YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY ASSOCIATES

Gift of
THOMAS EWART MARSTON
YALE 1927

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OFF THE MILL

THE OLD LOW HOUSE
(' Collecting Ancestors ')

OFF THE MILL

SOME OCCASIONAL PAPERS

BY
G. F. BEOWNE, B.D., D.C.L.
ni ^ i
HONOEAEY PELLOW OP ST CATHARINE'S
CANON OP ST PAUL'S
BISHOP OP STEPNEY
MEMBEB OP THE ALPINE CLUE

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1895
\_All rights reserved]

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PBEFACE

When I rejoined the Alpine Club last winter, after
some years of absence from that most pleasant society,
it was suggested that I should collect and publish some
of my papers on Alpine subjects, which appeared thirty
years ago and more in various periodicals. That is the
excuse for the present little book.
Some of the ' Cornhill ' articles appeared originally
with illustrations, the earliest, or almost the earliest,
examples of Mr. Du Maurier's work. It was at first
intended to reproduce these, which I have always re
garded as the best part of the papers. But on con-
• sideration we came to the conclusion that the great
change which has taken place in ladies' dress would
cause the illustrations to seem unreal. The present
generation of Alpine climbers, if the book falls into the
hands of any such, will find in the text quite sufficient
indications of the earlier state of things. Their way to
their work is made much more smooth and easy than
ours was. We had no Einspanners, and we carried our
own things.

VI PREFACE
I have added one or two papers on other subjects.
The ' Night with a Salmon ' records an experiment
which gave rise to a new kind of sport, namely, salmon
fishing in heavy tidal waters, where it used to be sup
posed that rod-fishing was out of the question. I shall
be glad if ' Collecting Ancestors ' leads some readers to
enter upon the investigations which I have found so
interesting. The ' Archaeological Frauds in Palestine '
conveys warnings of general interest, I think ; and the
papers on 'Pontresina' and ' The Engadine' will not be
without result if they induce anyone to take more than
a surface interest in the beautiful district to which so
many of us in London owe such strength as we have.
I have to thank the editor of the ' National Eeview '
for permission to use a recent article.
G. P. STEPNEY
May, 1895.

CONTENTS

PAGE
HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DBS CHEVBES . 1
HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN . . .30
HOW WE DID MONT BLANC . 60
ICE-CAVES OP ANNECY . . .... 90
A Winter Excursion in Switzerland . . . .117
A Night with a Salmon . . .... 138
The Chateau in the Ardennes . . . 161
The Engadine ... .... 168
Abch^ological Frauds in Palestine . . . 195
Collecting Anobstoes . . 227
Pontresina . . .... 252

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Old Low-house ('Collecting Ancestoes') Frontispieoe
The Big Fish ('A Night with a Salmon') to face page 138

HOW WE SLEPT
AT THE CHALET DES CHEVBES'
We were a party of three pedestrians; two sisters,
A. and M., and one brother, G. The former had been
developing their walking powers during a stay of two
or three months among the woods of the Jura, by such
rambles as ladies might take unaccompanied, and the
advent of the male person of the party had long been
looked forward to, as opening up a number of excur
sions too extensive or too ambitious for the sisters
alone. In fact, they were not alone ; but the other
members of the family party lacked the physical power
requisite for their long climbs, and could scarcely feign
a sympathy with what foreigners know as the English
mania for wandering and mounting.
And yet it was strange that the clear air of the
upland village had not supplied the one, and the
tempting beauty of the scene the other. Below was
the lake, with its broad frame of flat and richly wooded
country, stretching away to the west till lost amid the
glancing skylights of Geneva. The whole plain lay hot
and parched under the terrible August sun, suggesting
1 Comhill Magazine, September 1863. B

2 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
feelings of self-gratulation to the fortunate spectator
who stood at a cool level on the hills. Mont Blanc,
meanwhile, instinct with glittering life, flashed his
snowy mantle against the cloudless sky on the opposite
side of the lake, imparting an irresistible impulse in
the direction of a mount into the higher glens, where,
even in the Jura, the snow and ice were yet unmelted
in the pits, and a cold breeze might be secured in the
middle of the hottest day.
The excursion to which this paper owes its origin
came to pass in this way. The three young people
already mentioned were sitting in. the covered balcony
of the chalet where their family had spent the summer;
no one thought of raising an eye to look at the evening
glories of the Savoy Alps, for the magnificent view had
become an every-day matter. The lake close below, for
so it seemed to be, though twelve hundred feet of eleva
tion and some eight or nine miles of road cut them off
from it, displayed in vain its sunset dress ; they were
biases for that particular view from that particular spot ;
the balcony was now a place for reading and work,
though once it had been devoted entirely to gazing.
A. and M. were busy with their work, giving fitful
accounts of their mountain walks to G., who was
by turns an inattentive and attentive hearer as the
volume of Tauchnitz proved interesting or the reverse.
One of these excursions, on which they appeared to
dwell with peculiar delight, had taken them to the top
of a high cone of rock, comparatively bare of trees,

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 3
which rose abruptly about half an hour's climb above
the wooded glades forming the summit of the Jura.
They said much of the beauty of the view, of the clear
ness of the air, of the difficulties of the road, and of the
one blind path which they had discovered by following
the complicated directions of a chalet man, given in
unintelligible patois. At the very top of this rugged
cone were four walls and a part of a roof, being the
remains of what had once been the Chalet des ChSvres
— the goats' chalet.
At this point G. became so far interested as to raise
his head and ask what sort of shelter the old chalet
would afford in case of a storm.
' Very good,' they asserted, ' if the window-holes
were a little filled up, and anything in the shape of a
door forthcoming.'
' Any signs of a fireplace ? ' G. asked.
' Yes ! ' cried A., quite breathlessly, and with dis
tended eyes. ' Such a charming hole in the roof ! The
smoke couldn't help going through ! '
1 What do you think,' G. continued, almost brought
to silence by the eager interest with which A. hung
upon his words, ' what do you think of spending a
night up there, to see the sun rise ? '
' Mother ! mother ! ' they ran screaming off, ' he's
proposed it himself ! We didn't say a word about it ! '
and much clapping of hands ensued, not unaccom
panied by groans, or rather murmurs of protest, from
the elderly lady whose slumbers were thus broken in

4 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
upon. It turned out that this idea of camping in the
chalet for the sunrise had been for some time in A. and
M.'s mind, as possibly to be carried out on G.'s arrival ;
but the prudent heads of the family had determined
that it was impracticable. More than that, they had
been confident that G. would be the first to think so,
unless it were very artfully put before him. The
spontaneous insanity which he had now displayed was
a stroke for which they were not prepared, and all
direct opposition was at once broken down. It was
agreed, however, on all hands, that at least two of the
three aspiring excursionists should pay a previous visit
to the chalet, to see what its capabilities really were,
before they committed themselves to the labour of
carrying up the things necessary for spending a night
within its walls.
Accordingly, M. and G. went one day to survey the
place, and after some hours of agreeable climbing
reached the chalet, which they found (a foregone con
clusion, it need not be said) perfectly fit for their
purpose. The walls were so thick that large stones
could be piled up in the holes which had served for
windows, so as to keep out some of the night air and
all less pleasant visitors ; and there were a good number
of planks lying about which would serve to raise the
sleepers from the damp ground. Above all, they dis
covered in a corner a very respectable piece of door.
There were three compartments inside the chalet : the
middle, where the principal hole in the roof was, for

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 5
kitchen and eating purposes ; the two ends for bedrooms,
one horribly dark and still, the other light and very
draughty. So that on the whole they were justified in
taking a flourishing account of the accommodations of
the place to their friends below, and also a goodly bas
ket of the spoils of the way in the shape of blaeberries
and strawberries, which went far to remove the slight
opposition still kept up on conservative principles.
The preparations were not very great. Bedding was
for long a vexed question, for every native told shudder
ing tales of the cold of a night at the top of the hills,
and warned the mad English that wraps would be more
necessary than food itself. Fortunately the protesting
parents of the party were guiltless of French, and so the
full force of these representations never reached them ;
for all the interpreting passed through the hands of the
pedestrians, and the energetic little landlady's wailings
over their probable fate were perhaps not rendered into
English of equal vigour and spirit. So they settled the
question by taking no rugs — in fact the heat on the
lower part of the hills promised to be so great (and it
fulfilled its promise) that a rug would soon have had to
qualify for a shroud, had they attempted to carry one.
Those miserable duvets gave the greatest trouble, for
there was no gainsaying the paternal arguments which
asserted their lightness and powers of compaction, and
the only way out of the difficulty was by an unqualified
assertion that Madame Dorier would not like her clean
duvets to be put to such a disreputable use. Unfor-

6 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
tunately, Madame was so extremely kind and obliging
that the stay-at-home faction were confident that she
would accede to the request for the duvets, if the matter
were properly put before her ; after which nothing was
left but for A. to say that she hadn't the face to ask it,
and positively could not do it; M. and G. shrugging sym
pathetic shoulders and declining to have anything to do
with so unreasonable a request.
The bedding was a great weight off their minds and
backs, and at length their ideas of what would be
necessary were brought within the requisite bounds. A.
and M. so far bowed to maternal authority as to strap
each a shawl to her waist, the two ends hanging down,
and that was the sole extra wrapping they took with
them. Each had also a flat basket of food, similarly
fastened, and an empty quart bottle. All three carried
toilette apparatus, and a small basin and saucer, with
spoon and knife. M., who was a sturdy little person,
undertook the teapot, a strange Swiss copper vessel ex
actly like a brown owl in shape and colour, which was
wont to be perched on a stone by the kitchen fire when
ever it was expected that the English would require
warm water. Like the shawls and baskets, M. slung
this to her waist ; but lest it should bump too much it
was put under the skirt of her dress, by which means its
vagaries were sufficiently restrained. G. carried on his
back, knapsack-wise, a coat and waistcoat for night use,
for it was much too hot for anything more than a shirt
in walking, and, wrapped in these, a vast loaf of

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 7
spherical form, cut into halves to economise packing-
room. Also a small bag knapsack, wherein was a bottle
of Langlade wine, an empty quart bottle for milk, and
an empty tumbler for butter, these to be procured at the
last chalet, an hour and a half from the goats' ruin. At
the last moment before starting, a Vicuna shawl, soft
and light and warm, was brought by the maternal hands,
and it was declared authoritatively that if G. did not
wrap up his coat and the hemispheres of bread in this
the party simply should not go. This being a matter
which no interpreting ingenuity could stave off, G. was
victimised, and the shawl had the advantage of seeing
the sunrise.
At last they were off, amid the ill-omened prophecies
of the anxious landlady, which they did not think it
necessary to explain to their equally anxious parents.
Mounting began literally the moment they left the door,
for the house was built on so steep a slope that the
ground-floor at the back, whence they issued, was
a high balcony-floor in front. After a hard and hot
ascent through beech woods for half an hour, they
stopped for a minute or two, nominally to admire the
view, really to rest a little. The view, however, was
well worth the few minutes devoted to it, for they had
now reached the first plain, a green lawn from which the
hay had been four days removed, where the chalet La
Violette stood. The fresh green grass, and the beautiful
bell-shaped beeches which rose from it in picturesque
groups or still more picturesque solitariness, were in

8 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
themselves sufficiently fair ; but as the travellers stood
well back on the plain, and turning southward saw the
pure white of the upper half of Mont Blanc, cut short
off by the fairy lawn from which they looked, the effect
was simply magical. Fifty-five miles of land and water
lay between the meadows of La Violette and the snows
, of the White Mountain, but all was hid from view by
the green crest over which the path had lain, and the
ice and snows seemed to be as near and refreshing to
them as the lovely young grass of the vast lawn.
Keeping their object sternly in view, they soon left
La Violette behind, and an easy half-hour brought
them to the ' convent fountain.' Every one knows so
well the provident wisdom displayed by the monks in
their choice of sites, that it is needless to tell how the
convent fountain was famed through all the southern
slope of the Jura. The water poured through a wooden
pipe into a huge trunk trough, lying in a soft green
plot of grass surrounded by beech-trees, among which
the mounds that marked the convent walls might be
traced with great accuracy ; so much so that the dormi
tories round the centre building might still be counted,
and the solitary cell be seen a stone's cast from the
mass of the convent. A. and M. had in the course of
two or three months become so deeply enamoured of
the beauties of this fountain, that they had set off, a
week or two before the present visit, with a large stock
of pots and pans, and had cleaned out the trough, even
scrubbing it well into the corners with nail-brushes.

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 9
This sufficiently explained the angry exclamations
which broke the stillness of the monks' old home, when
they found sundry pieces of plebeian bread floating in
the water. The poor raspberry gatherers, who had
steeped their dry dinner in the fountain, came in for a
large amount of vilification ; and an unfortunate little
bird, whose feather polluted their pet trough, was
apostrophised in all the strong words of a lady's
vocabulary. Neither bread nor feathers, however, prevented
them from applying to the pure' source. A. now dis
played her chief weakness, which took the form of a
passion for cold water on a hot walk. Water by itself
was a sufficient delight, but when she had her little red
glass with her, there really were no bounds to her pota
tions. That little glass was her idol, chiefly, as was
believed, because it had once been sat upon and had
come out uncracked from the ordeal. She was always
told that she would kill herself, and on particularly
hot walks G. had been known to wax very cross as the
tumblerfuls mounted up to the high numbers. But on
the present occasion she was obliged to be more
moderate, being called upon to tell how ' the seigneurs '
were allowed three weeks to change their religion, and
how they followed the example of the North British
monks at Bipon, and chose rather to desert the convent,
carrying their silver with them, before the three weeks
expired. She had learned the tale from a deboshed-
looking old man, whose wife complained that no work

10 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
could be got out of him now that the English ladies let
him walk about with them and tell them lies.
They left the convent fountain not without regret,
for the next good water was miles away, and the after
noon was so terribly hot that all were more or less
affected by a partial mania, similar to A.'s chronic com
plaint. Once off, however, they thought no more about
the water, for the sudden changes from wood to open,
and from open to wood, kept them in a constant state
of delight, while every step crushed a hundred little
flowers, which formed- the design of the soft carpet on
which they trod ; so that on the whole the hours seemed
to have passed very quickly when they found them
selves at the Chalet de QranUne, patois for Crand
JEnnaz. This was the last piece of humanity on the
way, and here they were to complete their stores by
filling the empty bottles and the tumbler.
Fortunately they reached the chalet a few minutes
before the afternoon milking began, so they were in
time to accept the offer of a bowl of new milk from the
hospitable head of the establishment, a fine Bernois
with grey head and eagle nose, and meanwhile seated
themselves in the cool butter-room to drink 'tit lait.
For this last purpose the visit was not well timed.
The full benefits of the refreshing qualities of 'tit lait
are only to be enjoyed when it is on the balance be
tween hot and cool ; and now it was cold, and therefore
heavy. , The men had already armed themselves for milking;

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 11
a somewhat curious process, presenting a most remark
able appearance when accomplished. The interior
accommodations of a chalet are becoming so familiar,
that it is almost unnecessary to describe the ' chair of
the mountains,' as the chalet men pleasantly style their
itinerant seats. Each milker possesses a stool, which,
when not in use, may be taken for a small round shield,
with a boss at the centre a foot long, shod with pointed
iron. This stool is strapped on bodily in a suitable
position, and when a man gets up, his stool of course
gets up with him, so that when he comes out with his
pail of milk to the huge copper cauldron ready to receive
its contents, he appears with a stiff stump of a tail
behind. One would have thought that three legs would
have been easier to sit upon than one, but undoubtedly
the prevailing arrangement is much more picturesque
and ludicrous. To an unpractised Englishman the
manoeuvring of this caudal appendage is a great difficulty,
for the strap round the hips is tight and cramping, and
renders locomotion undesirable ; while to sit down in
any soft place is attended by awkward consequences, as
the leg inserts itself into the ground according to the
weight of the sitter, and has him at a considerable dis
advantage when he attempts to get up.
The advent of ' the English ladies,' about milking-
time, at any of the chalets in the neighbourhood, always
elicited a number of those inimitable milking songs from
the men, and with these they now amused themselves
until the flrstfruits of the first cow were brought by the

12 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
Bernois himself with much politeness, and with a grace
which few Englishmen would have achieved with a foot
of wood and iron for a tail. The milk was strained for
them into an inexpressibly white tub, round the edges
of which hung three wooden spoons of large capacity,
carved by the chalet men. The sieve was a remarkable
apparatus, consisting of a wooden funnel with an aper
ture large enough to admit a female fist, if such a thing
exists ; into this aperture a bunch of spruce twigs was
squeezed, something like what you extract from the crop
of a capercailzie, and through these twigs the milk was
poured. Having consumed the best part of a small cow, the
pedestrians proceeded to fill the quart bottle from
another tub, and gave the tumbler to the Bernois to be
filled with butter. He was anxious that they should
take a little brick of serre (stiff cheese curd), but they
could not carry up sufficient milk to make it palatable,
and so declined the offer of the tempting-looking mass.
A. and M. quite fell in love with the old man, because
he was the first person who had not attempted to dissuade
them from making their beds in the goats' chalet, and,
above all, because his bright eyes became brighter, and
his tail wagged sentimentally, when he divined their
purpose in the expedition, and spoke of a sunrise as if
he felt its charms, and could sympathise with any effort
which had so worthy an object. He made them promise
to call in the morning and tell him how they had
sped ; and then, seeing they were ready to go, he made

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CH&VRES 13
off to his cows again, waggling his stumpy tail behind
him. A hundred yards or two brought the party to the last
water. Here they filled the two remaining bottles, and
then steadily set their faces towards the grey cone which
now became visible, rising up from the undulating plains
and woods which crown that ridge of the Jura. The
road to the foot of the cone was beset at each step by
prolific tufts of blaeberries and strawberries, but as the
sun was drawing down fast towards the horizon, and they
contemplated a sunset as well as a sunrise from the
solitary elevation, they had not much time to spare ;
moreover, G.'s digestion was not in a state to allow him
to eat crude fruits, so he stalked on inexorably at a pace
which it required all the sturdiness of M.'s short legs,
and all the length of A.'s long ones, to keep up with.
So far they had not come across any real mountain
climbing, although it had been a severe ascent the whole
way ; but now they reached the base of the cone, and
began to wind up its almost perpendicular sides. It
certainly reflected great credit on A. and M. that they
had discovered the path, guided by an excelsior instinct
which they always displayed when near a mountain.
To uninitiated eyes, there was no reason for going to the
right rather than to the left of sundry groups of trees,
no apparent object to be gained by going below instead
of above certain fragments of mountain. But when all
the obstacles which clustered round the foot of the cone
. had been surmounted, and the three stood on the clear

14 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
face of the rock, it was seen that there had been a method
in their windings which no path had pointed out, and
the male person of the party expressed (and possibly his
companions felt) great admiration, for the feminine in
genuity which had threaded the difficulties without a
guide. M. had a weakness for performing all her excursions
in a roomy crinoline, and it had been an amusement to
A. and G. the whole time to watch the peculiar forms into
which the inflated petticoats were driven by the superin
cumbent weight of the copper teapot, slung, as has been
said, under the skirt of her dress. These peculiarities
were considerably increased now that she came to lay
herself well down to the steep climb, and one conse
quence was that she persisted in going last. This
worked badly in one or two ways ; first, because she
knew most about the road, and her directions from the
rear often came too late ; and, secondly, because they
had now come to the region of griffes de chat, and as M.
was particularly attached to that fruit, and there was no
one behind to drive her, A. and G. could not get her
on. Eventually they missed the sunset, and the others
silently attributed it to the unlucky combination of tea
pot and petticoats and precipice which had let M. loose
upon her pet fruit. Griffes de chat are not very tempting
things either ; resembling an irregular blackberry in
shape and size, and a half-ripe barberry in colour, and
it may be added, in sourness.
At last they reached the top, and pressed eagerly

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 15
into the little hut to see how it looked now that they
were really dependent on it for a night's shelter.
There is no denying the fact that their hearts rather
sank, for it looked incredibly gloomy and the air was
one mass of midges. The left-hand compartment, which
had been dignified with the name of the double-bedded
room, was so perfectly dark that for anything they
could see there might be bears or wolves or wild boars
hiding in the corners, for the neighbourhood could supply
all those horrors on occasion. Clearly nothing was
to be done till they got a good fire ; so they hurriedly
rid themselves of their encumbrances, and after a mad
panic for a second or two when no one knew where the
matches had been put, and another more subdued fright
when the smoke refused to go out by the hole in the
roof, they succeeded in establishing an excellent blaze,
which soon cleared the midges away and made the
place look quite comfortable. A little arrangement of
small boulders formed a capital fireplace, and benches
were easily made round the fire with the planks and
logs which were strewn about the chalet.
A., meanwhile, had set off to make what use she
might of the fast-failing twilight to gather strawberries
for tea, and G. now started for a more pretentious load
of firewood, such as should suffice to keep the fire
going till the morning. M. was left to make the tea,
and to set out the various kinds of food which the
whims of three people had brought together. The tea-
making process was a simple one, as there were no

16 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
complications of kettle and urn and teapot ; the copper
owl, set on a stone in the fire, was filled with water,
and when this boiled the tea was thrown in and sent to
the bottom with a spoon.
Before very long, A. had exhausted the twilight
and G. had collected a sufficiency of wood, and the two
returned slowly, not to say wearily, to the camp. By
this time all appearance of day and of Mont Blanc had
vanished, and the moon made vast pillars of moonshine
on the surface of the lake, now between three and four
thousand feet below, itself being twelve hundred above
the sea. The scene which presented itself when they
reached the door of the chalet was a perfect picture.
M. had large talents for neatness and orderliness, and
her utmost skill had been most successfully exerted on
this occasion. On a large raised plank were arranged
the different foods, according to their proprietorship ;
ham for one, hard eggs for another, corned beef for a
third, with a hemisphere of bread and an abundance of
sweet Swiss cake for the party in general. One of the
three had so far defied public opinion as to bring a
piece of Gruyere with abominably orthodox smell ;
before the evening was over, however, public opinion
waxed hungry, and shared the cheese with the owner.
On such excursions nothing is equal to a well-made
¦wurst, if only one has a knife with a very sharp blade to
cut it neatly ; the Jura, however, is not the habitat of
wurst, so the party had none. Opposite this stall was
the fire, blazing away as only gipsy fires can blaze, the

HOW AVE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 17
blackened little owl simmering contentedly on its warm
perch, while on two suitable projections from the walls
composition candles burned cheerfully and bright.
The whole was a mass of brilliant illumination, and in
the midst M. moved about with neatly festooned dress
and short hair. ' Short ' is not usually an epithet of
praise when applied to a lady's hair ; but in this case
it is so, for M., having once had her hair cut short in a
dangerous illness, looked so well in it that she yielded
to the solicitations of her friends, and ever after kept it
almost as short as a boy's. This nearly got her party
into a scrape at the French fort of Les Bousses, which is
in such unpleasant proximity to that Dappes valley lately
ceded to France. The day of their visit to the fortress
being windy, G. was seen by some of the soldiers to
assume a pair of blue spectacles when he came to the
dusty glacis, and evidently this excited their sus
picions; imagine, then, how they bristled with the
importance of detecting spies, when a sudden gust
lifted off M.'s hat and concealing veil, and displayed a
neat man's head of hair !
Picture or not, A. and G. were too tired and too
hungry to stand long at the door, or hole of entrance,
to look at it. Accordingly they speedily pushed in
towards their provisions, and as soon as the milk-bottle
and the butter had been brought from the window-
hole in which they had been set to cool, proceeded to
attack the food. It was found at once, however, that
the fire was too hot, although the tea stall was as
"1 c

18 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
far from it as the limits of the hut would allow. So a
screen became necessary, and G. felt a peculiar pleasure
in running a couple of alpenstocks through the maternal
Vicuna shawl which he had been forced to carry, by
which means it was suspended from what remained of
the rafters.
When the tea came to be poured out, it issued from
the pot almost black, and in answer to the exclamations
of A. and G., M. said, ' Oh, yes, of course she had put
in all the tea. Wasn't she meant to do so ? ' This
was a bitter blow to the others, who had set their hearts
on a refreshing cup at sunrise. M., however, fertile in
expedient, at once extracted the leaves from the pot
and spread them on a stone by the fire to dry, remark
ing that the present tea was strong enough without
them, and they would make good enough tea in the
morning, as they had been in the water a very short
time. At a later period of the evening, A. took it
into her head to sit down, quite promiscuously, upon
this very stone, and so carried off the nucleus of the
morning cup on her dress, thus making G. the only
one of the party who had not plotted against the sunrise
tea, a fact which at once reconciled him to its loss.
When there was really nothing more to be ex
tracted from the owl or the bottles, the three adven
turers made a promenade on the little plateau on which
their castle stood. The lights on the opposite moun
tains were wonderful. High up on the Alps a flame
would appear for half a minute, large and clear, and

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 19
then vanish ; sometimes there were five or six full
broad lights all in existence at once, stretching from
the extreme east among the Bernese Alps, to the
Grand Saleve and the westernmost Jura. Brilliant
beyond all, however, were the distant lights of the
Grand Quai of Geneva, each given in glittering dupli
cate by the still waters which border the current of the
Rhone. The wooded plain, too, at the foot of the cone
of rock, seemed to be one blaze of bonfires, large trees
burning as they stood, and black figures, frightfully
like Hartz demons, apparently jumping about in the
flames. This added immensely to the effect of the
night scene, and the travellers congratulated themselves
largely on their good fortune when they learned the
next day that the men of a chalet below had chosen
this particular night for clearing away sundry groups of
trees, in order to increase the neighbouring pasturage.
At eleven o'clock, or thereabouts, the moon dis
appeared, and it was time to think of bed. On this
point an important change had been made in the
arrangements. The left-hand compartment of the
chalet was so exceedingly dark and gloomy, that A.
and M. preferred the idea of sleeping by the fire in the
warm central division, which had so far been used as
kitchen and drawing-room. G.'s apartment, on the
other hand, was so utterly exposed to every breath that
chose to blow, and was in such a litter with bits of
stone and tufts of grass growing here and there, and
pieces of plank lying in all directions, that he came to
c 2

20 HOW AVE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEArRES
the conclusion that all three had better sleep in the
same place. Planks and logs were accordingly arranged
so as to form planes of various inclinations, as each one
fancied, on which they might lie with as much comfort
as may in the nature of things be extracted from hard
or soft wood, the present material being decidedly hard
and presumably damp. Then all had a final half basin
of heated red wine, the very worst thing it is possible
to take before going to bed ; the fire was made up with
solid logs ; the piece of door was dragged out of its
corner, and propped so as to cover a maximum amount
of the hole by which entrance to the hut had been won ;
sundry holes almost as large, by courtesy called windows,
were so far blocked up with stones as to render it a
difficult matter for anyone to get through from the out
side — though who should attempt to get through, except
the mountain demons, no one could say, and they didn't
suppose that stones would stop them if they had a mind
to come. At the same time it did seem very probable,
or at least very possible, that the startling appearance
of a large and sustained fire in the chdlet des cMvres
might draw some of the rough men from the chalets
below ; and so, while laughing at the idea of its being
in any sort of way a necessary precaution, G. thought it
wise to make his fortifications as strong as possible.
By common consent a fine club was rescued from the
fire, to be used as a defensive weapon in case of need ;
then the party proceeded— not to undress, but to dress
themselves, G. assuming his waistcoat, for so far a coat

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEATRES 21
alone had been almost too much, and A. and M.
wrapping little handkerchiefs about their heads in the
approved style. After this they proceeded in a body
with torches to investigate the dark corners of the
rejected double-bedded room ; and finally the candles
were put out, and a half-trembling ' Good-night ! ' was
wished all round.
Of course each of the three had determined to lie as
still as a mouse, and make no noise to disturb the
others. But somehow one's bones do come through to
the skin so very soon when the mattress is composed of
roughish five-inch planks laid gridiron-wise, that one
or other was generally on the turn. And however well
it may fit at first, a hollow place in a log of wood
doesn't do for a pillow as a permanency, especially
when the rest of the log is very knobby, and the
dozer's head wanders uneasily from one knob's point
to another. When all was over, each had a hazy recollection of
a black dream, the leading idea of which was a sleepless
night ; but whether the sleeplessness was a reality, or,
as so often happens, merely an unpleasant dream, no
one could feel quite sure. While all was yet perfectly
fresh the reports ran as follows : — G. believed that he
had slept in every new position for a minute or two,
until his bones came through, when he turned and
slept again, and so on. M. asserted that she had not
slept at all, but had lain in tolerable comfort for some
time, after which she got up stealthily and sat by the

22 HOW AVE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
fire. A. confessed at once that she was seized early in
the night with a fit of the horrors, and lay till daybreak
in a state of blank fright. It was remarkable, however,
that neither A. nor G. knew anything of M.'s sitting
by the fire, and that each thought the other had slept
tolerably soundly all night; which threw an air of
suspicion upon everyone's story. On the whole, each
of the party would probably endeavour to disabuse any
rash young friends, who might be similarly inclined, of
the idea that under the given circumstances a night is
short or a log soft.
At length M. announced, in a voice that was clearly
glad to be heard again, that it was four o'clock, and
that something like colour was beginning to appear in
the sky ; upon which all started up with great alacrity,
privately making wry faces at their hard beds, but each
unwilling to say the first word of abuse. The door was
soon knocked down, and the fire, still smouldering,
resuscitated to a magnificent extent ; a cup of Langlade
and a little roasting fortified the party for the morning
air, and then all three issued forth from their shelter
and waited for day. M. had been for some weeks busy
with a christening frock for a small niece, and having
prudently brought a piece of it with her, now sat down
on the highest rock of the plateau and proceeded
vigorously with the large-stitch parts in the doubtful
light. Already there was enough of diffused twilight to
render Mont Blanc perfectly visible. Though the lake

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 23
lay full in view, and the whole range of Alps and their
neighbour hills for two hundred miles displayed their
jagged horizon of grey rock and snowy points, the eye
could rest on nothing but the king of mountains. The
marvellous resemblance which the outline from the
north bears to a massive human head, reclining on a
pillow of snow and facing the east, was never more
striking than now. The straight forehead, the short
finely chiselled nose, the firm mouth and flowing beard,
all lay calm and still in the grey repose of death. No
one who affects to see a likeness to the old Napoleon's
head can have had the opportunity of seeing the moun
tain as it now appeared ; no one who has so seen it can
consider it much short of positive blasphemy to liken
that strong and delicate profile to the features of the
ill-tempered and vulgar Emperor.
M. had not much time for her embroidery. There
came first, for a single instant, a suspicion of a ray of
light intercepted in the neighbourhood of the Diablerets,
and the next moment a simultaneous cry, their first and
last, from A. and G., announced that the sun, still
invisible, had struck the highest crest of hair which
gathers on the brow of the gigantic head. For a few
minutes each instant brought a new delight, as the
different levels of peaks were successively gilded by the
rising sun. Gradually the glittering points seemed to
descend, fixing in turn upon all the salient features of
the profile. The mountain woke into life under the
magic touch of light and heat : the face was no longer

24 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
dead, it seemed visibly to rejoice in the reappearance of
its daily companion and friend.
The great power of the sun for the last month or
five weeks had added much to the illusion which is
owed to the peculiar outline of the mountain ; for exactly
where the shoulder of the reclining giant would natu
rally lie, a huge black precipice had been exposed by the
melting or sinking snow, and fifty or sixty miles of
distance reduced this to the very facsimile of an officer's
epaulette. The choicest beauties of the scene did not last long.
Nature is not prodigal of her highest efforts of light and
shade. The mountains and the snow remained pre
cisely as they were when the first herald of the sun
appeared, but the peculiar charm had left them, only to
reappear when another favourable combination should
allow the grandest portion of our world to assume again
for a while its loveliest dress. No sooner had the sun
risen than its hydraulic power began to mar the scene :
a haze spread over all the plain towards the west, and
only paused for a moment in its upward progress to
afford a hurried view of the distant tops of the French
hills, picked out against the still unmeaning sky by
the golden messengers of the sun.
With more of awe than they cared to confess, and
in silence which they almost dared not break, the three
adventurers turned at length to the hut which had afforded
them so kindly a shelter. It required some effort to
shake off the feeling that oppressed them ; and all felt

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 25
a certain relief when a few light words, and a palpable
return to the more commonplace circumstances of their
position, expelled the overpowering reality of a too great
beauty. It has never come back upon them in its full
force ; perhaps never will do so. The human mind is
not capable of retaining a living recollection of a scene
whose loveliness is divine. The utmost that can remain
in the memory is the consciousness that at one period
of existence a beauty too great for comprehension has
stirred the soul, too pure for words, which has yet left
behind it a certain intelligence not possessed before by
the mind, a certain proneness to discover beauty where
it is not strikingly and prominently visible, an in
exhaustible consolation in the idea that the best feelings
of heart and mind have been face to face with the most
perfect impersonation of nature, and have carried ^way
from the meeting some portion of her reflected divinity.
There was no object to be gained by a longer stay
on the plateau, so, as soon as G . had put the finishing
touches to the letters which recorded, and probably still
record, the initials of the visitors and the precise date
of their visit, and when all packing was satisfactorily
completed, the descent commenced on the opposite side
of the mountain. The object of this change of route
was principally to arrive as soon as might be at a chalet
where water for ablution could be procured, and milk
for breakfast. Each step disclosed such masses of wild
fruits in virgin ripeness that G. left A. and M. to in
dulge their appetites, and hastened on to engage a cow,

26 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
fearing lest the morning's milk should all have been
put into the cheese caldron before the party could
arrive. This would certainly have happened, for there
were only two cows unmilked when he reached Le
Couchant, or, as the patois map of the commune gave it,
Gu-au-tzin, rendered by the natives (in English letters)
Tsoo-ow-tchang. A. and M. having at length arrived, the three pro
ceeded to the well, an immense circular tank of water
iced by the feverish night they had passed. Through
a small round hole cut in the fir-trunks which formed
the cover, they drew pailful after pailful of exquisitely
pure and cold water by means of a balanced pole, and
revelled in the luxury of sponging head and neck and
arms with unceasing and undiminished enjoyment.
The .unfortunate cows were on short commons of water,
all the minor sources, if there were any, being dried up ;
and, knowing well the meaning of the round hole in the
cover of the reservoir, they crowded round the washing
party and pressed somewhat unpleasantly upon them.
Thus G., for instance, was wholly engrossed in giving
himself sponge shower-baths from a pail freshly hoisted
up, standing with head bent submissively to receive the
grateful stream, when suddenly the odour of new milk
came with owerpowering strength to his nostrils, and
he felt his hair caught up with a sound like that of a
thousand lampreys, a misguided cow having taken a
fancy bo the abundant water contained in it. A. and
M. had less ponderous but more persistent tormentors,'

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 27
in the shape of sundry goats, which evinced an insati
able desire to browse upon their hats and wicker baskets,
and were of course able, unlike the cows, to climb up to
them however high they might be hung on the heaps
of firewood. The craving for fresh water was at last in some
measure appeased, and with invigorated appetite they
proceeded to a small paddock enclosed by stone walls,
where they lay on their shawls under the shadow of the
chalet, with their faces turned towards the sweet west
wind. Here one of the civil men brought a white tub
of milk, round which the three lay to breakfast, the
remaining hemisphere of bread and a fresh supply of
butter completing the feast. As if that were not enough,
the head man of the chalet, pleased with the money which
had been prudently given him as soon as the cow was
engaged, and instigated by his native liberality, brought
in addition a whole goat, as to its milk, in a separate
bowl, and, greatest treat of all, a perfect little goat's
tomme, reclining in a bower of fresh gentian leaves. It
was well that one of the party had brought a small, a
very small bottle of brandy to qualify the milk, for
indeed the quantity taken needed something to qualify
it. No one can understand the full force of the temp
tation, who has not found himself lying on soft green
grass (a Vicuna shawl, say, intervening), lulled by the
deep or tinkling bells of the authors of his feast, fanned
by a Jura breeze, and shaded from the early sun by a
Jura chalet ; a white-wood bowl of the purest possible

28 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES
milk rippling its gentle blandishments before his eyes,
and a tastefully carved wooden ladle suggesting the
means of making those placid smiling charms his own.
M. alone could in any way be called temperate ; she
was the owner of the brandy-bottle, and not being able
to imbibe much milk even when disguised with brandy,
she soon retired from all active part in the meal, and,
making over the brandy to G., worked composedly at
her niece's christening frock.
One thing alone could be called a drawback. In
one corner of the paddock there was a small breach in
the loose wall, and through this an inquisitive young
goat essayed to visit the party. They knew well
enough that once in it could not be driven out. And
the chances amounted almost to a certainty that, in
evading expulsion, the little wretch would frisk itself
into one of the milk bowls, and leave the paddock in
general in a state similar to that of the room whose
occupant was annoyed by a bluebottle fly. Thus it
was necessary constantly to make up the breach with
temporary fortifications, which the persistent goat as
constantly pulled down. Blows— gently administered,
it is true — were of no avail, and only seemed to increase
its curiosity ; but, by one means or another, the enemy
was kept out, G. groaning sadly over the interruptions
which the repairing of the defences cost him. It is
perhaps not fair to say that this was the only draw
back, for A., whose friends were wont to call her
slightly fastidious, was troubled by a small species of

HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 29
slug, which the lovely grass she admired so much
seemed to produce in considerable numbers. These,
disdaining their native soil, shewed an unvarying and
unanimous desire to repose on the shawls of the party.
At length it was time to start for the lower regions,
by a wood-road which led round the base of the cone to
the Chalet de Grantene. We have not space for describ
ing the triumphant jodeln of the friendly chalet men
there, or the congratulatory tremulousness of their
master's tail. Neither may we tell of the excitement
which all Arzier felt on the return of the mad people.
Perhaps, also, it is unnecessary to add, that for some
months none of the party could shew the slightest indi
cation of cough or cold, without calling forth maternal
groans over that night on the summit of the Jura.

