THE MONARCH OF MOUNTAINS. THE MONARCH OF MOUNTAINS. MONT BLANC, FROM THE MER DE GLACE NTIL the close of the last century Mont | broken by fissures of unknown depth; the cav temperature below; the treacherous bridges and roofs of snow, that tempt the traveler upon them only to give way and dash him upon the ice, or bury him scores of feet beneath the suffocating snow which waits below to entomb him; the rocks, loosened by the action of the weather, and crumbling often beneath his hands and feet; the banks of snow, loosened by his foot, or even by the echoes of his voice, and overwhelming him in terrible avalanche; the ex accessible. Then, in 1760, a young scientific investigator by the name of De Saussure conHe was but ceived the idea of ascending it. twenty years old when he first visited the vale of Chamouni; but no sooner had he seen the "monarch of the mountains" than he was seized with an irresistible ambition to conquer it. He published abroad his desire; promised an ample reward to whatever guide would discover a practical route to the summit; would even pay days' wages to those whose labors were in-treme cold; the sudden storms, which no wiseffectual. But his dream of conquest was regarded as that of a young and visionary enthusiast. A quarter of a century passed away before he realized his dream. Thirty excursions among these Alpine mountains rendered him familiar with the details of nearly every other height. But still the monarch of them all baffled him. Delay did nothing, however, to daunt his ambition., "It became," says he, My eyes never "a sort of mania with me. rested upon this colossus without producing a painful impression." dom can foresee, and from which no preparation can protect; the difficulty of breathing in the rarefied atmosphere of the mountain-top; the feverish condition which that atmosphere induces; the lack of appetite and languor and faintness which ensue; the dangerously dazzling brightness of the snow, almost certain to blind for the time, if not altogether, the unprotected eyes-these are among some of the difficulties and dangers which, in every attempted ascent Add to these of Mont Blane, are added to the more common perils of mountain-climbing. The achievement presents difficulties which that the path, now well known to scores of it is almost impossible for the reader to con- guides, had yet to be discovered-that one ceive, who can gain from the best picture but height after another had to be essayed and a feeble idea of the stern and sterile grandeur abandoned before the victory could be wonThe peak is 15,739 feet and the reader may be able to form some faint of the mountain. above the level of the sea-over 9000 feet high-conception of the difficulties which M. De Sauser than our own Mount Washington; 7000 feet down either side is clothed with perpetual snow. The numerous jutting rocks, the fields of ice It was not even sure had to overcome before he could realize his long-cherished ambition. known whether the rarefaction of the air at so lofty an elevation would not prove fatal to hu- | and could be saved only by an abandonment of man life, as it has since done to some martyrs the enterprise; once the party were driven back to science on our American mountain-peaks. by storm just as they had reached the Glacier des Bossons. These three expeditions were deemed a sufficient demonstration that the mountain could not be scaled by the path which at first seemed most practicable. It was abandoned, proving simply a path, but not the ascent. Three attempts were made in the years 1775 and 1783 to gain the summit by Mont de la Côte and the Glacier des Bossons. But the adventurers reached no further than the base of Mont Blanc. Once the rarefaction of the air and the reflection of the sun's rays proved too much for them; once one of the party, sucIf the reader will look upon the accompanycumbing to the deceitful lethargy which ends ing panoramic view of Mont Blanc and its comin death, begged for leave to lie down and sleep,panions, he will perceive that it is one of three 1. Mont Blanc, 15,739 feet.-2. Dôme du Gonter, 14,400 feet.-3. Aiguille du Gouter, 15,550 feet.-4. Glacier des Bossons.-5. Glacier de Tacconay.6. Aiguille du Midi, 12,850 feet.