the Hall, 23 Savile Row, W. 1, on Tuesday, June 5, 1917, at 8.30 p.m., Captain J. P. Farrar, D.S.0., President, in the Chair. The PRESIDENT said: I am sorry to say the Acting Honorary Secretary is laid up with an attack of sciatica. I am to express his great regret at being absent. I think it is the only time during his tenure of office.

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358 Proceedings of the Alpine Club. I have to announce with very sincere regret the death, on May 22, of the Rev. T. H. Philpott, the survivor of the famous Hornby and Philpott party and the author of the charming Reminiscences lately published in the JourNnaL. He was about eighty years of age. J had a very delightful correspondence with him while he was preparing his Reminiscences, and I seem to lose in him a familiar friend. The splendid enthusiasm of the veteran was most invigorating to witness. You will remember that Captain G. T. Ewen, M.C., Manchester Regiment, was severely wounded on March 8, 1916, in the action for the relief of Kut, and had to be left when the attack was broken off. I fear we must now assume that he succumbed to his wounds. Captain Ewen was elected in 1911, and is another of the young members of the Club whom it can ill afford to lose. Doubtless @ full notice of him will appear later in the JouRNAL. The PRESIDENT then read a Paper entitled ‘A Great Traverse ’ (the traverse of the Aiguille Blanche de Peuteret and of Mont Blanc), which was illustrated by lantern slides. | A discussion took place in which Sir Edward Davidson, Mr. J. H. Wicks, Professor Collie, Mr. E. A. Broome, and Mr. R. W. Lloyd took part, and a hearty vote of thanks to the President, proposed by Mr. H. Woolley, was carried unanimously. The index to the present volume will be issued with the next number. Librarians can obtain advance copies from the Assistant- Editor, 23 Savile Row, W.2.

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INDEX. ACOIDENTS : Unterbaich Glacier (1885), 104 Val Teberda, Caucasus (1817), 125 Addenda and Corrigenda to Vol. XXX., 119 Vol. XXXI., 277, 352 Aeroplanes and Exploration, 138 Afanasieff, Rotislav, death of 125 Akademischer Alpen Club, Bern, New Hut built by, on the Engelhérner, 10 Albania, Northern Alps of, Tauber on his travels in, 278 Albert, King of the Belgians, Hon. Member A.C., 8 Subscription sent to, by A.C., 9 Albigna Group, K6nig on, 278 Sketch Map of, 279 Alpenstock, the, 23 Alpine Club Financial position, 7 Fihrerbiicher, Old, variously ac- quired by, 96 Journal Attention given to, 15 Corrigenda and Addenda to Vol. XXX., 119, 277 Vol. XXXI., 352 Value of, at Auction, 278 Library, Additions to Catalogue, 15, 110, 270, 346 Members Deaths of, 4, 5, 12, 13, 119, 145, 277, 288, 351, 358 Honorary, two new Elections, 14 Honours conferred on Civil, 14, 145, 277 Military, 1, 6, 7, 289 Rejoining, 14 Serving Casualties, 4, 5, 145, 289, 339, 358 Honours to, 1, 6-7, 145, 289 Subjects of Enemy States: Numes removed Honorary, 8 Ordinary, 7 Alpine Club (coné.) Message to, from the American Alpine Club, and _ the : Reply » 2-3 - Obituary, 119, 277, 351 Officers of, work of, 15, 16 Presentations to, 12, 96, 109 President Election of, 140-1 Valedictory Address of, 4 Proceedings, 140, 282, 357 Subscription from, to Albert, King of the Belgians, 9 War, the, as affecting, 1, 4 et sqq. Winter Dinner 1914, not held, 7; Alpine Club of Canada, War Record of, Letter on, to the Members, 94~—5 Alpine Clubs, see under Names Alpine Fauna, 21-2, 58, 72, 73, 215 Alpine Flora, 34, 59, 192-6 . Canadian, Book on, 348 Alpine Notes, 118, 276, 350 Alpine Passes, Freshfield on, 158 et 8qq.- Alpine Reminiscences of Conway, 146 Alpine Writers, Ruskin’s influence on, 49 . Alpini (Italian) in action, 116 Alps, see Albanian Bernina, Cen- tral, Lepontine, New Zea- land, Pennine, ‘Ticinese, Western Alps, The, from 1856 to 1865, article by Prof. T. G. Bonney, 16 ‘ Alte Briicke,’ at Basel, 33 Altitudes, Effects of, on the Human Body, 15, 134, 245 American Alpine Club, The, Message | from, «end the Reply, 2-3 Amphlett, G. T., death of, 13 Anderegg, Melchior, Recollections of, 281 Arbuthnot, G. A., death of, 119 Archiac, Mt., first ascent of, 249

