occasional opportunities for meeting together, for communicating information as to past excursions, and for planning new achievements; and a hope was entertained that such an association might indirectly advance the general progress of knowledge, by directing the attention of men, not professedly followers of science, to particular points in which their assistance may contribute to valuable results.'

These expectations have been fully realized. The club at the present moment we believe numbers more than a hundred members, a fact which speaks for the prevalence among the travelling English, not only of a love of science, scenery, and enterprize, but also of energy and physical vigour, for it has been determined, and wisely, we think, to require from each candidate for admission, a proof, literary, scientific, or pedestrian, that he is one who will co-operate in and further the objects of the club, and not one of those who go to Switzerland merely to cluster like summer flies round such sweet spots as Interlaken or Lucerne.

Thus the reader will perceive that the Alpine Club is to a very great degree scientific in its nature, but even were it less so, it would be scarcely less entitled to consideration as an institution. It is true there are a good many people who profess a profound contempt for mountain climbing, and ridicule those who indulge in it as the victims of a kind of lunacy. The reason they generally give is a perfectly rational and satisfactory one. They cannot understand what pleasure you find in it.' Of course they cannot, seeing they have never tried by actual experiment; but that does not prove that there is no pleasure to be found in it; while on the other hand, that there is some attraction about the pursuit, is shown by the fact that no one who has once tried a grand mountain excursion has ever been heard to express a disinclination to repeat the experiment, and many who used to sneer at such things as being work only fit for idiots, have, after once tasting the pleasures of the High Alps, taken kindly and even enthusiastically to the Alpenstock.

As to what these pleasures really are, it would be difficult to give an exact idea. Properly speaking mountaineering, per se and apart from its objects, is a new sport, and, as in all sports, a vast deal of the pleasure it gives lies in the excitement consequent on combating a difficulty by means of skill, pluck, and endurance. These three are necessary to any sport that deserves to be called a sport. Even fishing brings them out, as any one will admit after a hard day's thrashing with a heavy rod, enlivened by brisk races with a fresh-run ten pounder, and sundry plunges waist deep into the eddies of a March flood, and mad jumps from boulder to boulder, the whizzing reel all the while singing in your ear 'keep moving.' But in none, not even in fox hunting, is there such a demand for them as in Alpine excursions. It should be borne in mind also that there are things to be seen at great altitudes which can be seen there alone, and of which those who cling to the valleys can have no idea, not merely extensive and magnificent views, but marvellous bits of ice and snow scenery, which derive an additional charm from the solemn silence and desolation that reigns all around. The active exercise, the fresh mountain air, and the feeling of animal vigour and buoyancy of spirit they produce are important elements. Even the bustle and formalities of the preparation and start for an expedition are enjoyable. The scene is generally some airily perched little hotel, like those on the Eggisch-horn or Riffelberg, which from the valley below looks like a white speck on the mountain side. All over the house there is a sound and smell as of vigorous roasting going on, suggestive of the vast quantities of cold meat to be consumed on the morrow under the combined influence of keen air and hard work. The guides are for the most part taking it wonderfully coolly, but their employers, at least those who are not old hands, are in a great state of nervousness about the weather, always running in to look at the barometer, and out again to look at the moon, and asking whether that haze does not look ugly? and whether those clouds do

1859.]

not promise fresh snow? to all which inquiries the guides, who in such cases are a sanguine race, invariably reply that there will be 'schaynes watter.' You don't feel a bit inclined to go to bed, and would sit up all night rather till the period of it, two or three o'clock, which is fixed as time for getting under weigh were it not from a sense of the duty you owe to yourself, and the recollection that once off, you will have no rest for fifteen or sixteen hours at least.

Therefore you go to bed and delude yourself for hours with the notion that you are going to sleep. At length you do drop off-that is, you begin to climb an imaginary precipice which tumbles down with you every time you get to the top, and after you have been so employed for about twenty minutes, as it seems, your guide comes in with your boots ready greased and spiked, and tells you it is time to get up. The people of these hotels never sleep, unless by snatches in the day. When you retired they were running about the house getting your dinner ready, and now they are running about the house getting breakfast. At last your party is assembled in marching order, and what with the stars blinking overhead and the cold night air and the rawness and bleakness of everything round, a sort of feeling seems to be induced that it is a very serious business and very like turning out to be hanged, a notion which is rendered the more vivid by the fact of a coil of rope being slung behind the knapsack of one of the guides. Some Stoic, however, lights a pipe, and his example is generally followed: with a soul soothed by tobacco and limbs warmed by exercise you wind up the mountain side, and somehow the funereal-looking cavalcade begins to turn into a very jovial party. As you get on you see-but we must not trench on the province of the writers whose works are before us. things you will see are they not written in the Alpine Club book and in the volumes of Messrs. Wills and Hinchliff? As to the dangers in store for you, we might plead a sort of confession and avoidance, first, that it is all right that there should be dangers; and secondly, that there

The

ar

pleau represents

241

a very fair legal n tolerable truth al state of the case.

