were within twenty feet of a tremendous discharge of thousands of tons of suow and ice, which swept down the track that we had just ascended. We were perfectly safe; but somehow the by his hands alone, contrived to work his way along until he could place his feet in a crack in the rock. It was the most wonderful piece of gymnastics that I ever witnessed; and when one thinks that it was performed over some-half hiss, half roar, remained in my thing like six hundred feet of air, one recognizes the coolness of the performer. Finally, we made our way to the foot of the ice, and a tough job was before us. The slope was poised at an inclination which, according to the clinometer, varied from 50° to 60°, or two-thirds of a right-angle; its snow was worn down by repeated avalanches into the hardest possible ice, and it stretched up for some seven hundred feet. The amount of step-cutting involved was enormous, and our head guide frankly confessed that he did not like the prospect. But even if we decided to beat a retreat, the route by which we had with difficulty mounted was still more awkward to descend, and on the whole the couloir seemed to offer our best chance. So we began painfully hewing our way, and for two hours and three-quarters we slowly progressed up that unblessed ice-shoot with an arctic north-easter freezing our bones, chilling our marrow, and ominously suggesting frost-bites. The occupation of looking through the legs of the man above you becomes monotonous, even when varied by the constant reception, on face and body, of the bits of ice chipped off in cutting the steps; and as fingers and toes get more and more numbed with the intense cold, it is harder and harder to avoid slipping out of the tiny notches which are all that the leader has time to allow in the way of steps. And though a slip of one of the party would not necessarily have pulled down the rest, and the rope theoretically afforded perfect protection, still I am glad the experiment was not tried. Suddenly the guide gave the word to leave the channel of ice and take to the rocks on the side, for a snowball or two had rolled down from above, and he was afraid more might follow. Scarcely had we got out of our trough and up on the crags, when down came an avalanche with a vengeance, and we ears for some time; and for many nights afterwards, when indigestible suppers or bad Swiss beer produced evil dreams, the avalanche was sure to figure in them. When the fall was over, we descended from our perches on the rocks, and again began the work of cutting our way up; but we did not reach the top until we had spent just two hours and three-quarters on that ice-slope, not including the ten minutes during which the avalanche had interrupted us. It was fortunate that we found ourselves close to the summit of our mountain, for we were on the windward side, and one of my companions had two of his fingers frostbitten, though he had preferred to endure intense pain rather than say anything about it while we were in a critical position. Now we hurried along a gentle hill of snow to the top, and then promptly descended to some rocks on the southern face, where we proceeded, according to the traditional plan, first to rub the bluish flesh with snow, and then steadily to apply the roughest possible friction to the fingers affected. The remedy was heroic, and caused torture which my friend compared to the sensation of having a series of double teeth extracted continuously during a quarter of an hour. But the result was to save the fingers; and when we had basked for an hour in the most welcome sunshine that ever warmed mortal body, all was right, and we prepared, after a substantial meal, to tackle the descent. There was at first some difficulty in choosing the line to be taken, for the guides were agreed that it would never do to try to go down that couloir: first, because now that the sun was gaining power, avalanches were sure to be dislodged; secondly, for fear of frost-bites on that, the windward and at the same time the sunless, side of the mountain; thirdly, but these two reasons were quite enough, and we turned from the am afraid that the amount of danger difficult and dangerous to what had which the last man had to face was seemed from below to be the impossi-almost unjustifiably great. The rope ble. on which he depended had at first to be time we were two or three thousand feet lower down, with nothing but a long moraine between us and the upper pastures. It is true that there is nothing like the sharp stones of a moraine for trying wet boots and hot tempers; but though our boots were cut to pieces, the success of our climb outweighed all small drawbacks, and we returned to our damp beds in the hut supremely happy, although the heat of the steaming hay made me convinced in my dreams that I had somehow been converted into a cucumber in a forcingpit, and that the gardener was trying to suffocate me by refusing to open the frame and let in the air. As often happens, near acquaintance hitched round a rock, so loosely as to altered the aspect of matters. The be detachable by a jerk from below, first two hundred feet of descent were and then, lower down, had to be antremendously steep, and, indeed, almost chored to an axe driven into the ice; a sheer precipice; but if once we could and this axe had eventually to be reach a small snowfield which curled abandoned, as nobody could face that round from the south to the east face last bit of descent without support. of the mountain, the route seemed However, all went well, and at the practicable. And at one point below bottom of the lower patch of ice all our the little plateau that formed the sum-difficulties were over. We found ourmit there was a succession of what selves at the head of a series of snowmight be called platforms, in a direct slopes, obviously constructed for the line with each other, though number special purpose of furnishing glissades one was merely a rocky projection for mountaineers, and in a very short some two feet square; number two, some thirty feet lower down, was a big boulder that had somehow lodged on a small tooth of rock, and was poised as if ready to fall at any moment; while numbers three and four were tiny hanging glaciers, partly protected by their position from the glare of the southern sun, which ought, one would