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362 Argentiére, Col del’, 17) Arnold, E. P., death of, 277, 288 Avalanches in Italy, in War, 304 Mud, in the Himalayas, 66 Aylmer, Mount, first ascent of, 249 Bantue, Colle del, first crossing of, N. to S., 261 Baker, G. P., services of, tu A.C., 16 Bara Baghal, 52 Pass, 52 Bard, Fort, 176 Barricades, the, Stura Valley, 174, 176 Barrington, R. M., death of, 119 Beachy Head as Climbing Ground, 61 Benson, R. H., and the Alps, 348 Berne, in 1856, 33 Bernina Alps A First Ascent in, 11 First and only Ascent of, from the 260 Bieshorn, ascent of, 279 Biesjoch, first passage of, 200 Bietschhorn, W. aréte of, direct traverse of the Rother Thurm on, 267 Bird, 8. D., first Englishman to attempt Monte Rosa, 308 Blaitiére, Aiguille de, Col de Nan- tillons route up, de- scribed, 9 South Peak of, ascent of, from Mer de Glace side, 9 Blanc, Mont Crossings of, in one day, 70, 79 Success and Failure on; article by W. C. Slingsby, 70 Traverse of, without Guides (1896), 81 Wind on, 86 Blanc du Tacul, Mont, ascent by S.E. aréte, 9 Blanche, Dent and Weisshorn, on the N. side of, paper on, 279 Blanche de Peuteret, Aiguille, point on, reached by J. and B. Gugliermina and F. Ravelli, 10 Traverse to, and descent by E. face, 10 Blaueisgletscher, the, 263 Bonney, Prof. T. G., Article by, The Alps from 1856 to 1865, 16 Vocabulary, Applicable Botanist’s to Mountains, 43 Index. Boundaries, Natural and Political, in the Western Alps, Divergencies between, 161 Bourdillon, F. W., Article by, Gait and Style [in Climbing], 35 Bowyear, H. W. T., letters from Late Mr. T. H. Philpott, the; 357 Old Memories, 355 Brekketind, Climbs on, 291 Brockedon, W., work of, on Passes of the Alps, 168 &n., 174, 178 Brown, T. E., quoted on the Jung- frau, 39-40 Brunegghorn, ascent of, and view from, 279 First crossing of, 201 Bubna, or Balma Lake, 193 Buole Pass, fighting at, 303 C.P., origin of, explained, 120 Cadorna, General, and the Trentino Campaign, 303 Campiglio, 195 Canada, Flora of, book on, 348 Canada, Mountains in, ascended and explored, see also Canadian Rockies Alexander Mackenzie, Mt., dangers of, 111 Bess, Mount, second ascent of, 3 Black Douglas, the, 183 Donald Mackenzie, Mount, pedition to, 133 Edith Cavell, Mount, first ascent, 133 Ethelbert, Mount, 132 Faunce, Mount, 132 Geikie, Mount, see Edith Cavell, Mount Goodsir, Mount, 133 Longstaff, Mount, 133 ox- ' -Moloch, Mount, 133 Purcell Range, 132 Selkirks, the, 133 | Tetragona, Mount, ascents of; first, 111; later, 132 Torngat Range in, 132 Canada, Pictures of (painted), 274 Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol. VIL., 1916, reviewed, 132 Canadian Rocky Mountains Meteorological phenomena of, lll New Ascents in (1915), 111, 132 ef sqq. Canavese, Pont, swallows at, 195

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Index. Carson, T. H., K.c., death of, 351 Obituary Notice of, 341, Casse Déserte, Col de la, ascent to, 24 Cathrein, or Kathrein, Herr, of the Eggishorn, death of, 13 Obituary Notice of, 250 Caucasus, Central and Western, Passes in, 179 Cengalo, Piz, first and sole ascent by N. face, 261 Cenis, Mont, Pass of, 165 Called the Gate of Italy, 176 Route via, 175 Central and Western Alps, The Great Passes of ; Article by.D. W. Freshfield, 158 Chamonix, a Day’s Walk to, from Courmayeur, over Mont Blanc (1879); Article by W. C. Slingsby, 70 Chamonix Guides, first, on Monte Rosa, 316 Champéry, Landslides at, 278 Clapham, J. H., The Peaks about Slogen, 290 Climbers’ Guides, origin of, 148 Climbing, reasons for, 154 Climbing ie. the Oldest of, 112, 134 Climbing Girl, A, Verses to Miss Lucy Walker, in Punch, 1871, 98 Cluse, La, gorge, 176 Coleridge, 8. T., on Mountains, 177 Concordia Hut, building of, 253 Coolidge, W. A. B.; Article by La Storia dei tre Weissthor (Italian translation by G. Laeng), reviewed, 352 Cornice, the, 170 Correspondence Late Mr. T. H. Philpott, The, by H. W. T. Bowyear, 357 Old Memories, by H. W. T. Bow- year, 355 Ulrich Lauener; by H. T. Mennell, 138 Cortina, capture of, 302 Coryat, — , on Alpine travel, 176 Courmayeur to Chamonix, A Day’s Walk from, over Mt. Blane (1879); Article by W. C. Slingsby, 70 Cuneo, Name of, 166 DamMa Hut (S8.A.C.), New, com- pleted, 119 da Vinci, Leonardo, on the Spltgen Pass, 185 863 Davidson, Sir Edward, 143 Deaths of Members, see that Head under Alpine Club, and Alpine Club Obituary ; see also Obituary Notices Déchy, Moriz de, death of, 277 De Saussure, Life of, in hand by Freshfield, 15 D. and Oe. Alpenverein, Members of, Casualties to, 127-8, 277 Devil’s Bridge, Advertisements on, 32 Dévouassoud, Francois, guide, Re- miniscences of, by Fresh- field and others, 198 Dharmsala, 66 Done, N. S., death of, 145, 247, 277, 288 Obituary Notice, 247 Dibi, Dr. H., Articles by Genealogies of, and Connexion between, the Zermatt Guide-Families of Zum Taugwald and Taug- walder, 338 ‘Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpen- club,’ Vol. I., 1914 and 1915, edited by, re- viewed, 278 List of the Travellers and Guides engaged in the Early Attempts on, and Ascents of, Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1856, 333 Honour conferred on, 277 Duhamel, Capte. H., death of, 145, 285 Durance Valley, 166 Durham, W. E., Summer Holidays in the Alps, 1895-1914, book by, reviewed, 128 Eprror of A.C. (Mr. Yeld), work of, 15 Eggishorn Hotel, or Hétel Jungfrau, 250 Kiger, incident during descent of, 345 Kiger Rothstock, ascent of, by E. face, 9 Engelhérner, New Hut on Rosenlaui side of, 10 English Service at Courmayeur, 342 Ewen, Capt. G. T., M.c., death of, 5, 358 Exotic Granites of the Habkernthal, Article by T. Howse, 95 Expeditions and Ascents New (1916), 9 Various (1916 & earlier), 9 et sqq.