30

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLD EN HORN'
Some of my readers may recollect that they were
carried up last September (1863) to see the sunrise from
a summit of the Jura range. They must now take a
higher and a wider flight, and, crossing many leagues
of land and water, deposit themselves for a while in the
picturesque valley of the Upper Ormont — Ormont
dessus. It would be well for them if they were really
in. that lovely spot. A comfortable rustic pension at
three and a half francs a day without wine, or another
at four francs which may be described as simply
luxurious, will set the main question at rest even for a
Briton who does not change with the sky. The cheaper
house is close to the Grand' Eau, whose rising and
falling with the waxing and waning power of the sun
on the glaciers close at hand may be watched from hour
to hour, sometimes from minute to minute. On the
tamer side of the valley, though such an epithet even
in comparison is strangely out of place, the world is
shut out by the lofty green and grey range over which
Chaussy and La Pare and Isenaux preside ; while the
opposite barrier is formed by the inexpressible grandeur
1 Cornhill Magazine, July 1864.

HOAV AVE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 31
of the amphitheatre which contains the Creux de Champ,
formed of perpendicular rocks down which the glaciers
creep wherever they find an exception to the prevailing
perpendicularity, and countless cascades, of every size
and shape wherein most beauty may be found, come
tumbling headlong with no such careful search. Once
in the Creux de Champ it might be supposed that its
precipices reach the skies ; but on emerging it is found
that nature has reared a higher trophy still, for clear
above all stretches up a steep and iceless mass of rock,
the queen of all that region — the Oldenhorn.
It was currently reported in the Upper Ormont
valley that two English ladies had ascended this moun
tain a year or two before, and on enquiry at the pension
it was found that a son of the house had been one of the
guides on that occasion. What had once been done by
two English ladies, two English ladies might do again,
and A. and M. had accordingly set their hearts upon
making the attempt as soon as G. joined them, for, as
in the previous year, that male person's holidays began
rather late. In the Pension Gottraux there was a some
what motley collection of guests, and among them a
remarkably pleasant family, whose oldest son was a
manly Swiss of sixteen or seventeen, with much of
botanical and other knowledge. Madame D'E. was
anxious that her son should prove a good mountaineer,
•and to the great satisfaction of the English trio she
proposed that he should accompany them to make trial
of his powers.

32 HOAV WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
It was about half-past three in the afternoon when
the party left the pension, the Oldenhorn overhead
gazing with defiant contempt upon the many adieux.
Never was an excursion commenced with such evil pro
mise. M. had privately confessed to A. a violent
headache, with intermittent dizziness, while A., in her
anxiety to cure a blister, had aggravated it to an all but
incapacitating extent ; D'E. had run the point of an
alpenstock into the top of his foot a day or two before,
and G. suffered silently spasmodic premonitories. And
never was such promise so belied ; for the result was
one great total of complete enjoyment.
The work for the evening was to be a four hours'
walk by the Col de Pillon, and up the left bank of the
Reuschbach to the Chdlets d'Audon, which were to be
reached between eight and nine o'clock and left at two
or three the next morning, some one having picked up
an idea that beds were to be procured in the straw in
one of the cluster of chalets. The Grand' Eau has two
main sources : the one from the Creux de Champ, con
sisting of the water which pours down from innumerable
points of the Sexrouge glacier, and also of large supplies
welling up from dozens of limpid sources in the level
meadows at the mountain foot ; the other sent forth by
the northern slope of the same glacier, and bursting
from the rocks in a clear arch for the last hundred feet
or two of its fall. This is the Bard, and up its course
their path lay until the fall was passed on the right
hand. There are few things more charming among

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 33
Alpine delights than to lie on a summer's day on the
richly flowered grass, beyond the farthest point to which
the spray of a glacier fall can fly, and watch the span of
the arch becoming broader with the growing power of
the sun upon the ice. As the forenoon minutes pass
swiftly on, the unbroken stream flies farther and farther
from the face of the rock, its volume sensibly increasing ;
trout might rise where in the morning all was dry
gravel, and by the time that hunger steps in to end
the romance, the whole scene has passed through in
numerable variations of beauty, each in its turn the
most beautiful. This evening, however, their minds
were intent upon other things ; the Dard might leap
and dance in its wild fall as madly as it chose, they had
no eyes for its grand and graceful fling : the thoughts of
to-morrow's labours and dangers sat visibly upon more
than one brow, and perhaps some fear of coming beds
intruded itself among loftier cares.
After a time a small stream was reached which
flowed eastwards, the Dard having passed away to the
west, and for the rest of the way the glacier falls
precipitated themselves into this stream, which carries
their waters into the Saane, and thence by the Aar and
the Rhine to the German Ocean. Thus of two falls from
the same glacier, within rifle-shot of each other, one
carries the debris of the Oldenhorn to puzzle the delicate
fish of the Mediterranean, and the other will float a
piece of Olden pine to be picked up on the silent sands
D

34 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
of Scarborough. ' Even this phenomenon did not engage
their attention long, for now Alexandre, our guide,
suddenly left the beaten track which would have led to
La Reusch and Gsteig (Chatelet), and, crossing the
stream, plunged into a steep and pathless pine forest.
At the upper end of this he expected to strike a path
skirting the foot of the precipices on the right, by which
means ' a good half-hour ' could be saved. But short
cuts are bad roads. After a mile or two of very hard
work, each difficult step rewarded, it is true, by some
fresh majesty in the surrounding trees, the party was
brought to a sudden stop by a scene of such chaotic
confusion as defies description by pen or pencil.
' Behold a true eboulement ! ' was all that Gottraux
could say, referring to the eboulement of the Diablerets
which was to be the next course attempted by the three
English. And indeed that was exactly what it was :
a vast mountain of rock had fallen, leaving a deep
chasm from top to bottom of the precipice overhead,
and sweeping down in its course a broad belt of forest,
and alas ! the very path for which the travellers had
been making. It seemed at the first glance impossible
to cross the track of the rock avalanche ; but in the
Alps, as in other parts of the world, impossibilities are
1 Murray did not allow this. In his ' Clue Map of Switzerland '
(9th edition, 1861), he made the Saane flow on contentedly till it
had passed Freiburg, and almost reached the battlefield of Laupen,
when some evil impulse turned it southward, to be finally lost in the
Schwarze See ; whereas the local belief is, that it flows past Laupen
and falls into the Aar some fifteen miles below Berne.

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 35
wont to melt before determination and care, and in no
long time the path was struck on the opposite side, at
the point where its continuity had met with so sudden
a solution. But the word ' path ' is a misnomer, if it
conveys any such idea as it might do on a Scotch or
English hillside : it was a thing of faith rather than of
sight ; and to ' miss the path ' amounted to a shallow
euphemism for breaking one's neck. Unfortunately
the latter was the form in which the affair presented
itself to A.'s mind, and accordingly she did not display
too much alacrity when the path came periodically to
more complete disappearances at the critical points.
Gottraux confessed the next day that he had brought
them by this path in order to test their powers of head
and legs, and that at one peculiarly awkward place he
had turned to D'E. and whispered that the great
demoiselle could not manage the Oldenhorn. He had
not taken national character into his calculations,
however, and A. nobly proved him wrong when it came
to the point.
As considerable time had been lost in one way or
other, they now made what haste they could, stopping,
however, to admire to the full the grand loveliness of
the broken falls of the Reusch. Before very long they
had ascended by a series of zigzags, with a constant lift
as severe as the Lantern Tower of York Minster, to the
top of the precipitous rocks, when they found themselves
on the edge of a small and almost level pasturage — the
Olden Alp, down the middleof which the Reusch cut its
D 2

36 HOW AVE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
noisy way with the puerile waste of power of one whose
first important plunge has not been made. The
pleasant grass was dotted thickly with cows and goats,
and the large cluster of chalets lay agreeably near, the
whole hemmed in on the east by the harsh and naked
mass of the Sanetschhorn, too grand to be grotesque,
yet bordering closely on the fanciful in some of its forms,
and on the west by the suspended precipices round
whose other side their way had lain. At the farther
end, as there was still light enough to perceive, were
massed the snows at the base of the Oldenhorn, the
inhospitable steepness of the peak itself affording them
no long resting-place on its sides. Above the snow, and
more to the left, the edge of the Sanfleuron glacier
(patois Tzanjleuron) frowned seemingly close at hand,
and brought home to their hearts, not without an
accompanying impulse of chill awe, the fact that they
were approximating at this late hour of the night to the
regions of perpetual ice and snow.
At last the right chalet was reached, and they
entered without much ceremony. There were human
beings within, for grunts plusquam-porcine issued from
the darkness, and as Gottraux's tongue was only French
and the party had now passed from Vaud to Berne,
D'E. enquired in his worst German whether beds were
to be had there. The inmates evidently did not under
stand him, nor he their rejoinder ; but the others were
hungry and tired, and so took a hopeful view of the
matter, and boldly interpreted the sounds to mean yes

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 37
and a welcome. Then something shuffled along the
floor and began to blow, and in a few seconds the
smouldering embers produced a blaze, and a motionless
figure in an apology for a gown was seen holding a piece
of unlighted candle, promptly put to its natural use by
the new-comers. Knapsacks were taken off, a board
was propped up to form a table, bread and wurst and
tea and coffee were unpacked, and at last the landlady
was galvanised into exposing a three-legged pan of
water to the now handsome blaze, and producing a
vessel of cream two feet high, from which they baled
for themselves full basins until all were for the present
appeased. The fire was in the middle of the earthen
floor, kept within moderate bounds by three stone walls
about the height of the cream-jug, on which dusky
human figures began to make their appearance, creep
ing out from different corners and sitting in lumps
on the walls to enjoy the new warmth. Fortunately
the housewife was a very superior woman, who compre-
•hended that when a thing was asked for she must get
it if she had it. One of the men, too, was good for an
answer, or at least a responsive motion, about twice
out of three times ; so that what with signs and what
with broken German words, all things necessary were
procured, with the sole and strange exception of butter,
for converting what had been brought into a most
promising meal.
Suddenly, however, as they were on the point of
sitting down to enjoy it, a rush of many feet was heard

38 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
outside the chalet, the door flew open, and with screams
and yells a dirtier half-dozen precipitated themselves
through the opening, and banged the door behind them.
The first impulse of one at least of the invaded party
was to open in his pocket a large knife carried for
feeding purposes ; but before he could do so, and before
A. and M. had time or breath to scream, the intruders
ranged themselves against the wall on either side of the
door, and relapsed into total inanimateness. At the
same time a rapid succession of angry roars, ac
companied by sounds which shewed that some horned
beast was charging the chalet walls — choosing, let us
hope, the soft places — explained the irruption of men.
The woman muttered something of which the word Stier
formed a part, and pointed to a dark corner whence the
men drew each a long pole. Then, sallying forth as if
moved by very deliberate clock-work, they belaboured
the unfortunate bull until he took himself off. c He is
diabolical when strangers come,' she was understood to
explain, ' and the very Teufel if they are women.'
Tea was a delightful success, notwithstanding a
practical difficulty which arose from the obstinacy of a
rickety old bench. That piece. of furniture was equal to
standing safely by itself, and did not quite fall when
one person sat at each end and one in the middle, but
under no other condition was equilibrium possible.
This was only learned by the experience of two
catastrophes, when the rising of one of the party was
followed by the subsidence of the other two amid

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 39
avalanches of plates and cups and food. After this it
was enacted that no one must get up without giving
due warning. When tea was finished, the subject of
beds came naturally into prominence, and D'E. asked
the woman to shew the way to the expected straw.
She shook, or rather swung, her head in a hopelessly
puzzled way, but at length, on constant' reiteration of
the word Stroh in connection with bed, she seemed to
understand what was wanted, and opening a sort of
door in the side of the place where they had fed, went
through with the candle and pointed into the half-
victorious darkness. She was not the only one of
the group to point ! This, then, at length, was the
meaning of Stroh : — the darkest, dirtiest little cupboard,
four feet high, resting on the ground, with two beds
berthwise in its height stuffed with squalid patchwork,
the whole propped against the wall, and used as a table.
The face of the upper layer of reclining humanity would
be within an inch or two of the under-side of the table,
a favourable position, doubtless, for speculating upon
the materials that might be thrown onto it during
occupancy, while the lower layer could enjoy the tattoo
of a drowsy cowherd, sitting on the table and making
music with his pendant iron heels. A. said, ' Never ! '
and M. said, ' Never ! ' and the party fled.
It now struck G. that, as corn is not grown in great
quantities at glacier altitudes, dried grass might convey
more meaning than Stroh to their hostess's mind, and
accordingly he put his idea into such words as his

40 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
ignorance suggested, and also made imaginary hay.
Now, at length, they were on the right track ; sleeping
on hay was clearly a routine affair, whereas Stroh was
an unknown bed. This time she led the way with
alacrity through a hole in the opposite wall, and ushered
the sleep-desiring five — for Gottraux accompanied them
with a lighted lantern he had picked up in detachments
— into the stable where the cows were milked, empty
now of all but one sick heifer. About eight feet from
the ground a large shelf, decked with abundant cobweb,
stood out from the wall, with a ladder leading up to it :
placing the candle so that the hay on the shelf might
be seen, the woman pointed silently to the primitive
staircase, and departed.
They looked at the shelf, and they looked at each
other. A. was seen to shrink into smaller compass as
the involuntary hand drew in her draperies, while a
blank grey look came over her face, such as was wont
to appear there when impossibilities presented them
selves for performance. Gottraux was the first to move :
he had borrowed a dried calfskin from one of the men,
and with this clutched about him, and a fiery handker
chief tied round his bushy black head aud swarthy face,
he mounted the ladder and flung himself down in an
uncouth heap at one end of the shelf. D'E. ascended
next ; then G. was ordered up ; and M. led jauntily the
feminine division. A. being tall, five or six steps of the
ladder brought her face to a level with the shelf, and
there it remained for some time significantly expressing

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 41
unwillingness to proceed ; for Gottraux was now sitting
up on end, and with his calfskin, hair outwards, and red
head-dress, and the pattern of the lantern-side projected
on his face, he made that part of the shelf look the
reverse of tempting ; while in its way A.'s own end
contrived to look equally uninviting. However, it must
be done, and at length she crept up and subsided with
a protesting shudder. But Gottraux was not satisfied.
He called attention to some foreign substance, which
cropped up here and there at the female end, and bade
them extract it from the hay; when to every one's
surprise it proved to be an opportune duvet, with which
A. and M. at once gladly covered themselves.
The order of arrangement was this : the five lay
parallel, Gottraux at the extreme right, and at a small
interval D'E., with G. near him; then after a con
siderable gap came M., flanked by A. The lantern was
put out, though not without dissentient votes, and then
it was found that to those who were so inclined, the
holes in the roof presented favourable opportunities for
observing the transit of the stars. But little was done
in that way, for the business of the night soon com
menced in real earnest : it may be summed up in one
word — fleas. If a supplementary word be required, it
is forthcoming ; it is — snores. The former will convey
a depth of meaning to many a troubled mind ; but it is
probable that the full force of the latter was never so
completely felt as on this occasion ; for, considering all
the circumstances, there was something so uniquely

42 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
horrible in Alexandre Gottraux's snore, that its victims
doubt the possibility of a successful rival performance.
It was two distinct snores, the ascending and the
descending, each frightfully complicated and subject to
astonishing maxima in its execution, maxima being the
opposite of lulls. Sometimes the ascent was a loud and
jubilant trumpeting, ringing out clearly through the
cold night air, and then again it was subtle music of
more dirge- like type ; the descent was a deep prolonged
groan, which shook the rafters of the building, and
cruelly wrung the English nerves. Only the English
nerves, for fortunate D'E. was so fast asleep that even
an injustice to which he was subjected by G. failed to
rouse him. Ideas of space and position become
shockingly confused under such circumstances as the
present, and perhaps G.'s bodily torments did not
allow much calculation on his part. At any rate, he
conceived the idea that the snores proceeded from D'E.'s
averted head, and consequently admonished him with
gentle heel in the hope of mitigating the nuisance.
This having no effect, he became enraged and struck
out with his left elbow, taking poor D'E. in the short
ribs : D'E. flinched palpably, but the snore — at that
moment in the full swing of a triumphant ascent — went
serenely on, without the gasp which is usually observed
to follow an aggressive measure of this description ;
from which G. understood that he had make a mistake.
Another disturbing element most unexpectedly ap
peared, in the shape of loud idiotic explosions of

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 43
laughter, which broke at intervals from various members
of the chalet family ; not choruses, but solitary roars, as
each one realised some unwonted scene of the evening.
It was consoling to humanity to know that there was so
much of life in these fellow-creatures, but the noise was
a most aggravating anti-soporific.
About one o'clock things became a little better ;
each member of the family in the next compartment had
laughed ; the fleas had exhausted their powers ; the
snoring had become a normal condition of existence : it
seemed almost possible to sleep. But it was not to be.
The heifer below had so far been quiet ; it now began
to dance, and mountain heifers sound or sick wear
bells. For a few minutes this was writhingly endured ;
then one after another started up, and declared it was
time for breakfast. Gottraux and D'E. were maltreated
into waking, a match was struck while they were still
in the hay, and the party descended.
Breakfast did not occupy much time, for no one was
inclined to eat anything, though large demands were
made upon the pitchers in which tea and coffee had
been brewed. All were in a state of half-feverish im
patience to be out and off, and about half-past two the
start was made, under the guidance of a glittering frosty
moon which seemed to give a new character to every
thing on which its rays fell. The moon is in the way
of doing this, reaching further than the surface and
planting a spark of ghostly life in the heart of inanimate
things. The English members of the party were by this

44 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
time familiar enough with the appearance of a glacier,
but seen by moonlight the blue dip of the Sanfleuron
was something entirely new to them. It was a living
thing, possessed of divers orders of spiritual existence,
and they walked along in silent awe, as in the confessed
presence of these.
Half an hour of this, a sharp look-out being kept by
Gottraux for the diabolic bull, brought them to some
thing more practical in the shape of the first snow,
forming a bridge over the infant Reusch — strictly infant
now, for its sources were bound up by a biting frost,
and its voice had ceased for the time. The snow was
smooth and level and delightfully crisp, and the fresh
crystals, one taken up after another in ceaseless succes
sion by the swiftly moving eye, seemed to dance exult-
ingly in the presence of unwonted admirers. Day soon
began to break, marking its appearance in their imme
diate neighbourhood by a change rather in the character
than in the amount of light. But on the proud crests
of the surrounding precipices an imperceptible warmth
of colour was suggested, to the mental rather than as yet
to the bodily eye, which spoke of some influence more
impassioned than the convent coldness of the virgin
wanderer of the skies. After a time, D'E. startled the
party by announcing that he had two shadows ; and
when they all stood in a row to mark the curious phe
nomenon, the effect of the ten shade-pictures was very
strange. If Peter Schlemil had been there, he might
have come to some more satisfactory arrangement ; but

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 45
he must have made haste, for the conquering sun
banished the left-hand shadows before many yards more
of snow had been traversed.
But now the snow was no longer level; smooth
still, for it lay on a sheet of ice, but very steep. Gottraux
cut foot-holes athwart the slope, and by this means the
highest point of snow was reached, at the foot of the
precipices on which it had been unable to lodge. These
were now to be skirted eastward until they should
assume an assailable character, and the skirting process
was no pleasant one. There was not a level inch for the
foot to rest upon, the steep slope commencing from the
solid perpendicular rock. Moreover, the snow reached
within four or five inches of the foot of the precipices,
and that extent of sloping shale was accordingly the only
available path; while here and there the snow encroached,
not soft and deep, but frozen into thin ice of most
persuasive slipperiness, as the edges of such snow-fields
usually are. It might be nothing to a practised moun
taineer, but it was very trying for beginners, inasmuch
as the slightest slip must have led to a long glissade
down a slope of forty or fifty degrees, with ragged
boulders below stretching up inhospitable arms to receive
the prey.
At length Gottraux came to a stand, and announced
that they must now go up the rock on the right. It
certainly was lower than it had so far been, and the
surface was more broken ; but still it looked alarmingly
like a ruinous house side, and even Gottraux's goat-like

46 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
ascent failed to inspire confidence into the dismayed
adventurers. It was mere ignorance on their part, and
before the day was half over they had learned to look
upon such things as a matter of course, and had risen
to the requirements of the situation ; but they shuddered
now — and the chair seems to sink through the floor as
the scene returns — when the eye wandered disobediently
to the slope of snow, and suggested the only possible
result of a fall. This was the first of many like difficul
ties, for they had reached that part of the mountain which
Mr. Hinchliff has graphically likened to a giant staircase
with sloping steps ; the edges, too, of the steps were
frittered away, and the loose shale lurked treacherously,
at the steepest points, like some ruined stair at the foot
of which our explorations of an abbey or a castle are
brought to an end. Every angular point of the body
must serve for a hand or a crimponed foot ; the elbows
must know how to cling grimly, and the knees, and on
occasion the very nose, must be ready to save a slip of
half an inch from becoming a fatal fall. And thus they
crept slowly up, Gottraux approving himself a perfect
lady's guide, always cheerful, and taking a pleasure in
making their difficult work less hard ; encouraging them
up the possible places, and dragging them up the im
possible with the handle of his axe ; they all the while
feeling like infinitesimal units clinging to nothing, and
oppressed by the conviction which hangs about the face
of a precipice, that the slightest puff of wind must blow
them off. But there was a grandeur of penetration in

HOW AVE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 47
the absolute beauty of each vocal peak and mountain-
top, which crushed scornfully through such human
weaknesses as fear half undiscovered and incipient
fatigue, and made its way irresistibly to those recesses
of the heart where dwells the nearest approach to the
appreciation of more than mortal loveliness.
In course of time they came to the true level of the
Sanfleuron glacier, and some of the party were anxious
to make a digression onto its smooth and tempting
surface, which extended without an apparent break for
leagues and leagues towards the east, and south, and
west. But some roughish country lay between their
present position and the nearest edge of the glacier ; so
the more prudent heads decided that it was best to get
to the top of the Oldenhorn first, and take the San
fleuron on their way down, if they had not found out
by that time that merely up and down the mountain
would be quite sufficient for their powers.
Their work now lay before them ; for the Oldenhorn
rises in a sheer precipice from the west side of the glacier,
and the ridge up whose edge their way must lie sprang
from the spot where they stood, and lay extended as it
were up the mountain's side like the contorted back of
some huge antediluvian. Along this they toiled, a mark
for the blazing sun, until the base of the final cone was
reached. Its only accessible side was a mass of loose
shaly stones, moving down bodily when a step was
made in advance, and carrying the climber back
through half the length of his stride. Here Gottraux

48 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
made a determined stand on a narrow ledge, which
afforded no room for sitting down, but had the advan
tage of an agreeable back to lean against, and com
manded an uninterrupted view of the vast Sanfleuron
far below, from its very edge at the foot of the precipice
on whose face they stood. They must get some force,
their careful guide told them, before the last struggle,
having observed, perhaps, some indications of giving
way. So the bottles were brought out, and they pro
ceeded to get what force they could from crude red wine.
None of the four will ever forget that ledge of rock ;
for there, for the first time, they saw in its full beauty
the suggestive elegance of the chamois. Even that
cabined creature which feeds on the sugar and bread
of charity at the Giessbach Falls is a perfect incarna
tion of all that is sprightly and soft; and the mere
offer of a piece of Gemse at a table d'hote stirs up a sort
of appetising romance. To the more experienced, it
suggests the suspicion before tasting that some kid has
died to furnish the luxury ; while after trial made the
kid too often becomes an old goat, and suspicion becomes
certainty. But in its wild state the chamois is irresis
tible, and the glasses were never out of use, watching his
graceful course as he traversed daintily the glacier
below, or stopped with head erect seeking intently and
painfully the origin of Gottraux's alarming whistle.
G. had directed the guide to procure a rifle the day
before ; but unfortunately that was the day of the tir
at Aigle, and not a rifle or a powder-horn was to be

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 49
found in all the valley. It made no difference to
the chamois one way or the other, for he was quite safe
in G.'s hands ; but in descending they came close upon
three more, penned up in so narrow a cleft of the rock
that it would have been very difficult for even him to
miss them all.
When the chamois had disappeared it was time to
start again, and up the shifting shale they ploughed
stiffly and somewhat wearily. Did any one ever reach
the top of a mountain, or any other great object of
desire, without coming upon it at last unexpectedly ?
It is always a surprise in the last few yards or the last
few seconds as the case may be ; and so it was now.
Hitherto they had seen on the right hand the smiling
valleys of Vaud, and on the left, many glimpses of the
world-renowned giants which lie between the lake of
Thun and Monte Rosa ; but the ponderous mass of the
Oldenhorn itself had shut out all the south-west view.
No words can express their amazement and delight
when this seemed suddenly to melt away with the last
three steps, and they found nothing but the telescopic
atmosphere on any side. It would be tedious and im
possible to tell what old and new friends flashed out
from every point of the perfect horizon : a negative list
would be much more simple, for the peaks that cannot
be seen from that vantage-ground of 10,290 feet are
very few. On their way to the summit, the Combin
had been the easternmost of the mountains visible on
the left hand, and had stood out with such massive E

50 HOW AVE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
prominence that they had believed for a time that in it
they saw Mont Blanc. A different stand-point so
entirely changes the character of a mountain, that
their familiar knowledge of Mont Blanc from another
side was held to be no rule for their present position.
But now they were indeed undeceived, when the veri
table giant stood revealed in all that calm bewildering
grandeur which its closer converse with the heavens
has won. There is always a something about this
mountain which appeals to a subjective magnifier in
the heart, and the higher the observer rises the greater
the magnifying power; that is to say, the mountain
looks disproportionately high as compared with other
mountains. This is usually attributed to the compara
tive solitariness of the whole position ; but constant
familiarity with the soaring outline seems to put a
deeper meaning into it than this. At any rate, even
Monte Rosa, never a very striking mountain from the
distant north, is dwarfed into a thoroughly secondary
place for spectators from the Oldenhorn, in the presence
of its great rival.
There was not a cloud in the whole sky, so long as
the back was turned on eastern France ; but over that
country the white clouds lay fleecily, their upper side
presenting the appearance of a large army under
canvas, thousands of tent-like cones rising up skyward
and clearly seen from above. Over no other point of
the vast field of view was there any barrier between
earth and heaven. The mountains, clothed from base

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 51
to summit in glacial dress, looked like some white-clad
early Christian crowd at baptismal Easter-tide, raising
the clasped hands of prayer and adoration ; with here
and there one springing up into the eager attitude of
praise, and seeking with aspiring palms enveloped in
the bright garments of the new birth, to grasp the
incomprehensible, to attain to the infinite. And the
answering rays came down with abiding softness, and
played as it were lovingly around the adoring head and
on the hands of prayer ; and they sweetly lighted up
the ascribing palms with divine phosphorescence. And
the spotless virgin in pure Cistercian garb of jewelled
ice and snow, at whose voice when raised in wrath the
Wengern Alp is seen to tremble, and the rugged Car
melite at her side from beneath his concealing cowl,
renewed evermore their worship and their vows ; and
the ministering Engel-horner softly lurked behind.
And nature unisonant seemed to sing Te Beum ; and
antiphonal harmonies replied, for Jacob's dream was
there. But yet from all this loveliness the eye
wandered continually to the lovely Sanfleuron. A
thousand feet below, it lay ; the fair bodily form of the
spirit of peace and repose, hymning heavenward a silent
lullaby which soothed the weary climbers as it passed.
However, frail mortality has other senses than that
of sight, and a certain unromantic member of its
animal economy is possessed of a voice, and of power
to make it heard. A lady, in writing of such a situa
tion as the present, has spoken of the rich sweet thank-
E 2

52 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
fulness in being able to enjoy, which fills the eyes with
happy tears ; but the males at least of the party omitted
that ceremony, and proceeded instead to the enjoyment
of a well-seasoned wurst. There was barely room for
the five to sit, and on all sides except the shaly approach
the precipices fell sheer down ; nevertheless, they made
a perfect dinner, body and soul enjoying an inimitable
repast. One creature comfort the former found very
unexpectedly, the keenness of the night's frost having
caught a small patch of snow before it had time to slip
off, and pinned it there for icing the half-churned wine.
When the meal was finished, they opened the cache
and drew out the collection of wooden labels on which
the names of all their predecessors were carved or
written. A. and M. sought eagerly for the two
English ladies of whom they had so often heard, and
at length found them, one bearing a ducal surname,
with a Christian name now honoured by royalty.
Some of the ascents dated as far back as the beginning
of the century, and there were names among them that
the world has heard ; but, to A. and M.'s great delight,
no woman's name appeared except on the one label.
G. at once set to work to carve a memorial on a piece
of wood brought up for the purpose, and when it was
finished they all agreed that it was more complete than
anything the Oldenhorn had so far possessed. By this
time Gottraux was fast asleep, and as they kept an eye
upon him lest he should roll off, it was seen that he
was going through some lively adventure. D'E. was

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 53
in the act of remarking that the dreams should be very
romantic on such a couch, when he suddenly awoke,
and parodied the romance by exclaiming in the husky
voice of returning consciousness, ' Le matelas est Ken
dur, Monsieur B'Espine ! ' When asked to give an
account of his dreams, he said that he had been beat
ing an engineer for declaring that the road from Gsteig
into the Ormonts, over the Col de Pillon, could not be
made. This road had long been hoped for by the in
habitants of the valley, and curiously enough the
engineer was at this moment prospecting on the Col,
and he told the party in the evening that he had
watched them through his glass as they rested on the
summit of the Oldenhorn.
After two hours and a half had passed away, with
that ruthless rapidity which marks the march of moments
of delight, they sorrowfully determined that it was time
to start. They gazed on the charms they now must
leave, with the long, lingering look with which it is
supposed that in an earlier stage of civilisation a lover
was wont to part from his mistress. Nor was the
mistress in this case at least unresponsive ; for when
the heart yearns to some snow-clad mountain, and
cries aloud with the silent eloquence of the eye to its
valleys and crags, each atom of the mountain has its
voiceless answer ready, and gives it with abundant
sympathy. But at length they forced themselves to
rise, and once on their feet were soon equipped. The
descent of the highest cone was a very simple matter,

54 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
for it was only necessary to plant themselves every now
and then afresh, and the moving shale carried them
down without any effort beyond that by which equili
brium was maintained. This effort D'E. fancied that
A. found it difficult to make, so he went to her assist
ance, and the two came sliding down hand in hand,
preceded by a rattling avalanche of stones. The others
of the party had reached the bottom of the cone, M.
going a tremendous pace with the support of Gottraux's
hand, which reassured the dizziness she still felt, and on
looking back up the slope they were considerably struck
by the picturesque appearance presented by A. and D'E.
From head to foot A. was clothed in dove-coloured grey,
save where a brown hat and corresponding ribs of colour
at the other extremity broke the Quaker-like monotony.
D'E., on the contrary, rejoiced in white trousers and a
flaming red shirt and a white straw hat, with a new
botanical tin of the brightest possible green. Both of
them were tall and slight, and in the course of their
mutual efforts to save each other from falling their
hands had been gradually raised up high between them,
and they looked like those ornamental dancers who
perform on china mugs and gaudy tea-trays.
There was another reason for M.'s greater speed,
which partook of the nature of a feminine mystery and
was only explained later. Both A. and M. were care
fully looped up, but the sharp-pointed rocks which
cropped up here and there knew how to catch the
festoons and hold them impaled. M.'s was an elderly

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 55
gown, and with a finished grace it always gave way on
these occasions and offered no resistance to the rocks ;
but A. was more stiffly clad, and her festoons struggled
with their captors, while polite D'E. was always ready
to stop and assist in their release. So that although
M. reached the foot of the cone long before A., she
reached it more or less in ribbons, whereas A.'s more
stately paces were encompassed to the end by untattered
habiliments. At length the level of the Sanfleuron was once
more reached, and as they all felt perfectly fresh a
digression was made onto the glacier : their enjoyment
of it may be gathered from a remark made in stepping
from it to the rocks again, ' I could have walked there
for ever.' The popular idea of a glacier gives it a sur
face like water frozen as it chops and churns in some
narrow sea, and the cockney glaciers of Grindelwald
confirm and generalise the impression; but a more
smooth and level plain than the Sanfleuron cannot well
be imagined, excepting in the Sanetsch corner, where
crevasses prevail to an alarming extent.
If the glacier had looked beyond expression lovely
from the height of the Oldenhorn, the mountain in its
turn looked beyond expression grand from the surface
of the glacier. The whole sea of ice was hemmed in
by masses of rock of most striking character, but none
rose, with such glorious abruptness as that which had
now been made a friend for life. The melancholy
remnants of the three fallen Diablerets stood out with

56 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
an air which told a part of their story, a story told in
fall detail by the chaos in which the Lac Derborence
has found a home ; while the two that are yet to fall
reared themselves to the skies with a full measure of
preparatory pride. It had been the ambition of A.
and M. to ascend these, and there is certainly a strange
fascination in the idea of standing on the summit of a
mountain ten thousand feet high, whose companions lie
in shattered heaps in the valleys below, confidently ex
pecting the fall of the remnant that is still left standing.
But the ascent to the bird's-eye view of the eboulement
involves a long cheminie, and A. and M. did not care
to have their clothes torn off their backs ; while the real
ascent of the Diablerets was said on that side of the
mountain to present ' glacial difficulties through which
no local guide would undertake a lady ; so that on the
whole they were prudently satisfied with the graceful
and more possible summit of the Oldenhorn.
The glacier only escapes beyond its rocky margin
at two points : the one between the Oldenhorn and the
Diablerets, where its overflow forms the Sexrouge, a
glacier which some weeks before had hurled down huge
masses of ice upon A. and M. — those rash adventurers
having climbed up to its lowest point in a dense mist —
but had hurled them with so merciful a discretion that
only one small piece took effect; the other outlet between
the Oldenhorn and the Sanetsch, down which gap .they
1 The ascent from the side of Anzeindaz, including the cheminee
or pas de lustre, became very familiar to them in later years.

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 57
were now to endeavour to make their way to the chalets
d'Audon. They had determined that the route by
which they had ascended to the level of the glacier was
impracticable for the descent, when the whole giddy
height and the steep slopes of ice and snow would lie
before their eyes, demonstratively visible at every step
they took.
They certainly did eventually get down, but to this
day one or two of them scarcely know how. Gottraux,
in his anxiety to prove the way easy — for he had quite
come in to the view he had at first opposed — went down
thirty or forty yards of the ice slope like lightning, thus
tempting D'E. also to try a glissade. Poor D'E., how
ever, got under way before he was ready for a start,
and he shot down shapeless, providentially taking a line
which brought him within reach of Gottraux's powerful
arm. Had that chance of safety failed, the inevitable
boulders were ready for him below ; but as it was he
merely lost a little skin and his eau de cerise. Gottraux
then came back, and piloted M. down in safety, G.
undertaking A. and bringing her also down after
various little accidents. She was sometimes not very
sure-footed, and at the steeper points his only plan was
to fix his alpenstock firmly in the ice a little in advance,
and against this to place his foot ; then A., holding his
left hand, was to let herself glide gently down till she
rested on the upper side of this foot, when she could
get a good hold with her own alpenstock, and then the
slow process could be repeated. But she did not

58 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN
always hit the foot in sliding down, and on such
occasions her feet of course slipped from under her, and
with a wild shriek of ' Oh, George ! ' she flung her left
arm blindly round his neck, and the two rolled chaoti
cally down till one or other caught at something. One
of these rolls was alarmingly long, for A. missed her
accustomed clutch of G.'s shoulder, and brought her
left hand, still tightly grasping her alpenstock, heavily
upon his unfortunate nose, so that he commenced the
roll in a half-stunned state. M. and Gottraux were
not without their tumbles too, but the others were far
too much occupied to take any notice of them.
At the foot of the glacier they spent a long time in
collecting the lovely flowers which have chosen that
inclement region for their habitation ; one, the fairest
of them all, la frSld soldanelle, with its delicate lilac
fringes, bursting through the hard crusted edges
formed by the frozen meltings of the snow and ice.
Each of the five contrived to find a better specimen
than the others of the happily named velvet pied de
lion, so prettily introduced in a German tale of con
jugal happiness restored : the arabette, with leaves like
those of the plants which lower latitudes call ice-plants,
seemed to fill its proper place at the edge of the San
fleuron; while various ranunculaceas, the small red
glacial ranunculus, the white clusters of the anemone
a, fleurs de narcisse, and the large white Alpine
anemone, rewarded their enthusiastic search. Then
the chalets d'Audon were at length reached, the only

HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 59
disappointment having been that not one of the mar
mots which abound in that valley had made itself
visible. Gottraux had no object now in trying the
heads and legs of the party, so the path which had
suffered from the eboulement was prudently avoided,
and the better and more beautiful route by the course
of the Reusch was chosen. They were met by Madame
D'E. with a party, in great anxiety for her son's safety,
four hours from home, and regaled by her with a ban
quet of cream in a chalet ; the two parties then united,
and reached the pension, with flags improvised and few
or no signs of fatigue, at seven o'clock in the evening,
the five having thus made a hard day of seventeen
hours after a harder night of three. But even then,
and much more now, they could think only of the
delights of the day, for all its hardships were pleasures
and its dangers triumphs ; and of the night it may be
said, that in the course of time they have come to look
upon it as a most amusing experience.

60

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC1
The ascent of Mont Blanc is usually called a very
cockney affair. Moreover, it has been talked about,
and written about, and lectured about, till one might
suppose that every part of the mountain, from the
Hotel in Chamonix to the summit of the Calotte, was
as well known to the British public as the hills which
stand about London. But one member, at least, of the
British public had always found it impossible to make
out, from any of the numerous histories of ascents,
what there really was of difficulty, and what of danger,
in reaching the highest point of Europe ; and with the
view of satisfying himself on this question he determined
upon trying to accomplish the task. The training
gone through in preparation for the struggle amounted
to two days on a sofa in Geneva, with threatenings of
bilious fever, and incessant attention to a leg which
medical skill said might be patched up sufficiently for
ordinary walking ; these being the results of many hot,
fatiguing days among the lower mountains, and cor
responding nights of unsuccessful skirmishing with the
population of Continental beds.
1 Cornhill Magazine, June 1865.