think, to have brought them down with a crash long ago. If each of these perches should prove firm all would go well, otherwise we should be in a tight place. Fortunately, we had an ample supply of the tremendously strong Alpine Club rope, which in those days used to be made with a little silk thread running through it as a sort of trade-mark, and our leading guide volunteered to be let down the entire distance, so as to test the successive stages. When he came to the big boulder we were startled, for a slight push proved enough to disturb its equilibrium, and to send it hurtling down the mountain, starting in its course an avalanche, which roared and re-echoed through the valley. For a moment our guide swung into mid-air, entirely supported by the rope; but he was able to reach a projecting ledge, and to shout to us that, so far, es geht famos." Down below, too, he reported that the little ice patches were sufficiently adherent to the rock; and finally we all managed to descend, one by one and stage by stage, though I I have just given an illustration of one sort of danger that of avalanches which is not always avoidable, and I may mention another into which I was once induced to rush, and which very nearly cut short my career in the mountains, and, indeed, on this planet generally. It is a first principle among mountaineers that there ought to be at least three men on a rope. If one man slips, or breaks through the snow overlying a concealed crevasse, two companions ought to be able to hold him up; but if he has only one, that one may easily be dragged down. So I ought to have known better when, nearly a score of years ago, I had engaged the then well-known Alexander Lochmatter of Macugnaga to act as my chief guide, and, on there being some five-and-twenty feet difficulty in obtaining a second man, I stopped, some allowed him to persuade me that we down, by a tremendous block of ice, two, who knew each other's capabilities which had tumbled athwart the crepretty intimately, might well do our vasse at the precise spot. If we had climbing without anybody else. For a been a few yards one way or the other, few days all prospered, and we climbed we should have inevitably gone to the one or two peaks and passes to our bottom, and relics of us would probably mutual satisfaction, taking care to keep have been brought to light at the foot the rope taut in doubtful places, and of the glacier in some forty years. I each, from time to time, holding the do not know the depth of that creother up when the snow proved treach-vasse; I can only say that its icy walls erous. Lochmatter was particularly went down and down till they ended anxious that we should ascend Mont in darkness. But a good providence Blanc, in order to show the Chamonix willed it that we should find safety at guides that they had no right to a that particular place; and as the hummonopoly of the "Monarch of Moun- mock of ice was well covered with tains ;" and as the track is, in fine snow, we escaped without much damweather, one up which you could age. Indeed, as my fall had been almost drive a cow, as there is scarcely broken by the jerk of the rope which any climbing, and only a long and tir- pulled down Lochmatter, I had nothing ing trudge up snow-slopes, I had no worse than a few cuts and scratches, hesitation in undertaking the expedi- while he, falling the whole five-andtion, for which, by the way, there was twenty feet without a check, had rea precedent, for had not so experi- ceived a blow on the head which enced a climber as A. W. Moore made stunned him, and for a moment or so, the ascent from the Aiguille du Goûter accompanied only by Christian Almer? But though the weather had been fine, no sooner had we reached the chalet at the Grands Mulets, where we intended to sleep, than clouds covered the sky, and by three o'clock in the afternoon there was a tremendous snow-storm, with a raging gale which lasted all night. In the morning it was snowing still, and retreat was inevitable, so we made our way downward over the Glacier des Bossons, which was covered with a thick layer of snow. Lochmatter led; I followed carefully in his footsteps at a distance of some thre ger. I mentally vowed never again yards, and the rope was taut between o be one of only two men on a rope; S. Suddenly I found the snow give but Lochmatter went a good deal furway under my feet; but instead of be- ther than this. He declared that nothing held up, I was only for an instant ing should induce him ever to set foot checked by a jerk, and then down on a snow mountain again; and though came Lochmatter nearly on the top of he had earned some celebrity as a fine me. We had, without knowing it, and daring mountaineer, though he been walking on a thin crust concealing was absolutely uninjured, and in the a big crevasse, so when Lochmatter, full vigor of life (about thirty-three, feeling the tug at the rope, had stuck his axe into what he supposed to be firm ice, it went into vacancy. I had only just time to think that we were done for, when our fall was suddenly as he lay insensible, I feared that he might be seriously hurt. He soon came to, however, and though he had lost his axe, which is still in the depths of the glacier, I had held to mine, with which he was before long able to cut steps in the wall of ice up which we had to make our way. Before we reached the top we heard a shout, and it turned out that a party who, without our knowing it, were close to us, had seen the accident, and had hastened to the spot. They let down a rope, by which we were in turn hauled up, very thankful to have escaped from a great I fancy), he forthwith abandoned his profession of guide, at which he could command exceptionally high pay, and took to driving a fly between Zermatt and St. Niklaus. Only a few years ago, just before the opening of the | Donkin, who was swept away by an Zermatt railway, I was crossing the avalanche in the Caucasus, and who Ried Pass, when my guide, the well- was a delightful companion and the known Imboden, happened to tell me cheeriest of men, I had no more than a the story of another member of the slight acquaintance. fraternity, who, a score of years before, had received such a shock from a narrow escape that he had given up guiding and taken to cab-driving, and I was interested to find that Lochmatter was the