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864 FAaTRBANKS, Rev. A., death of, 119 Obituary Notice of, 108 Farrar, J. P., Articles by Early Attempts, The, on Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, 323 Franz Biner, Obituary Notice, 253 Geoffrey Young, 339 Historical Documents III. The Fihrerbiicher of the brothers Zumtaugwald, 218 Jungfrau, the Roththal face of, 210 Kéderbacher, Joh. Grill, Obituary Notice, 262 Matterhorn, Galerie route on, 139 Old Fiihrerbiicher, 96 Philpott, T. H., Obituary Notice, 340 Slingsby, Laurence, Obituary Notice, 344 Elected President of the Alpine Club, 140-1 Work of, for Alpine Journal, 13 Federer Kogel, first ascent of (1874), 343 Ferro Orientale, Pizzo del, first ascent of, by N. face, 11 Fibelstadhaugen, air at, 293 Fiescher Glacier, descent of (1897), 126 Foa, Edgar, Article by, The Campaign in the Trentino, 298 French first ascent of Matterhorn, 94 Freshfield, D. W., Article by The Great Passes of the Central and Western Alps, 158 Honours conferred on, 14, 277 Fihrerbiicher of the three Zum- taugwald brothers, 218 et 8qq. . Fihrerbiicher, presented to the Club, and otherwise acquired, 96 GABRIELE, SEN San, Young’s deeds , 309 Gait and style {in Climbing]; Article F. W. Bourdillon, 35 Galerie Route on Matterhorn, Farrar on, 139 Gate of Italy, pass so called, 176 Géant, Col du, in bad weather, 239 Gemsensattel, traverse to, from the Simmelisattel, 10-11 Genealogies of, and Connexion be- tween the Zermatt Guide- Families of Zum Taugwald and Taugwalder, by Dr. H. Diibi, 338 Genévre Mont, Pass, 165, 175 Index. Giudicaria Valley, road through, 301 Gjeithorn, climbs on, 291 Glaciers, Swiss, variations of, 281 Gleno, Monte, first ascent of (1874), 343 Godley, A.D., 15 Golind Peak, Ascent of, Height and Name, 58 Gondo, Gorge of, 183 Gorner Grat, in 1862, 32 Grave, La, in 1887, 21 Great St. Bernard Pass, 179 Crossed by Napoleon I., 182 Medieval traffic on, 161 Grenzgipfel, 220 Problem of, 324 & n.3, 325, 326, 331 Grenz Glacier route, up Monte Rosa, first followed, 259 Grépon, Ascents of by Couloir on Nantillons face, 9 Mer de Glace face, 9 Descent of, by Nantillons face, 9 Grill, J ohann aus der Bayrischen Ramsau (‘Der Kdéder- bacher ’), Obituary Notice of, 262 Grimsel Lake, temperature of, 18 Grivola, La, Ascent of (1862), 27 Incident on, 72 Grove, Craufurd, on his Ascent of the Matterhorn (1867), 88 Gspaltenhorn, Rothe Zahne of, Con- quest of, 10 | Guideless Climbing, and Climbs, 9, 81, 87, 249 Guides, see List of Guides Gwichten, New Ascent of, 9 HABKERNTHAL, Exotic Granites of, Article on, by T. Howse, 95 Hemoglobin, and Climbing, Kellas on, 135 e¢ sqq. Harrison, R. L., death of, 119 Obituary Notice of, 105 Hedin, Sir Sven, Hon. Member A.C., Name Removed, 8-9 Heights, Great, Difficulties at Physical, 137 Physiological, 135 Hérens, Val d’, paper on, 279 Himalayas, the Expeditions in, of de Filippi, 11 Himalayan Scrambles in 1914; Article by Capt. H. D. Minchinton, 5] Loftier Heights, Possibilities of ascending. Kellas on, 134 et sqq., 347, cf. 15 & 245 Mud Avalanches in, 66