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 61
Call this ill-trained person, unfit for glaciers, G.,
and his companion,1 a young fellow of seventeen, who
had spent a fortnight in creditable ice excursions, H.
The guide was a Zermatt man, whom they had taken
with them to Chamonix, and when P. P. are given as
his initials, any connoisseur of high mountains will
know that a better guide could not have been found.2
As a cheerful practical proof of the absence of danger
in the ascent, there arrived simultaneously at Chamonix
the complete leg and foot of one of the party lost in
1820, which had been found that afternoon on the
Glacier des Boissons, and was exhibited to the new
arrivals before burial.
It had been intended to take one porter from
Chamonix as far as the sleeping-place on the Grands
Mulets, to carry the necessary provisions, and another
to accompany the party to the summit as under-guide.
But when they applied at the bureau for a porter, the
chef-guide proved to G. with much politeness, from the
printed regulations, that it was impossible to attempt
the ascent without one guide and one porter for each
monsieur The reglement declares that this number is
necessary for courses dangereuses. G. claimed exemp
tion on the ground that, as no one could call the Mont
Blanc a dangerous course, the rule must have been
made for the Breven or the Mauvais Pas. But when
politeness and reason have failed with a Frenchman,
1 Captain Gaskell, late 9th Lancers.
2 This was Peter Perm.

62 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
chaff is scarcely likely to succeed, and the chef merely
bowed stiffly, and remarked that if monsieur would
pardon him, the Mont Blanc was the most dangerous of
the many courses dangereuses of the reglement, and he
could not possibly supply less than three men to assist
P.P. P. P. being a Swiss, and therefore impatient of
interference with the liberty of mankind, agreed with
the Herrs that under no circumstances would they
submit, after he had vainly suggested that as one of the
members of the Alpine Club had the same name as G.,
the difficulty might be evaded, for members of that Club
can take what number of guides they choose. When
he had listened to a homily on the immorality of his
suggestion, he made off into the village, and by good
fortune found a Courmayeur man, who was on the point
of returning home. This man was of course not bound
by the laws of the place respecting guides and porters
for Mont Blanc, and he agreed to make a fourth to the
summit, and to carry his share of food and night-
clothing to the Grands Mulets. But the chef-guide
heard of the arrangement in some roundabout way, and
illegally captured and incarcerated the Courmayeur
man, and so reduced the party to their elements again.
Fortune did not therefore cease to smile upon their
efforts ; for P. P. discovered a master-shoemaker, who
was anxious to make the ascent, and would be only too
glad to accompany the party pour son plaisir, and carry
half the things. Of course he was to be paid something,

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC

63

privately, but for all public purposes he was a gentle
man at large, and the chef-guide dared not meddle with
him. And thus they were at length complete, one
guide, two Herrs, and one master-shoemaker.
The amount of food to be carried may be imagined
from the following copy of the bill : —

Peovisions: Mont Blanc

Pr.

Ct.

Pr.

ct.

The

. 5

0

Brought forward

43

50

Cafe .

5

0

Fromage

2

0

Sucre .

3

0

Pruneaux

3

0

Viande de boeuf

5

0

5 bile. Cognac

4

50

Jambon

. 6

0

1 flacon Cognac .

4

0

1 roti de veau

6

0

7 biles, vin ord. .

7

0

2 gros poulets

. 10

0

1 bougie et 1 chandelle

1

50

Sel et poivre

. 0

50

Verres perdus

2

0

12 ceufs

. 3

0

Gros et pt. pain .

3

0

Carried forward

43

50

70

50

Ferdinand Eisenkraemer, of the Hotel Royal, possesses,
for three months in the year, a secretary, who manages
all these matters. The guide of the party meditating
an ascent goes to the bureau of this gentleman, and
orders provisions for Mont Blanc for so many persons,
and the secretary puts up what he thinks proper. It is
evident, also, that he charges what he thinks proper.
The present secretary is a schoolmaster, whose pupils
are handed over to his wife for the Chamonix season ;
let us hope that she inculcates those lessons of modera
tion and honesty which her husband is meanwhile
putting in practice. He is a man of friendly manner,

64 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
and of much imagination, which last has developed
itself in a new table of capacities, a propos to his
arithmetical work with his pupils in the dull season.
Two Swiss, he says in his heart, one Frank; four
Franks, one Boule. He therefore loves the English
much, as a people of stomach and of purse, — nay, he
not only loves, he worships the golden image. He
believes, or professes to believe, that they can eat any
amount of food when they make a course, and pay any
amount of money for it when they return. The fervour
with which he squeezes an English hand is but a faint
shadowing forth of the operation he performs upon the
purse. And yet there are immense charms in the
Hotel Royal at Chamonix, in the excellence and negligee
of its table-d'hote, the comfort of its beds, the picturesque
undulations of its billiard-table, and the sublime glories
of its mountain views.
The shoemaker was not promising, as far as per
sonal appearance went. He was sickly and small, and
had a large white nose, through which he snuffled
when he was in pluck, and whined when he wasn't.
His name, he said, was Friedrich Zimmerman, of Thun;
on which G. informed him that, as a testimony to his
pluck in thus attempting the ascent, he should be
called, not Zimmerman, but Immer-mann — which
seemed to delight him much and add something to his
stature and his step. He began at once to explain
what must be done, on their return, to obtain the certi
ficate of the chef-guide, which that exalted personage

HOW AVE DID MONT BLANC • 65
gives — for five francs — to all who make the ascent.
And when he was told that it would be time enough to
talk about that when the ascent was made, he said
proudly that he had already made a promenade to the
Breven last year (5000 feet above Chamonix) without
much fatigue, and had once reached St. Bernard in two
days. The seven bottles of vin ordinaire were in reality
only six, and of these P. P. had decanted four into a
waterproof bag, which in its turn was carried in a
waterproof knapsack ; as the verres perdus of the bill
represent the missing fabric of the remaining two, it
would seem that empty bottles are a valuable property
in France. Before they had gone far, P. P.'s back dis
covered that neither bag nor knapsack was wine-proof,
and as Zimmerman began to find himself very hot, G.
took charge of the coats of both. This slight relief was
not of much use to the shoemaker when they reached
the steep zigzags of the forest, and he walked last, and
cried constantly, ' doucement ! doucement ! ' causing
P. P. to become vocal with a song of two lines, re
peated ad libitum —
Langsam voran ! langsam voran !
Damit der letzte Mann naohkommen kann ! 1
1 It is to be hoped that the shoemaker did not know the Folk
song of which this is possibly a corruption, for the comparison with
the Austrian Landsturm would not have pleased him : —
' Nur immer langsam voran ! langsam voran I
Dass der Oestreicher Landsturm naohkommen kann;
Die Oestreicher haben eine Schanz' erbaut
Aus lauter Speck und Sauerkraut.' F

66 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
varied with prose declarations that a good guide's
motto should always be, langsam, aber immer. Still
the shoemaker fell more and more behind, and it be
came evident that no amount of langsam would ensure
the nacKkommen : so a halt was called, and the bundle
of rug and wraps was transferred to G.'s back.
But all was of no avail, and within an hour and a
quarter of Chamonix he came to a total stand. The
knapsack of provisions was taken from him, and all that
was his was eliminated from the bundle of wraps and
thrown on to the zigzag way, and then he was igno-
miniously turned out of the party, and told that neither
Zimmerman nor Immer-mann should henceforth be his
name, but, instead, Nimmer-mann. P. P. said that a
small auberge was being built higher up, and it might
be possible to find a porter there, so he and G. made a
division of the baggage, H. being by general consent
too young for such work, and they once more started
in hope. At the Pierre Pointue a new and cheap and excel
lent little auberge was found, kept by Sylvain Couttet,
and attended to by his pleasant wife. In future
ascents, it will be a good plan to purchase all pro
visions here, and so avoid the extortions of Chamonix,
and save the porters some of their toil. Sylvain was
speedily persuaded to carry half the baggage to the
Grands Mulets, and off they went across the rocks in
high spirits, Nimmer-mann coming on still behind,
with snuffling declarations that he would at least cross

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 67
the glacier, and even bursting forth into a nasal song
in proof of his restored pluck. But he was sternly
bidden to cease— it was not for him, of all men, to dare
to sing ; and, as for the glacier, he should not put one
foot upon it, with all those horrible crevasses. And
so he was half bullied, half frightened, into returning
with a party whom they found at the Pierre a l'Echelle,
one of whom did his best to turn H. back because of
the lightness of his clothing,1 which had already stood
the blustering cold of a storm on Monte Rosa ; and
another, a most agreeable Frenchman, showered evil
omens on the expedition by persisting in calling P. P.
' Benin,' and correcting himself each time with a shudder,
and Ah ! ce pauvre Benin, il est mort ! 2 When P. P.
heard that this gentleman was a member of the Alpine
club, he added the word Suisse with much scorn ; but
his scorn became intense respect when he was told how
worthily he had been elected into the English club.
Good guides are too much in the way of affecting to
1 This gentleman was afterwards proved, on unmistakable in
ternal evidence, to be the author of several interesting papers on
glacier excursions. In one of these he has described his outfit for
Mont Blanc, which he believes cannot be improved upon : — ' A
merino] waistcoat, then two light flannel shirts, chamois-leather
waistcoat, and over these a double-breasted cloth waistcoat, a light
kind of " lounging-coat," and light over-coat. For the nether
garments, a pair of stout trowsers, and two pairs of drawers.' The
lightness of H.'s clothing might well surprise him. G., too, had
only an old pair of trowsers, cut short at the knee, made of very
thin flannel worn thinner.
2 Lost shortly before in an avalanche on the Haut de Cry, in the
spring of 1864. f 2

68 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
despise this Swiss club. Thus a famous guide refused
to accompany one of its officers, because, as he said, he
found the English club climbed better and paid better.
Another guide tells that when his Herrs were dining
in a certain hotel, members of the Swiss club sent a
message from another hotel in the town, proposing
fraternisation. He answered that his Herrs were at
dinner, and must not be disturbed; he would see about
it after dinner. Meanwhile he paid a visit of inspec
tion, and found that the Swiss gentlemen had umbrellas
with spikes, paper pantofles, and black coats and trow
sers ; so he burked the message entirely.
Certain young malcontents of the canton Valais
have conceived a disapproval of the principles of this
club, and propose to form a rival society. They are to
perform real feats, as they say, in the way of ascents,
and, to shew their contempt for the pretensions of
other clubs, are to call themselves the Order of the
Broomstick, meaning the alpenstock, and their presi
dent the Grand Ramoneur. It might be suggested to
them that if they would carry brooms also, as a part of
the paraphernalia of the order, they might do some
thing towards cleaning their native Valais; and then
the travelling world would heartily wish them the
success which attended an ancient hero in a similar
labour. The most interesting part of the whole ascent now
commenced, across the shattered ice-fall of the Glacier
des Boissons, and up the ice and snow to the Grands

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 69
Mulets — a collection of rocks in the midst of the higher
glaciers. A few minutes of jumping across crevasses,
and winding along ice-bridges and up ' vertical preci
pices ' of the same material, sufficed to shew that the
danger here was simply nothing, as far as the fall of a
man was concerned, unless he was very determinedly
bent upon falling ; but from P. P.'s vite ! when the
party passed the base of any of the overhanging
pyramids of ice, it seemed that there was more room
for a mischance there. Indeed, a very competent
authority has laid it down as a law of nature — or, at
least, of the more adventurous members of the English
Alpine Club — that the only danger in mountain climb
ing is from avalanches and falling stones and ice ; for
the guides have too strong an affection for their own
necks — or, shall we say, for their wives and little chil
dren — to put themselves in positions beyond their skill.
Perhaps the most striking part of a tyro's first ex
tensive glacier lesson is the ease with which difficulties
are circumvented, and the excellent foot-hold afforded
by glacier ice. Nor is anything more instructive and
assuring than the first fall. As with a young horse at
an early fence, so with young climbers on their first
glacier, a fall is an excellent thing. It teaches a man
the wonderful use of the rope, and gives him thereby
much confidence ; and if, like the young horse, he is
careless, which is not very, probable, it teaches him also
to look to his feet. He goes crashing down, with much
clattering of icicles and the rattle of a truant alpen-

70 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
stock or axe, and has about time to conceive the idea
that he is gone for ever, when a sudden and unpleasant
strain upon his waist pulls him up short ; he hangs for
a few moments all ways, like a wounded rook in a tree,
till he is hauled up by his neighbours on the rope,
regardless alike of the projecting keenness of ice-points
and of the due precedence of head and feet.
When our friends had been an hour or so on the
ice, they heard the cannon of Chamonix announcing the
arrival at the Grands Mulets of a party which had left
the other hotel an hour before them ; and though the
prolonged iniquities of the wretched Nimmer-mann
had so much delayed them, they found on arriving that
they had gained on the others. The great Murray says
that the hut on the oasis of rocks is 10,000 feet above
the sea ; and, though the verbal inspiration of a guide
book is the last theory a traveller is likely"to take up,
there seems to be no particular reason for doubting this
measurement. But when it is added that ' the excite
ment of sleeping out on the mountain is part of the
interest of the adventure,' the most diluted theory of
inspiration is too strong. There are few places on the
face of the earth more abominable than that little hut
and its environs.1 When the present party reached it,
they found two Englishmen already established there,
with more than the Chamonix allowance, two guides,
namely, and three porters ; and three other porters had
accompanied them to the Grands Mulets, and returned
1 This was of course the old hut of over thirty years ago.

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 71
to Chamonix. The Englishmen had finished their meal,
and were preparing for ecarte — amiably converted into
whist — on the stones outside; but the hut was pervaded
by guides and porters in every stage of unpleasantness.
There were wet boots and damp men smoking before
the little stove, the men lying about uncouthly and un-
courteously, doing their unpolished best to ignore the
new arrivals, who were infringing every golden rule of
Chamonix. No ascent had been this year made by the
Grands Mulets, but there had been various attempts,
and the disappointed travellers had left the debris of
their meals to become unpleasant in every corner of the
hut. Fourteen feet by seven is its size, and although
its foulness cannot well be imagined, it may be more
easily imagined than described. It was not much satis
faction to hear that Couttet had undertaken to build a
better hut the next week, and that 120 guides and
porters had promised to carry each one plank in solemn
single file, a procession which would drain half Switzer
land of rascality.1 The new hut was to have two beds,,
and the old one was to be left for the use of guides and
porters only.
Tea is a beverage most refreshing on the mountains,
and tea had been looked forward to with much eager
ness. But the opposition guides had possessed them
selves of the only pan, and had commenced to make
soup therein ; soup, which, even in its beginning, gave
1 Not that this present writer believes, with so many of his
countrymen, that Mont Blanc is in Switzerland.

72 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
forth odours of a compound vileness that suggested
what its maturer moments would be. As the time
passed on — it was now five o'clock, and they had eaten
nothing to speak of since an early breakfast — 'Is the
soup ready ? ' was constantly demanded from without,
and ' No ' as constantly answered from within ; not
that the Herrs wanted the soup, but they did want the
pan. Those five men must have denied themselves
their soup for a good hour, that they might enjoy the
thirst of the wretches who had dared to come on
Chamonix ground without a pack of Chamonix guides.
And when the soup was made and swallowed, the snow
was still to be dug for making the tea, and it seemed
to be as obstinately slow in melting as the soup had
been in making.
Meantime P. P. took an opportunity of representing
to his Herrs that if there should arrive anything, three
was not a good number. An injured man could not be
left alone, and, on the other hand, it would not be well
for one to go alone for help ; so he strongly advised
that, if possible, Couttet should be retained for the
ascent. Now Couttet at the Grands Mulets was a man
of higher price than Couttet under competition pressure,
and so it came to pass that a long time was spent in
making francs mean half francs, and then it was time
for bed. The Chamonix men kept the places near the
fire for their Herrs, and for two of themselves — the
guides to wit; then the other Herrs reposed themselves,
and then the remaining five ; every one, of course,

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 73
lying on the floor. But when the Herrs were settling
down to dream of sleep, the guides, with one accord,
got up to eat and drink and make a noise; and the
clatter of bottles, and pots, and tongues, and the
undulations of the floor on which the Herrs lay, as
the heavy feet tramped up and down between the stove
and the provision-shelf, to say nothing of more serious
results when the feet were careless as well as heavy,
banished all idea of sleep. Moreover, the damp and
evil odour of the floor came reeking through the rug,
and added a yet viler group to the melange of vile
smells ; while all the angular contents of the knapsacks
rose to the upper side, and tested the hardness of the
heads which lay thereon. And when the hunger of the
guides was appeased, and their tongues became more
still, and the candle was blown out, and peace by
comparison seemed near at hand, an evil worse than all
rose into being. Seven rough men, and one guilty
Herr, sleeping, after a heavy supper, with their heads
lower than their bodies, and their mouths open, pro
duced a variety and an amount of noise utterly incon
ceivable. For some time G. tapped sharply on the
floor with his heel at each crisis, and a prompt responsive
thud told that a Chamonix man had interrupted his
own snoring, and was taking it out of P. P.'s back,
P. P. being a noted performer in that line ; but nothing
produced any permanent improvement, and G. and the
unsuccessful smiter got up, and spent the remainder of
the night in the open air.

74 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
The tender-hearted moon was lavish of her purest
splendours to reconcile them to the cold, and the ice
and snow thundered forth their most majestic harmonies,
as they poured in white and sinuous bands down
distant precipices of rock. The very vacuum was
moved which years of the Chamonix tariff had created
in the guide's breast, and he grunted his unfeigned
assent, between prolonged whiffs of tobacco-smoke, to
the proposition that, even if they saw nothing from the
summit, the weird waste and weird crashes of ice and
snow would amply repay their toil. As a rule, however,
it is not fair to draw upon a guide for sentiment, as
that commodity is not in the bond, and the chef-guide
has no tariff price for it.
At a quarter to one they ventured to return to the
hut, to rouse the various sources of sound into activity
of a more useful kind ; and the fire in the stove was
easily restored to sufficient vigour to melt a fresh
allowance of snow, and produce a decoction of tea.
The five Chamonix men, with the assistance of the
departed three, had brought, at their Herrs' expense,
abundant food for holding the Grands Mulets for many
days, and they now suggested to the owners of this
extensive larder that it might be better to eat something.
The other party also proceeded to make a selection
from their more limited, yet most magnificent store,
but the vile air of the hut backed up P. P.'s cautious
nur ein wenig only too decidedly. Then came the
dressing for the ascent. P. P. possessed himself of his

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 75
Herrs' boots, and ran melted candle onto every part of
them, especially about the laces and the part by which
boots are pulled on. Woollen helmets and magnified
babies' gloves completed their preparation, except that
G. was persuaded by P. P. to put on a thin Inverness
cape, with the sleeves tied behind, and H. assumed a
thicker scarf. The getting-up of the other party by
their guides and porters was a sight to see, and P. P.
sniffed a heterodox scorn in rare intervals of hard-boiled
eggs. A Herr was caught, and extended on his back
on the bench near the fire, with naked feet. Round
each foot paper was then wrapped, made soft and
binding with much candle, the head guide going
through all the graces of a young hospital dresser who
thinks he has a turn that way. Then, with much
ceremony, the stockings were put on, and another
layer of grease run in, produced by the application of
candle-ends to the surface of the opportune stove. Then
came the boots, stiff and white already with over-night
grease, and coated now afresh. Over all, a pair of long
brown cloth leggings, tied at top with gay red garters,
with bows and flying ends. When all this was done,
and the Herr was turned off the bench, he not un
naturally remarked that it was as well he knew from
previous knowledge which were his feet, for he had no
present sensation to guide him in appropriating a pair.
These ceremonies occupied a considerable time, for
the guides and porters seemed to think it right that
each should do something, and it required a good deal

76 HOW AVE DID MONT BLANC
of lengthy manoeuvring and stage action to bring all
five to bear upon one pair of feet. And when the feet
were finished, long after the patience of the other
party, the head of the Chamonix men suggested to his
accomplices, dubiously — like a man in a play — that
they might, perhaps, eat a little of something : an
operation which lasted a good half-hour, and put out of
sight much calf, and a family of cocks and hens. De
Saussure was still more unfortunate, for his eighteen
guides kept him till half-past six, quarrelling about the
adjustment of the baggage, each fearing lest an extra
half-pound should make him the victim of a weak
snow-bridge. P. P. now informed his Herrs that the other guides
had proposed that the two parties should start together
and each cut half the steps, to which he had agreed ;
so all the eleven, Herrs and guides and porters,
scrambled down from the hut and bade farewell to the
rock until their return to the Grands Mulets after
eleven hours of ice and snow. The first cord held the
party of seven; a guide at the head, then a Herr,
then another guide, then the other Herr, and the
three porters brought up the rear in a body. P. P.
of course headed his own rope, with Couttet at the
other end and the Herrs in the middle. It was curious
to see the antics of the chief of the Chamonix guides.
Taking his axe, stock downwards, between his finger
and thumb, he pranced carefully off the rock and
delicately felt and probed the snow, making a step in

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 77
advance with the air of a man ready to do and die, but
determined to do and die with science. Whether he
impressed his own people, did not appear; but the
party behind scoffed and moved onwards, and then he
theatrically made up his mind that it was safe to pro
ceed. The snow was in perfect order, crisp and smooth,
and requiring a considerable stamp in the steeper parts
before impression sufficient for a foot-hold could be
made. As this was the first ascent of the year by the
Grands Mulets, the only previous ascent having been
made from the other side, the swelling slopes lay
rounded off in virgin purity, and shone and glittered
in the strong moonlight with all the firm fulness of
nine unbroken months of incessant cold. And when
the sun rose behind the Aiguille de Charmoz, convert
ing countless peaks into Aiguilles Rouges, the exuberant
domes of snow put on that satin sheen which underlies
the bark of silver birch.
The effect of the winter had been very great upon
that part of the mountain which lies between the
Grands Mulets and the Grand Plateau ; and when the
Herrs of the smaller party found that the guides must
discover a fresh path among new crevasses, and give
up the line they had been accustomed to take, they
forgot to feel like cockneys tramping on a treadmill,
and the ascent assumed the charms of experiment and
novelty. Some time before arriving at the Plateau,
and before one step had been cut, the Chamonix party
dropped behind, and P. P. led; and as they never came

78 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
to the front again, he had to cut every step of the whole
ascent. On the Grand Plateau, where for a mile or two the
snow is almost level, the four held a serious discussion,
the others being out of sight in the rear ; at least P. P.
and Couttet discussed, and the Herrs sat on the snow,
and drank cold tea and listened. There was a choice
of routes; and the day was so exquisitely clear and
still, that difficulties arising from wind and cloud need
not be considered, and the routes could be judged on
their merits alone.
The three points of attack lay in front, spread out
like a fan round the upper end of the Plateau. On the
left, the ascent to the Corridor ; impossible, from its
long steepness, to the ignorant eye, and almost equally
impossible to the experienced eyes of P. P. and Couttet,
from the state of the crevasses at its foot, which seemed
in the distance to be more than usually unpropitious.
Moreover, it was the longest of the routes by an hour
and a half. To the right was the base of the Dome du
Goute, and if only the overhanging glacier would be
merciful, that was a most recommendable route. But
P. P. argued that it was very possible that when that
little difficulty had been got through, and they arrived
at the Bosse du Dromadaire, they might find the whole
length of the final arete mere blue ice, and that would
cost immense labour and much time. Finally, between
the two, lay the Ancien Passage. It looked smooth and
pleasant enough, and it was a short cut to the top, which

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 79
about that time was certainly a consideration. But the
Ancien Passage has a history, and is a passage for some
thing else besides men. Here Dr. Hamel's guides
were lost in an avalanche in 1820; and for the last
three years thermometers and lanterns and scalps and
limbs have been coming out from the glacier miles and
miles below, and reminding the valley of Chamonix of
the terrors of the heights above. So when Couttet
argued that the day was most still and fine, and the
snow in a better state than he had ever seen it ; and
when he declared that he would guarantee that no
avalanche would sweep the Ancien Passage that morn
ing; the Herrs called to mind the shrunk leg and
contorted foot they had seen two days before, lying
swathed in the boughs of trees at the wooden cross in
Chamonix, and they heartily ratified P. P.'s determina
tion to have nothing to do with that route.
By this time the other party had come up, and their
guides were wholly in favour of the Corridor ; so while
they made their halt, P. P. led on towards that side of
the amphitheatre. Couttet renewed his arguments for
the Ancien Passage as soon as they were out of hearing
of the Chamonix men, saying that he was sure they
meant to try it, and so reach the top first. But he
prevailed nothing, and P. P. went steadily for the
crevasses guarding the foot of the snow wall which drops
from the Corridor to the Plateau ; went steadily, but
doubtfully, for he feared that the winter's changes had
made the route impracticable. The ice and snow, how-

80 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
ever, must be very obstinate through which those keen
divergent Zermatt eyes can find no path, and the four
had already been performing the part of flies for a
quarter of an hour or so on the wall, when a noise
more expressive than thunder brought them to a stand.
As they clung to the frozen snow, and glanced out to
the right, they saw the Ancien Passage swept by an
avalanche of ice-blocks sufficient to have shattered all
Chamonix. The whole broad couloir through its utmost
length appeared to be in breathless motion, and far down
onto the Plateau the vast masses roared and ran, as
if some evil spirit within were urging each on furiously
farther than the other. P. P. gazed sternly on the
rolling chaos with the left eye, and deftly flashed on
Couttet the reproachful right, asking with expressive
thumb where was his guarantee. H. constituted him
self the spokesman of the party, and observed with
characteristic nonchalance that by Jove it was as well
they were not there. Some time after, when they were
near the top of the snow wall, another avalanche swept
down the passage, and they had the satisfaction of
feeling that if they had adopted that route they must
have missed the grandeur of this second sight and
sound.1 The Corridor was rather dreary walking, with only
1 There was a terrible accident here not long after, a whole party
swept away and killed, except a guide who was mounting by the
edge of the couloir instead of in the couloir itself. As the guide
was Sylvain Couttet, I reported to the chef-guide his persistence
in my own case, and he was suspended.

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 81
a slight ascent, and nothing more interesting than
softish snow ; but at the upper end a glorious view of
southward peaks opened out, and the Mount Maudit
in the immediate foreground was exceedingly grand.
Here, in obedience to the sun's warnings, extra wraps
were taken off before commencing the assault of the
interminable height of the Mur de la Cote, up the
whole of which no single step was made in advance
without the assistance_of P. P.'s axe. The other party
had made no halt at the head of the Corridor, and were
now within distant hail ; and it was amusing to hear
after a time the voice of their head guide coming
rolling up the ice, with a cool request that P. P. would
cut the steps a little nearer to each other, as his mon-
sieurs found them rather wide. We made them a little
wider after that.
Step-cutting is generally a slow process, and on
clear blue ice it is not bad to accomplish an average of
one a minute ; but here the continuity of the ice sur
face was sometimes broken by frozen snow, which cut
more readily, and so the second party never caught
us up. The short halt after each step, while the
next was being cut, made the ascent of the strangely
smooth and steep Mur an easy matter for the Herrs,
and allowed abundance of time for attempting to
appreciate the view. But whether it had really been
harder work than it seemed, or whether the diminish
ing amount of necessary air began to produce an effect,
G. called a halt at the top of the Mur, on the edge of
G

82 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
the level plain which leads to the final Calotte, and
harangued the party in general. It was not, he said,
that he was in any way losing pluck, but he was
decidedly — in the body — somewhat gravelled, and he
must call for constant short halts for the remainder of
the ascent. Since an early breakfast the day before
(and it was now eight o'clock in the morning) he had
eaten,, he declared, a certain amount of bread and
butter, and the thigh of a Chamonix poulet, the gros in
the bill referring to the price rather than the size of
the bird. Besides, he was taking up a lame leg to the
summit, which every second step made more lame, and
faintness and fatigue together produced a sort of mai
de mer. P. P. answered that he was very glad the
Herr had spoken out, instead of ruining the ascent by
foolishly struggling on till he was done. H., on the
other hand, did not like it quite so well. He was
fresher than when they started, and was evidently good
for a rapid race to the summit; and moreover he was
terribly afraid lest the other party should reach the top
almost as soon as they, for then the world of Chamonix,
now gazing eagerly with all its telescopes from the
other side of the mountain, would believe that the
parties had made the ascent together. So he kept
helping G. with a tug of the rope when the step was
steeper than usual, timing the tug with more zeal than
discretion, and cheering him on with a youthful in
genuousness which made that aged and emotionless
traveller smile in spite of himself; now crying, ' See

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 83
how near we are ! A feiv minutes more ! ' and now
appealing to other feelings, and declaring that the
party below was coming on apace. For the last
quarter of an hour or so this ceased, for the absolute
proximity of the desired summit banished for the
moment all fatigue, and they mounted promptly to
the final crest. Here they found that twenty yards,
off there was a point of snow a foot higher than the
level of the crest, and these twenty yards G.'s body and
soul refused to face ; but before he had time to collapse
H. put a strong pull on the rope, and hauled him along
with tottering steps to the true summit, whence they
heard the cannon of Chamonix sending up a triumphant
welcome. There was a similar point in De Saussure's
time, and he has left it on record that he kicked it,
rather with anger than with any sentiment of pleasure.
It has been written airily, in a book which treats
of Alpine matters, that, on arriving at the top of a
certain difficult pass, the historian of the ascent pro
ceeded to make what observations he could. The
guide believes that at that interesting crisis his Herr
simply threw himself on his face and howled, the only
observations made being, ' I wish I was down again ! '
' I wish I was dead ! ' This of course is a calumny ;
but when a long and elaborate account is drawn up of
all that can be seen from some point which has cost
the writer many hours of incessant and immense
fatigue, one seems to see him in an armchair in his
study, striking ex post facto lines of view on the map
G 2

84 HOW AVE DID MONT BLANC
with a ruler. And so the less that is said of the view
on this present occasion the better, beyond the bare
fact that on three sides out of four the most perfect
clearness prevailed.
From the head of the Corridor they had seen the
whole mass of Monte Rosa and the Mont Cervin, and
all the famous peaks which realise the early fable of
the giants' war with Heaven; and now the Oberland
and Dauphine were added to the view. H. turned his
undivided attention to a box of sardines, which the
numerous porters of the second party had contrived to
bring to the summit ; and a warm discussion regard
ing the respective merits of butter and sardines brought
poor G.'s woes to the point of despair, inasmuch as the
mere sight of an innocent bread-crust had been too
much for him. In vain P. P. pointed out the Dauphine
Alps ; he only groaned and turned away. Ah ! now
P. P. told him, he could see the Monte Rosa peaks —
and again he groaned and turned away ; now, the
Bernese mountains ; till at last he studiously faced a
thick mist which concealed the lower parts of Neuchatel
and Vaud. But even there P. P. had him, and ex
plained what he would have seen had there been no
mist. There was nothing for it but to descend a little
into denser air, so H. was ruthlessly torn from his
sardines, and carried off down the Calotte.
About twenty minutes from the top they met a
friend1 ascending all alone. He had left Chamonix
1 Mr. Frederic Morshead, of Winchester.

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 85
half an hour after midnight with one porter ; but this
porter had come to an end of his promised pluck shortly
after the Grands Mulets, and returned ; and so the
Herr came on alone, making use of the steps cut by
P. P., and accomplishing a feat never accomplished
before. . While they slowly continued the descent, and
the solitary adventurer passed on to the summit and
drank his champagne and ate his poulet, P. P. gave
expression to the most unbounded astonishment. He
knew this Herr's powers well, had made many courses
with him and others of the best members of the Alpine
Club, and had said only the day before that there was
not one who could compare with him : still, he was
completely overcome by the adventurousness of the
ascent. ' Ah ! ' he kept repeating, ' das ist ein
grieslicher Herr ! ' and grieslich being a new word, he
was called upon for an explanation. It seemed that
Christian Aimer and he had been discussing various
Herrschaft, and among the chief this present Herr,
whom Aimer had summed up with a deep sigh,
reminiscent of many a grind more severe than his soul
loved, and ' das war ein grieslicher Reisender ! ' P. P.
confessed that it was patois, not meant for grdslich, and
he believed that no German or French word would
quite hit it off. It was far on the other side of
schrecklich, and a good deal beyond heillos ; and heillos,
a great authority1 has declared, means past praying
for. 1 Mr. Leslie Stephen.

86 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC
The grieslicher Herr came up with them again at
the top of the Mur de la Cote, and administered the
remains of the champagne. Here G.'s physical faint-
ness caused him to develop that excessive and sharp-
tempered prudence which is so near akin to fright.
To an inexperienced eye the appearance of the rapid,
even slope of ice and frozen snow, across and down the
face of which they must follow the steps cut in the
morning, was so unpleasant, that no account could well
exaggerate it. The ice seemed to shoot clean down to
the Corridor, with a slight rocky edge at the bottom,
beyond which an insignificant drop to the Corridor
might be imagined. But in passing up the Corridor
in the ascent, they had noticed this same drop, and
instead of finding it insignificant, they had been struck
by the grand loftiness of the precipice ; and the
recollection of that impression afforded a most suggestive
measure of what must be the length of the slope, at the
bottom of which the drop could now seem so small.
H. had fed well, and was practised, and, moreover, had
experienced the power of the rope. G., on the other
hand, light-headed and heavy-footed, made every step
in the belief that if he slipped he must inevitably carry
the other three down with him. The grieslicher Herr,
meantime, danced unroped behind, doing Albert
Smith's account of the horrors of the Mur.
The descent from the Corridor to the Plateau was
something the same, only rather less so, to use for once
a slang expression. Rather less so, inasmuch as,

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 87
although steeper, it was more snow than ice, and ended
in a shelving blue crevasse instead of a solid pitch over
rocks ; and, besides, the Plateau once reached, nothing
worse than fatigue had to be faced.
On the Plateau the party halted for a long time,
and discussed the ascent. H. had never thought it
could be so easy, and so little dangerous, and could
scarcely believe that he had at last been up Mont
Blanc. G. allowed that the ascent was in all ways less
than he had expected, but expressed his great surprise
that so many people had achieved the descent in safety,
and his satisfaction that he was well out of it. Here
for the first time he was set right about the power of
the rope, and was informed that P. P. and Couttet
would have held themselves and him with the most
perfect ease, however wild a tumble he. might have
made. This would have relieved him immensely on the
Mur de la Cote, but still he repeated that there was
more to face than he had expected, not of fatigue, but
of apparent danger, on the Mur and on the descent to
the Plateau. Then it was confessed by the guides that
many Herrs require a hand, and two hands, at every
trying place ; require also that their feet be guided and
held ; pray constantly that they may be taken back ;
and, in descending, are shunted down the worst slopes
like logs of wood possessed; — indeed, guides are in
the habit of saying that they would much rather
take up a log of wood of equal weight than many
a Herr who has ' successfully made the ascent.' One

88 HOAV WE DID MONT BLANC
illustrious Alpine traveller's name was especially taken
in vain. The second party had meanwhile come down, and
had already got a long start from the Plateau, so the
four in the rope, with the grieslicher Herr unattached,
went off at a great pace down the slopes of softened
snow. As they got lower and lower on the mountain
they sank lower and lower in the snow, and, for a long
way, well above the knees was little more than an
average depth. Their theory and practice was that
they stopped for nothing; and so, when one of the four
stuck fast or fell, he was constrained to do the impossible,
and head and arms and legs became for a while a
spasmodic chaos, which turned out feet downwards and
face foremost, with mechanical legs, some yards in
advance of the chaos point. Farther down still, the
passage of soft snow-bridges over the crevasses became
more or less hazardous, and the grieslicher Herr was
persuaded to lay a hand on the rope. Here, moreover,
they found the other party, and taking the lead, they
soon reached the Grands Mulets, and packed and started
for Chamonix. Once across the last snow, and down and across the
Glacier des Boissons, they ran at such a break-neck
pace down the remaining part of the descent that they
' did ' the watchful authorities, and reached Chamonix
before any one knew they were within an hour of the
place, much to the disappointment of that excited town.
The waiter at the door of the Royal was the first to see

HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 89
them, and he bolted like a rabbit with a ferret behind
to order the cannon, but they triumphantly achieved
their rooms before the salute was heard. From the
Grands Mulets to the summit had been six hours and a
half, to the Grands Mulets again three and a half — for
the state of the snow did not allow a glissade — and to
Chamonix well under three.
Next day they got certificates from the chef-guide.
These documents stated that they had made the ascent,
accompanied by so-and-so — tous guides effectifs de la
SocieU des Guides de Chamonix. Considering the
illegal obstructiveness of the chef in the matter of the
porter, G. pointed out to him carefully the ludicrous
falseness of this clause, thereby congealing that evaded
functionary, polite and stern, and vertical even in
defeat. On the back of the certificate a list of ascents down
to 1855 is given. An early acquaintance will scarcely
know himself as N. B. Richowor, and what English
gentlemen may be represented by Athbrun and
Alpedecolatt, and Honourable Jackeville, it is difficult
to say. Enslechndwom, Anglais, is said to have made
the ascent on August 16, 1854, and a like feat would
seem to have been performed on August 18, 1855, by
M. K. G. Eirslacehndzous, Anglais also.

90

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY1
Attention has recently (1865) been called to the curious
works of nature locally known in Switzerland and in
some parts of France as glacieres, or ice-caves, being
caves in which large masses of ice are found throughout
the year, in latitudes and at altitudes where ice would
not naturally be expected to appear in summer. Many
of these are out of the reach of tourists who object to
face discomforts, not to say hardships, in their search
for the picturesque or the strange. But in the neigh
bourhood of Annecy, in what is now the French depart
ment of Haute-Savoie, three remarkable ice-caves are
found, which can all be visited in the course of a long
day from comfortable and attainable head-quarters.
The present paper contains some account of a second
visit to these caves, in the summer of 1865, the object
of which was to complete certain investigations left un
finished in the previous year.2
Our party consisted only of two members of the
1 Good Words, November 1, 1866.
2 The descriptions of two of the caves, the glacieres of Grand
Anu and Chappet sur Villaz, form Chapters X. and XI. of my book
on the Ice Caves of France and Switzerland, Longmans, 1865.