man in question, and that he was still engaged in an occupation of which the monotony was in curious contrast with the adventures of his previous career. There was one old ally of mine, however, among the pioneers of mountaineering, whose comparatively early death was mainly due to the effects of the fever which he contracted in the marshes of the Rion River on his return from the expedition in which Elbruz, the highest of European mountains, was first ascended in 1868. A. W. Moore was a man of singular ability as I have thus described the only two well as of infinite humor, and when accidents that have befallen me in the Lord Salisbury was secretary of state mountaineering of many years, and for India, Moore was his most trusted though both were close shaves, I am subordinate, and was the draughtsman, not sure that my life has not been in often on very slight instructions, of the greater peril on more than one occasion most important despatches which emafrom the Mr. Winkles of shooting-par-nated from the "political and secret " ties, if not from the chances of amateur branch of the department, at a period yachting. In fact, most amusements have a spice of danger in them, and I doubt whether mountaineering has more than, for example, either shooting or hunting. I fancy that no accident in the Alps has excited public feeling more than that on the occasion of Mr. Whymper's first ascent of the Matterhorn. I was specially shocked by the news, as poor Hadow and I had played many a cricket-match together, and only a day or two before he started for Switzerland he came to see me at the Privy Council office. I happened to be treasurer of a club to which he belonged, and when he told me that he was going abroad with Hudson, celebrated as an ardent mountaineer, I laughingly said to him, "Well, if you are going to break your neck in Switzerland, you had better pay me your subscription before you start," to which he rejoined that I might be easy about his coming back, as Hudson was not going to take him mountaineering that year. In less than a fortnight the poor fellow was killed, and when the telegram came, one of my colleagues recalled our conversation. Nobody else, I think, of my many mountaineering friends has ever lost his life in the Alps; for I am sorry to say that with His of crisis in our Indian frontier policy. with Moore's tremendous expedition | tle known regions of Burmah, where, from valley to valley over the head of by the way, he contracted the chest Mont Blanc. And he described as well illness that eventually carried him off, as he climbed. Some of the best pa- to the great grief of a very wide circle pers ever published on mountain travel of friends. have come from his pen, and a copy of Still, I am glad to say that the losses his privately printed "Mountaineering in our brotherhood of mountaineers in 1864" sold a few months ago for have been comparatively rare, while £10 at a public auction. His wit was the friendships cemented in the Alps of the kind that flashes, and can have been numerous and lasting. be scarcely sketched in words, but it was extraordinarily ready. One of his friends of the Alpine Club, who had named each of three or four children after particular Swiss peaks, once applied to him to suggest suitable names, on the same lines, for twins that had recently arrived. Quick as thought came the answer, "Of course you must humorous oratory; and Mr. Justice call the boy 'Monty' and the girl 'Rosa.'" It would be easy to recall dozens of good things, varying from mere verbal quips to brilliant but not ill-natured sarcasm, which were poured out spontaneously when Moore was in the vein; and few men were better company. Our Alpine Club dinners have annually brought together a large number of lovers of our special pastime, and a good many distinguished men have figured at them. For many years Mr. Leslie Stephen, himself one of the pioneers of mountaineering, never failed to delight us with his brilliantly Wills, the author of the charming "Eagle's Nest," and the conqueror of many a virgin peak, showed himself an excellent after-dinner speaker. It must have been about a dozen years ago that the late Lord Coleridge, who entranced the club with his silvertongued eloquence, made the confession Another Alpine veteran, of whom I - singular in the mouth of a relative saw a good deal, was the late Frederick of the poet who first showed the apPratt Barlow, who had also a merry preciation of mountain beauty that wit, and who published some admirable he had never seen a snow peak, and accounts of his expeditions on the Gri- that it was only from description that vola, the grand Paradiso, and one or he could attempt to appreciate the two other peaks. Many students of poetry, the dangers, and the glories of Alpine literature will remember his de- the Alps. On the same occasion, by lightful story of the straits of hunger the way, we heard from Mr. Matthew and thirst to which his party were once Arnold one of those characteristic reduced in the mountains, till they speeches in which the mingled wit and came across some goats that demanded poetry forced one to ignore the curious to be milked; how a pail was wanting, awkwardness of his delivery. But it so Jakob Anderegg threw himself on was at another Alpine Club dinner that his back to suck an elderly matron of a very short oration evoked the most the flock, who vigorously objected to tremendous roars of laughter that ever the teeth of her red-bearded offspring; proceeded from a couple of hundred how she managed to plant one hind throats well braced by Swiss air. A foot in his mouth, the other in his eye, distinguished traveller who had made and with a tremendous kick sent him the ascent of an Asiatic mountain rolling over and over on the turf, where (which may be here called "Upapol ") he lay, his disreputable old sides shak- was to return thanks for the visitors; ing with laughter. Barlow was the but though he was a bold mountainfirst to make the interesting and diffi- eer, he was a timid orator. "Got to cult ascent of Monte Rosa from the make a speech ?" said a friend whom Zumstein Sattel; his experience of the he consulted at the club. "Then there Alps was very extensive, and his love is nothing like taking a glass of sherry of exploration carried him to some lit-and bitters first." So said other |