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Index. . Hispar Glacier, trough of, .156_ Hochkammerlinghorm, first traverse of, 263 ie a E. flank of, ascent of, Honorary Members of A.C., Subjects of Enemy States: Names Removed, 8 Honorary Secretary of A.C., work of, 16 H6rnli Hut, reconstructed, 120 Hotels, see Eggishorn, Riederalp, and Trafoi . Howse, T., Article, by, on Exotic Granites of the MHab- kernthal, 95 Hudson, C., ascents by, of Monte Rosa (1855), 313, 315 Human Body, effects on, of Altitude, 137 Huts, see Concordia, Damma, New H6rnli, Rosenlaui, Solvay, Sustlihiitte, Torino, Zsig- mondy ‘Isex, The, of Shia-Ping,’ book by Lieut. L. B. Rundall, cited, 53 -In Memoriam, see Obituary Notices Incavo-gravure, Illustrations and pro- cess, 278 Innerkofler, Sepp, guide, killed in action, 13, 127 Inng, Swiss, past and present, 21 Invitation, An Irresistible, 126 Irving, R. L. G.; Article by, A Flight into Italy (1914), 237 Iseran, Mont, story of, 23 Isére Valley, 166 Italian Alpine Club, War Services rendered by, 305 Italian first ascent of Matterhorn, 93 Italian Mountain Fighting during the War (1916-17), 115, 116 Italy, Flight into (1914); Article by R. L. G. Irving, 237 Gate of, pass so called, 176 JactTa to Riesenaase, ridge between Jispa, 37 Johnston, Andrew, ascents by, of Monte Rosa (1856 and 1882), 318 Jones, Major Stanley L., death from wounds, 134 865 Jordan, W. Leighton, third ascent ofthe Matterhorn by, 90 Jéstedalsbrae, 290 Julier Pass, 186 Jungfrau, beauty of, 157 Descent of, to Silberhorn, 214—15 Roththal face of, Farrar on, 210 View of, from Miirren, 39-40 Kaxtti Peak, Great, probable identi- fication of, 59 Karakoram Mts., Eastern, de Filippi’s Expedition in, 11 Kaufmann, Ulrich, guide, Obituary Notice of, 345 Kellas, A. M., Article by, A Considera- tion of the Possibility of Ascending the Loftier Himalayas, reviewed, 134; cf. pp. 15, 245, & 347 Honour conferred on, 277 Kemble, Fanny, Verses by, addressed to Miss Lucy Walker (1889), 102, 144 Kennedy, E. S., climbs by, on Monte Rosa, 310 et sqq., 325 & n. Kesch, Piz, ascent of, by S. face, 264 Kessel Kogel, first ascent of (1870), 343 Kingspitze, ascent of, by variant route, 11 Klokseggen, fiord under, 296 Kolaastind, ascent of, from the E., 296 Attempts on, 294-5 KGnigsspitze, first ascent of, from _ the Suldenjoch, 263 Kulu, 69 Kundini, 245 Kviteggen, ascent of, 293-4 Kyelang, 56 LABRADOR, first ascent in, of Mt. Tetragona, 111 Mountain climbs in, 133 Lago, Croda da, the, early ascents of (1884), 124 Laluni Glaciers, 52 Passes, Kast, height of, 55 West, height of, 54 Landslides, Serious, at Champéry, ; 278 Lauener, Ulrich, 309-10, 325 é7n., 356-7 — Letter on, from H. T. Mennell, 138

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866 Lausanne, in 1856, 33 Lauteraarhorn, ascent af, by W. face, 11 Léchaud, Glacier de, 200 Lei, Val di, Rhine sources in, 161 Lenzer Heide, the, 186 Lepontine Alps, ascents in (1913-15), 11 Lilla, 189 Little St. Bernard Pass, 176 Lliwedd, difficulties of, 293 Lucmanier Pass, name of, 185 Lyskamm, first ascent of, from the Felikjoch, 255 Matwa Mundinoo, 245 Maloja Pass, 187 Maps, early, defects of, 22 Marrons, derivation of the word, 169 Matroosberg, height of, 122 Matterhorn, the Ascents of, Early, 87 by Giordano, 93 from Zermatt, 148 Second, by a traveller, 88-9 Third, by Leighton Jordan, 90 Various, 92 et sqq. Galerie Route on, Farrar on, 139 ZMutt aréte of, 150 Matterhorn Hut (Lower), struction of, 120 Maudits, Monts, 164 Mennell, H. T., letter from, on Ulrich Lauener 138 Meteorological Phenomena, Canadian Rocky Mountains, 11] Meteorology, the Italian Alpine Club, and the War, 304-5 Mettenberg, New Ascent of, 9 Military Honours , Belgian, 289 British, 1, 145, 289 French, 1, 6, 7, 289 Italian, 2, 10, 145, 289 Miller, W. H., Camp Craft: Modern Practice and Equipment, book by, reviewed, 130 Minchinton, Capt. H. D., Article by, Himalayan Scrambles in 1914, 51 Cag de, Tecon- Mischabel, attempt on, Miserin, igo, 197 Mitre Peak, Milford Sound, ascent of, 249 Mittelspitze, ascent of, from the Watzmannscharte, 263 Index, Montagnier, H. F., Article by, The Records of Attempts on, and Ascents of, Monte Rosa from the Zermatt Side, from 1847 to 1860, compiled from the Tra- vellers’ Books of the Hétel Monte Rosa at Zermatt and of the Riffelhaus, 305 Gifts from, to A. C., 110 Matterhorn, Early ascents of, 87 Thanks to, 87, 96 Montanvert, in August 1914, 237 Moore, A. W., MS. Journals of, acquired for the A.C. Library, 15 Mountain Club of South Africa, elections and awards of, 277-8 Mountain Sickness, 245, 273 Kellas on, 136 Mountains, beauty of, 157 Botanist’s Vocabulary applicable to, 43 Coleridge un, 177 Feelings inspired by, 45 Mud Avalanches in the Himalayas, 66 Muling village, 56 Muveran, Grand, new route on, 10 NADELGRAT, the, 15] Napoleon I., and Alpine Passes, 170 Crossing by, of the Great St. Bernard, 182 New Zeuland Alps, first ascents and first crossings in, 248, 249 Nonne, the, first ascent of, 284 Norungsdal, Upper, 291 | Norway, mountaineering in, 290 et sqq. Norwegian fiords, moist air of, 293 OxsItuARY Notices, see also wnder Alpine Club, Deaths of Members, and Obituary Biner, F. (guide), 253 Carson, T. H., K.c., 341 Dennistoun, J _R., "948 Done, N. S., 247 Fairbanks, Rev. A., 108 Grill, J. aus der Bayrischen Ram- sau (Der Kd6derbacher), 262 Harrison, R. L., 105 Kathrein, or Cathrein, E., 250 Kaufmann, Ulrich, 345 Philpott, Rev. T. H., 340 Rivington, A., 243 Schocher, M. (guide), 260