-7. Chaine du Brévent et des Aiguilles Rouges. peaks which seem to lie in a line together. | all fours. His companions, angry at his teAbandoning the attempt to reach the mountain by the Glacier des Bossons (marked 4 in the picture), the next attempt was made by the way of the Aiguille du Gouter (marked 3). The first attempt in this direction proved no more successful. The season, 1785, was cold and rainy; when at length, in September, the attempt was made, the party, after penetrating as near the fortress as the summit, or very near the summit, of the Aiguille du Gouter, were obliged once more to abandon their dangerous undertaking. At the point where they halted the barometer showed an elevation of 11,250 feet. But they had not really failed. They had paved the way for the success which attended the endeavor of the following year. That endeavor has crowned with honor the name of Jacques Balmat. merity, perhaps jealous of his courage, abandoned him and returned to Chamouni. Not even Jacques could go far. Retracing his steps, still straddling along the ridge like a child on his grandfather's stick, he found himself alone in this icy wilderness. Indignant, he resolved to remain until he should have accomplished the purpose which they had abandoned. Instead of returning to Chamouni, he descended only as far as the Grand Plateau. The Grand Plateau is itself a mountain-top raised nearly 10,000 feet above the level of the sea. It is surrounded on all sides by peaks of snow. It is swept by avalanches. It is the battlefield of contending winds. It does not contain a single tree to serve as shelter. A fine frozen snow was falling. With no other companion than his alpenstock, with no other protection from the cold and snow than his mantle, Jacques Balmat spent the night in this awful wilderness, prepared to resume his explorations on the morrow. Such are the heroes who serve as pioneers in the march of modern science. At daybreak he recommenced his investigations-this time not without success. Bad weather, want of provision, excessive cold, and blinded eyesight compelled him to turn back before he had reached the summit, but not before he had found the path which would lead to it. An adventurous and ambitious guide, whose profession was his pleasure, he had been for years endeavoring to find, independently, a road to Mont Blanc. When in the spring of 1786 a party of guides, inspired by the partial success of the previous year, and by the hope both of reward and honor, undertook again to find a path for the still sanguine scientist, who awaited the result of their explorations before again essaying the ascent himself, Jacques Balmat joined them. That there was any other road to Mont Blanc than by the Dôme du Gouter (marked 2) no one had as yet imagined. The party-two parties, indeed, reaching the same goal by different routes-penetrated beyond the success of the preceding year, ascended to the All this occurred in July, 1786. The followAiguille, passed it, reached the Dôme, pressed ing month he started a second time to reap the on, and gained at length a long and narrow fruits of his discovery. He took a single comridge which connects the Dôme with Mont panion with him, Dr. Paccard, of Chamouni Blanc. We have said connects, yet perhaps village. Alone they entered upon an underunadvisedly; for this ridge, which strikes be- taking which, to-day, with the path well known, tween two precipices, each 6000 feet in height, is never attempted without a numerous and is so narrow as to be utterly impassable. The well-provided escort. All their stores consistguides turned back with reluctance. Jacques ed of a couple of woolen coverlets with which Balmat persisted in undertaking the dangerous to wrap themselves at night. The first day passage. To do so he was obliged to creep on brought them to the Grand Plateau. On the On returning home he slept forty-eight hours without once awaking. following day the inhabitants of Chamouni assembled in crowds, watched breathlessly with their glasses these two figures toiling their way up the steep and icy sides of the mountain monarch, and at length beheld them reach the summit, and stand upon the peak which for a quarter of a century had defied every effort of man to reach. The courage which rendered Jacques Balmat the first to reach the summit of Mont Blanc led him at last to his doom. Nearly fifty years after, in 1834, he had been led to believe that a mine of gold existed in the flank of one of the lofty peaks which shut in the valley of the Sixt on the northeast; and, accompanied by a chamois-hunter as intrepid as himself, he went in search of it. To reach the place indicated it was necessary to advance along a narrow shelf formed in the edge of the rock, beneath which descended, sheer and sombre into the abyss, a precipice 400 feet in depth. The same audacity which tempted him on to the Ass's Back, between the Dôme du Gouter and Mont Blanc, tempted him again. He crept along the narrow ledge a few steps, then disappeared in the abyss. His body was never found. But let us return to M. De Saussure. He had waited, as we have said, a report from some of the gallant mountaineers who were exploring the mountain for him. As soon as he heard of the successful ascent of Jacques Balmat he wished to follow without delay. A severe storm, however, prevented the immediate execution of this wish. It was not until the following year that the ascent was accomplished the first ascent ever made for scientific purposes. The first day was spent in ascending Mont de la Côte. The first