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 91
Alpine Club, one of whom • has on various occasions
done something towards maintaining the scientific
character of that muscular society. We left the dili
gence, or rather it left us, at Charvonnaz, close upon
Les Ollieres, a hamlet some three-quarters of an hour
distant from the residence of our excellent friend the
Maire of Aviernoz, the owner of two of the glacieres
and our guide to all, with whom we had made arrange
ments by post for the further exploration of the caves.
Being breakfastless, we naturally asked for the nearest
auberge at Les Ollieres, and were informed circumstan
tially that it was only ten minutes off, near the Church,
an amount of detail which might in itself have rendered
us sceptical as to the existence of the auberge, if we had
not been fresh from England. We went on for more
than one ten minutes, each new peasant assuring us
that there was no such thing nearer than Thorens,
which we knew to be some miles off, and declaring that
we could not even be supplied with bread or milk aux
Ollieres. At length a larger house appeared at some
small distance from the path, and we determined,
auberge or no auberge, to breakfast there. M. Joly, for
such we eventually discovered the distinguished name
of the proprietor to be, was supercilious at first; but
after some explanations as to our position and inten
tions, he became polite and elaborately hospitable.
His welcome hospitality went the length of milk
and bread. The bread was black bread. It was a
1 The Reverend Professor T. G. Bonney, D.Sc.

92 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
whole loaf, and we could not get into it. M. Joly
chopped off a piece of crust at one side, with a small
hatchet, and carried it off to his little horse. Then we
got at the inside.
On enquiring about M. Metral, the Maire of Avier-
noz, and M. Rosset, the Instituteur of that commune,
we found that M. Joly was a friend of both, and he
proposed to accompany us as far as the Mairie, a pro
posal which we accepted with polite raptures. He put
on his best hat and coat accordingly, and led the way.
Finding that we were ecclesiastiques of the Anglican
Church, he proceeded to ask precisely the same ques
tions that the schoolmaster of Aviernoz had asked the
year before, couching them in such very similar lan
guage that I am disposed to believe it is a part of the
religious instruction of the district to slander the faith
of our Church.
When we reached the Mairie, about eight o'clock in
the morning, we found that M. Metral had gone out to
work in his fields, under the impression that the
weather was too bad to allow of our projected visit, and
M. Rosset was still in bed. The Mayoress meanwhile
received us with some empressement, and sent for the
Maire and awoke the schoolmaster. The latter ap
peared first, in a state of great delight by reason of the
arrival of his friend of the previous year, and of some
squalor by reason of the hastiness of his toilette. We
shook hands most affectionately ; but with that insular
coldness which characterises even the most adaptable

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 93
Englishman, I abstained from embracing and saluting
him, to his evident surprise. He was much impressed
by the presence of the vrai savant, my companion, to
whom I introduced him. He rejoiced greatly in our
turning up on the day we had fixed, inasmuch as it was
his weekly holiday, and he could therefore accompany
us without the necessity of any ingenious devices to
excuse his absence from scholastic duties, such as he
had employed the year before. Presently the Maire
arrived. He, unlike the schoolmaster, did not look so
well as in the previous year. The end of his nose was
decidedly and fixedly red, and his incessant shrug had
ended in chronic high shoulders.
Considerable preparations had been made for our
expedition. One of the domestics was to accompany
us as porter ; and a monsieur from Annecy, a good
friend and confrere of the Maire's, had engaged to come
out and give us his countenance for the day. Indeed,
he had promised to condescend so far as to call upon
us at the H6tel de Geneve, and accompany us from
Annecy to Aviernoz, but that he had not done. To
enhance his merits, M. Metral informed us that he was
an aubergiste. As he did not appear before the start
from the Mairie, his alpenstock was made over to
Bonney, whose trusty weapon had been lost the week
before on a railway in Brittany. The new possessor
was not as grateful as he ought to have been for the
honour, misdoubting the sustaining power of a long
and thin mottled bamboo — for such the stock was —

94 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
with a point something like the broken awls with which
boys used to arm their reed arrows, in the days when
boys were boys and made their own offensive weapons.
A steep ascent through fir woods brought us in two
hours to the furthest of the Maire's three chalets, where
we encountered a particularly disagreeable brouillard,
and endeavoured to console ourselves by lunching on
uncooked ham and boiled milk. Bonney was scientific
enough to take an altitude observation with his aneroid,
and fastidious enough to broil his ham on the end of a
stick, marks of the civilised savant which caused the
assembled party to marvel, and brought upon the poor
Maire the affliction of burned fingers in the course of a
praiseworthy effort of imitation with respect to the ham.
Twenty minutes from this shewed the mouth of the first
glaciere, the glaciere of Grand Anu, as Rosset had
spelled it for me the year before, though now he said
that ahn would be a better spelling. As we stood
amid rude vegetation at the edge of the huge pit in
whose side is the entrance to the cave, the appearance
of the vast portal below, with its gigantic architrave of
a single block almost regular enough to give the idea
of art, was exceedingly impressive; and the large
masses of piled snow which lay at the bottom of the
pit, and led into the darkness, added much to the
strangeness of the scene. The perpendicular depth of
the pit is 120 feet, and the descent of more than half of
this is by the snow which has resisted the summer's
heat. Bonney made an excellent sketch from a point

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 95
a few feet below the edge of the pit, in spite of the
difficulty of drawing down-hill.
The snow had very much increased since the last
year, and it gave M. Joly much fear. That upright
man came slowly and stiffly on, at each step tottering
on the verge of becoming an avalanche, and not re
assured by the dreadful yells of Rosset, who had pre
ceded him and developed a mania for waking the
subterranean echoes. M. Joly arrived at the bottom at
last ; but it was evident even in that dim light that he
had left his colour behind, and from observations made
during the day it is certain that he never quite re
covered it. The increase of snow was still more per
ceptible at the mouth of the cave than on the side of
the pit of descent ; and where there had been in the
previous year a neat and precise pyramid of that
material, there was now a huge mis-shapen mass,
almost blocking up the entrance. The amount of ice
on the walls was very great, much greater than before,
and its folds and curves were beyond description
beautiful and grand. To my great satisfaction, the
prismatic structure of the ice, which many of those
whom I had consulted on the subject had attempted to
explain away, was very beautifully and clearly marked,
and we chopped out at random masses of ice composed
entirely of separable prisms. We found, as might have
been expected, that an hexagonal arrangement pre
vailed ; but there were apparently many exceptions,
and in numerous cases the bounding lines of the end

96 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
surfaces of the prisms were not straight lines. Some of
the prisms were decidedly of the nature of truncated
pyramids, and others were twisted. The ice in the
more solid masses seemed to be but little less hard and
difficult to cut by reason of this structure. The pieces
chopped out usually broke off at the depth of from one
to two inches below the surface, and prisms of that
length were easily separated from the mass by means
of a penknife ; very often our fingers alone sufficed for
the operation.
A pit in the ice on the opposite side of the cave was
the point on which our hearts were set. I had found
it on my former visit, and had fathomed it to a depth
of 70 feet, the aperture at top being a yard or four feet
across. One side of the pit was the solid rock wall ol
the cave ; the other sides were the ice of the floor. We
nad brought from England a sufficient length of the
stoutest Alpine club rope, and pulleys running on bars
of iron, with an abundance of strong staples to make
our proposed descent free from danger. To make it
if possible comfortable, I had caused to be made a
broad and strong belt of stretching-girth and leather,
that we might not be cut by the rope while being let
down. At the mouth of the original pit of entrance we
had cut three strong limbs of young fir trees, which
were to be laid across the pit, and used as the frame
work for the pulleys supporting the rope. But alas !
the first sight of the edge of the pit made it too evident
that our plan could not answer. Notwithstanding the

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 97
great increase of ice on the walls of the cave, the ice
forming the floor had disappeared to the extent of
nearly a foot in depth ; and as it had departed irregularly
about the mouth of the pit, and the opposite side was
sheer rock with a narrow ledge at the former level of
the ice, there was no place for the bars of wood to rest
upon. Indeed, it was unpleasant work to approach the
pit at all, in the dim light which alone reached that
side of the glaciere, and for further safety we lay flat on
our faces, and thrust our heads over the edge to look
down into the utter darkness, knowing from my pre
vious visit that the ice caved away sharply under our
feet. We had brought out a number of yards of mag
nesium wire for the illumination of the lower regions ;
but when we began to make experiment thereof, we
found that, without some further contrivance than we
had the means of effecting, the wire was of no use to us.
Each motion of the hand, or jerk of the string which
supported the wire, caused the ignited portion to snap
off, and after a score of attempts we fell back upon our
oil lamps. Bougies had been intended to be our main
stay for all ordinary purposes, but when we asked the
Maire for some at his house, he assured us that there
was not a candle of any kind in the whole commune,
none nearer than Thorens, indeed. Of oil lamps we had
two. One was our own property, a bull's-eye lantern
purchased for the occasion in Cambridge, and it turned
out to be the most utter imposture ever perpetrated,
dying in an unscrupulous and unseemly manner within H

98 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
a minute of each fresh re-arrangement of the wick. The
other was a lamp of the country, from the luncheon
chalet, looking completely past work, but doing its little
best when tried. This we lowered steadily, with the
care which might be expected of men whose only lumi
nary was being committed to unknown and perilous
depths. As the feeble, twinkling light descended, it
shewed in passing that what had before been bare
rock had now a thick coating of ghost-like ice, pro
fusely decorated with large corbel towers and massive
pendants ; and though immediately under where we lay
the solid ice which formed the floor of the glaciere caved
inwards, the pit seemed to be closely surrounded with
ice through three-fourths of its circumference, and
wherever the scanty light of the oil-wick penetrated, we
saw still the same glacial decoration. Between sixty
and seventy feet below the surface, the lamp struck a
floor of ice, and as we paid out more line it glided
smoothly down the slope, passing at length under an
arch in the rock, which hid it from our view at a depth
of seventy-three feet. Just before its disappearance,
the flame burst for a moment into something like bril
liancy, and the flash revealed to us the smoothest
possible slope of dark ice, passing on as far as we
could see. This was close upon 200 feet below the
surface of the earth, and the temptation to prosecute
our designs was naturally great. But, independently
of the fact that there was no possible point d'appui
for our apparatus of cords and pulleys, it struck us
that the rope, in swinging about as we descended,

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 99
must detach some of the heavy corbels of ice, and
launch them upon the adventurous head below. Any
one of them would have been sufficient to fracture
an ordinary skull. Besides, the slope at the bottom
was, so far as we could tell by the one glimpse we had
caught of it, so exceedingly smooth, and so very suffi
ciently rapid, that a man suspended, as we had pro
posed, with a belt under his arm-pits supporting all
his weight, could never effect a fast footing, and so
must be content to slide down shapeless out of the
sight of those above, till such time as water, or a preci
pice, or the end of the 90 feet of rope, should arrive.
Under all the circumstances, we determined that no
good could come of an attempted descent. Even the
dictum of a Cambridge friend, who, having the lowest
possible opinion of all approach to instruments and
observations in connection with the Alps, had told us
that ' if we were smashed, it would be a comfort to be
smashed in the interests of science,' could not to any
practical extent ameliorate the unpleasantness of the
situation. All the same, it would be a useful thing to
determine how far towards the centre of the earth this
strange stream of subterranean ice rolls down the wide
fissures of the limestone rock.
We decided sorrowfully that this investigation must
be left to other and better-equipped explorers, and
made a start for the second glaciire. This had declined
to be found in the previous year, having only been dis
covered two years before, and never since visited. On
H 2

100 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
the receipt of my note to the Maire, Rosset had gone
off for a hunt in the neighbourhood of the place where
the Maire had told us it certainly ought to be, and
having succeeded in finding it, had marked it down.
Nevertheless, we were taken hither and thither among
the chasms and furrows in the white live rock, which
here formed the surface, and up and down the pro
jecting masses of stone, in a very unsystematic manner.
Patience and endurance, however, met with their re
ward after a time, and the coy glacidre stood at length
revealed. Nothing could be more unlike the grand
wild opening of the former glaciere,- than the unpreten
tious hole which afforded the only means of reaching
I'Enfer, a name which provided the schoolmaster with
inexhaustible material for witticisms bordering on the
blasphemous, and sometimes transgressing the boun
dary. A descent under an archway of rock, by a slope
of muddy shingle for forty feet or so, ushered us into a
large low hall with a floor of ice, of which we could
see no termination any way, for — unlike the previous
glaciere — daylight failed as soon as we reached the
bottom of the slope. Once more we gave the impostor
lantern a chance, but it failed even more miserably than
before. The native lamp, which had braved the dangers
of the pit we dared not face, did not give sufficient
light to render locomotion under its guidance safe,
especially as we were a party of six, and only one
could have the lamp at once. We therefore resorted
to the magnesium wire, and saw at once the form and

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 101
dimensions of the cave. The floor appeared to be of
solid ice, perfectly level and unbroken, and formed an
area approximately circular, with a diameter, as we
afterwards determined by measurement, of seventy-five
or eighty feet. The roof was ten or twelve feet above
the floor, and the surface of the rock composing it was
almost even. From one side to the other it scarcely
varied at all, and the effect of this even, natural roof,
stretching away always parallel with the floor, was very
remarkable. Progressing slowly at such times as the
magnesium wire chose to burn, and remaining carefully
without motion during the frequent intervals, we ar
rived at length at a hole in the ice floor, and into this
the two Englishmen made their way. It soon turned
under the ice, and we proceeded by the light given by
a succession of wax vestas to explore its further recesses,
sternly forbidding any of the others to come. Little
came of it, however, except that we saw enough to
shew that the ice composing the floor of the cave was
of great thickness. On our return to the surface of the
ice floor, we found that the others of our party had
become sufficiently accustomed to the darkness, or
twilight, to move cautiously without a candle. They
had discovered that at the farthest end of the cave the
ice did not quite reach up to the wall of rock, but was
rounded off in a swelling wave, leaving a sort of Berg-
schrund or gap a foot or two across, formed, of course,
on a principle the very opposite of that of a Bergschrund
proper. Into this hole they threw stones, which crashed

102 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
down over ice for what sounded like some considerable
distance, and then fell heavily into water. It seemed
to be .possible to effect a descent at one end of this
chasm, where the ice joined the rock, so Bonney put
on the belt and we let him down with the lamp. He
reported that at a depth of about twelve feet a tunnel-
shaped hole passed steeply down under the main mass
of ice, and at the bottom of this tunnel water was
visible. He threw down several large pieces of stone,
and ' made all the observations he could,' and then we
hauled him up again. The other Englishman in turn
assumed the belt, and was let down with a string for
measuring distances, and a supply of magnesium wire
to illuminate the depths. The length of the tunnel
proved to be twenty-three feet, and its slope we guessed
at about 30°, so that the thickness of the mass of ice
forming the floor of the glaciere was here about twenty-
four feet. The water was collected in a cave in the ice,
lying in a most suggestively unpleasant manner at the
end of the tunnel, which was perhaps four feet high.
The standing ground provided by nature for these ob
servations was of the narrowest and most unsatisfactory
description, and we were obliged to have the rope kept
on a constant stretch to check the frequent commence
ments of a slide down into the tunnel. While half
standing, half hanging, I chanced to kick a large piece
of decayed wood towards the mouth of the tunnel, and
getting onto the slope it glided rapidly down, and fell
with a loud splash into the water. A second or two

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 103
elapsed, when a horrible gurgling groan issued from
some cavernous depth, and almost startled me into
losing my hand-hold. They heard it distinctly above,
and were asking what could that noise be, when, to our
dismay, the same rolling groan came from far away
under the ice, feeling its way, as it were, towards the
tunnel, and up to where I stood. At periods of several
seconds it continued to be repeated, losing nothing of
its horror, as long as I stayed down below. After they
had hauled me up it still lasted, growing rather fainter,
and occurring at considerably less intervals, till at last,
when we went away, it was going at the rate of thirty-
nine groans a minute. Those who have heard a large
hydraulic ram at work, and can conceive that sighing,
groaning noise transferred to such a place as I have
described, and made horrible by the acoustic properties
of the black depths from which it issued, may have some
idea of what it was. The schoolmaster suggested, with
a ready ingenuity which I believe came very near the
truth, that the noise was related to that class of noises
which water running from the neck of a bottle allows
the entering air to make. He imagined that the piece
of wood I had despatched to the lower regions, had
been sufficiently heavy to remove some obstacle, which
had before prevented the accumulated waters from
passing through a hole into a reservoir still further
underground, and that the noise we heard was, on a
large scale, exactly the gurgling noise which attends
the flow of fluid from a bottle. It is unnecessary to

104 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
suggest any of the various modifications of this theory,
which the tastes of different theorisers may form. It
may very probably be that some explanation of the
noise can be given on grounds radically different from
those which Rosset enunciated, but for the present I am
quite inclined to believe that he hit off the true theory,
or something very like it.
At the mouth of the glaciere we found a young man
in a blue blouse, whom the Maire introduced as his
confrere, the aubergiste from Annecy, who had come out
to give himself the pleasure of joining our party. With
this accession to our forces, we marched off to the third
glaciere, down a very remarkable face of riven and
eroded rock. The cheminee leading to this glaciere was
found without difficulty, and four of us ascended to the
entrance of the cave. The Maire had declared, early
in the day, that though he had not entered this glaciere
when I was last there, he fully intended to explore it
with us now ; but he changed his mind at last, and did
not even attempt the cbeminie. His last year's care
fulness about risking his neck, in the descent from the
entrance cave to the fissure in which the glaciere lay,
had been attributed to a patriotic determination that so
exalted a person as the Maire of Aviernoz must at all
hazards be kept unhurt ; but he had no such excuse
now, for he informed us that the elections had taken
place three days before, and another was Maire. He
had been eligible for re-election, but had not desired it.
Indeed, it was nothing but trouble, being Maire ; there

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 105
was nothing to be made by it, and the work was great.
Five or six francs, for journeys which he was forced to make
on communal business, that was all the reimbursement
he received. It appeared, however, that whether eligible
or not, he had no chance for re-election, for the prefet
had put down the name of the man to be chosen, and
the commune had been obedient. It was a conge d'elire,
accompanied by a letter recommendatory. The election
had occurred after three, instead of after five years, so
M. Metral's period of dignity had not been so long as
he had expected.
The Maire, then (for so we were still at liberty to
call him, inasmuch as the bare sapin, which is planted
in front of the official's house, and points out to the
world the position of the Mairie, had not been removed),
and the monsieur from Annecy, remained at the bottom
of the chemine'e ; indeed, the Maire eventually made his
way to the fire of some Italian charcoal burners, where
we found him roasting on our return. M. Joly, still
manfully maintaining an upright back, clambered stiffly
up the cheminee, and posed himself in the small cave at
top, a sort of dark ante-room to the narrow internal
fissure which penetrates into the heart of the mountain,
with its roof of rock immensely high above. He had
long before relapsed into a sort of moody silence, caused
by his fatigue, and broken only by occasional questions
to which he seemed not to require any answer, such as,
' The English are the greatest people in the world ? '
' You don't believe in baptism ? ' and so on. The rest

106 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
of the party made towards the drop which leads from
this cave to the fissure, and we observed that there was
an absence of the icy current of air which had so tried
our endurance and our candles on the previous visit.
On lowering the solitary little oil-lamp down this drop,
we found, to our astonishment, that the fissure was
choked with snow, commencing eight or nine feet below
the platform where we stood, and passing down as far
as we could see, — which is not saying much, for the
range of the lamp did not command a radius of six feet.
I had believed, on my previous visit, that it was quite
impossible for snow to reach the fissure, and I am now
at a loss to know how it got there, unless the lie of the
hills and gullies exposes the mouth of the cave to strong
northerly winds, which drift the snow through the
various windings of the approach to the fissure. We
could see that the snow shrank from the sides of the
fissure, and so presented a sharp descending arite, with
what may be called a Bergschrund on a small scale on
either side. To pass down this in the dark was as
unsatisfactory a process as can well be imagined, for
the friction caused by the contact of a broad shoulder
with the rugged side of the fissure was often the only
hold, excepting the sharp edge of unresisting snow, on
which the foot dared place no reliance whatever.
Considering how useful the bull's-eye lantern would
have been, we rather wished we had the man who sold
it at one or two of the worst parts of the descent.
The snow reached as far as the entrance to the first

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 107
ice-chamber. This, a gallery of forty feet long, shewed
a complete flooring of ice, whereas in the previous year,
rather earlier in the summer, there had only been ice
at the further end of the floor. The ice cascade which
blocked that end was much higher and more striking
than on that occasion, when it measured seven yards in
height.- It must have been now, at the least, half as
much again, and the ice was thicker and more beautiful.
The most limpid parts of it were prismatic, and were
so clear that, as we moved the lamp backwards and
forwards, the meshes of the network of shadow cast
through the ice upon the rock behind were most distinct,
being magnified and diminished, of course, according
as the lamp was nearer or further off. In one part we
observed that the mass was formed of prisms of very
large size, the ice being so clear and limpid that the
shadow cast by the dividing lines was seen as if nothing
were interposed between us and the rock on which it
rested. Some of these prisms were at least three inches
across the exposed end, and one or two cast shadows of
most perfect hexagons ; their length, that is, the thick
ness of the ice in this particular part, must have been
half a foot, and was possibly a good deal more. Their
beauty was so great, that here, as in the first glaciere,
we groaned over the impossibility of carrying them
away. Some parts of this cascade were interspersed
with large and eccentric air-bubbles, but in the best
prisms there was not a flaw of any kind.
It was now time to descend to the lower chamber on

108 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
the right-hand side of the fissure, everything being, of
course, involved in the most pitchy darkness. The
solid ice floor of this chamber, and the remains of
columns at the entrance, were apparently in precisely
the same state as when I had last seen them. But the
corner which we were bent upon exploring was much
changed, unfortunately for our schemes. It was before
closed by a curtain of ice, and a hole in the curtain was
easily made, large enough to admit a man. Within
the curtain I had found a gentle slope of ice passing
down into a supposed chamber, which gave forth sounds
of water and of rock in answer to the lumps of ice
despatched along the slope. The curtain at that time
formed a low roofing, which did not permit me to stand
upright, but allowed room for sitting on the ice-slope
and using the axe to cut steps. I had desisted on that
occasion from proceeding more than a yard or two down
the slope, in consequence of the absence of ropes, and
the impossibility of finding any holding for hands or
feet in case of a slip. We were now well provided with
ropes, and we attacked the curtain in great spirits. It
was evident at a first glance that the amount of the ice
which formed the curtain had very much increased, but
we were not prepared for the labour it cost us to hew a
hole through it. The difficulty of this process was
made greater by the extreme slipperiness of the ice on
which those who hewed and those who looked on were
obliged to stand. Whenever the hewer pat more than
ordinary vigour into a stroke, his foothold gave way,

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 109
and he slid along the ice bent double and with all sides
foremost, in that fatuous way which marks a beginner's
appearance on skates. This was only partially remedied
by roughening with the axe the ice-floor in the neigh
bourhood of the desired hole in the curtain. When at
length we had all had our turn, and had all skated
about involuntarily and inelegantly, and were all pretty
well tired, a hole sufficiently large to admit a man, legs
first, was achieved, and we sent in the oil-lamp to
explore. The icy current which rushed out from the
hole was almost too much for the feeble flame, and blew
it about so much that we could see nothing of what was
inside. We therefore lighted a piece of the magnesium
wire, and after many unsuccessful attempts contrived
to light up the interior with it. In place of a tolerably
roomy cave, with floor and roof of ice, and ice on one
side and the other, we found a mere trough. The
diminution in size was caused by the lowering of the
icy roof, which now approached much nearer to the
slope forming the floor, and ran parallel with it as far
as we could see, until the flooring passed down into
invincible darkness, and the roof joined the rock.
What we had called a curtain was in fact a grand and
solid mass of ice, streaming down from a fissure in the
rock, and completely occupying all that corner of the
chamber. This mass of ice reached within two feet of
the ice floor through all its thickness, and the curtain
in which we had hewn a hole was a veil hung before
the entrance to the broad and low tunnel thus made.

110 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
The roof was very prettily groined, and was studded
with crystals, and here and there graceful pillars ran up
to it from the floor. There was nowhere room to sit
upright, barely sufficient room for a man lying down ;
and there was no possible chance of using an axe. It
was clear, however, that a man lying on the ice
could worm himself along down the slope, and ac
cordingly the belt was put on and I essayed to go,
entering feet first, and taking our only light with me.
But before I was well in a feeling of suffocation came
on. The situation was too much like what it must be
to be buried alive. Whatever happened, it was im
possible to do much more than raise the head and
indulge in lateral motion of the arms and legs. The
idea was so choking that I began to resolve to go no
further. There seemed to be no reason for supposing
that there would be more vertical space further on,
where the slope became more rapid and turned a corner
of the rock ; so that it was among probabilities that an
explorer in my circumstances would be let gradually
down by the rope, gliding on his back round this
corner, and there would remain jammed when the
attempt to pull him up again was made. Besides, the
horrible devouring gurgle of the depths of the last
glaciere was still in our ears, and this tunnel in which I
lay might end in sudden water just as the tunnel in
VEnfer did. Water we knew to be round the corner at
some greater or less distance, and the idea of plunging
in, feet first, off a slippery slope of ice, without room

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 111
for any kind of struggle, and without a certainty that
the spasmodic tirez ! tirez ! would reach through all
obstacles to the men at the other end of the rope,
finally decided the question. Before calling, however,
to them to haul me up through the hole, I observed
that the roof of this strange trough was thickly set with
the same brown case-flies which I had found in the
glacieres of La Genolliere and St. Livres in the Jura, as
also here, in the previous year. The present specimens
struck me as being smaller than those I had before seen,
and I secured two — being all I could accommodate in
fingers already encumbered by an axe and an oil-lamp.
Then they were told to haul me out, which they did
with a will, evidently enjoying it much more than I did,
and oblivious of the fact that a human being feels more
than a log of wood may be supposed to do, when jerked
abruptly on his back over a little obstacle a foot high,
consisting of a solid threshold of ice jagged with recent
hewing. While we were placing the two flies in the
box prepared for them, we found that two others had
attached themselves to my beard, and one of these was
of an entirely different species. These insects have since
been submitted to the inspection of the Entomological
Society. Three of them are specimens of Stenophylax,
the largest being probably, though not certainly, S.
hieroglyphicus of Stephens, as the specimen brought
from an ice-cave in the Jura had already been supposed
to be. The two smaller caddis flies are either
S. testaceus of Pictet, or some very closely allied species.

112 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
The remaining insect is an ichneumon of the genus
Paniscus, but no one has been able to identify it with
any described species. It differs from all its congeners
in the marking of the throat, and in this respect bears a
strong resemblance to some species of Ophion ; never
theless, it is a true Paniscus.1 The case-flies may have
been washed into the cave, somehow or other, in the
larva form, and come to maturity on the ice where they
have lodged. Case-flies, it is well known, have the
power of adapting themselves to great extremes of cold ;
the same flies which come to maturity in one year, or
even in one season, in protected and warmer regions,
requiring two and three and even four years to arrive
at the perfect state at higher altitudes, or in colder
latitudes. But this explanation will not hold in the
case of the ichneumon, which is a parasitic genus on
larvae of terrestrial insects. The ice trough in which
the flies were found must have been hermetically sealed
at the end by which we entered. No one who had
seen the huge curtain of ice which shut in that corner
of the cave could doubt the fact. The other end plunged
down into darkness, and blocks of ice despatched down
the slope fell at length into water. A great entomo
logical authority is of opinion that the presence of the
ichneumon proves conclusively that some communica
tion with the outer air existed at the time, or had very
recently existed, but the depths into which the trough
1 I have to thank Mr. R. H'Lachlan and Mr. Albert Miiller for
valuable information and suggestions with respect to these insects.

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 113
plunged pass straight on towards the heart of the
mountain in whose face the original entrance to the
fissure lies. Another gentleman, who has for several
years investigated the insect fauna of Switzerland, is
inclined to think that the curtain could not have
hermetically sealed the entrance to the trough, and
that through its interstices the insects had flown. I
feel sure that if he had seen the place he could not have
thought this. In any case it is exceedingly remarkable
that this particular cavity in the ice should be found to
contain such a very large number of the same insects
that I had found in two of the Jurane ice-caves the
summer before. The flies were perfectly stationary on
the ice until touched, when they ran actively, and we
had great difficulty in catching the ichneumon.
On the opposite side of the main fissure from that
on which this triangular chamber opened out, we found
the same curious channel of motionless water that we
had observed the year before, lying about a yard and a
half wide between vertical walls of rock which passed
up out of sight. By lighting the fissure with mag
nesium wire we discovered with some difficulty the
other end of this singular channel, far away from the
furthest point we could reach. The rock at the end
rose up vertically like the sides, and we did not
succeed in detecting the roof. The man who accom
panied us from the Mairie declared that he had long
known the glaciere, and had been employed to extract
ice from it for M. de Chosal of Annecy ; and that on

114 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
one occasion he had found one side of the channel of
water solid ice, along which he had passed till he
reached yet another ice-cave.
This supplementary visit to the glacieres of Mont
Parmelan and the Montagne de l'Eau had the effect of
raising our opinion of the grandeur of the natural
phenomena connected with them ; while our obser
vations seemed to shew that no very deep scientific
reasons for their existence need be sought. The
presence of a large quantity of snow in the cave last
described contradicted the opinion formed upon the
observations of the previous visit, and shewed that in
this cave also snow may have played the large part
it certainly does play in many glacieres, in the pro
duction of the larger masses of ice which form the
solid floor of the caves. Very probably such glacieres
may be found in connection with many of the neigi&res,
or snow-holes, which abound in the Jura, in cases at
least where the water formed by the melting snow does
not run off entirely by natural drainage, but lodges in
a cave at the bottom or side of the pit. And from the
nature of snow it is easy to see that the mere presence
of a large superincumbent mass will tend to convert
the lower parts into ice, when the infiltration of surface
water is taken into account, without the necessity of
supposing a complete thaw of the snow and a separate
freezing of the resulting water. The decorative parts,
which appear on the walls in the shape of curtains, and
as pillars, and stalactites, and stalagmites, are originally,

ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 115
no doubt, formed in the end of winter or in early spring,
and are maintained by the low temperature which a
cave half full of ice and snow must possess. Probably,
indeed almost certainly, additions are made to these por
tions of the ice by the congelation of some of the water
which courses over them, or falls on to them from
fissures in the roof and walls of the cave, at later
periods of the spring and summer. It is worthy of
special notice that in the course of a visit paid to two
of the Jurane ice-caves in the middle of January some
years ago, a small course of water was found to be
running down the face of the rock where in summer is
nothing but a solid sheet of ice ; and a certain pathway
in the cave, which in the hot months is difficult by
reason of a thick crust of ice, was bare rock. This
appears to point to early spring as the time when the
formation of the decorative parts of the ice takes
place. The temperatures in the three glaci&res after we had
been in them some little time were respectively as
follows: — 1-2 centigrade, 1*5, and 2-5, being higher
than the register of the previous year, observed a few
weeks earlier in the season.. The misconduct of the
aneroid renders the altitude observations less trust
worthy, but the heights of the three caves are probably
from 4,900 to 5,500 feet. With regard to the prismatic
structure so very clearly marked, it seems possible that
when large masses of ice are subjected for a length of
time to the summer temperature of these caves, a
I 2

116 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY
degree or two degrees above freezing, the surface takes
the opportunity afforded by the partially relaxed con
dition of its molecules, to assume to a definite extent
the crystalline form which in a more modified degree
is natural to it.
Note. — The question of the prismatic structure of the ice
is dealt with in Chapter XVIII. of my Ice Caves of France
and Switzerland. I read papers on the subject at the Bath
meeting of the British Association in 1864.

117

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND'
The reading world has been abundantly supplied of
late years with accounts of Swiss excursions made in
the summer season, but Switzerland in the winter is
comparatively a novelty. It may not be without
interest, therefore, to attempt a description of an ad
venturous expedition into the Jura in the third week of
January of the present year (1866). Our party consisted
of five persons, two being men — whom we may call
the Doctor and Monsieur, following the nomenclature
adopted by our Swiss friends — and one a boy, who may
without offence to his dignity be called Charley ; the
remaining two, being ladies, must maintain a modest
incognito as M. and H. The object of our excursion
was to visit one or two curious caves of the district,
containing vast masses of permanent ice, under cir
cumstances which would seem to afford no further
opportunity than any ordinary cave affords for the
preservation of that material through the hot season.
Having seen these caves in the summer months, and
made joyful use of their cooling stores, we were
1 Once a Week, December 22, 1866.