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Index. Obituary Notices (cont.) Slingsby, Capt. H. L., 344 Tiddeman, R. H., 249 Todd, Major O. E., 244 Walker, Miss Lucy, 97 Werner, Capt. C. A., 106 Whitridge, F. W., 243 Oie, 290, 294, 296, 297 . Olan, Pic d’, 114, Old Memories, letter on, by H. W. T. Bowyear, 355 Orco, Val d’, flowers in, 195 Ordinaire, Dr. Edouard, first attempt on Monte Rosa, from Zermatt side, made by, 305 ; Ouchy, Tower at, 33 PALAMAO, huts at, 57 Parisian on Mont Blanc, 86 Passes, the Great, of the Western and Central Alps; Article by D. W. Freshfield, 158 High, military value of gorges below, 286 . Pasubio, Monte, fighting near, 303 Patchell, C. W., 290, 291 Pavillon Kathrein, 253 Pawhunri, ascent of, 134 Pays d’Enhaut, French invasion of, 281 Pelvoux, the, attempt on (1860), 25 Bivouac for (1860), 26 Pennine Alps, Central, late snow in, 1914, 11 Perebecche, 194 Perren, Peter, début as guide, 225 Peuteret, Grand Guglia de, ascent to, 10 Pflerscher Tribulaun, first ascent of, 263 Philpott, Rev. T. H., death of, 351, 358 Letter on, by H. W. T. Bowyear, 357 Obituary Notice of, 340 Photographs Presented to A.C. by Diibi, Dr., 110 Forster, Mr. and Mrs. H. W., 110 Hugi, Prof. Dr. E., 110 Montagnier, H. F., 109 ‘Use of, as Illustrations, 34 Physical Difficulties at Great Heights Kellas on, 135, 137-8 Pickford, Rt. Hon. Lord Justice, Retiring President, A.C. Valedictory Address by, 4 Vote of Thanks to, 142-3 867 Pierre Grept, Téte de, new route on, 10 Pierre Pertuis, 17 Pike’s Peak, mountain sickness on, 135-6 Pilkington, C., illness of, 351 Plates of Scenery, presented to the Alpine club, 12 Pontresina, meaning of name, 181 Pousset Dessus, chalets of, in 1862, 28 Prarayé, incident at, 80 Primiero, seizure of, 302 Puiseux, Victor, first attempt, on Monte Rosa, from Zer- matt side, made by, 305 Punch, verses in, to Miss Lucy Walker (1871), 98 Punz, or Preiss, J., 262 Pyrenees, articles on, 112 Book on, 346 Ranairata River, glaciers of, 248 Remo Glacier Exploration of, 11 Rivers rising from, 1] by difficult Requin, ascents of, variant routes, 9 Reviews Camp Craft : Modern Practice and Equipment, by W. H. Miller, with introduction by E. Thompson Seton, 130 Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol. VII., 1916, 132 _ Consideration, A, of the Possibility of Ascending the Loftier Himalayas, by Dr. A. M. Kellas, 134 Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpenclub, Vol. L., 1914 and 1915, edited by Dr. H. Dibi, 278 La, dei tre Weissthor, article by W. A. B. Coolidge (Italian transla- tion by G. Laeng), 352 Summer Holidays in the Alps, 1895-1915, by W. E. Durham, 128 Ried Pass, first passage of, 220 Riederalp, Hotel on, 252 Riffelhorn, Six Famous Guides on, 72 Riva, 301 Rocky Mountains, see Canadian Roesa, meaning of the word, 182 Ronchi, Bocchetta dei, Pass, 191 Storia,