night was passed under a tent upon its summit, at a point called the Grands Mulets-still the night station for those who are so courageous or so fool-hardy as to dare the ascent of Mont Blanc. It was not until the second day that the difficulties of the ascent really commenced. "Despite the great interest we all had in starting/ at an early hour," says M. De Saussure, from whose narrative we condense the account of his ascent, "the guides raised so many difficulties in reference to the arrangement and distribution of their various burdens that we were not in full march until about half past six. Each was afraid of overloading himself, less through dread of fatigue than from the apprehension that he might sink in the snow under too heavy a weight, and so fall into a crevasse. "We entered upon the glacier, face to face with the blocks of granite under whose shelter we had slept. The approach to it is easy, but travelers soon find themselves entangled in a labyrinth of ice-rocks, separated by crevasses, here entirely covered, there only partially concealed, by the snows which frequently accumulate in fantastic arches, hollow beneath, and yet very often the sole means of traject; in other places a sharp ridge of ice serves as a bridge for crossing them. Occasionally, where the crevasses are wholly unfilled, you are compelled to descend to the very bottom, and afterward to remount the opposite wall by steps hewn with a hatchet in the living ice. But nowhere do you ever see the rock; the bottom is always ice or snow; and there are moments when, after having descended into these abysses, surrounded by nearly perpendicular walls of ice, you can not conceive in what manner you shall escape from them. While progressing on the living ice, however narrow may be the ridges, however steep the declivities, our intrepid mountaineers, whose heads and feet are equally sure, seem neither terrified nor disquieted; they gossip, laugh, jest at one another; but in passing along these frail vaults suspended above profound abysses, one sees them march in the profoundest silence-the first three bound together by cords at the distance of five or six feet from each other, the remainder supporting themselves two by two by their staves-their eyes fixed on their feet, each person endeavoring to plant himself firmly and lightly in the track of his predecessor. When, after crossing one of these suspicious snow tracts, my caravan found themselves on a rock of living ice, an expression of joy and serenity brightened every physiognomy; the babble and the jokes recommenced; then they consulted what route it were best to follow, and, reassured by past successes, exposed themselves with greater confidence to new danger. Thus we spent nearly three hours in traversing this formidable glacier, although it was scarcely a quarter of a league in breadth. Thenceforth our progress was wholly on the snows, frequently rendered very difficult by the rapidity of their incline, and sometimes dangerous when these inclines terminated upon precipices; but where, at all events, we had no dangers to dread but those which we saw, and where we incurred no risk of being swallowed up without either skill or strength beingof any service." For If we were inclined to moralize, we should certainly do so upon the fact that when at last the summit was gained it afforded to the victor so little real satisfaction. twenty-seven of the best years of his life he had been looking forward to the realization of this dream; but when it came it afforded him less happiness than the dream itself. The view, magnificent as it was, afforded no surprise, since it had been seen during nearly the whole of the last two hours of the ascent. And the self-gratulation at the final result of his endeavors was not of a kind to incite a similar ambition in others. "The strongest and most agreeable sensation that I felt," says De Saussure, was that the anxieties of which I had been the object would now cease; but the length of the struggle, and the impression of the still smarting wounds which this victory had cost me, caused a sort of irritation in my mind. At the moment when I reached the highest part of the snow which crowned the top I trampled it under my feet in a kind of rage, rather than with any feeling of pleasure." 66 His first thought was of his wife below. To the present day, whenever any party undertakes the ascent of Mont Blanc, there is always a throng of spectators, not only to witness their departure, but to watch them the following day in their winding course-mere dots far up on the white surface of the mountain-side-and to note, with peculiar satisfaction, their arrival on the summit. In fact, this consummation of their dangerous expedition, though the dangers are far from being over, probably always gives more satisfaction to the spectators in the valley GREAT OREVASSE AT THE FOOT OF MONT BLANO. |