118 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND
desirous of visiting them at the season when the
annual addition to the supplies of ice might be in
course of formation.
Our intention had been to leave Geneva by the
route for France, passing at the back of the Dole on
foot by the Faucille road, and so down to St. Cergues
and Arzier, leaving the main road before reaching the
famous French fortress of Les Rousses. But the high
valley behind the Dole is so completely unprotected
from the worst inclemencies of the weather, that
prudence, and regard for our weaker members, forbade
the attempt to face it, and the less romantic rail con
veyed the party to Nyon. Thence a walk of eight or
nine miles, over much snow in parts, led up the Jura
to Arzier, from which village the expedition to the
caves was to start on the following day. One small
cave, indeed, had been intended for the afternoon of
our arrival, but various delays made it necessary to
omit that portion of the programme, and we visited
instead some of our old summer haunts.
It was strange to see everything so familiar, and yet
so utterly different from what we had ever known it to
be. Lovely and treacherous as the steep green slopes
of summer pasture had always been, they were yet
more lovely and treacherous now that they lay smooth
with untrodden snow. Pure as the fresh green of the
young meadows might be in summer, their winter
dress was purer still. And never on the loveliest
summer's day had the atmosphere been so exquisitely

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 119
clear, the view so wonderfully grand. The whole range
of Mont Blanc stood out free from the dark seams
which in the hot season mark the desertion of the
snows ; and from Mont Blanc eastward the horizon was
studded with all the white peaks which link the sum
mits of Savoy with the furthest giants of the Bernese
Oberland. More than one chaotic fall as we progressed forcibly
reminded us that there were other changes besides in
creased beauty to be taken account of ; for on slopes
where in summer the foothold had been sufficiently
good for all practical purposes, a hearty laugh at the
mishaps of any of the party was now almost sure to
end in a long roll down the face of the snow.
That night to our dismay the weather changed.
As we sat over an excellent though primitive supper,
the shutters were driven in by a sudden gust of wind,
sweeping down pans and the whole stock of cups and
saucers, and creating a disturbance which could
scarcely have been greater if the house had come
down, a catastrophe which for a time we believed to
have arrived. The cold was intense, and every one
secured a hot bottle for the feet before going to bed.
Sunday morning brought pouring rain, heavy snow
having fallen in the night, and only three of us struggled
out to the little village church, the others staying at
home and preparing the walking boots of the party.
About this time we found that our arrangements for
guides could not be carried into execution, as one of

120 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND
our meditated companions was suffering from pleu
risy, and the other had sprained his ankle two days
before. So in default we took a man whom they re
commended as walking well, working well, and talking
little, and about two o'clock on the Sunday afternoon
we started for the more immediate neighbourhood of
the caves.
St. Georges was the village for which we were to
make our way ; it was where in summer we had more
than once stopped en route, and had found respectable
accommodation au Cavalier. The country was deep in
snow, through which we ploughed in a most praise
worthy manner, and there was so dense a fog that
any one who separated himself ever so little from the
party was for a time lost.
We swept through more than one village, to the
utter astonishment of such of the inhabitants as could
catch a glimpse of us, and were plodding on our way,
desperately wet and slightly out of heart, when suddenly
the sun burst out on the right, opening a rift in the
brouillard, and there, in the centre of the narrow rift,
appeared the head of Mont Blanc, with a suddenness
and clearness which seemed almost magical. Then the
view expanded, and above the boiling, whirling, tearing
wreaths of mist we saw the Bernese mountains, the
peaks near the Rhone valley, and even — in another
direction — the highest summits of the Jura. The very
guide was moved to speech and feeling ; and we all
stood still, lost in admiration, till unmistakable sensa-

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 121
tions about the feet and ankles reminded us that a
compound of deep snow and rain forms an undesirable
standing ground.
The ' Cavalier ' seemed to think at first that the
place could scarcely fulfil the promise of its sign-board —
Loge d pied. The woman in charge was not prepared
for travellers at such a season, and it was with difficulty
that we made our way upstairs to judge for ourselves
of the badness of the quarters. There was a good-
sized room, with a bench and two beds ; a miserable
little back place, containing a wooden trough filled
with straw, which counted as another bedroom ; — and
behold all !
' Was there not a hole of any kind into which
Mademoiselle could be put ? ' H. asked.
'Yes,' the woman said, 'there was; but  ' and
she looked at Mademoiselle, and said, ' No, it would
not do ; she could not even shew it.'
' Shew it by all means,' we urged ; ' Mademoiselle
is not difficult.'
It turned out to be a large room, with a long table
and benches, some with legs and some without, but all
in the vilest state of dirt and evil smell. In an alcove
was a narrow trough, with straw, to which the hostess
gave the style and title of a single bed, the broader
trough in the other room being presumably accounted
a double bed. As it was a question between quarters
here and quarters nowhere, we at once decided to take
these three rooms for sleeping purposes, and proceeded

122 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND
to ask where could we eat, as we were by this time
hungry. There was no room which possessed a fire,
they told us, and inasmuch as we were wet through
with snow-water, we were unwilling to put up with the
absence of artificial warmth. Distressed to see us in
such a plight, the hostess offered her own bedroom,
where there was a stove, informing us that, as there
was an alcove, her husband and she would not mind
our presence, and we should do very well there for our
supper. There was also a baby a few months old in
their bed, but that, she supposed, did not signify, as it
could be warranted quiet. That room was naturally
declined. Then we discovered that the double-bedded
room had a fireplace, and, although the chimney
appeared to be hopelessly choked with snow, we suc
ceeded in melting it out with a cheerful blaze of wood,
and soon had a glorious fire. The table, unfortunately,
was a dissipated sort of table, and could not, without
much care, be brought near the fire. When that feat
was accomplished, one of its legs struck work, so it
rested on three odd legs and two nails in the wall ;
these last proved eventually to be too frail a support,
and they betrayed the trust reposed in them in a very
treacherous and painful manner. One tallow candle
was all the light we could procure in the auberge, so we
placed the thick carriage-lamp candle we had brought
for our subterranean explorations on a similar prop in
the wall. But everything seemed to be alike rickety
and unsound ; and prop, and candle, and all, were soon

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 123
lodged on poor Monsieur's head, depositing there an
unwelcome run of melted bougie.
No one had a complete change of outer or under
clothing, for we were obliged to march light, and in our
generally damp state we did not make much profit of
the two beds and the single and double trough. The
last was the worst of all, for a considerable amount of
its straw had been abstracted for some purpose or other,
and the vacancy was made up with billets of wood.
The Doctor and his wife accordingly got up next morn
ing with their bodies considerably bruised, and their
minds enlightened as to the demerits of this new kind
of couch. The natural result of hard beds, and noisy
clocks — for the clock of the village struck in the wall
of the double-bedded room, and they always strike the
hour twice in those parts — and late tea, and universal
difficulties, was that the nine o'clock fixed for the start
in the morning became a late ten.
At that hour the whole party got actually under
way for the cavern of St. Georges,1 a large cave in the
hills, below the surface of the earth, a hundred feet
long and sixty high, entered by ladders through a small
hole in the roof. The floor is permanently composed
of ice, of unknown and great thickness, and as we had
frequently visited this cave in summer, and found large
and beautiful sheets of ice on the side-walls, in addition
to the solid flooring of that material, we were anxious
1 Described in Chapter II. of the Tee Caves of France and

124 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SAVTTZERLAND
to determine its condition in midwinter. The way by
the woods was impassable by reason of the deep snow,
and we were in consequence obliged to go round by the
main road which passes up the side of the Jura. Even
this would have been too much for us, perhaps, con
sidering our want of training, but fortunately men had
come down with wood that morning, and their cavalcade
had acted as a sort of snow-plough, and made our
course less toilsome than it must otherwise have been.
It was hard enough work as it was ; and in spite of a
dense fog, which prevented the rays of the sun from
reaching us, we became so hot that the men walked in
shirt-sleeves and the ladies without wraps. When the
track of the woodmen ceased to be available, we
ploughed along knee-deep, till at length, after an hour
and a half s walking, the cavern was almost reached,
and then the guides were obliged to cut branches and
make a sort of platform for us to stand on, while they
shovelled away the snow from the mouth of the hole of
entrance. The ladders were declared to be sound, which had
not been the case on one of our previous visits, and we
proceeded to descend, tied with ropes as a matter of
precaution, for the rungs of the ladders were more or
less covered with ice. To explain the presence of the
ladders, it may be as well to say that ice is taken from
this cave in large quantities during the summer, to
supply Geneva and Lausanne.
The cave felt quite warm when we got well into it,

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SAVITZERLAND 125
but that sensation was partly due to the contradiction
of our expectations, rather than to the actual tempera
ture of the contained air, for the thermometer observa
tions gave the temperatures within and without the
cave the same, viz., half a degree Centigrade above the
freezing-point. The hygrometer also gave the same
record in each case, a lowering of half a degree due to
evaporation. The large sheet of ice which in summer clothes one
of the side-walls of the cave with fantastic and beau
tiful drapery was gone ; but there were grand icicles
hanging freely from many parts of the roof, and some
signs of the commencement of another sheet on the
wall, in the shape of mural icicles, partly connected by
curtains. In one corner was a small remnant of a sheet
of ice, but it appeared to be fast melting away, and a
minute stream of water trickled down a face of rock on
which in summer there is always ice. A raised terrace
of rock and stones, which in the hot season is difficult
by reason of its thick covering of ice, was now perfectly
free from that treacherous material. A block of stone,
three feet by two, was covered with an efflorescence of
ice-crystals, like those of carbonate of lime, but larger,
being from half an inch to two inches and a half long,
some hexagonal and others pentagonal. These were
joined at their bases, but stood out clear from the stone.
The great lake of solid unfathomed ice, forty-five feet
by fifteen, was dry, very much drier than in summer.
A large quantity of snow lay in one corner of the cave,

126 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND
where even in August a collection of unmelted snow is
found ; this supply penetrates in winter by a hole in
the roof, near to that by which an entrance to the cave
is obtained, the latter hole being permanently covered
with trunks of trees to shelter the ice in summer at the
bottom of the cave.
Near this collection of snow we had always under
stood that there was said to be a hole or tunnel in the
flooring of ice, but we had not succeeded in finding it
in the course of previous visits. The man whom we had
engaged at St. Georges to act as our porter and guide,
told us that some men had let their sack of bread fall
into it thirteen years ago, and a knife as well, and there
they must be still, for no one had ever yet been down.
This hole Monsieur was determined to find, and before
long he found it, a nasty dark place, with only a slope
of the hardest and most slippery ice to descend by. He
was speedily roped, and let down for nine or ten feet
into the darkness, when M. also adventured with an
other rope, and was lowered to the same point, a sort
of bridge of ice and rock, lying under the collection of
snow. The Doctor and H. and the two Swiss worked
the ropes meanwhile, obedient to the slightest signals
from the lower regions, and the boy Charley made him
self generally useful.
The standing-place thus reached by the two adven
turers afforded an opportunity of examining the further
depths of the hole by means of a lantern and blazing
paper, the latter being the more useful plan, for the

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 127
lantern always turned its one glass side to the ice when
it was lowered, and was therefore useless, after the
fashion of such lanterns on such occasions. The further
slope was an unsatisfactory sort of place for a descent.
It consisted of a rather steep arete of ice, with sides
sloping no one could say whither. If the adventurers
could make sure of keeping to the arMe for fifteen feet
or so, all would be well. But there was no certainty
about the matter, and the rope was of little use, as
ropes will not work in curved lines round a corner.
However, by help of a pole which had fallen into the
cavity and become frozen onto the surface of the ice,
this difficulty was got over; but only to shew that there
lay more and insurmountable difficulties in front and
on each side. Here was found a red measuring-tape,
which appeared to be in excellent condition, but melted
away into nothing when it was touched, a fate that
may have come spontaneously upon the sack of bread
and the knife. Further than this it seemed impossible
to go, nor could it be determined how far the streams
of ice flowed down. We could see, however, for some
fifteen feet further than we had descended, making in
all about fifty from the mouth of the hole in a tortuous
course. The rapidity of the descent, when once commenced,
the darkness and discomfort of the depths, and the
difficulty of the ascent, recalled of course a trite piece
of Virgil. The ascent was really most unpleasant, for
it consisted of a series of hauls over any little impedi-

128 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND
ments that might lie in the way, and round sharp
corners guarded by jagged bits of rock. At one of
these corners, M. was so nearly palled in two by a
sudden jerk, and by reason of her dress catching, that
she had not breath to cry 'Hold!' and was in conse
quence all but choked by the strap to which the rope
was attached. The Swiss men rubbed their chins when
they looked down and saw the commencement of what
she had gone through, and talked to each other in
whispers about courage. It was observed that at two
or three places, where a little assistance was needed
after the party had set off for the return, they helped
H. in the most careful manner, but respectfully drew
aside to let M. take care of her own most competent
self. The walk back to St. Georges was accomplished in
less than an hour. More wood had been brought down
and had further cleared the road. Themethod of dragging
wood down the mountain-side, over the snow, is primi
tive. A sort of driving bench, made to run like a
sledge, has four or five chains attached to it behind,
each chain bearing a long point of iron, which is driven
into the end of a tree ; and the whole apparatus is then
dragged down together.
When we arrived at St. Georges, there was an hour
and a half left for us to warm ourselves and make pre
paration for our departure, still on foot, for Biere, from
which place another and more singular ice-cave was to
be visited next day. It will be understood that starting

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 129
at five o'clock on a January evening for a walk of two
hours and a half, cannot be called starting by daylight ;
and ploughing in the dark through the deep slush which
covered the roads was the reverse of pleasant. After a
time the road became a gentle course of water, and in
this we walked patiently till the lights of Biere shone
out seemingly near at hand, but practically very far
off, for a long and deep ravine had to be turned before
the auberge of Biere could be reached.
Auberge, however, is scarcely a respectful name for
the Hdtel de la Poste, to which our steps were bent ;
and the landlady, being full of guests, adopted the grand
supercilious air with which modern hotels at home have
made us familiar. The house, she said, shortly and
decidedly, was full. It was in our power to retort, as a
traveller, whose weariness could not destroy his power
of sarcasm, did retort, when the mis-manager of a
famous London hotel made a similar statement, ' I
suppose, madam, it is your affable demeanour that fills
the hotel.' But we were too anxious for a resting-
place to resort to such dangerous weapons of offence.
The firemen of the neighbourhood, three score and
ten pompiers, were dining with their pompes in the
hotel. It was also a skin-fair in Biere. Thus the
downstairs rooms and passages were all full of rabble,
and the affair looked as hopeless as could well be. At
this crisis a bonny chambermaid came up to her mis
tress, and reminded her that there were two spare
rooms with two beds each, and one single room. The
K

130 A AVINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND
landlady declined to recognise this statement, and only
unbent so far as to say there was a single room we
might have, where we must all sleep together. Our
Arzier guide hereupon turned on his heel in wrath,
observing loftily that there was no occasion for company
' like his to say no to that, and we trudged off disconso
lately to look for another auberge. In all the place
there was only one bed to be had. So we returned to
the Poste, followed by a crowd of idle men and boys,
who had been drawn together by the strange character
of. our cavalcade, and who insisted on believing that we
were brigands, whatever that may mean on the peace
ful slopes of the Jura. At the door of the Poste the
pretty maid met us. She had been sure we should
return, and she promised to use her influence with the
mistress. Eventually we got the- three rooms, and the
maid explained the reason of the landlady's objection
to our having them. The landlord had been ill in bed
for six weeks, in a room between the two double ones
we had with so much difficulty secured, and his wife
took us for German tourists, who would sit up all night
singing boisterous songs, after the fashion of tourist
parties of that nation. The necessary noise of the
house was of itself too much, and the seventy pompiers
and the skin-fair had almost driven the landlady mad.
We soon set their minds at rest about our nationality
and our sitting up all night ; and the natural sympathy
we shewed for the forlorn case of the mistress of the
house obtained for us many little comforts we should

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SAVITZERLAND 131
otherwise have seen nothing of. Indeed, the landlady
made us a fire in a little den of her own, where we
regaled ourselves on larded beef, jumped potatoes, rum
and cherries, and a chicken that seemed to melt in its
tenderness. Unfortunately poor Charley was attacked
at exactly the wrong moment by one of his favourite
headaches, ' a regular floorer,' as he described it ; and
as that sent him supperless to bed, it cast some gloom
upon the party. The bed accommodation was very
decidedly superior to that with which we had grappled
at St. Georges ; but the Doctor had to be satisfied with
a stiff little sofa considerably shorter than himself, and
about eighteen inches wide, stuffed so as to display a
rounded crest along the middle of the cushion, down
which Doctor and duvet kept rolling in moments of
relaxed vigilance The ludicrous airs of the pompiers'
songs kept every one awake for a time, and the people
of the house made periodical appeals to the firemen to
be quiet or to leave. They declined to do either ; and
at two o'clock they were still singing and shouting with
unabated vigour. M. slept during the verse, but awoke
invariably for the chorus and applause.
Some of us were up at seven the next morning, as
we had arranged overnight to start at nine for the ice-
cave ; but the men of the party were only beginning
breakfast at nine, and it was a quarter to eleven before
we left the village. This difficulty about getting off
early, it may be observed, is a marked feature in winter
excursions. Our trusty Arzier guide had secured for
E 2

132 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND
us the services of the Inspector of Forests, who had
rented a chalet near the cave for three years, and there
fore knew the place well. He did all he could to dis
suade us from going. More than halfway no one had
yet been since the snow came. As far as halfway a
man might have been — in effect, a man had been ; but
we should find it two feet deep for the greater part of
the way. The ladders, he expected, were good, and if we
were scientific people (apparently a synonym for fous),
the expedition was certainly, as far as he could see,
possible. When he found that we had not come to
Biere for the purpose of turning back, he consented to
accompany us. The air was colder than on the previous
day, and gloriously clear ; the bright blue sky, seen
through the snow-laden branches of the dense firs, was
too brilliant for the eye to encounter without pain.
The snow was so deep, well above our knees, that we
durst not look about us without stopping to do so, for
otherwise the chance of coming down on our faces was
very great indeed. Sometimes Monsieur led, sometimes
the inspector, sometimes the guide; the rest planted
their legs in the holes thus made, save when a stumble
caused one or the other to flounder about a little on
their own account. The snow became deeper and
deeper, till a six-foot-three man plunged in frequently
as deep as his legs would let him go, and still made no
bottom. We passed over a stone wall and a gate with
out knowing that we had done so. M. and H. were
wet through and through to well above the waist, and

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 133
at one place H. stuck hard and fast, and could only
with much difficulty be drawn out. Every one grew
silent,- and some rather sad. At length, after more
than three hours' walking, a long steep ascent appeared
right ahead, at the further end of a valley into which
we dipped, and the idea of pounding up this slope was
too much for the endurance of most of the party. M.,
however, had been there before, and to the general joy
announced and maintained that the slope had not to be
encountered, for the cave was in the valley close at
hand. She was always right on such points. A few
yards more brought it into sight, its yawning black
mouth shewing in strange and suggestive contrast in
the midst of the deep unbroken snow. The summer-
chalet close at hand resounded speedily with the stamp
ing of feet and chopping of wood, and, better still, in
an incredibly short space of time the roar of a blazing
fire was added to the concert, for which purpose the
straw-beds of the last inhabitants were ruthlessly
pillaged and exposed to the action of wax vestas.
Wine for heating and spicing, and solids at discretion,
had been carefully brought in a sack, and to these
creature comforts every one applied vigorously. The
red wine of the country, when judiciously spiced, is by
no means despicable as a cordial, and the guide and the
inspector went in for it with emphasis, declaring that it
was parfait amour.
Arrived at length at the edge of the pit, further
progress seemed to be impossible. The entrance to

134 A WINTER" EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND
this cave, unlike that of St. Georges, is by a deep open
pit, at the bottom of which a grand archway in the
rock leads to the cave proper. For the descent of this
pit two long ladders are required, which we found piled
deep with fresh snow ; and when the fresh snow was
knocked off — no pleasant operation — the steps proved
to be frozen into a conglomerate of ice and older snow.
A ledge of rock, which forms the resting-place for the
foot of the top ladder, was so deep in snow that an
alpenstock could not fathom it. After much prepara
tion of the ladders, M. and H. were lowered by cords,
Monsieur having pioneered. Then a long slope of very
slippery ice was passed, with similar regard for safety,
after which came another ladder frozen into a wall of
ice, and very difficult of descent. This eventually
landed us at the bottom of the cave, where we found a
lake of ice, with grand masses of former columns lying
about, and a wall of solid ice, twenty feet high, barring
our return. On the strength of previous information
the floor was carefully examined till a small crack was
found, and through this, after it had been enlarged
sufficiently, M. and Monsieur and Charley were let
down, or climbed, into a lower cave still, which shewed
a continuation of the ice-wall seen above, as far as the
eye could penetrate by the aid of a candle.
But time failed for further explorations, to the great
annoyance of the explorers. There was known to be
besides a marvellous ice-cave some half an hour away
among the woods, but it was impossible to go to it,

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 135
even if the inspector had known the way, which he did
not.1 If gentlemen will lie in bed, or on a sofa, as the
case may be, instead of getting up and starting in
good time, they must expect to be cut short at the end
of the day. H. and the Doctor had already been
packed off some time ago, for they had a dinner party
next day, and must catch the evening train at Allaman
to give orders. The rest of the party had engaged to
walk fast, and reach Biere in time for the Postes
conveyance, which would take them to Aubonne and
Allaman, and so to Geneva ; but there was not much
use attempting to walk fast. A strong and bitter
wind had risen, the snow had become lighter and more
powdery than it was in the morning, and going down
hill in deep snow after a winter twilight has well set
in, is of all things the most bewildering and fatiguing.
Every one arrived at Biere too late for Postes, or any
thing, else. It was already pitch dark, and a great
storm was brewing. There was no help for it but to
remain there for the night, drenched as we all were.
The hostess, now rid of the pompiers, did her best to
make things comfortable, pitying the desperate con
dition of the ladies of the party, whose dresses made
circles of wet on the floor wherever they stood still for
a few moments. Thorough ablutions, and such attempts
at tidying as were possible, made so great a change in
their appearance that the maid exclaimed to M. :
1 The descriptions of these two glacieres form Chapters III. and
IV. of the Ice Caves of France and Switzerland.

136 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND
' Mademoiselle, I cannot tell you how many more
francs you look worth than when you came in from the
glaciere ! '
The cuisine maintained its high character of the
previous evening, and the beds were comfortable, always
excepting the mountainous and refractory sofa. But
neither bed nor cookery can make it other than dread
fully unpleasant to put on for the third morning the
same thoroughly wet clothes. The skin and flesh
assume a parboiled appearance under such circum
stances, and become exceedingly tender ; and the idea
of applying clothes stiff with wet to the limbs is
unbearable till the moment arrives when it must be
done. In spite of these and other very serious drawbacks,
it is well worth while to penetrate into the depths of
the Jura in midwinter. The skies, and the loaded
trees, and the wonderful undulations of the snow-clad
country, have a charm which no other season and no
other scene can surpass. In a scientific point of view
it was worth while to determine that there was actually
less ice in the glaciere of St. Georges in January than
in July, the reason probably being that nature had not
yet restored the supply of that material removed for
culinary purposes during the summer and autumn, or
melted away by the heat of the sun. Much of the
columnar ice in these caves was more like alabaster
than ice, an appearance due to the great admixture of
air. The microscope and the air-pump displayed this

A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 137
character of the ice well, and there was found to be an
unusual amount of nitrogen in the cells. The ther
mometer and hygrometer gave the same results in the
glaciere of St. Livres (the one visited from Biere) as in
that near St. Georges.

138

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON'
No creature of land, air, or water, is subjected to so
much legislation as the salmon. If a bird happens to
be hatched a grouse, or a blackcock, or a partridge, he
knows that wherever he may go within the limits of
these islands, man can make no lawful raid upon him
and his when once December 10 and February 1 are
respectively passed. His life only becomes a burden to
him on August 12 or 20, or September 1, as the case
may be. He knows when to make himself scarce, and
when it is safe to appear. Moreover, he knows the one
lawful weapon which man may wield against him, and
so long as he keeps out of the way of guns his life is
safe from human pursuit. If he is deprived of life by
unsportsmanlike means, he has the keen sympathy of
his, most energetic persecutors, and a fair chance of a
dirge from a bench of magistrates. The salmon has a
different tale to tell. His periods of freedom from care
are of so complicated a character that he is seldom at
his ease. During the spring and summer months there
1 Cornhill Magazine, July 1869.

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A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 139
are certain hours in the week when he may not be
lawfully circumvented with the net ; but man has had
the arrangement of these periods, and has meanly
selected the hours which nature and revelation alike
point out as holidays even for the victim of human
sport. The meagre months of continuous safety from
lawful human foe are spent in the toilsome task of
working up stream, and depositing the seed of future
generations of the Salmo fario. Even this one oasis in
the poor creature's life is of the nature of a shifting
mirage. It depends entirely on the river he chooses
to run up, though, as a fact, each fish knows his river
and keeps to it. According as it is the Tay or the Tweed,
he is absolutely free to devote himself to domestic cares
from October 10 or some complicated day in Novem
ber, and becomes safe from all weapons but the rod
on August 26 or October 14. For six or seven months
of each year he is exposed to vastly more than one
method of destruction. Engines of the net kind are of
various descriptions, one more fatal than another. The
common sweep-net is at least as fatal to the salmon as
cholera and small-pox, and fevers high and low, all put
together, to the lords of creation. The eyes which
guide this pen have seen three hundred fine fish lying
on the beach as the spoil of a pair of nets at one fishing
station, in four hours of ebbing tide, the other tide of
the day yielding another three hundred. For miles
and miles up many rivers the sweep-net is going from
both sides at once, the ' shots ' dovetailing in the most

140 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
murderous manner. Only fish that are uncommonly
deep, either as regards cunning or as regards position
in the water, can hope to reach the upper streams,
where peace from the net awaits them, and unremitting
persecution from the rod. The stell-net is as destruc
tive as it is illegal, and is worked unscrupulously by
those who are bound to see the law obeyed. Stake-nets
are in all respects dreadful engines. The hang-net is
the poacher's friend, and from the salmon's point of
view is diabolical. The pot and the basket await with
hungry jaws the sentimental fish that amuses himself
by jumping up waterfalls. A beneficent legislature
saves, or seeks to save, the salmon from perishing
through its own madness when a light is blazed on the
water ; but not a few do come to that manner of un
timely end each year, at the hands of blase sportsmen
anxious to ' see what it is like,' to say nothing of less
distinguished persons with whom material motives
weigh. And all the time, while the passion for the flesh
and blood of the salmon is being carried out to the full
in these various ways of violence, a steady course of
underhand assassination is going on, deceptions of the
most artful and stealthy description being practised to
lure the unfortunate fish to his destruction. Does he
love to dash grandly at a glimpse of rainbow imprisoned
in the water? — he makes his dash, and finds himself
impaled on a hidden hook, with a creature possessed of
brains at the other end of a hundred yards of oiled line,

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 141
dancing in horrid ecstasy to the tune of ' hooked him
at last ! ' Is he more quiet and sombre in his tastes ? —
there comes stealing across the clear stream, with ever
such a little kick and jump now and then, a soft-looking
dark creature, with the most piquante bit of silver
ornament possible ; and the same ecstatic dance and
shout of triumph follow his plunge at the enchanter.
Does he like his little bit of fish now and then? —
there is introduced to his notice, during his hungry
moments, a shy little creature of the minnow species,
now darting from him, now lazily lingering, lingering
till he seizes it and makes it his own, all with the same
result. Nay, for salmon so degraded as to love the
soft and juicy lobworm, there are found anglers so
degraded as to fix such a reptile on a hook, and there
with work the ruin of the fish that forgets the funda
mental maxim of his nobility. And, as if a man could
not do harm enough with one rod and line, which a
providential arrangement of hands has made the full
complement of his offensive armoury, he gets him a
boat, if he be suitably situated, and hangs him out
astern therefrom three rods, each with its line and lure.
A second conspirator, the boatman, tacks quietly across
and across the stream, thus drawing the lines through
the water, while the first sits cat-like in the stern.
Suddenly a reel rattles, the boatman shouts a husky
' therrum,' and the contest between brains and instinct
commences, sometimes, it is true, to the discomfiture of
the brains. The number of rods renders it possible to

142 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
pander to so many tastes at once, that the salmon falls
a frequent prey to this great sport of ' harling.'
The circumstances most favourable to harling are a
broad expanse of water and a quick current. There is
then sufficient room for manoeuvring the boat, while the
current keeps the lines always in new water, as the
boat drops slowly down. A romantic river, boiling over
shelves of rocks and rushing between boulders like a
mill-race, is no place for a boat to work ; and as salmon
rise well to the fly under such picturesque circum
stances, it is as unnecessary as it is impossible to resort
to the device of harling. But when the mountain burn
has become a stream, and a dozen such have been
gathered into a loch, and the loch has given birth to a
river, and the river has become an estuary three-
quarters of a mile broad, with a rise and fall of twelve
or fourteen vertical feet of tide, it is of no use to cast a
fly. It has been held, indeed, up to very modern times,
that salmon are here entirely safe from the rod ; but
recent experiments have gone far to explode this
opinion. Harling has been found to answer very well
under such circumstances, and it is better to take fish
by harling than not to take them at all, though that
manner of sport is decried by fly-fishers whose lines are
cast in other waters. Now, a good deal of nonsense is
talked about fly-fishing. There is an idea abroad in
the world that it is a most graceful art, requiring much
skill if it is to be practised with success. And the idea
is sound, so far as really good fly-fishing and distin-

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 143
guished success are concerned. But salmon are killed
often enough by gentlemen, and by ladies too, who
have a very flail-like style of hurling a fly, and can
certainly claim no superiority of skill over the scientific
harler. Rough measures will take a fish determined on
being taken, a state of mind in which a good many
salmon find themselves one time or another. This
present writer served his novitiate in a boat, with a rod
more like a hop-pole than a fly-rod, with which sturdy
instrument some ten or twelve yards of strong cord got
itself painfully thrown out, a length speedily increased
by the strength of the current. This process, repeated
half-a-dozen times, secured a clean fish in half an hour,
— ' casting, not harling,' as the captor informed his
friends with a careful pride. When once a fish is
hooked in fair water, in that secure manner in which a
salmon carries through the business, of hooking himself
when he is in earnest, a little judicious assistance from
the keeper will bring him in due time to the gaff.
The value of salmon, either as a means of sport or
as an article of food, depends very much on the part of
the river where he is taken. If he is hooked near the
tidal waters, he is usually full of vigour for sport, and
in thorough condition for the table, fighting hard, and
shining like silver. If he is hooked in the higher
waters, unless he be a fresh run fish, with sea spirits
and sea food still invigorating him, he is comparatively
an ignoble prey. Towards the end of the season, men
on the higher waters scarcely find a gaff necessary. By

144 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
the time a fish has 'got that length' he is a lazy
creature, with skin as red as a soldier ; so that it has
been said, not without wit, that salmon travel better by
land than by water. It would doubtless be a great
satisfaction to owners of higher waters if they could
persuade fish to come up to them in good condition ;
and as this is impossible, they are at daggers drawn
with the lower proprietors and their nets. They
cannot, with any decent show of patience, endure to
see fish taken out of the tidal and lower waters by the
hundred, which would, in the course of nature, have
run up to them, arriving, of course, as ' red fallows,'
and therefore not nearly so choice for food as when they
are torn flashing like burnished silver from the arms of
the tide. Legislation in the direction of some sort of
arrangement between the upper and lower proprietors
is constantly being tinkered at, but the principle on
which Parliament interferes is not very clear. Young
fish must of course be protected, and breeding fish not
wantonly destroyed. But so long as the public con
venience is not violated by an undue destruction of
salmon, resulting in a deficient supply of that luxurious
food, the public may fairly be satisfied ; for it is idle to
talk of bringing salmon down to the price of cod in a
seaport town. So long, then, as the rentals of food-
producing rivers do not fall off, it is rather too bad that
the time of Parliament should be wasted purely in the
interests of sport. The upper proprietors, however, are
so powerful a body throughout the kingdom, that they

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 145
are able to influence the councils of the nation, and
seriously to affect the supply of salmon for the market.
A moor lets so much better if good salmon-fishing can
be advertised with it.
But at this rate we shall never get to our night with
the salmon. To do so we must transport ourselves to
that part of the Tay where the Earn joins its waters
with the larger stream, and the estuary proper com
mences. Up to the year of grace 1867, no single
salmon or sea-trout, so far as can be ascertained, had
ever been taken here by means of rod and line. After
the season for net-fishing closed, leaving five or six
weeks for the sporting season, when only the rod is
lawful, and salmon is no longer an article of sale, the
waters of the estuary became each year valueless to
their proprietors. The upper owners, far away above
the tide-way, revelled in their sport with the fly and the
minnow ; but those lower down had the aggravation of
seeing their waters teeming with huge fish, in admi
rable condition, leaping and gambolling in all directions
— ' warping,' to be technical — without the possibility of
taking one. The impossibility lay in the force of tra
ditional laws of nature. It was an accepted fact that
no salmon would take a fly or a minnow in waters
where the vertical rise of the tide amounts to twelve or
fourteen feet. The lower orders of the Scotch, with
all their good qualities, can scarcely be called an ex
perimental race ; and so it had come to pass, that every
one engaged in the fishing works held fast the tradition h

146 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
that no fish could be taken by the rod in this fine
stretch of water, three-quarters of a mile across at high
tide. At length, however, it was tried, and with unex
pected success. Day after day the water was paraded
by a boat, across and across, with three rods and lines
hanging out astern, and day by day sea-trout and
whitling (the grilse of the sea-trout) came to report
themselves satisfied with the arrangements made. The
salmon for some time held aloof, but after a time they,
too, came in. By degrees a more extended series of
experiments was tried. The tastes of the fish were
pandered to by appeals at odd times of the tide. It
was found that the sea-trout kind took best from three
hours to an hour before low water ; then a relaxation
of their efforts was observed. When low water was
imminent, so that the stream became very slight, and
the minnows would scarcely spin, the flies not working
at all, then it was that a strong and steady pull would
come, followed by the joyful music of the reel, and an
exciting fight with a salmon. If no such agreeable
interruption came, patience succeeded expectation, and
weariness patience, until the tide had well begun to
flow in again, when a few whitling would rise. After
an hour and a half of tide, the oars were plied in vain.
It cost much time and perseverance to arrive at some
experimental law respecting the best states of wind and
weather, and a somewhat elaborate system of lures
grew up. The fly was practically soon abandoned, not

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 147
rising one to six as compared with the minnow, and
that one never more than a sea-trout. On bright days
a blue phantom, on dark days a brown ; higher up the
channel a smaller minnow than lower down ; a clear
day infinitely better than a dull ; the less wind the
better, so that it is not actually calm ; a fair speed for
trout, a mere crawl for salmon ; the deeper the water
the better the fish : such were some of the results of
innumerable experiments. But the lesson, enforced
most frequently and with most painful emphasis, was
this : — Never buy phantom minnows that have not
W.B. stamped on the spinner. They are only imita
tions of the Aberdeen phantom, and may be sound.1
The ' Night with a Salmon ' was the last night but
one of the rod season of 1868. It was high tide about
ten in the morning, and operations were commenced at
half-past eleven, an earlier stage of the tide than had
yet been experimented on. For nearly an hour nothing
was done, and it was determined that either the tide
was as yet too large, or there were seals in the water,
the latter explanation one that had already proved true
too frequently. To any one alive to the beauties of
nature, and the charms of local antiquities, the scene
was sufficiently attractive to call the thoughts from pis
catorial failure. On all sides save one, where the sea
lay, the view was closed by hills of renown, Moncrieffe
and Kinnoull, the Ochills with far Craig Rossie, and
1 This was twenty-six years ago. I know, alas, very little of
phantom minnows now. l 2

148 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
the Sidlaws, with peaked Dunsinane. The sides of the
hills and the level plain were dotted thick with castles,
recalling many a stirring history. The castle of Kin-
fauns 1 stood out boldly, on its new site, representing a
long line of the turbulent barons of Gray ; the old site
nearer the river being now unmarked by any sign of
the times when Sir Patrick Charteris held there his
abode — teste the Fair Maid of Perth — and aided the
burly burghers of the Fair City. Nearer still, and
close on the water's edge, were the well-kept ruins of
Elcho, a nunnery once, then a castle, whence the
Wemyss takes now his second title. Through an
opening in the hills lay the massive keep of Balthayock,
where the much-acquiring Blairs were wont to guard a
pass into the Carse of Gowrie. And at equal distances
along the hills, stationed on similar duty, lay the stout
towers of Evelick and Kinnaird, the former indeed only
poetically present, save to the eye that could see through
an intervening buttress of rock. Close at hand were
the wo'ods of Errol, the cradle of the ' handsome Hays,'
Errol, Kinnoull, Tweeddale, and other noble branches,
with Falcon-stones in all parts of the neighbourhood,
in honour of the traditional founding of the family.
Further away was old Megginch,2 an appanage of Errol
once, and bearing still on its walls the Hay name ; in
another direction grey Pitfour,3 where the handsome
blood still burgeons in the female line, and Seggieden,4
1 Margaret, Baroness Gray. 2 John Drummond, Esq.
3 Sir John Stewart Eichardson, Bart.
4 Colonel Drummond Hay.

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 149
another Hay, with its carpets of flowers. On the other
side of the river, Abernethy shewed its strange round
tower, Culdee cell, prison, campanile, granary, place of
refuge, beacon, watch-tower, palace, idol temple, or
whatever the most correct view of its original purpose
may be. On the hills beyond, the ruins of Balvaird
shewed the old home of the Stormont Murrays. Near
it wound the road whence it is believed, in spite of some
physical difficulties, that the Romans looked down upon
the Inch of Perth and the flowing Tay, and uttered, in
their impudence, the doubtful compliment, ' Ecce alterum
Tiberim, ecce alterum Campum Martis ! ' Or, lastly, to
recross the Tay and look further afield, the towers of
Stuart-loving Fingask • might be seen, nestling under
Dunsinane ; and the lordly pile of Rossie 2 with its chapel
and its chimes will close the list, unless, indeed, we
prefer to wind up with the chimneys of smoky Dundee.
At the mouth of the Earn the captain of the ex
pedition warns the boatman not to go too near the
sandbanks, and as the boat obediently turns upwards,
the middle rod shews a drag, and the line begins to
draw off lazily. ' Bottom, Jimmy ! You always go too
near there ! ' ' That's no bottom,' Jimmy declares ;
and as the owner of the rod is proceeding to put things
in order again, there comes a swish which nearly carries
off rod and man and all, while the reel makes mad
music, eminently suggestive of a rapid end to the run.
' Back, Jimmy ! back her ! We can't stop him.' And
1 Sir P. M. Threipland, Bart. 2 George, Lord Kinnaird.

150 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
as Jimmy backs, the non-combatant member of the
party reels up the other two lines and gets the rods
out of harm's way. The fish is clearly a monster. He
plays the boat, rather than the boat him. He careers
about the middle channel of the Tay for a time, the
boat cautiously following, and then he goes into shal
lower water, on banks dry at low tide, where experience
has taught us that more than one dangerous stake
exists. Then he rushes up Earn, and to follow him
against the powerful stream is no easy task for Jimmy's
stout arms. He has taken the lightest of the three
lines, a mere makeshift composed of two trout-lines,
seventy and fifty yards long, and this puts no drag
upon his movements. Nor dare we let him get far from
the boat, for the splice has not been tried, and the rings
are ¦ small. However, we congratulate ourselves on
hooking him so early in the tide, as we can afford to
spend an hour upon him and yet have the whole usual
time of fishing left. But an hour sees him no nearer
the gaff. He keeps up a succession of long steady
runs, followed promptly by the boat, and only once
getting more than seventy yards away so as to shew
the splice. In an hour and a half we have drifted down
into the neighbourhood of a very threatening danger,
the poles and ropes of a row of sperling-nets,1 standing
now on a sandbank in five or six feet of water, each
1 Sperling or Sparling : Fr. eperlan : the common English smelt.
They are taken in large fixed purse-nets, and are left high and dry
in the nets at low water.