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868 Rosa, Monta_ascent of (1857), 126 Early Attempts an, from the Zer- matt side; Artrele by J. P. Farrar, 323 : List of the Travellers and Guides engaged in, from 1847 to 1856, by Dr. Diibi, 333 First ascent of (1854), 308 et sqq. First ascent, from Grenz Glacier to Sattel, 259 First Lady to reach summit of, 222 Origin of the name, 182-3 Ostspitze of First ascent of, 332] Height of, 324 Present Name of, 220 Records of Attempts on and Ascents of, from the Zer- matt side, from 1847 to 1860, compiled from the Travellers’ Books of the H6tel Monte Rosa at Zer- matt, and of the Riffel- haus, by H. F. Montagnier, 305 Silbersattel of, 325 & n.6 Ulrich’s routes to, 326 et sqq., ll., 327 Piz, first ascent of, by E. ridge, 261 Rosengarten Spitze, first ascent of (1874), 343 Hut, Engelhérner, of A.A.C., Bern, 10 Rothe Zihne, the, of the Gspalten- horn, conquest of, 10 Rother Thurm on W. aréte of the Bietschhorn, direct tra- verse of, 267 Roththal Face of the Jungfrau, Farrar on, 210 Rundall, Lieut. L. B., on the beauties of Laluni district, 53 Ruskin, John, influence of, on Alpine writers, 49 Roseg, Rosenlaui St. BERNARD Passes, 165 St. Gotthard group, heights in, 183 Pass, rise of, 184 Salethar Pass, crossing of, 52 San Bernardino Pass, 185 Sang, G., Honour for, 128 S. Giacomo, 194 San Martino, seizure of, 302 Scerscen-Bernina, 260 First traverse of, 261 Index. Schlagintweit, Adolf and Hermann, ascent by, of Monte Rosa, 308, 314, 315, 325 ¢&7., 353, 354 Schocher, Martin, guide, death of, 113 Obituary Notice of, 260° Schéllenen, Gorge of, 178 Schénbihl Path, improvement of, 119 Schwarz Monch, 216 Schwarzthor, descent of, 72 Schwarzwald, granites of, 95 Schweizer AlpemClub Accounts to Dec. 1916, 351 Club Huts, New, 119 Reconstructed, 120 Jahrbuch, of, reviewed, 278 Sciora, Ago di, first ascent, by W. face, 261 Sea, the, and Mountains, Feelings inspired by, 45 Seiler, Dr. Alexander, hospitality of, to wounded British officers, 13 Thanks to, 87 Sengie Col, Southern, 190 Septimer Pass, 185, 186 Sesiajoch, first passage of, 223 Sette Comuni, plateau of, 303 Shingo-La, 57 Summit, height at, 59 Shyok River, glacier source of, 11 Silver Cone, Lahuni region, ascent of, 64 Simmelisattel, to | Gemsensattel, traverse of, 10-11 Simplon Pass, 183 Skar, the, on Slogen, 297 Slingsby, Capt. H. L., m.o., Obituary Notice of, 344 Slingsby, W. C., Article by, Succese and Failure on - Mont Blanc, 70 Slogen, ascent of, 296-7 Peaks about; Article by J. H. Clapham, 290 Routes to, 296 Smorskredtind, S.W. ridge of, 291 Smyth, Capt. E., attempts of, and first ascent by, of Monte Rosa, 308-10, 315, 325 Christopher, attempts of, and first ascent by, of Monte Rosa, 308-10, 3265 ; later ascent by, 313 on the Early History of Monte Rosa or Silvio (1856), 313 et sqq. Rev.

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Index. Smyth, Rev. J. Grenville, attempt of, and first ascent by, of Monte Rosa, 308-10, 325; later ascents, 313 et sqq. Snow, Difficulties due to, 77 in July 1914, in Central Pennine © Alps, 11 Snowstorm Peak, Lahuni ascent of, 61 Soana Val, flowers in, 195 Soera Lake, 193 Soera Punta, N. and S., ascents of, 191 Through, Article by G. Yeld, 189 Topography of, 191 n. Soera V |. chalets of, 192 Solvay, Refuge, completed, 119 South Africa, Mountain Club of, founded (1891), 122 Elections and awards of, 277-8 Mountaineering in, History of; Article by G. L. Travers- Jackson, 120 et sqq. Spelling, Uniform, dangers of, 43 Spencer, S., services of, to A.C., 16 Spliigen Pass, 186 Leonardo da Vinci on, 185 Standal, 294 Staven, cliff of, height of, 293 Stecknadelhorn, 151 _ Stellifluh, 216 Stelvio Pass, 187 Fighting near, 301-2 ed ae extraordinary, 77 Style, M., death of, 119 Style, see Gait and Style Subjects of Enemy States as Members of the Alpine Club, 7, 8 Siidlenzspitze, ascent of, 151 . Sugana Val, advance up, 302 Sustlihiitte, new, 281 Swiss Alpine Club, see S.A.C., supra Swiss Costumes, circa 1860, 33 Swiss Flowers, menaced by travellers, 34 region, Swiss Food in earlier times, 19 Swiss Glaciers, variations of, 281 Swiss Topographical Survey, work of, 280-1 TaBLE Mountain, ascents of, 120-3 Tairraz, Jean, guide, 31 Tennyson, on Mountains, 45 Terra Nova Pass, first crossing of, 249 Thamsar Pass, crossing of, 52 Thrale, Mrs., on the Alps, 177 Ticinese Alps, ascents in (1913-15), 11 369 Ticino, Canton, position of, 161 Tonale Pass, fighting near, 301 Topo Tokpo Nullah, 57 Torino, Rifugio di, 241 Tour Noire, Col de la, 281 Toverkop, South Africa, ascents of, 121-2 Trafoi Hotel, destroyed by fire, 288 Tramontane Order, the Earliest Climbing Club, 112, 134 Traversette, Col de la, pass and tunnel, 175 Trentino, the, the Campaign in, Article by E. Foa, 298 Italian frontiers in, and nature of the terrain, 298 et sqq. Tribolazione, Becchi di, new route, 270 Triftjoch, incident on, 25 Turbia, 170 Usx, Colle delle, view from, 190 Ulrich, Routes of, to the Silbersattel, Monte Rosa, 326 et sqq, all., 327 . Ulrichshorn, first ascent of, 220 Umbrail Pass, or Wormser Joch, 187 Untergabelhorn, 149 Urke, village of, 292, 296 Varro, on Alpine Passes, 167 Vers libres, 44 Verte, Aiguille, ascent of, 129 Vierge, La (Col du Géant), 240, 241 Virgil quoted, 159-60 Viso, Monte, Ascent of, from N., 9 in Classical Literature, 164 Conquest of (1861), 22 Vorauen, 82 WALKER, Miss Lucy, death of, 144 List of Climbs made by, 98-101 Obituary Notice of, 97 et sqq. Verses to, by Fanny Kemble, 102, 144 Punch, 98 Walliser-Alpen, Clubfithrer durch die, Vol. III., issued by 8.A.C., 120 War, The, see also Trentino, Campaign in Members engaged in, 1, 2, 7, 94-5 Watershed Pass, Laluni region, 54