The fact that there are possible dangers which when met with coolness, pluck, and endurance almost cease to be dangers at all, is, constituted as we are, one of the great attractions of the excursion, and the thing which of all others would make the High Alps the best of training grounds for a rifle volunteer. But these dangers have been very much exaggerated, not, we suspect, by those who have much experience in the matter, for your true mountaineer is not given to bombast or superlatives, but by those who have seen a little and fancied the rest. Thus we read of the traveller being in positions where a single slip or false step would have been instant destruction. Why, as much might be said of crossing Fleet-street. A single slip or false step in front of a Pickford's van or a Royal Blue omnibus would be instant destruction for all practical purposes just as much as a descent of five thousand feet on the ice pinnacles of a glacier. Nor is there any occasion to slip or make a false step in the one case more than in the other. Of course it is another thing if a man cannot depend on his hands and feet; and if he feels any doubt on this point he has no business on the High Alps; but if he has a wellplaced confidence in his head, in his hands, and in his feet, he is just as safe standing on one ledge of a precipice and holding on by another as he would be in his arm-chair, for nothing short of an act of volition can remove him. Then the dangers of falling into crevasses or slipping on ice-slopes are reduced to a minimum by the use of the rope, without which no expedition is now ever undertaken. These are not the dangers which those accustomed to the Alps stand in fear of. These can be always provided for; but not so fogs which may come on and render retreat or advance, surrounded as you are by precipices, equally impossible; or the sudden fall of masses of overhanging ice or snow; or the descent of rocks upon your head as you scramble along the face of some crumbling precipice, or even when you fancy yourself so far removed

from its base as to be out of range. We could not illustrate this sort of danger, or bring this paper to a conclusion, better than by an extract from Mr. Hinchliff's very graphic description of the Trift pass, which, better than anything we could say, will give an idea of the delights and dangers of an excursion in the High Alps:

The continuous exertion and great excitement of the three hours and a half since leaving the Col were admirably calculated to put the whole party in a high state of satisfaction at coming to so smooth an anchorage, and in the highest spirits we prepared to improve the occasion to the uttermost. The provision knapsacks were emptied and used as seats; bottles of red wine were stuck upright in the snow; a goodly leg of cold mutton on its sheet of paper formed the centre, garnished with hard eggs and bread and cheese, round which we ranged ourselves in a circle. High festival was held under the deep blue heavens, and now and then, as we looked up at the wondrous wall of rocks which we had descended, we congratulated ourselves on the victory with a quiet nod, indicative of satisfaction.

M.

Seiler's beautiful oranges supplied the rare luxury of a dessert, and we were just in the full enjoyment of the delicacy when a booming sound, like the discharge of a gun far over our heads, made us all at once glance upwards to the top of the Trifthorn. Close to its craggy summit hung a cloud of dust, like dirty smoke, and in a few seconds another and a larger one burst forth several hundred feet lower. A glance through the telescope showed that a fall of rocks had commenced, and the fragments were leaping down from ledge to ledge in a series of cascades. Each block dashed off others at every point of contact, and the uproar became tremendous; thousands of fragments making every variety of noise according to their size, and producing the effect of a fire of musketry and artillery combined, thundered downwards from so great a height that we waited anxiously for some considerable time to see them reach the snow-field below. As nearly

as we could estimate the distance, we were 500 yards from the base of the rocks, so we thought that, come what might, we were in a tolerably secure position. At last we saw many of the blocks plunge into the snow after taking their last fearful leap; presently much larger fragments followed, taking proportionably larger bounds; the noise grew fiercer and fiercer, and huge blocks began to fall so near to us that we jumped to our feet, preparing to dodge them to the best of our ability. 'Look out!' cried some one, and we opened out right and left at the approach of a monster, evidently weighing many hundred-weight, which was coming right at us like a huge shell fired from a mortar. It fell with a heavy thud not more than twenty feet from us, scattering lumps of snow into the circle where we had just been dining; but scarcely had we begun to recover from our astonishment when a still larger rock flew exactly over our heads to a distance of 200 yards beyond us. The malice of the Trifthorn now seemed to have done its worst; a few more blocks dropped around us, and then, after an incessant fire for about ten minutes, the falling masses retired in regular gradation till nothing remained in transitu but showers of stones and small débris pouring down the side of the mountain; the thundering noise died away into a tinkling clatter; and, though clouds of dust still obscured the precipice, silence was soon restored.

We resumed our seats on the knapsacks now bespattered with snow, and lighted the pipe of tranquillity, all agreeing that we had never before seen such a sight, and wondering at the force which could project such masses for six or seven hundred yards through the air at a single bound. Even Cachat looked somewhat bewildered, and with a most comical expression of face he exclaimed,

Ah! si ma femme pouvait savoir où je suis à présent! Je lui ai dit en partant de Chamouni que j'allais voyager avec des messieurs qui étaient les plus tranquilles du monde, et-me voici !' The fact was that the fall had taken place too near to the line of our descent for the remembrance of it to be altogether pleasant.*