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 151
rope collecting a flotilla of surface rubbish. Once among
these the fish must be lost, and not only does he shew
a strong inclination to go there, but we have learned
that he will go where he chooses. After ten minutes
of anxious manoeuvring, he cruises across towards the
north shore of the Tay, in the direction of a famous
landing-place for salmon, a firm beach with a short spit
of gravel running out into the river. The third man
in the boat has never engaged in salmon-fishing before,
and finding two hours' ' play ' without one sight of the
fish something too much for his young philosophy, he
hails with delight our prophecies of speedy success.
Suddenly, ' The line's slack ! he's off! No, he isn't, he's
turned ! ' and while the slack line is reeled in with all
imaginable speed, Jimmy gets the boat round just in
time for the most furious bolt southward we have
yet had. The third man's hopes of shore are rudely
blighted. Meanwhile, the tide has drifted us down well below
the sperling-nets on the south shore, and that danger
is past. But the affair is becoming serious, for we have
arrived at the head of Mugdrum Island, which divides
the Tay into a North and South deep, and once in the
South deep, a rapid run of tide and current will quickly
carry us down to Newburgh, and then there will be a
stormy estuary two or three miles across to be faced.
Mugdrum can scarcely be called a romantic name. It
is a corruption of Magridin, the name of a Scottish
saint ; another form of which is Magruder, not much

152 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
more romantic ; while yet another form lingers in the
denomination of a parish in Fife, Eccles-Magirdie,
Ecclesia-Magirdle. The fish at first shews signs of
taking the North deep, to the great confusion of Jimmy,
who reports the bottom ' gey foul,' as no nets have been
worked in that channel for years. He makes, however,
for the South deep, and in the neck of the channel,
some thirty feet deep, with the water running like a mill-
race, he takes it into his head to sulk for the first time.
There are half-a-dozen stones in the boat, a part of the
mystery of harling, and these are dropped at intervals
on to the spot where the fish is calculated to be. One
only of them takes effect, and, after a rush of a few
moments, he returns to his position, the patience of the
third man becoming of a somewhat stormy character.
After a quarter of an hour he bolts suddenly, and makes
for a nice little sandy beach on the island, where we
could land very conveniently and fight him from the
shore ; but finding himself in shallow water he doesn't
like it, and sails off down the channel seawards, with
current and tide and all in his favour. Down he goes
almost without a pause, till we find ourselves under
Mugdrum House, the harbour and shipping of New
burgh close at hand, and the wild expanse of estuary
beyond. At another time the scene would have had
associations and attractions sufficient for us. On
Mugdrum House there hangs the escutcheon of the last
male Hay of Leyes, a line of twenty-three direct de
scents from father to son, the first Hay of Leyes being

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 153
himself the sixth in direct descent from William de
Haya, Pincerna Domini Regis. Newburgh was of old
the capital of the kingdom of Fife. It still retains
Macduff's cross, where any of Macduff's kind might
find a sanctuary, sure by royal ordinance, in case he
had killed a man by any means short of diabolically
premeditated murder. Macduff's kind were a likely
sort of people to keep the sanctuary warm. The ram
pant reformers of Perth smashed the cross as a joke
while paying a visit of deformation to the Abbey of
Lindores. The remains of that famous abbey are now
in sight from the boat, the ground-plan wonderfully
complete, and the whole cared for to the utmost by the
owners and occupiers of the land. There is to be found
in stone effigy the winged horse, the cognisance of the
last Earl of Douglas, whom his king sent to die a monk
at Lindores (' he who may no better be, a monk must
be ') . There, too, is the delicate skull of the young
Duke of Rothsay, the wisdom-teeth half cut, taken
from a poor slab-tomb south of the high altar, where
those who brought his murdered body from Falkland
had hurriedly laid him. There, too, are the coffins of
the infant sons of the founder, David Earl of Hunting
don, whose daughters, had these little babies lived, would
never have handed down the ancient throne of Scotland
to the Anglo-Norman barons of Sheriff-Hutton and Bar
nard Castle, the Bruce and the Balliol. And, hanging
over the abbey, is a famous crag, famous in its history
as striking in its outline— no other than the Clatchart

154 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
Craig, where Wallace outwitted the English ; the neigh
bouring woods being descendants of the great forest
of Black Earnside, the scene of a great battle of his.
Further down the river, on a bluff headland, stands the
ruined Castle of Bambreich, or Ballinbreich, a former
home of the Dukes of Rothes. A son of that house,
Norman Leslie, became Lord Lindores at the Dissolu
tion ; but the title came to trouble, as coronets gilt
with monastic gold have been wont to do.
It is now half-past three o'clock, and we are rapidly
approaching Newburgh. A council of war determines
that, at all hazards, we must get to shore ; and, as if in
furtherance of our determination, the fish makes to
wards the island. We push on, parallel with him, and
regardless of the splice, until the boat actually touches
the bottom for a moment, imparting to the third man
the most pleasurable sensation he has yet felt. The
next moment we are rowing hard out into mid channel,
for a sudden rush has run all the line off the reel but
ten yards or so. That is our first and last contact with
the shore from the beginning to the end. He still
makes seawards ; but we observe with much satisfaction
that the tide shews signs of turning, and we hope soon
to find ourselves moving homewards. The change of
tide seems to make the fish frantic. We are never still
for half a minute, and never cease wondering what his
size must be if his strength is so enormous and so un
tiring. Finally, he decides on going up with the tide,
and he goes at so merry a rate that the third man is

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 155
encouraged to bring out three sandwiches of potted
grouse — our whole supply of food — and eats his share.
A strong cold wind from the sea, and a heavy fall of
rain, soon come to damp his satisfaction, and he is
reduced to the verge of despair. Double himself up as
he will, his waterproof will not cover the whole of him ;
and as he must sacrifice either his legs or his head, he
elects to save the legs. The waves become embarrass
ing, and the boat is no longer easy to manage. A new
fiend enters the fish, and makes him play the maddest
pranks imaginable. We have for some time discussed
the probability of his being a strong fish hooked foul,
which would account for some part of his power ; but
just when the waves are at the highest and the boat is
blowing up the river close upon the fish, out he springs
two feet into the air, a monster as large as a well-grown
boy, with the line leading fair up to his snout. ' Never
land that fellow with a couple of trout-lines, or any
other line,' is the fisherman's verdict ; and as if to con
firm it a cry comes the next minute, ' The line has
parted ! ' Sure enough one strand has gone, owing to
the constant friction of the wet line running through
the rings for so many hours, and within twenty yards
of the end of the line there is an ugly place two inches
long, with only two strands out of three remaining.
There is no longer a moment's safety unless that flaw
is kept on the reel ; and the necessity of pressing close
on the fish leads Jimmy such a life as he will probably
not forget. We are hungry and cold and somewhat

156 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
wet ; it is growing very dusk, and if we could not land
him with 120 yards of line, how can we with twenty?
We have caught a Tartar indeed. The non-combatant
determines to go overboard and swim to land ; but the
fish seems inclined to save him the trouble, and once
more makes for the favourite north shore. We near
the haven, are within fifteen yards of land. Our friend
gets on to the seat to jump, but waits for one weak
moment to have a shorter swim, when off goes the fish,
and off we go, too, into mid-channel. The disappointed
man resigns himself, for the Tay, with a strong tide
half up, is no pleasant bath in the twilight of a rough
October day.
And now night comes on in earnest. It is half-past
six, and all but dark, before we reach the pier whence
we started seven hours before. Here there are several
boats kept, and we shout with the utmost confidence
for ' Ro-bairt ' to come and take our friend ashore.
Alas ! all the boats are far up in the reeds, and will not
be available for two or three hours yet, so on we go
into the deepening darkness. The clock at home
strikes seven, and we hear our passenger groaning over
the fact that they are just going in to dinner. Lights
peep out on the hillsides and in the plain, and a gather
ing cluster of bright points at the water's edge reminds
us that we are nearing Inchyra, where we shall cer
tainly get a boat to come out to us. We shout in
concert, ' Boat ! ' — ' Boo-o-o-at ' the hills all round re
turn, with echoes marvellously prolonged ; but there is

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 157
no other reply. The whole village must have heard —
probably takes it for a hoax. , Again and again we cry,
now in harmony, now in discord ; and anything more
horrible than a loud body of discord borne on repeating
echoes it is difficult to conceive. At length a measured
sound of oars is heard, and a black pirate-like boat
comes down upon us. We state our need. Can he
take this gentleman down to the pier, and bring us
back some food ? ' Na ! ' And that is all he will
vouchsafe to say as he sheers off again. Soon, however,
a more Christian boat appears, and with many com
plicated manoeuvres, to keep the line clear of the boats
in the dark, we tranship our friend about eight o'clock,
loaded with injunctions 'to send off food and a light.
The light would be of the greatest service, for a frozen
finger and thumb are not sufficiently certain indicators
of the passage of the frayed portion of the line from the
reel ; and as the fish has never ceased to rush from one
side to the other, frequently passing sheer under the
boat, and requiring the utmost care to keep the line
clear of the oars, we think almost more of the coming
lantern than of the sorely needed food. It is an hour
before the boat returns, with an excellent lantern, a
candle and a half, a bottle of whisky, and cakes and
cheese enough for a week. Before setting to work
upon the food we attempt to put in execution a plan
we have long thought of and carefully discussed. A
spare rod, short and stiff, is laid across the seats of the
boat, with the reel all clear, and a good salmon-line on,

158 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
with five or six yards drawn through the rings. We wait
till the fish is quiet for a moment or two under the boat,
and, taking gently hold of the line he is on, pass a loop
of it through the loop at the end of the salmon-line.
As if he divined our intention, off he goes at once,
running the flaw off the reel, and costing us some effort
to catch him up again. This is repeated two or three
times. At last we get the loop through, get a good
knot tied, snap the old line above the knot, and there
is our friend careering away at the end of a hundred
yards of strong salmon-line, with some seven or eight
yards only of the thinner line. When we examine the
now innocuous flaw, we find it is seven inches long,
and half of one of the remaining strands is frayed
through. The only thing now to be avoided is coming
into very close contact with the fish, as the new loop
will not run easily through the rings. Unfortunately,
the light in the boat seems to attract him to us, for he
does little else than rush from one side of the boat to
the other, and we are obliged to take the oars in and
let her drift. For a few moments, we propose to hang
the light over the stern, and gaff him when he comes
up to it ; but that method is at once rejected as unfair
to so noble a foe. Jimmy, however, will not abandon
it. ' I should be ashamed all my life,' the fisherman
declares. ' There's never a body need know,' Jimmy
replies. 'J should know,' was the moral rejoinder.
' Deed I wudna tell.'
Time passes on as we drift slowly up the river to-

A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 159
wards Elcho. Ten o'clock strikes, and we determine
to wait till dawn, and then land and try conclusions
with the monster that has had us fast for ten hours.
The tide begins to turn, and Jimmy utters gloomy
forebodings of our voyage down to the sea in the dark.
The fish feels the change of tide, and becomes more
demoniacal than ever. For half an hour he is in one
incessant flurry, and at last, for the first time, he rises
to the surface, and through the dark night we can hear
and see the huge splashes he makes as he rolls and
beats the water. He must be near done, Jimmy
thinks. As he is speaking the line comes slack. He's
bolting towards the boat, and we reel up with the
utmost rapidity. We reel on; but no sign of resis
tance. Up comes the minnow, minus the tail hook.
Jimmy rows home without a word ; and neither he nor
the fisherman will ever get over it.
Note. — A large fish was taken in the nets at Newburgh the
next year, which was popularly recognised as the fish of the
above account. It had a mark just where I saw the tail hook
of the minnow when the fish shewed itself once in the strong
water above Newburgh; and a peculiarity of form of the
shoulder, which I then noticed, was seen in the great fish taken
in the nets. Correspondence with Mr. Frank Buckland, who
took a cast of the fish, appeared to establish the identity of the
two. It was the largest salmon ever known to be taken, weighing
74 lbs. as weighed at Newburgh, and 70 lbs. in London the next
day. Fish are usually found not to decrease, but to increase
largely in weight after their capture. My boatman on Loch
Freuchie once told me, a propos of a ' 4 lb. trout ' caught by a
Stirling gentleman in the loch, that the fish must have grown
2j lbs. between that and Stirling.

160 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON
There is a cast of the big salmon in the South Kensington
Museum. A photograph shewing its size in relation to a large
wheelbarrow and the rudder of a coble is reproduced at p. 138 ;
the photographer found it impossible to prop the fish up in such
a fashion as to shew its remarkable depth of side.

161

THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES1
They told me of a chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes,
A pension kept charmingly by two young chatelaines ;
They told me of some English people who had
summered there,
On next to nothing for the best and most abundant
fare;
They could not tell me where it was, or who the
chatelaines,
But they knew it was a chateau, in the heart of the
Ardennes.
The heart of the Ardennes is large, if it be somewhat
cold;
And chateaux are in plenty there, the home of barons
bold;
The ruins that were homes in ages past, that is to say,
And not at all like pensions where English people
stay;
But all the information that they really could obtain
Was this, — it was a chateau, in the heart of the
Ardennes. 1 Spa, 1880. M

162 THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES
They both were very anxious to be able to make out
The way to reach the chateau they had heard so much
about ;
'Twould be so charming after all the tours that they
had been,
And after all the gay and noisy places they had seen,
To go and live for nothing, far from all the haunts of
men,
At a veritable chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes.
They left. No more they dejeuner'd at healthy
Sauveniere,
No more they meant to dejeuner at distant Geronstere ;
No more abused the Ninth for all the tuneless things
they played,
No more encored La ronde qui passe in Leopold's
arcade.
They left ; and I was lonely for a day or two ; and
then,
I went to find the chateau in the heart of the Ardennes.
There met me, on the way to join the luggage at the
gare,
About the most experienced of travellers ' that are,
The ' Art ' himself ' of Travel ' ; and, though not born
yesterday,
I listened to the guileful tale he told me by the way ;
1 Mr. Francis Galton.

THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES 163
For he told me with descriptive tongue, as clever as his
pen,
What sounded like the chateau in the heart of the
Ardennes.

He told me of the demoiselles who kept a charming
place ;
Of English people, how they praised its cleanliness and
space ;
He told me of a brother, too, who helped his sisters
dear,
And how for almost nothing they gave most delightful
cheer.
It was not called a chateau by his friend, he said ; but
then,
It really was a pension in the heart of the Ardennes.

A Belgian lady staying in the Britannique hotel
Had told him. That was where and how my ladies
learned as well.
It clearly was the very place. I took the train at one ;
Then drove across the bitter moors ; and when the day
was done,
We pulled up in a dirty little town amid the rain,
And o'er the door was painted H. — not chateau — des
ARDENNES. M 2

164 THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES
A huggermugger maid appears, with pail and brush in
hand,
And makes a sound or two which she perhaps may
understand ;
And then there comes another, with a wart upon her
nose,
And she must be, as I at length unwillingly suppose,
At least the mother of the pair of blooming chatelaines
Who keep the charming chateau in the heart of the
Ardennes.

But if a pair they ever were, the other's not alive,
And this one is the only one, and she is fifty-five ;
The ' brother ' is a page in blouse, who won't do what
he's bid,
The people call him Jacquot, but with madame he's
stupide !
We've thus disposed of brother and of blooming
chatelaines ;
But what about the chateau, in the heart of the
Ardennes ?

I'm ushered in; and there, I find, are fellow victims
three,
Prepared to eat their souper, fixed for sept heures et
demie :

THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES 165
A monsieur with a napkin tucked beneath his double
chin,
A mother, and a giggling girl for ever on the grin.
Then knives begin to shovel in the meat and beans,
and then
I feel I'm in a pension, in the heart of the Ardennes.

The mother tells of glories which have quite possessed
her brains,
The salons of a wealthy fabricant of counterpanes ;
Discusses is it proper for a Verificateur
.To ask to dance the daughter of a public Inspecteur.
It sounds perhaps a little insignificant, but then
We're very near a chateau, in the heart of the
Ardennes.

Monsieur gets purple over non ! and shouts it six times
o'er ;
And when he feels affirmative, a dozen si's or more ;
Elisa nips her mother when I don't take haricots,
Which smell so strong of onion I'm glad to see them
go.
And this within a yard or two, not more than eight or
ten,
Of a most undoubted chateau, in the heart of the
Ardennes.

166 THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES
The morning breaks in beauty, and romantic dreams
take flight,
As through the open window streams the sun's fast
gathering light,
Romantic dreams of sylvan courts, and eke of banished
dukes,
And pensive Jaqueses meditating by meandering
brooks.
I rise and seek the window, feeling sure that there and
then
I shall realise the chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes.
The noises that the pigs are making really pass belief ;
The cocks are louder still, to shut the window's no
relief;
And, ah ! for dreams of sylvan glades so sweet and
fresh and pure,
At every door are soaking heaps of excellent manure.
But what are trifles such as these, when close within
my ken,
There stands at last the chateau, in the heart of the
Ardennes ?
The guide-book says ninth century, but carved in stone
the date
Of this remaining morsel is but sixteen twenty eight ;
It's now a shop for carpet slippers, sweets and boots
and wool,
And madame takes a room in it when her h6tel is full ;

THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES 167
The rest was all fait sauter, not by Revolution men,
But to build a new Hotel de Ville, in the heart of the
Ardennes.
The meats are very tender, and the bedrooms very
good;
Madame is very pleasant, and there's quite sufficient
food;
The coffee's sometimes perfect, and there seem to be no

And it costs you very little by the day at Houffalize ;
But yet I'm not at all inclined to go and see again
That smelly not a chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes.

168

THE ENGADINE'
The Engadine has been written about so often, and
from so many points of view, that the subject might
seem to be exhausted. But there is one vein which
has not been sufficiently worked, if, indeed, it has been
worked at all. Some of the Engadiners of old time
devoted themselves to a study of the history and topo
graphy of their country. The modern students of the
history of Rhsetia have been active in reprinting the
old works, and printing others which have lain long in
a manuscript form, notably the Rhastian history of
Campellus, or Chiampel, and a large number of docu
ments from among the archives of Chur. By this
means a great deal of valuable information has been
rendered accessible. An additional interest has thus
been given to the bracing valley which claims to have
been peopled by a Latin-speaking race, and to have
retained their language in the Romauntsch of to-day.
To proceed at once to the place which made the
modern reputation of the Engadine, some guide-books
have suggested that the name of Pontresina is derived
from Ad Pontem Saracenum, and others have scoffed
1 National Review, August 1883.

THE ENGADINE 169
at this derivation. The Chur archives leave no doubt
on the point, so far as the use of that as the Latin name
of the place is concerned. Such use is of course not
a proof of the derivation of the one name from the
other. In 1291, Caspar and Romedius de Ponte
Sarraceno make over to Andreas Planta of Zutz all
their tithes in Zutz, on payment of eighty-four pounds.
Five years later, Caspar de Ponte Sarraceno sells to the
same Andreas four lambs yearly, part of the canons'
tithes, for twenty-six pounds. Six years later still, the
same two brothers resign into the hands of Bishop Sifrid
the fee of Curtins in the Fex valley (in valle Pedes, the
Feet- or Fex-Thal), which the Bishop grants again to
one of the Castelmurs, a family famous in Bregaglia,
taking its rise from the Castle of Murum on the lake of
Sils, a name derived from a much more ancient place
in the Val Bregell (Prae-gallia). The de Ponte Sarra
ceno or von Pontresina family were evidently going
down the hill in the thirteenth century as the Plantas
rose, taking their name from the bear's paw, planta.
Andreas Planta, it may be remarked parenthetically,
was at this time buying up tithes and church fees in all
directions ; for instance, twenty-seven fishes a year from
the lake of St. Moritz from Tobias de Cambescasco
(Toby of Camogask) for three pounds, and another
twenty-seven from Peter and James of Camogask for
four pounds.
That the name Pons Saracenus does refer to the
Saracens, and does not owe its form to some accidental

170 THE ENGADINE
coincidence, may be argued from the fact that the
bishopric of Chur suffered greatly at the hands of the
Saracenic invaders who so grievously troubled that part
of Europe. Thus in 940, according to the original
document still existing at Chur, King Otho I. gave to
Bishop Waldo of Chur, to alleviate the losses inflicted
by the Saracens, the church of Bludenz and St. Martin's
Church in Schams (in valle Sexamnes). The latter was
to go after Waldo's death to the convent of Katzis,
represented in the Latin, no doubt in accordance with
the then pronunciation of the double z, as Chazzes. In
955 the same Otho recorded in a document not now to
be found at Chur, that he had himself seen, in the
course of his journey from Italy, evident traces of the
mischief done by the Saracens. He therefore gave to
Bishop Hartpert as some compensation his demesne of
Zizers, with all its pertinents, and also perpetual freedom
from toll for the Bishop's vessel on lake Walenstadt
(in lacu riuano). Lothar had remitted the toll in 843,
by a charter now to be seen in perfect preservation at
Chur. Otho's gift, by the way, did not pass unchal
lenged, for Count Arnold von Lenzburg asserted that
the property in question belonged to his church of
Schannis. The matter was investigated at Constanz in
972 before Otho, now become emperor, a jury of twelve
or more men of the district, and a court of eleven Counts
and Counts Palatine ; the verdict was in favour of the
Bishop. The archives at Chur abound in material of the

THE ENGADINE 171
highest interest for all who find pleasure in the province
of Rhsetia, in its ancient or its modern guise. Many
travellers will remember well their visit to the quaint
old cathedral church of Chur, with its early charters,
reliquaries by Hibernian gold-workers, and its collection
of sculptured stones ranking high in point of antiquity
and beauty among the Christian remains in Europe.
Some of the best of the charters are displayed in the
sacristy. There may be seen the long and narrow and
somewhat infirm characters of the Caroline charters,
still written in the Merovingian hand, before Alcuin's
influence reached Chur. Alcuin, formerly head master
of the Cathedral school of York, in succession to Albert,
cousin of the King and Archbishop, and to Ecgbert,
brother of the King and Archbishop, and afterwards
Charlemagne's right-hand man, honoured the Bishop
with several letters, having made his acquaintance on
the journey to or from Rome ; but no one who knows
Alcuin's style will expect that anything of antiquarian
interest is to be found in these effusions. One of them
is more practical than most of his letters, inasmuch as
it introduces to Bishop Remedius a certain merchant
journeying on Alcuin's account to Italy, and begs that
the Bishop will let him off all tolls in passing the
mountains. Many of the documents in the archives at Chur
relate to the Engadine. The earliest, or one of the
earliest, is a gift of the Church of Sins to the presbyter
Hartpert, Henry the Fowler being the giver, and

172 THE ENGADINE
Berthold being the Count of the Engadine. But the
most interesting are three which bear date January 22,
1139, whereby the Counts of Gamertingen sell their
possessions to the Bishops of Chur. This was practically
the acquisition of the lordship of the Upper Engadine,
where the bishops were lords till the people bought
their freedom in 1494, the Lower Engadine buying
their freedom of the House of Austria in 1652. The
boundaries of the Gamertingen possessions, as recited
in the first of the three documents, were as follows :
To the east, the pons alta, now Punt auta, still the
boundary of the Upper and Lower Engadine. To the
north, the source of water in Pulpugnia, of which
Professor von Mohr remarks that no one can tell the
site; we can scarcely be wrong, etymologically or
topographically, in placing it at Palpugna, close by the
little lake of Weissenstein on the Albula road, from
which the Albula itself flows. To the south the water
course which runs into the lacus albus, the laig or lej
ah as the Romauntsch people call it still, better known
by its Italian name of lago Ua7ico, at the summit of the
Bernina pass. And to the west, the water-course of '
Campofare, which is not far to seek now-a-days. The
possessions included the church of St. Peter at Samaden
and of St. Lucius at Zutz. The price was eight hun
dred marks of silver and sixty ounces of the purest gold.
The second of the three deeds disposes of a part of the
Upper Engadine in which some additional members of
the Count's family had an interest, possessions at

THE ENGADINE 173
St. Moritz and Schlatain, for two hundred marks of
silver. The third gives as a free gift to St. Mary of
Chur the family property at Pontresina, ad pontem
sarisinam as the deed has it, in disregard of ordinary
rules of gender, a disregard which the modern form of
the name has stereotyped.
It is unfortunate that the first mention we find of
an Engadine family is due to dishonesty. There is a
document in the Bishop's archives at Chur, dated
May 18, 1244, by which Volkard, the bishop who built
the castle of Guardaval, puts Andreas Planta in the
place of Tobias de Ponte Zarisino as Chancellor of the
County of the Upper Engadine, by reason of the mis
demeanour of Tobias. Von Mohr unkindly puts a
note to this, that there flourishes still at Pontresina the
ancient family of Saratz, probably descended from the
de Ponte Zarisino. The late President of Pontresina,
and landlord-owner of the Grand Hotel Saratz, was not
likely to feel very grateful for this remark, which con
fuses, by the way, a gentile and a local name.
Something more than 300 years ago, the Engadiners
were made the subject of a cruel calumny. In the year
1550, Sebastian Minister, the illustrious Professor of
Hebrew in the academy of Basel, published his cosmo-
graphic work, printed by Heinrich Petri. He described
the character of each people, as well as the country
which they inhabited ; and he was in some cases very
frank. Thus of the Scots he said that they were
personally dirty, that they thought themselves better

174 THE ENGADINE
than other people, and that the most beggarly Scot
called himself cousin to the king. Of the Engadiners
he used words which Chiampel cannot bring himself to
repeat, so slanderous and insulting were they. Another
writer is quite as angry but was less discreet. He
quotes the words. The professor said in his Latin
edition that the race of men in the Engadine was
rapax et furtis dedita, a pack of thieves and robbers ;
and in the German edition, published simultaneously,
he said of them, sy sind grosser Bieben dan die Zigyner.
After some copies had been sold, Miinster found that
the statement was considered likely to get him into
trouble, and in the remaining copies the words were
erased with pen and ink. The Engadiners took the
statement ill, being conscious of no such deserts. They
will, no doubt, have the sympathy of all who have paid
bills for rooms and carriages in the Upper Engadine
during the last few years. John Travers of Siis and
Balthasar Planta of Zernetz, who were among the
leading men in the lower and upper valleys respectively,
were sent as delegates to Basel to make a disturbance
about the slander upon their fair fame. They arrived
in October 1554, and to their great disappointment they
found that Miinster was dead. They endeavoured to
fix the responsibility on Petri, the publisher, on the
ground that he must have known what he was printing.
But Petri got off by an argument which seems to have
been good enough for those times. In the first place,
he knew better than to take the trouble of reading

THE ENGADINE 175
through all the books he had to print ; in the second
place, though it might at times be necessary to be
careful, with so famous an author as Miinster he should
never have thought of examining what he printed. At
length, by way of appeasing the wrath of the Engadine,
the men of Basel made a proposal which was accepted.
Two tablets were prepared, sealed with the seal of
Basel, to be preserved in the archives of the Lower and
Upper Engadine, setting forth that Miinster was entirely
mistaken in describing the Engadiners as a rapacious
people, and in asserting that they were bigger thieves
than the gipsies. Thus whitewashed, with characters
guaranteed by the seal of Basel, Travers and Planta
returned joyful, and deposited their invaluable docu
ments among the treasures of their muniment rooms.
Chiampel, as we have seen, could not bring himself
to quote the scandalous words. Peter de Porta gives
the text of the whitewashing document, in which the
words quoted above are found. Their account some
what exaggerates Miinster's offence, for in the Latin
editions of 1550 and 1554 the Engadiners are described
as bellicosam gentem sed furacem. In 1572 they are
bellicosam — of -that, their attitude at Basel had left no
doubt — and no longer furacem. The German was
corrected earlier, for in 1556 they are a gut streitbar
Volclc, as indeed they had proved themselves to be.
It was discovered in the course of time that ' one of
great name, but a great rascal,' had told Miinster tales
about the Engadine which Miinster had believed. The

176 THE ENGADINE
contemporary writers spare his name. He was one of
the most prominent men in Rhsetia, de Porta says.
Probably he was of their own race, and they felt it a
little awkward to answer a charge of rascality against
the Engadiners by the argument that the Engadiner
who made it was a rascal. Possibly the informant had
merely travelled through the Engadine, and communi
cated his adventures to the learned professor; for
Chiampel mentions one or two places of evil report,
which might not unfairly give some countenance to the
idea that the people were rascals. Near Siis, his own
home, was a place which had been cleared by the in
dustry of his fellow-townsmen, but had formerly been
covered with brushwood and stones, where ' thieves and
robbers lurked behind trees and rocks.' And at Zernetz,
where the valley narrows so much that there is not
room for the road without cutting the rock, is a place
called Puntaglias, once very unsafe on account of rob
bers. When the band was overcome and seized, they
confessed to having robbed many travellers and thrown
them into the Inn. Chiampel does not say that any of
these gentry were foreigners.
The Reformation in the Engadine was brought
about by a series of local struggles, each commune
being a law to itself and reforming or remaining un-
reformed according to the decision of the majority. By
good fortune one of the main actors in the matter — no
other than Ulric Chiampel — was engaged upon a history
of Rhaetia, and he and others have recorded details, such

THE ENGADINE 177
as perhaps no other country possesses, of the change of
worship. The struggle as a rule centred round the
images. If the images were got rid of by fair means
or by foul, the Mass went and the preaching came in.
The means were oftener foul than fair, and the details
are usually quaint. At Campfer — a place very inno
cent now of anything of the kind — there was a celebrated
image of St. Roche, with a shrine of the highest sanc
tity. One winter's night three men passed with sleighs,
and the last of them, being very strong and bold,
dragged down the huge image, fastened it to the tail of
his sleigh, and dragged it multis cum cavillis to Cresta,
near Celerina, which last place, by the way, mistaken
tourists will persist in calling Chelerina, as if it were
Italian and not Romauntsch. The Papists, of course,
were furious, and they appealed to the ordinary tribunal.
The people of Samaden, and other pru'dent persons,
appeased them by taking care that the image was put
back in its place ; but no one attempted to disguise the
fact that Rochus, though restored, was male habitus.
It was only for one day that he recovered his position.
Jachem Muott (James Hill) of Celerina, described in
the record as St. Paul describes the Athenians in the
English version, brought the family food to the restored
Rochus to be blessed. He unluckily stumbled at the
threshold and fell with the food. Forgetting his super
stition in the presence of so great a catastrophe, he
uttered unseemly words against the Saint. The priest
rebuked him so severely, and the bystanders jeered him

178 THE ENGADINE
so much, that he forswore Rochus on the spot, and all
other saints, and joined his fellow-citizens in putting
down the images and establishing the reformed faith.
At Celerina, which place, in union with St. Moritz,
preserved the old religion longer than any other com
mune in the Upper Engadine, Johannes Zacconius was
the priest, and all his life he sang the Mass. He was
a highly respectable man, in proof whereof Chiampel
adduces the fact that he was the father of several lawful
children, a proof of respectability which the Reformers
on their part were from the first very ready to afford.
The assistant priest was Thomas a Castris, who had
been brought up at Zurich, the great seminary of re
formed doctrines, and there had learned better things.
He made use of his access to the images at Celerina to
make cracks in them, and mutilate them, and break
them, and even to carry them off. People saw what
was going on, but nobody dared to interfere, for the
artful Thomas, who had not learned better things at
Ziirich for nothing, allowed it to be supposed that the
images were being maltreated at the instigation of
Frederick von Salis of Samaden, the Commissary of the
Upper Engadine, whose relations were the great people
of Celerina. Thus the way was paved for a change, so
soon as the highly respectable Zacconius should leave
his lawful children fatherless. This event occurred in
1576, when Celerina and St. Moritz by common consent
allowed the Mass to follow their ruined images. The
dwellers at the shrine of St. Moritz, we are informed,

THE ENGADINE 179
had for some time been inclined to hold out the hand
to the Gospel, but the constant influx of strangers from
Italy to drink the waters kept up the old views. They
succeeded, however, in ejecting the images in 1570, as
a preliminary to the rejection of the Mass. This was
twenty years after places in the neighbourhood had
become reformed.
The proceedings at Camogasc did not follow the
same order. The people were so equally divided that
they could not decide whether to elect a minister of the
Word or a priest of the Mass. Each half chose for
itself, the minister being Chiampel the historian, the
priest, usually a Bergamasque. The services were per
formed on alternate Sundays ; but one Sunday both
Chiampel and the Bergamasque appeared. Neither
would give way. At length Chiampel went up to the
priest and asked him what the Mass was. The priest
after some cross-questioning was constrained to say that
the Mass was summum scelus et injuria contra Christi
meritum, which his superiors would scarcely, one may
suppose, recognise as an orthodox statement. Curiously
enough this did not terminate, the doubts of the com
mune. Chiampel migrated to Siis. Five years later
the two halves agreed that they should take as their
common pastor Christopher Chioerngias, who, strange
to say, had been informally and impartially serving
both parties without shewing his hand, and should leave
it to him to decide whether Mass should be sung or
not. Nunquam amplius missificavit, he never sang Mass
N 2

180 THE ENGADINE
again. The unreformed party then vehemently re
gretted that they had made the pact ; for along with
the Mass the images were to be removed, and the
church of Camogasc possessed statues second to none
in beauty and elegance. They succeeded in preventing
for a while the removal of the images ; but before long
a corn merchant offered sixty measures of corn for them,
valued at a hundred florins, and this offer converted so
many that the reformers had all but, if not quite, a
majority. The numbers being so nearly equal that
neither side had a clear preponderance, they went to
law before the Courts by the space of eight months at
great cost. At length the Papizantes, seeing that the
decision would go against them by two votes, acted the
part of the dog in the manger. They changed their
cry, and said they would rather have their saints burned
than sold. The Gospel party accepted the compromise,
and the judge made a solemn order that on that or the
next day all the images belonging to the church of
Camogasc should be ' handed over to Vulcan.' The
Gospel party made the pyre and kept it fed with fuel,
while the others kept jealous guard outside the ring
lest anything of value should be abstracted, which
might be sold and so ' yield an offering to Bacchus or
to Ceres.' At Zernetz there were three churches. One of these,
the Church of Roven, has since disappeared, but its
large bell is in one of the remaining churches, and is
still known as il sain (signum) da Roven. One night

THE ENGADINE 181
in October, 1552, the statues in these churches were
cut down and foully damaged, and all the furniture for
Mass was torn or cut to pieces or removed. The next
morning the excitement was intense. The bells were
rung and the people assembled. No one had done it.
What was to be done ? The Parochus, who had so far
held a mean between the two parties, but had continued
to sing Mass, decided that as the images had gone the
Mass might go too, and it went accordingly.
At Siis, Chiampel's family played a prominent part
in Reformation matters. A daughter was born to him
in his absence, and the infant seemed about to die.
Who was to baptise it ? The grandfather, Caspar, had
to arrange the affair, and his social relations with the
ecclesiastics of Siis were of such a nature as to cause
some complications. He altogether refused to receive
the sacred dew from midwives, and there remained
only the priests and the Parochus. He would not re
ceive it from the priests, for he was not on speaking
terms with them. Least of all would he receive it
from the Parochus, for the Parochus and he were under
bonds to keep the peace towards each other, in con
sequence of differences which had come to a certain
head. He therefore baptised the child himself, naming
it Anna, and then it died. Thereupon the Parochus
and others of Caspar's enemies, who seem to have been
numerous, made a great uproar. The bell was rung
and an assembly collected. Either Caspar had allowed
the child to die without proper baptism, or, if the bap-

182 THE ENGADINE
tism was valid, Caspar had become the compater of his
own son and daughter-in-law, a thing unheard of,
abominable. If divorce followed upon spiritual cog
nition, a wretch such as Caspar, unworthy of the light
of day and of the nature of things, must be altogether
put out of the way. In pursuance of this determination
the people drew their swords, the Parochus meanwhile
throwing cold water on their wrath, as Petrus de Porta
ironically relates, though, after all, the recollection of
the bond may have made him earnest against actual
violence. Caspar got himself into a corner of the
market-place of Siis, and there intrenched himself,
making such good play with his sword that he kept off
the parson and all the people till help came. From
this arose the disputation in the church at Siis, famous
indeed, but less famous than the disputation of Ilanz
eleven years before. The subject was women's baptism.
The discussion lasted for seven days, and was so eager
that the disputants would scarce take time to dine ; ate,
in fact, at mid-day, parce rapideque. At supper, de
Porta takes unnecessary pains to say, they made up for
it, pensabant. The judges decided that in case of great
necessity any one might baptise. Many of the Enga
diners retained the opposite view, and rebaptised under
such circumstances, whence they have sometimes been
described in history as Anabaptists, and in one veracious
record as ' Antibaptists.' As the result of the great
disputation at Ilanz to which reference has been made,
the moderator Sebastian Hoffmeister, a man of trans-

THE ENGADINE 183
parent impartiality, declared that his joy and wonder
were almost equal : joy, that on the Evangelical side
were so many pious, modest, and learned ministers ;
wonder, that on the other side were so many stupid,
old, ignorant, and audacious priests.
Pontresina was the first commune in the Upper
Engadine to embrace the new faith. Vergerius, for
merly Bishop of Justinopolis, was resting at the house
of the president of the village after the fatigues of the
Bernina, at the time when the election of a minister
was at hand. He heard one member of the commune
after another discussing the matter with the president,
and at length he began to speak of the new views and
to expound the Evangel. The president was a man of
a liberal turn of mind, and it occurred to him that
Pontresina might as well have a chance of hearing
what was going on in the world, — audiemus quid italus
iste novus nobis dicturus sit. He spoke to such good
effect that the next scene presented by history is a
procession from the church to the high bridge, over
which the images were thrown into the seething depths
below. It may be noted here that the interesting old
church of San Gian, near Pontresina, was used in 1623
by the fugitive Protestants from the Valteline. An
Italian sermon preached before them by Rampo of Zutz
is still in existence in manuscript.
There are in the Engadine, as in most parts of the
world, creatures not pleasant to fall in with. Among
them may be reckoned — though they are very seldom

184 THE ENGADINE
seen — the Vipera chersea and the Kreuz-otter ; of
which last Theobald comfortingly observes that though
it is said to spring at people it does not. If it does
not, it is an unworthy representative of its fore-elders.
The Engadine and the neighbouring mountains have
been much troubled by monsters of the serpent kind,
with and without wings, all apparently able to spring
in a disagreeable and dangerous manner. An early
writer employs the a priori method in speaking of the
existence of dragons in the Grisons : ' Le Pais des
Grisons est si plein de montagnes et de Cavernes, qu'il
seroit etonnant qu'il ne s'y trouvat pas de dragons.'
Those who are not satisfied with this, will no doubt
yield to the argument from inspiration, whether
historical or poetic, as employed by the Jesuit Kircher
to prove dragons in general. None can doubt, he says
in his best Latin, save those who contradict holy scrip
ture ; for in the fourteenth chapter of Daniel is open
mention of Bel, a dragon worshipped with divine
honours by the Babylonians, and in the Psalms it is
said ' Ye dragons and all deeps.' If uninspired history
is of any value as evidence, the case is clear in favour
of dragons. Jean Fabritius investigated the history of
a dragon which appeared in the Grisons in his time,
and he wrote to Henry Bullinger (Sept. 18, 1559) to
announce that he had received the assurances of a
most trustworthy man on the subject. This was the
less surprising to him, because thirty years before a
countryman had shot in that neighbourhood a worm of

THE ENGADINE 185
prodigious size, sunning itself on a rock. Its blood
was so venomous, and the poison was so subtle, that a
gust of wind blowing across the blood towards him
caused him to lose his. sight, and his body swelled so
much that his life was despaired of. Peter von Juvalta,
pfarrer of Stul, near Bergiin on the Albula route,
writes (Oct. 29, 1702) that in August 1696, Barthelmy
Alegre was driving his cows to the alp of Foppatsch
(or Joppatsch, for the old Dutch account impartially
spells it both ways) near Stul, when he came upon a
creature lying in the mouth of a great hole. It was
two ells long, had a cat's head, long red hair, flashing
eyes, a mark like a white collar round its neck, feet like
the fins of a fish and covered with scales, a serpent's
tongue, and a forked tail. Barthelmy not unnaturally
made off, and he succeeded in getting onto a rock so
steep that the creature could not follow. From this
vantage ground he shot at it. It came at him like an
arrow, and all but reached him, but at length he
managed to kill it with stones. Three days later,
when he returned, the body was decomposed. The
inhabitants of the district asserted that dragons of this
kind were often seen on Foppatsch and on the opposite
alp of Utgeis, which must in those days have been
interesting places.
Chiampel, the Reformer and historian, says that his
maternal grandfather, Martin Massol, surnamed Baloc,
saw at the foot of the Julier an enormous and horrible
serpent. He fell ill of it, and lost all his hair, and all

186 THE ENGADINE
the skin which was not covered by clothing when he
saw the beast. In the cleft through which the Inn
passes after escaping from the lake of St. Moritz, there
is a hole which used to house a dragon or worm. In
Chiampel's time a trustworthy man, John Mallet, died
of the sight of this worm. From the same historian we
learn that the little lake of Alpiglias, near Siis,1 was
possessed of unenviable notoriety as the abode of a
dragon. The relative of a Laviner named Bonorand
had seen it rise with fearful roaring out of the lake.
One Johann Branca, of Guarda, covered the surface of
the water with leaves and branches of trees, and thus
forced the reptile to leave the lake, which it did in a
furious storm of wind. It swam down the Inn to
Innsbruck, and there, not without much danger to the
people, it was killed. After this we may agree with
Kircher, that there is no one tam perfrictce frontis as
not to believe in the existence of Swiss dragons. To
make assurance doubly sure he gives a picture of one,
which the landamman of Soleure, who had seen them
often, drew for him from his own experience. It is a
dreadful scaly creature with wings and claws. For
scientific readers he gives an explanation of the origin
of such compound animals, based on observation. It is
a mistake to suppose that careful scientific observation
is a thing only of to-day. They are always found, he
1 There is a Piz Arpiglia near Zernetz and Siis, and an Alp
Alpiglia near Zuz. Chiampel knew of the ambiguity, and remarked
that he meant Siis and not Zuz (i. 82).