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3/0 Watzmann, E. face of, ascent of, 264 First traverse of three peaks of, 263 Ostwand of, ascent of, 268 Weisshorn, W. face, ascent of (1883), 266 the, guideless ascent, and frostbite on, 71 Weissthore, the various, 352-5 Wellenkuppe, the, 150-7 Werner, Capt. C. A., Obituary Notice of, 106 Western Alps, Bour.daries, Natural and Political in, Diver- gencies between, 161 Weissmies, Western Alps, The Great Passes of; Article by D. W. Fresh- field, 158 Rev. Walter, conferred on, 277 Whymper, E., 274 on the Travellers’ Book at the Hétel du Mont Rose, 88 Wicks, Wilson, and Bradby, Messrs., ascents by, 9-10 Winterhoek, Great, height of, 122 Winter mountainecring, an expert in, 261 Wollaston, C., late Hon. See. A.C., vote of thanks to, 141 Weston, Honour Index. Womin Climbers (see also Walker, Miss Lucy), costume and efficiency of, 35 Wormser Joch, or Umbrail Pass, 187 YARKAND River, glacier source of, 11 Yeld, G., editor of the Alpine Journal Article hy; Through the Val Soera, 189 Speech by, 142 Work of, 15 Yellow Rock Peak, ascent of, 65 Young, Geoffrey; Article by J. P. Farrar, 339, see also 289 ZERMATT, in 1872, 146 District, nomenclature of, 150 Zermatt Pocket-book, The, 152-3 Z’ Mutt aréte, Matterhorn, 150 Zocca, bergschrund on, 343 Zsigmondy Hut, burnt by shell-fire, 127 Zumtaugwald brothers, the three, Fihrerbiicher of, 218 Zum Taugwald, and Taugwalder, the Zermatt Guide-Families of, the Genealogies of, and Connexion between, by Dr. H. Diibi, 338

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GUIDES MENTIONED. os ALBREcaT, Alexander, 221,310 & n.8, 311, 334 Almer, Christian, 9, 197, 203, 223, 224, 253, 264, 281, 323, 356 Portrait, 110 Ambithl, Abraham, 109 Portrait, 109 Anderegg, Jakob, 72, 144, 224, 255 Portrait, facing 88 Melchior, 72, 97, 101, 144, 203, 212, 215, 224, 253, 259, 281 Climbing with, 83, 84 Death of, 13 Portraits, 110, and facing 88 Andermatt, Moritz, 320 Andermatten, Adolph, 71, 72, 77, 80 Franz, 72 et sqq., 80, 320, 322 Character of, 88 Portrait, facing 148 Ignatz, 319 Ansermin, Frangois, 90 Batmat, Auguste, 321 Bich, J. B., 89, 90, 91 Biener, Biner or Binner, Brothers: 308, 334 Anton, or Johann Anton, 306 n.2 ‘ Breithorn,’ Portrait, 109 Franz (‘ Weisshorn ’), 96 Death of, 13, 253 Portraits, 109, and facing 260 Ignaz, 317, 336 J. M. ( long Biener ’), 262, 320 Peter, 320 Stephan, 220, 353 Bischoff, Johann, 211, 215 Death of, 212 Peter, 210, 211 Blanc, J. J. (le Greffier), death of, 13 Bleuer, C., 354 n. Bohren, Christian, 126 Peter, 318, 319, 320, 337 Bortis, Joseph, 210 Boss, Emil, 345 Brantschen, Hans, 10 Johann, 218, 306 x. 2, 321, 333 Brantschen, Johann Baptist, 306 n. 2 Joseph, 218, 222, 306 &n.2, 318, 320, 321, 336 Brocherel, H., 9 Burgener, Alexander, 150, 253, 261, 5, 355 Cacuat, Frangois, 321 Zacharie, 222 n., 316, 336 Carrel, César, 90, 91 Jean Antoine, 89, 93, 94, 224 Carrier, Jean, 323 Chanton, Frangois George, 318, 336 Charlet, Jean (dit Straton), 120 Pierre, 120 Couttet, Frangois, 319 Jacques-Marie, 318, 337 Jean, 316, 336 Croz, Jean Baptiste, 24, 27, 109, 224, 323 Portrait, facing 19 Michel Auguste, 24, 27 et sqq., 88, 91, 224 Portrait, facing 19 DAMATTER (or Thamatter), Peter, 96, 110, 218, 306 Dangl, Peter, 264, 265 Dévouassoud, Francois, 208, 343 Death of, 198 et sqq. Portraits, 110 and facing 198 Henri, 208 Fucus, Fritz, 212 Theodore, 316, 321, 335 Fuhrer, Heinrich, 245 GASPARD, Dévouassoud, 128__s Pierre (dit Pére), death of, 13 Gentinetta, Augustin, Portrait of, 109 Grass, Christian, Portrait of, 109 Hans, 209, 264, 265 Portrait, 109

