comes again.
Doubtless there may exist some people who, even if they had been smitten by the glory of the mountains in the age of their own most abounding youthful powers of body, would not have been attracted to climb them; yet such folks must be rare. Those who first see mountains in the years of their solid maturity naturally escape the attraction. But most young and healthy individuals as naturally desire to climb as they do to swim or to wander. The instinct of man is to believe that joy is somewhere else than where he stands. "Dort wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück." It is not true, but life is not long enough to teach us that it is not—and fortunately, else were half our efforts quenched in the impulse.
To see round, over, and beyond—that is the natural desire of all. We want to go everywhere, to behold everything. Who would not rush to visit the other side of the moon, were such journey possible? If Messrs. Cook were to advertise a trip to Mars, who would not be of the party? "To see round, over, and beyond"—that is a common human instinct, which accounts for the passion of historical and scientific investigation, for the eagerness of politicians, for the enthusiasm of explorers and excavators, for the inquisitiveness of psychical societies, for the prosperity of fortune-tellers, and for the energy of mountaineers. What! There is a height looking down on me and I cannot attain it? There is a mountain wall around me and I cannot look over it? Perish the thought! There is an historical limit behind which I know nothing about the human race? Give me a spade, that I may dig out some yet earlier ancestor and discover something about him. There is an unmapped region at the south pole? What is my Government made of that it does not send forth an expedition to describe it?
THE PIER AT SCHERZLIGEN, LAKE OF THUN—EVENING
The Niesen on the right.
In face of the unknown all men are of one mind. They cannot but endeavour to replace ignorance by knowledge. What is true of the mass is true to some extent of each individual. There exists in the unit the same tendency at all events as in the multitude. Each man wants to see what he has not seen, to stand where he has not stood, to learn more than he knows. In the presence of mountains this desire urges him upward. He does not start as a mountaineer intending to climb, and climb. He starts for a single expedition, just to see what high peaks and glaciers are like. The snowy regions beheld from a distance puzzle him. Evidently they are not like the places he is familiar with. He will for once go and take a nearer look. He will climb somewhither and get a sight all round. Little does he suspect what the outcome of his venture may be. A week ago he was perhaps laughing at the tattered-faced climbers he met, as mad fools, going up to mountain-tops just to come down again and say they had been there. Of such folly he at any rate will never be guilty. Climbing has no fascinations for him; he is merely going to have a look at the white world, so that he may know what it is that he hears people talking about—their corridors and their couloirs, crevasses, snow-bridges, séracs, and bergschrunds.
So he hires a guide and sets forth for the Breithorn, perhaps, or some such high and safe-reputed peak. He hits upon a day when the weather turns bad. Winds buffet him; rain and snow drench him; he labours through soft snow; he is bewildered by fog. If the sun shines for a few moments, it is only long enough to scorch the skin off his face and ensure him a few days of great discomfort to follow. He has no view from the summit. He returns wearied out to his inn.
MELCHIOR ANDEREGG
Born 1828. A celebrated Alpine guide; with the late Sir Leslie Stephen made many first ascents, including the Rympfischhorn, Alphubel, Oberaarhorn. Also well known for his wood-carving.
Yes!—and thenceforward the alpine fever masters him. He is caught and makes no effort to escape. His keenest desire is to be off once more into those same high regions—once more to feel the ice beneath his feet—once more to scramble up clean crags fresh from nature's sculpturing and undefiled by soil or vegetation. With each new ascent he becomes eager for more. The summers are all too short for his satisfaction. He goes home to read about other people's climbs, to study maps and guide-books, to lay out schemes for future seasons. Dauphiny, the Graians, the Engadine and Tirol—he must give a season or seasons to each. Thus is the climber fashioned out of an ordinary man.
Each new votary of the peaks in turn experiences the same sudden conversion, expects to be able to explain his new delight to his lowland friends, and in turn discovers the same impossibility. He learns, as we all have learned, that the delight is not translatable into words; that each must experience it for himself and each must win his own entrance into the secret alone. The most we can do is to awaken the inquisitive sense in another, who beholds the visible evidence of our enjoyment and wonders what its source may be. In that fashion the infection can be spread, and is spread with the extraordinary rapidity that the last half-century has witnessed.
What climber does not recall the enthusiasm of his first seasons? the passionate expectation of the coming summer, the painful awaiting for the moment when his foot should once again crunch the ice-corn of the glacier beneath its hob-nailed sole? Gradually that enthusiasm passes and is replaced by a settled mood of calmer, but no less intense, satisfaction. But does the æsthetic delight in the beauty of the mountains remain through all these experiences undimmed? Not always. In the first view of them it is the beauty of the snowy peaks, of the great white walls, that appeals to the eye. Ignorant of the meaning of every detail, the details are almost unseen. It is the whole that is beheld in the glory of its whiteness. The wonder of the silver snow beyond the green and beneath the sky invades the mind of every new spectator. Small need be our surprise that unsophisticated, semi-civilised peoples have always believed the snowy regions to be part of the other world—the home of ghosts and fairies, or of demons and dragons. "Not more awful, round heaven, the walls of sacred Death," says Ruskin in the passage above quoted, thereby manifesting how close in its instincts is the sympathy between genius and the purely natural man. Almost universal is the feeling aroused by a first sight of a great snowy range that it is unearthly. Mystery gathers over it. Its shining majesty in full sunlight, its rosy splendours at dawn and eve, its pallid glimmer under the clear moon, its wreathed and ever-changing drapery of cloud, its terrific experiences in storm, all these elements and aspects strike the imagination and appeal broadly to the æsthetic sense. Nor are they ever quite forgotten even by the most callous of professional mountaineers.
STORM COMING UP OVER LAKE OF LUCERNE
Sketch made from Flüelen.
But with increase of experience on the mountains themselves come knowledge and a whole group of new associations. A man does not climb a mountain without bringing some of it away with him and leaving something of himself upon it. Returned to the level and looking back, he does not see his peak as before. Every feature of the road he traversed is remembered, and he instinctively tries to fit the features to the view. That velvet slope above the trees is the stony tract up which he toiled before dawn and where he stumbled in the fitful lantern-light. That grey band beside the glacier is the moraine, whose big rocks were unstable beneath his tread. That glacier—how slippery it was before the sun smote it! There are the crevasses that made his track so devious; and there began the snowfield so hard and pleasant under foot in the early hours, so toilsome to wade through as the day advanced. In the upper part of the mountain all the little features, that seemed unimportant from below, take on a new meaning. He finds it hard to identify different points. Can that tiny thread of snow be the broad gully up which so many steps had to be cut? He looks at it through a telescope, and the actual traces of his staircase become visible. The mountain judged by the scale of remembered toil grows wonderfully in height. The eye thus trained begins to realise and even to exaggerate the vast scale on which peaks are built. But along with this gain in the truthful sense of scale comes the loss of mystery. The peak which was in heaven is brought down to earth. It was a mere thing of beauty to be adored and wondered at; it has become something to be climbed. Its details have grown intelligible and interesting. The mind regards it from a new aspect, begins to analyse its forms and features, and to consider them mainly in their relation to man as a climber.