THE ENGADINE 187
points out, in regions inhabited by large birds of prey.
These birds carry ofi' to the neighbourhood of their nests
many more carcases of animals than they and their
young can devour, and the consequence is that car
cases of diverse creatures lie and decay together.
Each decaying carcase having in itself — such is his-
simple postulate — the seed of regeneration, the seeds
of all the carcases become commingled, and hybrids
more or less horrible are the result.
Less problematical than the dragons of the Enga
dine are its bears. The Upper Engadine is too open
for such animals to maintain a lodgment, and it is
most likely that any bears seen there are visitors from
Italy. A calf was eaten by bears at Siis Maria in the
summer of 1874, but the inhabitants asserted that the
culprits were Italians. Now that arms of precision are
in the hands of the natives, any bears that shew them
selves in the open have a bad time ; but the valley is
full of traditions of a period when the balance was
more even, and bears were a recognised and constant
danger. La Presiira, near Siis, was the scene of a
famous encounter between a woodman and a bear, in
the course of which the man, Duri Beta of Lavin
(Lavinium, the Engadiners say), thrust his left hand,
wrapped in his coat, between the jaws of the bear, and
with the right killed the beast with blows of his
axe. In the same neighbourhood is a field called al
bouf giall, ' to the dun ox.' This is in memory of a
fight between a bear and an ox, in which the latter

188 THE ENGADINE
killed his antagonist by pinning him to a tree with
his horns.A member of the University of Oxford, who seems
to have had his eyes and ears very wide open indeed, if
one may judge by his ' Alpine Sketches ' published in
1814, relates that in his time the bulls and bears had
a regular appointed rendezvous, and always fought till
one or the other fell. A bull which had once pursued a
bear from its pasturage was nowhere to be found ; but
after a search of three days it was discovered im
movable, pressing against a rock its enemy long since
dead and putrid. The animal had made such efforts
that his hoofs were driven several feet into the ground.
With any less sound guarantee than that of a member
of the University of Oxford, the length of the bull's legs
might be called in question.
There are traditions of encounters with wolves in
the streets of towns in the Engadine. Thus in January
1536, a date which speaks of a severe winter, a wolf
seized the grandson of Padrutt Perini in the street of
Madulein (Mediolanum, they say), when Juliot of
Milan came up and after a struggle killed the beast
with his sword. Boy and man, however, died raving
mad from their wounds a few days after.
Notwithstanding the advantage which the possession
of heavy rifles gives, the Engadiners still consider an
encounter with a bear a very serious matter. Some
years ago a number of the inhabitants of Zernetz
sallied forth for a hunt with the utmost determination

THE ENGADINE

189

and bravery, and they were fortunate enough to find
a bear. Having found him, they did not like his
looks, and they put into active exercise that best part
of valour which is known as discretion. The following
verses did honour to the expedition, in somewhat
Italianised Romauntsch : —

UNA CHATSCHA AL UORS
tin proverbi antic e bel
A tuots cognit, suggerescha,
Cha del Uors vender la pell
MS nun sto iin memm* in prescha,
Ma spetter da fer marcho
Cur cha l'Uors ais schluppetto.
Quaist proverb1 a que chi pera
A Zernez eir' incontschaint,
Quels Tregants siin lur bandera
Tuots pigliettan guramaint,
D' schluppetter iin bel TJorsun l
B '1 mner mort siin Un bastun !
A tel scopo 's radunettan
Bain armos siin il plaz grand
E 'n discuors alio taidlettan
Pronunzio dal comandant
G-iachem Filli il renommo,
Chi bgers Uors ho schluppetto.
Amihs 1 dschet el, aunz co 'ns metter
Per la ohatscha in ehamin,
Stuvais vus uoss' am permetter,
Sco ais 1' iis eir a Berlin,
Ch' eau a vus fatsch' tin discuors,
Per spieger che ch'ais Un Uors :
— L' Uors ais una bestia grossa,
Perm' e granda sco 'n liun,
Cur el vain in mez 'na scossa
Fo'l d' iin bes-ch be iin baccun,
E suvenz per complimaint
Magi' il paster eir suraint ;

A BEAR HUNT
A proverb old and sound,
Known to all, suggests
That to sell the skin of a bear
One must not be too quick,
But must wait to make one's market
Till the bear is shot.
This proverb, as far as appears,
Was unknown at Zernetz,
The sharpshooters on their banner
All took a solemn oath
To shoot a fine big bear
And bring him dead on a pole.
With this view they assembled
Well armed upon the great place,
And there gave attentive ear
To a speech made by their captain,
Jacques Pilli the renowned,
Who many bears has shot.
' Friends ! ' said he, * ere that we put
Ourselves on the road for the hunt,
Tou must permit me now,
As the use is at Berlin too,
To make a speech to you,
With a view to explain what a bear is.
1 The bear is a huge beast,
Strong and large as a lion,
When he comes in the midst of a herd,
He makes of a sheep but a mouthful,
And often as a finish
Eats the shepherd too in addition.

1 Un is an intensitive termination, Uorsun a large bear. Thus from Bap, a
father, Babun is an ancestor ; but the quaintness of this is spoiled by the practice of
pronouncing a final n as m, which gives Baboom instead of Baboon. This pronuncia
tion has a curious effect in such words as chaun and paun in the sixth stanza.
Chaun is pronounced like the first syllable in chamber, and pauu rhymes with it, as
if an English schoolboy who had not been introduced to the new-fangled method of
pronunciation were cutting the middle out of panem.

190

THE ENGADINE

Cun iin cuolp da sia tschatta
Un grand bos-ch vain atterro ;
E sch' in fam el as rechatta
Ho 1' Uors eir gia divoro
II chatscheder e sieu chaun
Sainza sel e sainza paun 1 —
Tel discuors siin 1' adunanza
Fet 'na granda impressiun,
Ogniin vzaiv' in lontananza
G-nir vers el iin trid Uorsun,
Cun aviert la buoch' e bratscha
Pel maglier sco 'na fuatscha ! —
— Cur 1' intera compagnia
FUt riveda in mez il god,
Cumper Brum be sper els via
Plaun plaunet passet bain bod,
E cun fatscha rianteda
Saliidet tuot la brajeda.
Da trer our 'na schluppetteda
Ad iingiin gnit que in maint
E dT avair 'sche bain passeda
Fiit 'minchiin pii co containt ! —
— Que dvantet in noss pajais
An ottschientsessauutatrais ! ! !

'With one blow of his paw
A great tree is brought to the ground ;
And, as it is found in story,
The bear has also devoured
The huntsman and his dog
Without salt and without bread.'
Such a speech as this
Made a great impression on the assembly ;
Each one saw in the distance
A horrid bear coming at him,
With mouth and arms wide open
To eat him up like a sweetmeat.
When the entire company
Was arrived in the midst of the wood,
Leisurely at a fair pace
Near the road passed gossip Bruin,
And with a grinning face
Saluted the whole brigade.
It never entered the mind
Of any to fire a shot,
And each was more than content
That the thing had so well passed off.
This occurred in our country [three.
In the year eighteen hundred and sixty-

It is not necessary to point out that this passage of
Romauntsch bristles with problems and illustrations of
much interest to the student of languages. The pro
nunciation has almost as remarkable a bearing on the
pronunciation of Latin as that of the "Wallon of the
Belgian Ardennes has upon the pronunciation of
French. The frequent occurrence of the modified u
bears out the can on , ' La Valteline et l'Engadine
aiment beaucoup Y umlaut9
There is rather a want of early traditions of a
romantic character in the Engadine- One such is
localised at Guardaval, a name so suggestive of
romance that invention would have been busy if fact
had not forestalled it. The castle of Guardaval, near

THE ENGADINE 191
Madulein, was built by Bishop Volkard of Ohur before
the middle of the thirteenth century, as a protection to
the dependants of the bishopric. The roads were so
unsafe in Rhsetia, that the stages made by travellers
worth robbing were only from one episcopal castle to
another, always under escort of an episcopal guard.
The protection of the Vogt seated at Guardaval, at the
time of which the tradition treats, was not the kind of
protection contemplated by the episcopal mind. The
Vogt gave orders that a certain fair maid of Madulein
should be brought to him at the castle, and in order
that she might be properly apparelled he sent down
gay clothes for her. Her father brought her, gaily
clad, and accompanied by a certain Adam of Camogasc,
who ran the tyrant through the heart as he was ad
ministering a first salute to the maid. The people
then rose and dragged down the tower, stone by stone.
A guide-book alludes to this tradition, and remarks
that it is a modern invention. Chiampel's manuscript,
however, written three hundred years ago, tells the
story, and asserts that the grandson of Adam was
known to the author. This is fairly good authority
for a modern invention.
A more romantic form of the legend decoys the
maiden into the castle and throws her from the battle
ments in her determination to escape from the Vogt.
The whole is too long to quote, but the catastrophe is
as follows : —
Castellan. Nay, but hear !
I swear by Guardavall, by my life I swear —

192 THE ENGADINE
Adam. Thy life is mine, not thine, swear not by it.
Nor swear by Guardavall : for stone on stone
Of Volkard's tower —
Cast. Let it be so, yet hear !
I swear by that thou hast or hadst most dear,
That all unharmed, untouched, in groundless fear,
Thy maiden sought her death. Her stainless soul
As pure of hurt from me to Heaven has gone
As though she had died some eighteen years ago
A babe on her mother's knee !
Ad. Unharmed ! imtouched ! and pure ! What words
are these !
She was a maiden from the side of Inn :
Say that, thou sayest all.
In other lands, where villains such as thou
Mar God's fair earth, I doubt not that it needs —
When that by some rare chance it may be true —
Needs say, expressly say, of such an one
That all unharmed, untouched, and innocent,
And pure she died. And I can well believe
That that fell land where mother gave thee birth
Hath many a damsel, many another dame,
Who makes those words a lie.
But in this land of ours, when such as thou
Casts devil's eyes upon a maid of Inn,
And time and place and circumstance favour him ;
But three words will that dauntless maiden say
Ere that she take safe shelter in the grave,
' Death ere dishonour ! '
And talkest thou of Heaven ! Did I but think
That such as thou had aught to do with Heaven,
I'd sin some mortal sin and thereby gain
The purer realms of Hell. Dost thou not know,
Thou villain tyrant, when a son of Inn
Has innocent blood to avenge, foul blood to shed,
But three words will he speak ere that he send
The vile, damned, caitiff, soulless soul to Hell,
' Death in dishonour ! '

THE ENGADINE 193
There is one interesting tradition in a Romauntsch
district other than the Engadine, more than five hundred
years old, which survives in full vigour to the present
day. It relates to the position of women in church. In
the churches where Romauntsch services are held, the
women sit on the north side and the men on the south.
The separation is so well defined that in some churches
the men go out by one door and the women by another
in the less sophisticated parts of the valley. And it
may be remarked that in one church, at least, the men
light their pipes and cigars on leaving their seats, and
pass out smoking, possibly in preparation for an exercise
alluded to by Chiampel when the Reformation was still
a novelty — ' After the sermon, the men are accustomed
to converse gravely with each other on what they have
heard.' In the church of Lugnetz the order is reversed,
the women sitting on the south side and the men on
the north; and the women precede the men in the
Holy Communion. This arrangement is in perpetual
memorial of a deed of bravery which earned for the
women of Lugnetz the title of las valorusas femnas di
Lungnezza. In 1352, the Count Rudolf of Montfort
had a contest with the Baron Ulric Walther of
Belmont, who ruled over the Foppa, Lungnezza, Vals,'
and Flem. It was a desperate strife. No less than
nine nobles were killed, and they were buried side by
side in the cloister of St. Nicholas at Chur : — Eberhard
Helmer, Rudolf von Ramsperg, Albert von Stein eck,
Hermann von Griinstein, Ilmar Herwer, Heinrich o

194 THE ENGADINE
Rusplinger, Hermann von Landenberg, Hans von
Lindenberg, and Wolfli Singband. On one occasion
the men of Lugnetz went up into the mountains and
fought the troops of Montfort near Morissen, defeating
them at the little chapel of St. Carlo. Meanwhile,
another body of Montfort's men unexpectedly attacked
the valley, which had no male defenders ; and since in
those days such wars were carried on with fire, rapine,
and murder, all seemed lost. The women of the
district, however, collected in a large body at the gate
which closes the entrance to the valley, still called
Porclas (Porta clausd), and this they defended till the
men came back and completely routed the enemy. In
order to establish a permanent record of the bravery of
their women, the men determined that they must sit on
the right hand in church, and at Communion present
themselves first at the altar — aunz co ils homens avaunt
I'uter.

195

ARCHuEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE '
Fkom the Quarterly Statements of the Palestine Ex
ploration Fund, and from several other sources, those
who are interested in such matters, without being
specialists, have been made aware that antiquities
coming from the Holy Land are not altogether above
suspicion. They have learned, too, that while certain
names constantly recur in connection with the dis
covery or ownership of doubtful objects, there is one
name which has been made to stand out very pro
minently in their detection, that of M. Clermont
Ganneau. This gentleman has recently (1885) published
a book, full of interest, entitled ' Les Fraudes Archeo-
logiques en Palestine.' Had the author's attitude
towards other discoverers and learned men been the
reverse of what it is, the book would have been a
delightful one.
There are many desiderata in connection with
Israelite archaeology. Some authentic inscription, for
instance, of the time of King David would be a great
acquisition. Hieroglyphic inscriptions of a much
' National Review, April 1885. o 2

196 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FEAUDS IN PALESTINE
earlier date abound. The Hittite ancestors of Bath-
sheba's former husband are mentioned in inscriptions
which were nearly a thousand years old in David's
time, and exist still. Without going to such antiquity
as that, it is quite clear that if the genius of the
Israelites had run in the direction of inscriptions, there
is no assignable reason why Israelite inscriptions of the
time of David and Solomon, or the more archaic times
of Samuel, or even of Moses, should not be found.
There is nothing in the nature of stones — of the right
kind of stones, that is to say— to render it impossible
for the two tables of the Law to be in existence still
and still legible. Indeed, the absence of early Israelite
inscriptions needs explanation more than the existence
of a considerable number of such inscriptions would do.
A race which was always being told how their greatest
man, at the greatest crisis of his life, inscribed on stone
the greatest moral and religious gift ever up to that
time given to mankind, would naturally be prone to
resort to that honoured method of preserving any
record of supreme importance. No scrap of anything
of the kind has as yet been found. It does not say
much for the courage and skill of the gentlemen who
provide portable little treasures of antiquity for tourists
in the Holy Land, that they have not undertaken some
magnum opus of Davidic or pre-Davidic times. The
discovery of the Moabite Stone, which has quickened
the forgery trade, has also impeded it. The forgers are
not even yet familiar with the Phoenician alphabet, and

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 197
they dare not venture beyond a few letters. They
know, too, that even tourists in the Holy Land will not
now buy antiques with inscriptions in modern alphabets ;
Cook's conductors know better than that. A few years
ago there were no such annoying complications, and the
forger's course was clear and easy. A certain hoard of
coins of Moses had a great success in the pre-scientific
days of a short generation ago. They bore square
Hebrew letters, it is true; but that was not in those
times a very grave objection, except with the few. On
the other hand, they had undoubted marks of great
antiquity, which every tourist could appreciate, such
as a pair of ram's horns on the bust of Moses which
adorned one side of the coin, and real extracts from
Moses' writings on the other side. These well-known
characteristics of Mosaic coins were found to be very
convincing. An inscription of Moses' time, indeed of Moses' own
construction, was produced, it is true, about thirteen
years ago. It was said to have been found at Madeba,
some forty-five miles east of Jerusalem, but its pro
venance was not traced further back than M. Shapira's
curiosity shop in Jerusalem. Madeba probably sug
gested itself as a proper place for an inscription when
the first rumour of the Moabite Stone at Dhiban was
heard. For Dibon and Medeba are mentioned together,
each for the first time, in an archaic verse in Numbers
(xxi. 30) ; and as that verse tells of Moses' victories,
the evident subject for an inscription at Madeba was a

198 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
victory of Moses. M. Shapira had himself deciphered
and translated the inscription. Priority of importance
over the Moabite Stone itself was claimed for it, a fact
which, even after the lapse of many years, stirs M.
Ganneau's wrath. The date 900 B.C. would have
paled before 1450 B.C., and Mesha of Moab would
have sunk into insignificance in the presence of Moses
of Israel. M. Shapira made the stone speak as
follows :
We drove them away, the people of Ar Moab, at the marsh
ground ; there they made a thank-offering to God their King,
and Jeshuren rejoiced, as also Moses their leader.
So, at least, the ' Times ' said, printing Sir H.
Lumley's letter with that unusual spelling of Jeshurun.
In the same letter the careful reader will find ' Sinaitic'
printed ' Siniatic ; ' and in Sir H. Lumley's letter in
the next number of the ' Times,' ' Phoenician ' printed
' Phcenecian.' These are just the sort of mistakes by
which an unskilful forger is detected ; but their occur
rence in the letter of a learned man in the columns of
the greatest newspaper of the world may induce M.
Ganneau to make less sure of some of his evidences of
forgery. We have seen how Madeba may have come to be
selected as the lieu de naissance of this stone. In the
same chapter of Numbers which suggested it, there is a
quotation from that mysterious book which it is to be
feared there is now no one capable of producing — ' the
book of the wars of the Lord.' The quotation is this :

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 199
' What he did ... at the stream of the brooks that
goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, that lieth upon the
border of Moab.' And in the passage of Joshua in
which Medeba is mentioned (xiii.), we find ' the city
that is in the midst of the river, and all the plain of
Medeba.' Here we have the origin of the facts of his
tory and physical geography mentioned on the Madeba
stone. There remains the use of the name ' Jeshurun '
to consider. It is perhaps sufficient to say that except
ing once in Isaiah, where our authorised version, the
authority (and a sufficient one) for the ' Times,' spells
it wrong, it occurs only in that one book of the Old
Testament which is supposed to have been the chief
study of M. Shapira and his learned friends, namely
Deuteronomy. It may serve to connect this poetical
record of the rocks more closely still with that Moses
whom it names as the leader of Jeshurun, to notice
that when the name does occur, as the title of Israel, it
is found in the two magnificent poems which Moses
recites in the last two chapters of the book. Thus the
whole record is full of highly interesting coincidences.
This inscription must have been a great disappoint
ment to its author. It was presumably put in hand at
the time when the Moabite stone began to be talked
about, and before it was sprung upon the world the
alphabet of the Moabite stone was fairly well known.
Unfortunately, the author of the Madeba inscription
had selected, not unnaturally, the Sinaitic character,
and had, in fact, reproduced a Nabathean inscription

200 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
from Um er-Russas, on which other people in modern
times had practised ; indeed, one skilful gentleman had
taken in a German savant by inscribing a portion of it
upside down. The Sinaitic character is so unlike that
of the Moabite inscription, especially in the letters of
the key words Moses and Moab, that the Mosaic record
of the victory at Medeba had but a short course of
authentic life. It may be remembered that when
Captain Warren first sent for a squeeze of the Moabite
stone, his messenger brought back a squeeze of a
Nabathean inscription, which Captain Warren promptly
rejected. It is to be regretted that we cannot stop here, and
pass on to other matters than the ' new Moabite stone.'
But there are a few words which, in the interests of
truth and propriety, ought to be said, however un
pleasant it may be to say them. Let M. Ganneau tell
us himself what Sir Henry Lumley did when M.
Shapira shewed him the precious piece of porphyry at
Jerusalem :
Oelui-ci s'empressa d'en faire part au public dans une lettre
qui parut dans le Times, le 29 novembre 1871, et qui fit tout
d'abord grande impression. . . . Helas ! Ton ne tarda guere a
s'apercevoir qu'il en fallait singulierement rabattre. Cette
merveille qui se presentait comme la revanche d'Israel sur
Moab et qui ne pr^tendait a rien moins qu'a rel^guer la stele de
Mesa au troisieme rang, n'dtait pas autre chose qu'un nouveau
pastiche de l'inscription nabat^enne d'Oumm er-Resas dont j'ai
parW plus haut.
Now look on the other side of the picture. There
is no such letter in the ' Times ' of November 29, 1871,

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 201
nor in any ' Times ' of that year. It was written in
Jerusalem on November 29, 1871, and sent to the
' Times,' but it did not appear. Sir H. Lumley came
to England, shewed the squeeze to Mr. Deutsch, and
got such an opinion from him that he at once sent to
the ' Times ' to have his letter stopped. But on
January 26, 1872, to his surprise and annoyance, the
letter appeared in the columns of the 'Times.' M.
Ganneau says of it : ' Qui fit tout d'abord grande im
pression . . . I'on ne tarda guere a s'apercevoir,' &c. It
is not easy to believe that what happened was this.
On the next day, January 27, 1872, a letter from Sir
H. Lumley appeared in the ' Times,' dated January 26,
stating that on his arrival in England after writing
from Jerusalem in November, Mr. Deutsch had told
him the squeeze shewed the inscription to be, not
Moabite or Phoenician, but Nabathean, and that a copy
more or less complete of what — so far as he could judge
from a mere tracing — seemed to be the same inscription,
had appeared twice already. ' I took immediate steps
to withdraw my letter to you,' he proceeds, ' written
under very different impressions, but, unluckily, it seems
to have crept into your columns after all.' Had M.
Ganneau found a brother savant doing the sort of thing
he has himself done in dealing with this matter, he
would have told him, in carefully pointed phraseology,
that his date, and his 'fit tout d'abord grande impression,'
and his ' I'on ne tarda guere d s'apercevoir,' &c, needed
explanation quite as much as the scratches on the

202 ARCH/EOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
leather of the manuscript of Deuteronomy. And he
would have had public opinion with him.
The seal of King David was offered to M. Clermont
Ganneau, at Jerusalem, some eleven years ago, for ten
francs. The illustrious French savant did not secure
this unique treasure at this easy price, and it probably
now forms the principal glory of some private collection
of antiquities from the Holy Land. The inscription
was in four lines, thirteen letters in all, and the inter
pretation was, ' Servant of Jehovah, David King.' In
order to suit various tastes, the engraver had patronised
various alphabets ; there was a Phoenician d, a Samari
tan m, a Rabbinic h, a Latin I, a Moabite jod, and an
English e. The inscription was legible enough, even
though the engraver copied badly. The same cannot
be said of the inscription on the sarcophagus of Samson,
which is much the reverse of legible. The sarcophagus
is all gone but one side, a slab of lead about four feet
long. Leaden sarcophagi of the Greek and Byzantine
periods are not uncommon ; visitors to the Louvre will
remember a highly ornamented example on a shelf on
the Egyptian staircase, brought by M. Renan from Saida,
with scrolls whose curious details are reproduced on
some of the early English sculptured stones. The in
scription on the Samson sarcophagus is incised, and
consists of fifty letters ; they have a decided soupgon of
the Moabite stone, but at the same time give the im
pression that the engraver had got hold of some such
document as one of Mr. Isaac Taylor's tables of various

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 203
alphabets, and had let his eye wander. M. Ganneau
does not profess to take the trouble to decipher the in
scription, but remarks that the closing word is clearly
Samson, ' written Chimchon.' It is evidently what we
should reproduce as ' Shmshon,' and the engraver, if he
took the French spelling to imply a cheth, as it seems
to do, would repudiate the ch with some indignation.
M. Shapira brought it to England. It had no success
here, and its owner then announced that he had brought
it to shew how easily a real forgery could be detected.
The lead is undoubtedly of very considerable age, and
M. Clermont Ganneau shrewdly remarks that the cupola
of the Mosque of Omar had been under repair about
that time. He seems to have an intuitive perception
of the likeliest means and instruments for forgery, which
renders him a dangerous subject for a forger to practise
on. On many accounts an inscription in Greek letters
would be easier to make tolerably natural than one in
Phoenician characters. The advantages of an attempt
in this direction became evident some years ago to an
acquaintance of M. Clermont Ganneau, Martin Boulos
by name, a worker in marble, who was accustomed to
engrave epitaphs for the Jews' cemetery. In 1871
M. Clermont Ganneau was fortunate enough to find in
the foundations of an old Arab house, near the Mosque
of Omar, a very remarkable Greek inscription, no less
than the law excluding foreigners from Herod's Temple
on pain of death, copies of which are known to have

204 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
been placed at various parts of the precincts. The in
scription was complete : ' Let no foreigner pass within
the precincts of the Temple. Any one found so doing
will be guilty of his own death.' M. Clermont Ganneau
spent a good deal of money in his endeavour to secure
this stone, but in vain ; the Mussulman owners of the
house absolutely refused to allow the stone to be removed.
He left Jerusalem for Constantinople ; and the very day
of his departure the Turkish governor had it taken out
of the wall and carried to his quarters, where he received
6ffers from ' the representatives of certain Powers,' as
M. Clermont Ganneau puts it, meaning certainly the
hated Prussians, and probably the English too. The
Governor is said to have asked 2,000L sterling for it at
first, and, later on, 1500L Turk (about 1,380?. sterling).
Afterwards he offered it to a Jew financier living in
Paris; but the national instinct did not incite the
financier to make a sufficient financial exertion, and it
now rests in the museum at Constantinople, of all places
in the world.
On M. Ganneau's arrival at Constantinople, which
took place fourteen years before he learned that the
Temple inscription was there, Martin Boulos endeavoured
to provide some compensation for his loss of the stone.
He found another copy of the law of Herod, built into
the foundations of a wall, with the lines vertical, ex
actly as in the first case. There was a great deal of
ceremony and secrecy about shewing the precious
treasure to M. Ganneau's correspondent. The hour

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 205
fixed was 5 o'clock in the morning, that the Governor
might not get wind of what was going on. The place
was an ass's stable, in the wall of which the stone was
embedded, and, to the terror of Martin and the pro
prietor, the ass began to bray. They stopped that by
pulling his tail — an infallible remedy, it seems — and at
last they saw the stone. What passed we are not told,
but Martin was encouraged to proceed with the negotia
tion, and in a few days he brought the stone in triumph
to M. Ganneau's friend. That gentleman was ready.
He told Martin that it was a forgery, so frankly and so
conclusively, that Martin fled, and left the spoil in M.
Ganneau's friend's possession. The photographic repro
duction of Martin's stone shews that the Greek letters
are very boldly and well cut, and are, for the most part,
correct; and yet, handsome as the inscription looks,
the blunders in the details of letters are so frequent
that only two words out of twenty-two are Greek words,
and they are so short — only three letters and two re
spectively — that their correctness is no doubt accidental.
It was scarcely necessary to warn the scientific world
against performances such as this. An idea of Martin's
inscription may be given in English capitals, without
making any special type for the purpose ; it would be
necessary to make special type for a full description,
since some of his letters are not Greek letters at all.
Taking the first three words of the warning notice in
its English dress, ' Let no foreigner,' Martin, at his best,
would have produced something of this kind : ' LEI

206 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
NO EOBEICNEP.' He would have been in good
company in making T into I, for either Captain Warren,
of the Palestine Exploration, or the sculptor who cut
the beautiful inscription, in Greek letters, to Titus
^Elius Adrianus Antoninus, on a pedestal in a garden
af Saida, made exactly that mistake, giving Autokraiori
for Autokratori. The Moabite pottery, which began to come over to
England in 1872, must be fresh still in the minds of
those who take an interest in these matters. It was
some of it very fresh when it came. After a certain
time devoted to careful consideration — a fashion which
English learned men follow as being preferable to the
course of rushing upon a thing, or its possessor, with a
wild shriek of Faussaire I — the Moabite pottery was con
demned. Its owner, M. Shapira, had, meanwhile, been
more fortunate in Germany, where the new Emperor
provided the money for the purchase of a large collec
tion, some seventeen hundred pieces, at the moderate
average of 21. a piece. To this step the Emperor was
led by the opinion of a very learned man, M. Schlott-
mann, who declared the things to be authentic. M.
Clermont Ganneau does not let M. Schlottmann down
easy. There can be no doubt that the English officers of
the Exploration Fund in Jerusalem came to the con
clusion that the first specimens of the pottery examined
by them there were genuine. They sent over sketches
and descriptions, and expressed themselves as quite con-

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 207
vinced. M. Ganneau refers especially to a letter in the
' Athenaeum ' of November 2, 1872, in which ' M. Drake
se prononce formellement pour l'authenticiteV insisting
on the variety of execution and of style, which implied
various hands and various epochs, on the intimate
knowledge shewn of phallic rites, and on the high
esteem in which M. Shapira was held by all the Protes
tant community of Jerusalem, that gentleman being a
converted Jew. It will be seen from this recapitulation
of Mr. Drake's arguments that the hint given in the
Bible of the cultus of Baal Peor had been made full use
of by the makers and the decorators of the Moabite pot
tery. The result was that the early Moabites were credited
with some abominable obscenities in their common
household ware. It is interesting to note that the Book
of Numbers passes straight on from the mention of
Dibon and Medeba to the story of Balaam, with its
immediate sequel in the evil practices connected with
Baal Peor. Thus the inspiration of the new Moabite
stone and of the Moabite pottery probably came from
a study of this limited portion of the wanderings of
Israel. Mr. Conder also took an optimist view of the pottery.
He recognised Astarte in a horned goddess : he found
specimens of the biblical teraphim, an image of a phoenix,
a Midianite priapus, and so on. He read on one piece
the name Jehovah.
The committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund
asked the opinion of M. Clermont Ganneau. He an-

208' ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
swered that, in his opinion, the things were forgeries
from first to last. The pottery was covered with in
scriptions, in characters the same — or meant to be the
same — as those of the Moabite stone. But they were
badly copied, and they were combined in such a manner
as not to make translatable words. The style of the
letters struck M. Clermont Ganneau as resembling that
of a copy which Serim-el-Qari had made for him of some
lines of the Moabite stone, and he put the forgery down
to this former ally of his. All through M. Ganneau's
discoveries of forgery, it has been of inestimable service
to him that he has known so well the ways and the
personnel of Jerusalem rascality.
In the case of this pottery, as in other instances
adduced by M. Ganneau, the impression conveyed by
his book is that he was the one wise man, Athanasius
contra mundum. But Mr. Drake himself had said, in
writing to the ' Athenasum,' that, except in Jerusalem,
people everywhere attacked the pottery as false. And
the ' Athenaaum' affixed an editorial note to Mr. Drake's
letter quoted by M. Ganneau — M. Ganneau makes no
reference to this editorial note — to the effect that they
printed the letter for what it might be worth, that the
Germans (Dr. Socin) were the first to use the word
forgery, that only one German of repute had ' gone in '
for its genuineness and attempted a translation of the
inscriptions, and that even he confessed that the attempt
had not satisfied him.
M. Ganneau returned to Jerusalem towards the end

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 209
of 1873, sent there on an Archaeological mission by the
Palestine Exploration Fund. 'Je savais d'avance, je
puis le dire, ce que j'allais trouver a Jerusalem,' he
tells us, but we do not gather whether his knowledge
was the fruit of early experiences or was pure theory.
His first step was to endeavour to obtain a sight of the
new collection of Moabite pottery which M. Shapira
was getting together from the friendly Bedawin of the
land of Moab. The search instituted by these gentry
when they heard that the first batch had sold for
3,O00L appeared to be greatly blessed. The pots came
in by the hundred. Moab was always a fertile land,
and its fecundity was found to extend to works of art,
early art, art scarcely worth the name of art, but price
less from its hoar antiquity. M. Shapira had, of course,
heard that this would-be visitor had condemned the
things which some of the English critics had believed
and the practical Germans had bought, and he declined
to allow his treasures to be polluted by the eye or the
hand of such a sceptic. But M. Shapira was under
great obligations to Mr. Drake, who knew the collec
tions well, and M. Ganneau persuaded Mr. Drake to
persuade M. Shapira to takeoff the embargo and let
him see them. M. Ganneau tells .us that he had con
fided to Mr. Drake his real object, and had succeeded
in shaking his belief in the authenticity of the things.
Mr. Drake himself has told us that it was impossible
not to notice and be struck by the great difference
between the first batch of pottery and that which fol-

210 ARCHaEOLOGICaUa FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
lowed. The first specimens were good ware, and had
few inscriptions ; the latter were of very poor texture,
and were covered with inscriptions. Some of the
earlier pieces were almost certainly old, whatever else
they might be or not be. The two counter-plotters
were ushered into a large room full of figures, vases,
and all manner of articles of pottery, covered with
inscriptions in Moabite characters, the whole thing in
such profusion as was itself the most convincing
evidence of fabrication. The workmanship was of the
rudest description, not with an archaic rudeness, which
is honest, telling, and real, but with that vulgar rude
ness which speaks of debased or fraudulent art. The
French savant can think of nothing better to compare
with the sight that met his eyes than a collection of
gingerbread men on a stall at a village fair ; and the
comparison is graphic and true. He recognised at
once the style of Selim, some of whose works of art he
had already in his possession — how or when acquired
we do not learn, for we are not here dealing with the
question of inscriptions. M. Shapira allowed him to
examine the pieces closely, and he found that the clay
was that in ordinary use at the present day among the
potters of Jerusalem, and that in some cases it was
scarcely baked. There was even the impression of the
coarse linen on which it had been laid when fresh —
though how that proved it modern M, Ganneau does
not say. In short, of the whole collection — ' dont M.
Shapira, ses premieres hesitations une fois vaincues,

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 211
nous avait fait du reste les honneurs avec une com
plaisance que je me plais a reconnaitre' — there was
not one piece which could be considered real. M.
Ganneau told Mr. Drake, as they left the house, that
the only authentic thing he had seen was a live ostrich;
and that, as for the pottery, the only thing left was to
look for the potter. Of Arab potters there were not
more than six in Jerusalem, so the field of investigation
was not large.
His first attempt was upon a day labourer, Abou
Mansoura, whom he questioned with extreme care not
to arouse his suspicions. Abou Mansoura set him on
the track by telling him that he had worked for a
Christian called Selim-el-Qari, who made statues and
vases of clay, with inscriptions. He had given up
working for him, and mentioned Bakir-el-Masri as
Selim's present potter. Bakir said he had never
worked for Selim, but a young apprentice of his,
Hassan, had formerly worked with another potter,
Ahmed, and this Ahmed had business relations with
Selim. From Hassan M. Ganneau learned the whole
story. Selim got his clay from Ahmed, made it into
men, dogs, and women — that was Hassan's order of
merit — with their noses, feet, hands, and busts covered
with writing. He then sent them to Ahmed to be
baked. Vases, which required the wheel, Ahmed made,
and Selim inscribed them, and then they were baked.
Hassan's function was to carry the things backwards
and forwards. This he did after sunset, concealing p 2

212 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
them under a long cloak which he wore, but he was so
much afraid of being stopped by some patrol that he
left Ahmed's service. The pieces were all counted with
minute accuracy, and if one got broken the fragments
were collected with the utmost care. On one occasion
Hassan had dropped a very small piece, one of the
tesseraa, and Selim gave a little boy who picked it up
the important sum of eight sous. On some occasions,
when Hassan brought the things to Selim's house, Selim
plunged them in water, telling him it was to age them.
Mr. Drake, who stood to his favourable opinion of
the first batch of Moabite pottery, reported on by him
and purchased by the Emperor William, took M.
Ganneau's view of the second batch, and entered upon
a similar investigation. He, too, got hold of Abou
Mansoura, and obtained from him information which
he got him to declare before the English Consul.
These things M. Ganneau laid before the world in a
letter published in the ' Athenaeum ' on January 24,
1874, and here again we get the impression that he
was the first in the field, was, indeed, the sole dis
coverer. But early in November of the previous year
Mr. Drake had learned from some Bedawin that written
jars were made in Jerusalem, transported to Moab,
buried there, and shewn to M. Shapira as found in
caves. This he communicated privately to the Com
mittee of the Palestine Exploration Fund in a letter
written on November 11. On November 12, M. Gan
neau wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Fund, iu

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 218
which was a statement thathe was on the track of the
pottery. Thus Mr. Drake had that priority which
M. Ganneau claimed with such amusing anxiety, and
such curious insinuations, in the matter of the Moabite
stone, in his letter to the ' Times ' March 22, 1870.
When the 'Athenaeum' in due course made its
appearance in Jerusalem, there was consternation
there. M. Weser, who had been instrumental in
procuring the first batch of pottery for the Prussian
Government, questioned the witnesses, and got a very
different account from them. He then proposed to
M. Ganneau that they and the witnesses should meet
in the presence of Mr. Drake and have it out. In
answer to M. Ganneau's direct question, M. Weser said
— as M. Ganneau tells us — that the enquiry was
entirely a personal one, and of a character strictly
private, and on that assurance M. Ganneau fell into
the trap. He tells us that, as he learned afterwards,
the enquiry was absolutely official, undertaken, on an
imperative order from the Prussian Government, under
the direction of Dr. Kersten, the German Consul at
Jerusalem. He describes what happened with dramatic
force. Mr. Drake and Lieutenant Conder provided the
place of meeting, M. Ganneau took with him his artist,
and M. Weser was accompanied by M. Duisberg, an
honourable grocer of Jerusalem decorated by the
Bavarian Government, who has enriched the Museum
of Stuttgart with Moabite pottery, and by one Serapion
as interpreter, a Levantine, an employe of the German