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372 Grass, Hans, the younger, 129 Grill, J.(‘ der Kéderbacher ’), death of, 262 Portrait, facing 261 ImBODEN, Josef, 259 Portrait, 110 Imseng, Ferdinand, 207, 253, 355 Johann Josef, Portrait of, 110 Inderbinnen, Peter, 324, 334 Innerkofler, Michel, 124 Sepp, killed in action, 13, 127 J ACCHINI, —, 355 Jaun, Hans, 12 Portrait, facing 99 Jossi, C., 129 Jost, —, portrait of, 110 Jullen, Aloys, 337 Karn, C., 133 Kaufmann, Ulrich, Obituary Notice of, 345 Portrait, facing 345 Klucker, Chr., 260, 261, 279 Knubel, Josef, 9, 10, 92, 259 N., 257 Portrait, 110 Peter, 91, 92, 259 Portrait, 109 ' Ké6derbacher, see Grill Kronig, Jean, or Johann, 319, 320, 322, 337 Joseph Marie, 25, 307é& n. 6, 320, 334 Portrait, 109 LACEDELLI, A., 124, 125 Lagger, J. M., 279 Lauener, Christian, 223, 320 Peter, 212 Ulrich, 138-9, 207, 211, 215, 221, 309, 313, 315, 321, 325 & n. 6, 334, 335, 357 Leir, Benedict, 221, 310 et sgq., 325, 335 Lochmatter, Franz, 353, 355 Josef-Marie, 9, 88, 91, 92, 323 Death of, 13 9, 88, 326, Mapvurz, Johann, 220, 307, 314, 324, 332, 334 Maquignaz, Daniel, 267, 269 Jean Joseph, 90, 91, 93, 94, 139, 140, 224 Guides Mentioned. Maquignaz, Jean Pierre, 90, 91, 92, 139, 1 Victor, 90, 92 Maitre, Jean, death of, 13 Meinet, Augustin, 89, 90 Salumon, 89, 90 . Moser, Joseph, 307, 320, 333 Portrait, 109 Miller, Nicholaus, portrait of, 109 Miitschard (Mentschard), Friedrich, 315 &n.10, 335 Payot, Alphonse, 12, 72, 197 Michel, 12, 72, 323 Prosper, 120 Perren, Moritz, 323 Peter, 225, 254, 320, 321, 323, 337 Pession, B., 189 Phillips, Donald, 133 Pic, Alexandre, 24 Pollinger (the elder), Aloys, 260, 261 Portrait, 109 Josef, 11 Punz or Preiss, Johann, 262-3 Rey, Adolphe, 9 Henri, 98 Ritz, Antoine, 319 & 7.16, 320, 323, 337 Rodier, J. B., death of, 13 Rubi, Peter, 202 SCHOCHER, Martin, death of, 13, 260, Portrait, facing 260 Simond, Auguste, 337 David, 320 J. B., 25 Jean M. Ambroise, 319, 337 Supersax, Ambros, 213, 214 TAIRRAZ, Jean, 31 Joseph, 321 Death of, 31 Portrait, facing 19 Victor, 321 Taugwald, zum, see Zumtaugwald, infra Taugwalder, the, family tree of, 338 P. J., 320 Peter (Vater), 224, 259, 260, 308, 316 & 7.11, 317, 318, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 332, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338 Peter (Sohn), 259, 260, 322 &n. 20, 323, 338 Portrait, 109, and facing 88

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Guides Mentioned. 878 Turgwald, zum, see Zumtaugwald Zumtaugwald, Johann (cousin), 318, 19 infra VEILLOoN, Charles, 10 Félix, 10 Jules, 10 Volker, Alois, 210 WaLpDEN, Anton (Tony), 103, 104-5 Weissenfluh, Johann von (junior), 3 35 Welschen, Joseph, 353, 354 ZUMTAUGWALD, the family tree of, 338 Franz, 218 & 7.14, 337, 338 Ignaz, 319 Johann, 96, 218 ef sqq., 307, 316, 317 n., 310 et sqq., 311 & n.9, 313, 317, 318 & 7.14, 319, 320, 325, 332 n.12, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 353 Portraits, 110, 219, 225 3 Johann Joseph, 307 &én.3, 324, 332 & n.11, 333, 334, 338, 353, 354 Louis, 323 Mathias (1), 338 Mathias (2), 333 Matthéus, 96, 218 ef sq9., 230, 307 &nn., 308, 310, 311 &n.9, 313, 314, 317, 319, 320, 323, 324 326, 332 & n. 12, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 353, 354 Portraits, 110, 219 Niklaus, 338 = Paulus, 338 Stephan (elder), 338 Stephan, 96, 218 et sqq., 228, 316, 318 & n.14, 319, 322, 326, 335, 336, 337, 338, 353 Portraits, 110, 219 Zurbriggen, Pierre, 92 Zurbriicken, Louis, 213 Zybach, Simon, 310 &n.7, 325, 334 END OF VOLUME XXXI. AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE AND CO. LTD. COLCHESTER, LONDON AND ETON, ENGLAND

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