214 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
Consulate, of whom M. Ganneau remarks that he has
since been cashiered. The witnesses were called in
one by one. You might have thought you were
reading the ' Thousand and Second Night.' Hassan
was in floods of tears. He declared on oath that the
' Khawadja au cheval blanc,' there present, that is to
say M. Ganneau, had entrapped him and kept him
locked up, had beaten him, and threatened him with
death, to make him tell the tale he told him to tell.
Next came Abd-el-Baqi, that is to say, Abou Mansoura.
We are not told that he was in tears, but he swore ,
strong oaths. He swore by Allah and the triple
divorce that the said Khawadja had come to him
voter sa langue, and to make him repeat word for word
the tale he had thereupon told to Mr. Drake and
declared before the English Consul. Bakir came next,
and swore by oaths the most holy that Hassan came to
him after his interview with M. Ganneau and told him
just the same piteous tale that he had now told in that
honourable presence. The third potter, Ahmed, swore
solemnly that he did not even know Selim, and with
an exuberance of completeness declared that he had
never done work for any one of that name. But that
was nothing to what was to come. Selim, the very
Selrm-el-Qari himself, the culprit whose evil deeds
M. Ganneau had so triumphantly detected, Selim ap
peared. That his appearance was not altogether
voluntary we gather from M. Ganneau, who tells us
that, though an Ottoman subject, he had been arrested

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 215
without ceremony and imprisoned at the German Con
sulate, the same arbitrary authority having carried out
a domiciliary search at his house without finding any
thing suspicious — le drole, se sentant menace, avait du
prendre ses precautions.' It should be added that some
time later a. like visit, instituted by the next German
Consul, Baron Munchausen, discovered a Moabite image.
Selim, then, appeared. He pathetically declared his
innocence, and then turned suddenly to his accuser
' avec un mouvement oratoire qui ne manquait pas
d'une certaine ampleur.' This was what Selim said :
(M. Ganneau met me two months ago in the street,
near the Greek convent, and promised me a hundred
pounds if I would declare that the potteries of M.
Shapira were false, and were fabricated by M. Shapira
and myself.' ' Ce coup de theatre etait vraiment du
dernier comique,' M. Ganneau adds, with an appreciative
sense of the humour of the situation with which his
readers would scarcely credit him. Of course, to
persons not infected with the odium Moabiticum the
story told by the witnesses was incredible; but even
those who disbelieved it laughed at it as an excellent
joke, and some, no doubt, found a certain sly enjoy
ment in the discomfiture of the savant. M. Ganneau
deals with those from whom he differs in a manner
which renders it less difficult than from his knowledge
and position it ought to be to raise a laugh at his
expense. It is not without a sensation of lively amusement

216 ARCHaEOLOGICaIL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
that we find M. Ganneau relying, after all, on the
evidence of Selim's words, or rather hints. In the
summer of 1877 it would seem that Selim had a desire
to visit Paris, and it appears to have occurred to him
that he might as well travel at his former employer's
expense. Accordingly, he wrote to M. Ganneau to
say that M. Shapira and he had fallen out over some
payments, and that he, Selim, wished to ruin M. Shapira,
as M. Shapira had ruined him. If M. Ganneau wished
to have the whole pack of lies shewn up from beginning
to end, he was to send him money for the journey from
Jerusalem to Paris. This letter M. Ganneau prints in
full, as evidence that the pottery was a forgery. It does
not mention pottery at all. It speaks of antiquities
generally, and, as it is clear that there had long been
dealings in antiquities, the reference may be to some
thing else than the pottery. The letter is veiled and
subtle, and tells nothing. If Selim had got his journey
money and come to Paris, and told a circumstantial
tale of forgery, there would still have been people
foolish and mean enough to say, that the one occasion
on which he really told the truth was that which M.
Ganneau has likened to the ' Thousand and Second
Night.' All this work of carving inscriptions on stones,
incising them on lead, impressing them on pottery,
and engraving them on gems, required persons skilled
in manual labour; and such persons were naturally
not quite equal to the task of reproducing with

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 217
sufficient exactness the archaic form and disposition
of the letters, and of inventing likely inscriptions.
For complete success, scholars and men of letters
were required, and the work must be done in secret,
without the intervention of persons in a position to be
bribed or likely to become talkative in their cups. As
time went on, those who were bent on making some
really grand coup appear to have seen that the only
kind of forgery which would meet the exigencies of the
case was the forgery of a manuscript. Unfortunately,
there was an inherent difficulty in the way of a Davidic
or a Mosaic document, the nature of the material.
With a good block of basalt the only question was the
genuineness of the lettering ; with papyri, dates reach
ing very far back indeed are accepted without hesitation ;
but with a roll of leather there came the disagreeable
question, which any ignoramus could ask, and every one
would be sure to ask, how had the material survived ?
No doubt the secret council which considered the whole
matter knew a good many examples of rolls being
bought for four or five centuries older than they really
were, and they may have thought that Western credulity
which had accepted so much, could accept a few centuries
more. However that may be, the order was given. A
manuscript was to be produced in the same character as
the inscription on the Moabite stone. It was to be a
Biblical manuscript, but no slavish copy of any book of
the Bible. Whether the conspirators familiar with our
Greek names for some of the books of the Pentateuch

218 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
had a sly intention in their selection no one can say ;
but the fact is there, that they selected the book we
call Deuteronomy, and proceeded to make it assume the
position of a second edition. The labour of acquiring
a sufficient precision in the Moabite alphabet must
have been great. Supposing this difficulty surmounted,
the work of dictating an amended book of Deuteronomy,
in language sufficiently archaic to pass undetected under
the eyes of the most learned persons the Western world
had at its disposal, might well have made the most
sanguine Eastern despair. But there was courage as
well as skill among the allies. The third difficulty,
the material, they must have known to be, on the face
of it, at least as great as either of the other two. It
would appear that they got synagogue rolls of un
doubted and considerable antiquity, and with broad
margins, and they cut off the margins to form the
corpus of their last and greatest experiment. The
outer edge of the old and worn roll was, of course,
ragged; they seem to have been unable to grapple
with the difficulty of causing the cleanness of their
new edge to disappear. Further, the roll from which
they cut the margins had lines run with a pointer
across its width, to divide it into proper spaces for the
columns of manuscript, and these ineradicable lines,
impressed into the material of the leather, remained on
the margins they cut off. They boiled the leather in
fat, put it into the ashes, and maltreated it in every
imaginable way to make it look old, but they so far

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 219
forgot themselves as to leave it supple. All having
been duly completed, they prepared the historical and
geographical facts of its discovery. A Bedawi had
found it in a cave many years ago, near Aroer, on the
river Arnon, on the north border of Moab. It was
wrapped in dark-coloured linen, embalmed after the
manner of Egyptian mummies. The fortunate finder
kept it as a talisman for a considerable time. At
length it came into M. Shapira's hands at the modest
cost of a few shillings. Its talismanic properties had
evidently proved to be apocryphal.
The new possessor of the manuscript saw in it some
thing more than a discredited talisman. It was nothing
less than an early — perhaps original — manuscript of
the book of Deuteronomy, written in the same character
as that of the Moabite stone to which the date 900 B.C.
had been assigned. The value of such a document was
beyond calculation; M. Shapira gave up the attempt
and put it at 1,000,000?. For this sum the British
Museum could have it, or presumably, any great insti
tution. It was brought first to the British Museum, in
July 1883.
M. Ganneau saw an announcement in the news
papers that this precious relic had come to London,
but the name of its owner was not mentioned. He
wrote, on August 1, to the French Minister of Public
Instruction, stating that he had reasons for holding the
document in suspicion until the fullest examination
should be made; that it might prove to be yet one

220 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
more of the frauds to which the discovery of the
Moabite stone had given rise ; and that there might be
some connection of origin between it and the pseudo-
Moabite pottery purchased some years before by the
Emperor of Germany — so M. Ganneau describes that
potentate — which he had shewn to be absolutely apocry
phal. The result, he adds, fully confirmed his doubts.
The remark must occur to the reader that M. Ganneau
had no priority or monopoly of doubt, as he seems to
imagine. What he said to the Minister of Public
Instruction was just what the great mass of people who
knew anything about such matters had said in England
from the first. The manuscript required, of course,
careful examination ; but the only real question was
where would the first clear evidence be found that the
forgers had outwitted themselves. No doubt there
were people who were ready to believe the possibility
of the existence of such a document, but they were not
among those who know what manuscripts are. Captain
Conder wrote a very sensible letter to the ' Times,'
pointing out that our earliest Hebrew manuscript is
not older than the seventh century after Christ, and
that the famous Samaritan roll at Shechem, which he
had more than once examined, dating possibly from the
sixth century, is in a very different state from the
Shapira manuscript. People had been inclined to
argue from papyrus to leather. He informed those
who did not know more about papyri than that some
were supposed to be 3,000 and 4,000 years old, that it

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 221
was only in the dry and rainless Theban desert that
such examples were known, and that their state before
they were unrolled was something as unlike as possible
to. the complaisant leather of the original of Deutero
nomy. Papyrus and parchment both were used by
the Assyrians and the Accadians, and not a fragment
of either was known to survive. And yet here in
Moab, a district with a rainfall of twenty inches, a mass
of comparatively supple rolls of leather was found,
written in characters which preceded the square
Hebrew, so that the manuscript must be at least 2,000
years old. That was the tone taken by those who
knew about such things, and it is absurd for M.
Ganneau to write as if he had any priority or monopoly
of insight into the truth.
The Minister of Public Instruction gave M. Gan
neau a mission to England to examine and report upon
the manuscript. It had been committed for that pur
pose by the Museum authorities to Dr. Ginsburg, who
had been at work upon it a fortnight when M. Ganneau
arrived, and had not finished with it. Imagine an
Englishman going under such circumstances to the
Bibliotheque Nationale or the Louvre, and expecting
to be allowed to examine the manuscript. Nothing
can be more polite and obliging than the authorities of
those institutions, but they would know how to indicate
that the document was closely engaged under official
examination, and that at present it was not to be seen.
If the Englishman, after such an answer, persisted, and

222 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
quoted his official mission, they would have no difficulty
in indicating their feeling that the Minister who gave
the mission, and the person who attempted to execute
it, were just a little forward.
No such reception was accorded to M. Ganneau,
and yet he writes of what happened with additional
gall in his ink and a special point to his pen. Indeed,
from the moment that Dr. Ginsburg appears upon the
scene, we feel that we have got at the final cause of M.
Ganneau's little book. There is a bath well known at
hydropathic establishments called ' the sharp needle,'
where the sufferer is surrounded by coils of pipes full
of little holes, from which issues a countless and con
tinuous shower of icy darts when the torburer gives a
twist to the screw. The relations between the appa
ratus and the bather are much the same as those be
tween this portion of M. Ganneau's book and Dr.
Ginsburg. The bath, it may be remarked, is much
enjoyed by some people, and it does them a great deal
of good. M. Ganneau came to the British Museum,
and was introduced to the room in which were Dr.
Ginsburg, the manuscript, and — M. Shapira. He was
received with marked coolness. He explained that he
had come to study the document ; that, in order not to
interfere with Dr. Ginsburg's ' priority ' in the matter
of text, he would confine himself entirely to the material,
and that he only asked for one hour's study. Dr. Gins
burg allowed him to look at two or three of the frag
ments, and promised to let him know next day but one

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 223
whether the request could be granted. Some of the
fragments were displayed in a glass case, and these he,
like the rest of the world, could look at as long as he
pleased, though not, of course, under the most favourable
circumstances. That is the manner in which most of
us have to examine things supposed to be of great value
and perishable.
When M. Ganneau returned to the Museum, the
Principal Librarian told him that, to his great regret,
he could not submit the fragments to him, for M.
Shapira absolutely refused to allow him to do so.
That this was M. Shapira's strict right M. Ganneau
allows, but he proceeds : ' L'on pourrait se demander
seulement pourquoi le Dr. Ginsburg et l'administration
du British Museum ont cru. pouvoir de preter a une
pareille recusation. II ne m'appartient pas de repondre
a cette delicate question.' There is clearly more than
one usage of the word delicate; but the answer is a
very simple one — what else could they do ? It must be
remembered, too, that their visitor was an old acquaint
ance, whose desire for prioriti was well known, and it
was pretty certain that he would interrupt the cautious
and complete investigation by some public announce
ment, ' une note destinee a me faire prendre date et a
m'assurer la priorite de la decouverte et de l'interpreta-
tion,' as he said in his letter to the ' Times ' in con
nection with the Moabite stone. In fact, this was
what actually happened. He complains with various
insinuations, that he was not allowed by special favour

224 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
to examine the leather. But, after all, he was allowed
to examine it by special favour of Dr. Ginsburg, and
by the general liberality of the authorities of the
Museum, to an extent quite sufficient for his purpose.
The fragments in Dr. Ginsburg's hands and those in
the glass case told their story to him quite clearly, and
he lost no time in proceeding ' a me faire prendre date.'
He wrote to the 'Times' on August 18 a long letter,
which appeared on August 21, stating that the manu
script was a forgery,' written on leather cut off the
margin of a synagogue roll, as was shewn by the fact
that there were lines running across the leather, which
had served to divide the whole original scroll into con
venient columns, and that the forger had written across
these lines as if they had not been present. The scraps
of margin had been sewed together to make a continuous
piece. An evening journal has slyly suggested that if
Selim had been present he would have explained that
Moses, being a great economist, used the margins of a
roll of Genesis for writing Deuteronomy. No doubt it
might be maintained in sober earnest that if it was
possible for leather of that age to exist still, the facts
of its having one edge cut clean and of lines being im
pressed upon it across the writing were not inconsistent
with conceivable circumstances. If that was all there
was to say against the manuscript, its defenders were
not reduced to that utter despair to which M. Ganneau
claims to have reduced them. Fortunately, in the
same number of the ' Times,' there appeared the letter

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 225
from Mr. Conder above described, which dealt a much
severer blow than that of M. Ganneau, and from a
more scientific side.
The hasty publication of the fact observed by M.
Ganneau coincided with the completion of Dr. Ginsburg's
labours. As though no such person had intervened,
Dr. Ginsburg allowed his translation of the closing
portions of the manuscript to appear in the 'Times,'
and sent to the authorities of the British Museum his
report on the document, dated August 22, 1883, the
day after M. Ganneau's letter appeared in the ' Times.'
Dr. Ginsburg declared it a forgery both on external
and on internal evidence. The external evidence was
that already announced by M. Ganneau, but he was
able to add the very important fact, without which M.
Ganneau's statement loses much of the force it would
have had, that rolls of just such leather, with margins
of the right width, were bought by the British Museum
from M. Shapira in 1877, the year in which he became
possessed of the manuscript, and that in one of these
rolls a piece of the margin had been cut off and sewed
on again. Now, in reporting thus, Dr. Ginsburg did
not allude to M. Ganneau. It would have been a
simple matter to say a few graceful words of the
eminent French savant to whom he had shewn some
of the fragments ; had the circumstances of the two
men been reversed, M. Ganneau, in reporting, would
have managed to make the other wish he had not been
in such a hurry to put in his claim for priority. But
Q

226 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE
Dr. Ginsburg did not even allude to M. Ganneau, and
he suffers for it. There is a paragraph on page 232 of
M. Ganneau's little book which, from the concentration
of its venom, must probably take rank as his chef
d'oeuvre. We will not give him the pleasure of seeing
it on these pages.
The other ground, the internal evidence, was in
itself more interesting ; and here Dr. Ginsburg's three
weeks' study almost found its justification. The book
had remarkable variations from the received Deutero
nomy, the object of several of them being obvious ; it
was dictated . by some one who learned his Hebrew in
the north of Europe, to two scribes, neither of whom
was perfect in the alphabet of the Moabite stone ; and
the dictator either was careless in his revision or was
himself not well practised in the alphabet, for gross
blunders were allowed to remain. Gross, by the way,
only too aptly characterises the example given by Dr.
Ginsburg. It has seemed necessary to speak of some parts of
M. Ganneau's amusing little book in a manner very
different from that in which it would be natural and
pleasant to speak of anything done by one who has so
many claims on the regard of the scientific world.
The necessity of speaking more strongly still of his
remarks in connection with M. Shapira's suicide warns
us off that painful subject.

227

COLLECTING ANCESTORS '
Man has been defined as ' a collecting animal.' The
definition goes far. It notes the fact that man has an
eye to the past, a regard, respect, reverence, for anti
quity and things ancient. It notes the fact that man
has an eye to the present, to beauty, comparison, ex
haustive illustration, acquisition. It notes the fact that
man has an eye to the future, desires to build up an
interest that may grow as he grows, to send down
something that bears the impress of his own handi
work. And it notes the fact that each man has his
individuality, his idiosyncrasy, his taste, his hobby.
No doubt these characteristics often lie dormant in
men, not at times only but throughout their lives.
Still, they are there, though dormant. And they are,
as a class, distinctive of the man as compared with
other animals. The bower-bird — not that a bird, ex
cept for scientific purposes, is usually regarded as an
animal — decking its garden and walking about in it
with its tail spread, comes nearer to man than most
things do which are not man. The squirrel storing
1 Comhill Magazine, March 1895. a 2

228 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
nuts for the winter is a collecting animal. But these
are only examples of the working of two universal laws,
from which no living thing is free, the instinct of pre
serving life and the instinct of perpetuating life.
A collecting animal ! What a delight it is to be
able to fulfil in one's own person this definition; to
have the knowledge, and to have for once the money !
If careful search were made by some favourable en
quirer, it might perhaps be found that to be a collector,
to collect, calls into play some of the highest and
noblest feelings of which man is capable. It certainly
calls into play some of the worst. We must draw, of
course, a clear and broad line between calling into play
an unworthy feeling and inducing the man to give way
to it. Many a collector has been tempted by the oppor
tunity of acquiring a treasure from some ignorant per
son, at a twentieth part of its value, to the great loss of
the owner ; and some have overcome the temptation.
Some haven't. Many a collector has been tempted to
delay the return of a specimen or a book or a photo
graph, in the idea — carefully concealed from himself — ¦
that the owner and he will forget all about it, or one of
them will die, or in some other way it will become a
part of his own collection. The knowledge of most of
us is adverse to the view that collectors always — or
shall we shall generally ? — overcome this curious temp
tation. Many a collector has been tempted to dig up
by the roots and carry away the only specimen he can
find of some rare plant. Let botanists and tourists

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 229
look into their hearts, and their other receptacles, and
blush. But collecting ancestors is a different kind of thing
from collecting china, or coins, or ivories, or ferns.
Vou cannot buy them, dear or cheap ; you cannot steal
them; you cannot dig them up and dry them. Of
course, in a sense you can buy them ; that is, you can
buy a picture of ' a gentleman in half-armour,' and,
having ascertained the period represented by the dress,
you can paint a name and a date upon it. It is also,
in a sense, possible to steal them : in the sense, that is
of taking what is not your own. But you cannot take
them away from the people to whom they belong ; for
one of the charms of an ancestor is that he can belong
to a great many people, and half a dozen more make ho
practical difference. It is no robbery of Lord Spencer
to claim kinship with the departed glories of burnt
Cowdray and drowned Montacute. It is less clear that
there is a sense in which you can dig them up and dry
them. It is only in metaphor that you talk of un
earthing an ancestor ; and a dry old hunks is the mere
abuse of a deservedly disappointed heir.
Landscape gardeners tell you there are two ways of
making a weeping ash. One is to graft buds of weepers
at the crown of an ordinary stem. The other is to plant
a sapling upside down, branches in the ground, roots in
the air. If you examine some very large specimens,
you will see reason to think that the latter course has
been adopted. So, in producing a genealogical tree,

230 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
you may proceed on either of two methods. Vou can
begin at the top, or you can begin at the bottom. The
one gives you a fan-shaped tree hung from the tassel of
the fan ; the other gives you the fan as a woman holds
it. The woman is always right in these days.
Beginning then at the bottom, that is, at yourself,
it is clear that above your own name come two others.
Above each of those two others, and so on. In four
generations, counting yourself as one, there stand above
you eight names, and of these, in ordinary course, only
one is your own name. What are the others ? Where
did the eight people live ? Who were their forbears ?
Of course, if you are a great person you have the answer
at once ; it is emblazoned at the Heralds' College ; it is
recorded on the pages of the history of England or of
Scotland ; you have it constructively or actually in the
Peerages, the County Families, the Landed Gentry;
you can draw it all out when you please. But there
are a great many people, and not such very small
people either, who can by no means tell you very
straight off all the eight names and all about them ;
there are a great many more who are lucky if as much
as one of the eight is found in those interesting volumes;
there are a vast multitude who have not even that assist
ance towards collecting their ancestors. If persons
belonging to any of these three classes desire to collect,
in any one of the eight branches which does not link
on to lines in printed books, there is only one way to
do it. They must go to the parish registers. After

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 231
that, if they have been fortunate, they have plenty of
other places to go to, probate offices, and so on ; but
our present concern is with the first step, the parish
registers. Behold, then, a collector of ancestors, who knows all
about his wife's eight names and a good deal about
some of his own eight, going forth to investigate the
earlier origin of a relative so near as his mother's
father. That gentleman was not a young man, was
rather elderly, when the collector's mother was born,
and she was born in 1801. His birth may have taken
place about 1750. A reference to a directory of the
cathedral city in which he lived, dated 1825, shewed
that he was sub-chanter of the cathedral church, rector
of Thursdaythorpe ' in the Wolds, vicar of St. Mary
Priesthill Junior in the city, and curate of Appleton,
four miles up the river. The 'Maior and Jurats' of
New Romney once applied to the Archbishop of
Canterbury to send them ' a nimble curate in full
orders;' and on January 31, 1664, they remonstrated
with their non-resident vicar for having left them
wholly destitute sinbe Christmas last, up to which time
they had enjoyed the services of ' a nimble curate who
was usually in his sermon and prayer before it about a
quarter of an hour.' The collector's grandparent must
have been a very nimble curate if he did all his duties
at Appleton and elsewhere.
1 The thin disguises of names of places here and in Westmor
land are retained as they originally appeared.

232 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
The collector had never had speech of this beneficed
gentleman. How much could have been learned in ten
minutes' conversation with him, if he had consented to
be communicative ! He was, as a fact, very reticent.
' We are a fallen family,' was all he would tell his
young daughter, who was inquisitive, as young daughters
sometimes are — or were. 'We came from Scotland,
long ago,' he used to say. And once, talking of some
great people near, he was heard to say, ' Countess ! I
have a cousin a countess.' Before his death he de
stroyed his letters and papers ; but in a private drawer
there had once been seen a miniature of a beautiful
young woman, and his daughter imagined that this
was the cousin, and that thereby hung a tale. The
collector once came by accident on the official record
of his appointment as chaplain to the premier Earl of
Scotland ; but no attainable cousin seemed to lurk in
either of the countesses of the said earl.
One thing was quite certain ; he himself came from
Charbrook, in Westmorland, and his father was a
' statesman ,' the owner and worker, that is, of an estate
in land. In that beautiful valley of Charbrook, leading
up from the left bank of Turnmere to the Kirkliston
Pass, his forbears had lived and worked their own land.
Could they be traced in the registers ? Were their de
scendants still there ? A letter to the vicar settled
both questions. They appeared on the first page of
the registers, and they and another family were at
present the most respected statesmen in the dale. The

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 233
first page of the registers might not mean very much
in the way of antiquity, but the answer was stimu
lating. To get to' Charbrook village you have, as every one
knows, to go by Stringness, if you go by water, and by
Birkthwaite, wrongly called Turnmere, if you go by
rail. How the tourist swarms at Stringness, and how
bright the shore looks, with its dozens of pleasure boats
gaily painted and red-cushioned ! And how pretty the
white-winged yachts are, bending gracefully beneath
the breeze till their jib laps the water ! And if you are
there on the occasion of a regatta, when the racing
yachts are for once brought out from their confinement
in safe houses, you do indeed see a beautiful sight.
Even the swiftly plying steam yachts are not un-
picturesque, from the little cock-boat with a tea-kettle
for a boiler, to the great public boats, the ' Teal,' and
the ' Swan,' and the ' Tern,' built respectively for three,
four, and five hundred people, and on occasion proving
that they possess elastic properties. It is not quite
sure that the steamer, as etherealised by Mr. Ruskin on
the neighbouring Konigsee into a glorified gondola, is
so very much superior, from an aesthetic point of view,
to these Midland Railway boats, with W.S.Y. — sup
posed to be short for whisky — embroidered on the
jerseys of the men. And how well the great crowds on
board and on shore conduct themselves, all good temper,
and quietness, and propriety ! The contrast between
this and the Isle of Man is in this respect extreme.

234 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
There is probably no place in existence which is so
trying to a quiet person as Man in the hand's of
trippers. A solitary archaeologist, sorely afflicted by
that visitation, and treated with special contumely by
some of the ' softer' sex, thus delivered himself:
It's true, but rather spiteful,
To say, in Mona's isle,
That Man is quite delightful,
But man is very vile.
' What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle,
And every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.'
With fallen man the poet
Reproached that torrid isle ;
In Man, he did not know it,
Much more than that is vile.
Fair Mona, far from torrid,
Of tailless things the nurse,
Thy tripping man is horrid,
Thy tripping woman worse.
But pleasant as the lake tourists are, the collector
avoided them by resting at the most quiet and restful
place on the lake, the Low-moor Hotel, with its private
pier a mile short of Waterend, for Kanturside. A
pretty walk of a mile, or a mile and a half, over the
shoulder of the hill, brings you from Low-moor to
Charbrook Dale and village.
At Charbrook Church the Vicar disclosed his
treasures, kept still in the old oak chest, with three

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 235
keys and a partition for each key. It was clear at a
glance that the ' first page of the Register ' meant a
great deal in the way of antiquity, and that extra
ordinary care had been taken to preserve the venerable
relic. The first date visible was 1579. The records
had been kept in a paper book, and the earliest pages
had become discoloured and worn, almost to the last
degree. Some one with knowledge and means had had
the worn fragments let into paper sheets, in the skilful
manner now carried to so much perfection at the Record
Office, and bound in a vellum-covered volume. More
than that, the whole of the faded writing had been read,
and the registers from 1579 to the time of the modern
books had been copied into a fine folio volume in a clear
hand. All this good work was due to the leading
statesman of the place, whose ancestors, from time im
memorial, had been among the principal people there ;
his name, whether the real name or not does not -matter,
George Browne. The inlaying of the worn leaves and
the vellum binding had been done at Ripon — much to
the credit of the Ripon workman. The example set by
the village of Charbrook is well worthy of imitation by
many greater places.
The ancestors to be collected were Forrests, and the
Vicar's communication had said, ' Forrests and Birketts
are all the same,' whatever that might mean. Again,
it does not matter whether the names are the real
names or not. The second entry in the Register, in
the year 1579, ran thus : ' George Byrkhead the . . .

236 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
Byrkhead was baptized the . . .' Then came ' Cuth-
bert Birkett was buryed the 3d of Aprill.' Then,
' Margrett Birkhead the daughter of Christofer Birkett
baptized the ... of the moneth of Aprill.' Then,
' Catheryne hir sister being her Twynlynge was baptized
the same daie ' — a pretty word for a twin sister or twin
brother. Seven out of the first nine legible entries
were of these names. It was clear that Birkett,
Birkhead, and Byrkhead, were all one, and that the
Birketts take their name from an ancestor who was
designated ' o' the Byrk-head,' his home nestling in,
or under, some projecting spur of the hill, clothed with
birch trees. Any supposed reference to the character
of the ancestor as a hardheaded man may be rejected.
No Forrests appeared till 1703, when there was an
entry, ' Edward, son of John Forrest,' baptized January
23, 1703, meaning, of course, what we should call 1704,
the old year ending with March. But in 1647 there
was an entry which suggests an interesting question,
' Isabell Ellerey, daughter of George of Orrest.' Every
one knows Orrest and Orrest Head at the foot of
Charbrook Dale, not far from Stringness. Did the
name Forrest in those parts come by elision of the
opening vowel from the place designation ' of Orrest ' ?
And was this the last surviving hint of it, mixed up
with a permanent surname taken from elsewhere ?
The Registers gave several examples of place designa
tions on which surnames might be founded ; for
instance, ' o' th' Beckside.' Ellerey, or Elleray, is

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 237
itself a place designation, so that the entry would
mean ' Isabell of Elleray of Orrest,' the family having
moved from Elleray to Orrest, or from Orrest to Elleray.
'Price' from 'ap Rhys,' and 'Pritchett' from 'ap
Richard,' are patronymics formed on the same
principle as ' Forrest ' from ' of Orrest.' In a similar
manner Saint Liberius has given birth to Saint Oliver,
through the form Santo Liverio, and Saint Odo to San
Todo, from Sant' Odo.
This John Forrest had to be traced upwards and
downwards. Upwards, there was no sign of him ; he
was clearly an imported person — a foreigner. Down
wards, he grew. He married again, his second wife
being ' Agnes Fleeming.' Fleming is a common name
thereabouts, and the le Flemings have long been great
people in those parts. The old Hall of Kirch- Konigs-
burg was their residence for seven generations, on the
property which came to them in the time of Henry III.
by marriage with the Urswicks. It was not till 1409
that they settled at Tieal, when a marriage with the
daughter of Sir John de Lancaster brought to the le
Flemings their present lovely domain. The particle le
was dropped in the next generation ; nearly 300 years
later the owner had his son christened 'Michael le,' and
from that time they have been le Flemings again.
This second marriage of the foreigner John Forrest
was in one of the years 1707 to 1715, near the end of
that period, the margin with the years being worn away.
On May 15, 1743, his son married Agnes Birkett, and

238 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
Richard, their fourth child, was baptized March 19, 1748.
This was the pluralist of 1825, and thus the two names
were added which alone were wanted to complete the
eight in that generation. The four corresponding
names in the previous generation were there too, and,
if John could be traced, the eight in the generation
beyond were in the books. The leading names, more
over, were there up to the tenth generation, beyond
which the registers did not go. The collector had
secured from eighteen to twenty ancestors, and search
among wives' parents would give more. This was a
great haul for one afternoon.
The other treasures of Charbrook Church are the
church itself, with a roof very bold for its period, two
old collecting boxes of oak, with inscriptions, and a
silver chalice with an inscription, shewn at Carlisle
some years ago, and there seen by the unwitting col
lector. All of these were found to connect themselves
with the search for ancestors. The church was rebuilt
in 1736 by George Browne, son of Elizabeth Birkett,
who was aunt of Agnes, the pluralist's mother; the
pluralist, it was recorded, preached in the church when
it was forty years old and he twenty-eight. The
collecting boxes were inscribed, ' Remember the poor.
W.B. I.C. 1692,' those initials representing William
Birkett and John Cookson. The chalice was inscribed,
' This is the gift of Agnes Burkett y" daughter of Capton
George Burkett given to Gharrebrooke Church Ajirill ye 28
Anno Bom. 1688.' The is had been omitted, and was

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 239
added by the same hand above the line. These four
materia] ' finds ' were pieces of luck such as very rarely
come in a collector's way.
There remained the most material of the links with
Charbrook, the existing members of the two main
families. One of the families was soon exhausted ;
Birketts, as statesmen, there were none. But, of
course, every one knows the ' Mortal Man ' of Char
brook, with its old sign, a red-faced man fronting a
pale-faced one, and the legend of their dialogue —
' 0 ! Mortal Man, that liv'st on bread,
How comes thy nose to be so red ? '
' Thou silly ass, that looks so pale,
It comes of drinking Birkett's ale ! '
Forrests had become heirs of the two ' estates ' formerly
held by Birketts, and a very pleasant visit to the
modern statesman the collector had. The two ' tene
ments,' held from time immemorial of the great Barony
of Kendal (manor of Turnmere, sub-manor of Char
brook), on service of a man and horse for each, have
always been known as Lowfold and Lowhouse respec
tively. Lowfold came first to the Forrests, by marriage
with the Byrkheads, Robert having been admitted to
possession in 1743, in right of Agnes his wife, heiress
of her brother who died sine prole in 1739. It is now
let out to cottagers, the two farms being worked as one,
and most of the windows on the ground floor and upper
story have been made up, one end of the house being
used for storage. Before these changes it must have

240 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
been very picturesque, both on the long straight face
which looked on the village street, with a particularly
fascinating and unusual upper oriel, and also on the
court side, where the long house with its return gable
end, and the barn with another return gable, form with
the wall and gate a rectangular enclosure. There is a
peep through to a garden with southern-wood ; and the
balustraded space under the barn roof, at the head of the
covered stone stairs, with doors giving access to various
lofts, is gay with trailing flowers, like a German laube.
An oak cupboard let two feet into the wall in one of
the rooms of Lowfold, with unusually good carving and
pendants, has ' 1674 O.B.' in the centre of the canopy,
and at one end in a circle , that is Christopher
Birkett and Anne, his wife, daughter of Edward Turner,
of Kendal, who were married September 5, 1657, the
great-great-great-grandfather and mother of the col
lector. This, again, was a very unusual piece of luck.
On a slatey stone is inscribed ' R. Forrest annos 18
natus 1820, Jun. 30,' that being the handiwork of a
son of Lowfold who became a well-known clergyman in
Australia, and returned to die at Kendal and be buried
at Charbrook. The ' tenement ' of Lowhouse came to
the Forrests a generation later than Lowfold, by
marriage with another Agnes Birkett. The present
Lowhouse is a much more modern house than Lowfold,
probably a hundred years later. It has on a gable
'W.B. M.B. 1627,' William Birkett and Mary, his

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 241
wife, father and mother of Christopher, of Lowfold.
But by a very unusual instance of spaciousness, William
and his wife left standing within the large enclosure of
their courtyard the old house which they quitted when
they moved to the new house in 1627. It was kept up
as a second family house for a considerable time, and
tradition says that ' Capton George Burkett ' lived here,
whose daughter Agnes gave the chalice in 1688. It is
the oldest house in the district, and dates at least from
Edward IV.'s time. An etching of it was published
early in the present century in the ' Beauties of the
Lake Scenery,' and it is the most photographed house
in all the dale. A walk round it shews a larger place
than the photograph (see frontispiece) indicates.
A fine tall statesman, sitting in an ancient chair in
the home of his ancestors, talking of the old people and
the old times, is a very pleasant sight to see. The
pleasure is greatly enhanced, to the mind of the
visitor from a distant city, by the sense that the old
times and the old people belong to him too. There
were a few excellent bits of old blue china, and two
great circular Leeds dishes with the feathered edge,
exactly like two great Warburton dishes which the
collector in his china days rescued from Nuremberg,
but with the projecting rim at the bottom which puts
a chasm between Leeds and rare Warburton. In the
passage between the entrance and the best room there
was a beautiful oak cupboard, let into the wall as at
Lowfold, and very skilfully carved, with the date 1634,
R

242 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
seven years after the completion of the gable end. Up
stairs, the great bedstead was quite a dream of hand
some Jacobean pillars and richly sculptured head. It
bore in the centre of the head ' G.B. 1654,' presumably
' Capton George.' A beautiful chest on the landing
carried in bold relief the legend ' LB. 1694,' for John
Birkett. Latest of all the dated pieces was a plain
chair of black oak, with arms of the Glastonbury type
and the initials ' A.B.' — no doubt the Agnes Birkett
who became heiress of Lowfold in 1739 and brought it
to the Forrests in 1743. A date, ' 1752,' was marked
on the back in different character. A collector must be
very grasping who asks for fortune greater than this.
These ' tenements ' were two out of the forty-eight
customary tenements of the sub-manor of Charbrook.
Both of them were ' five cattel ' tenements, that is, the
holder had the right to turn five young cattle onto cer
tain stinted pastures of commons. The lord's rent
was 6s. 8d. Other land was held with Lowfold, for in
1742 the lord's rent was 9s. 2d., and free rent 8d.
The great Barony of Kendal was granted to Ivo Taille-
bois, and in the course of time it came to be divided
into four fees. One of these, which included Charbrook,
was called the ' Richmond fee,' because it was granted
to Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry
VII. It had reverted to the Crown on the death of
her father, John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset and
Kendal. This was the sixth escheat to the Crown
since Ivo's line had ended in two heiresses, from the

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 243
younger of whom, Alice, married to William de Linde-
sey, the Richmond moiety descended. The other
moiety was the 'Marquis' fee. Alice's older sister,
Heluise, married Peter de Brus. One of their
daughters, Margaret, married Robert de Ross, whose
heiress five generations later married William Parr.
William Parr's descendant, five generations later still,
was William Parr (brother of Queen Catharine Parr),
created Marquis of Northampton. Hence the name of
'Marquis* fee. Margaret's sister Lucy married Mar-
maduke de Thweng, and brought to him a half-moiety
of the Barony of Kendal. Their heiress married a
Lumley, and hence this fourth part of the barony was
called the ' Lumley ' fee. The tenants held on the
tenure of service at ' the western border for anent
Scotland.' The Richmond and Marquis fees are famous
as having been the subject of the attempt of James I.
and Prince Charles to put an end to tenant-right and
take actual possession of the tenants' lands. If they
had succeeded we might now have a race of malcontents
where all is peace and order. The king's plea was
that with the advent of his gracious person to England
the boundary was obliterated and there could be no
border war. If no border war, then no border service.
If no border service, the tenure was bad. Prince
Charles filed a bill against the tenants of the Richmond
and Marquis fees. They subscribed 2,700?. and gave it
to the Chancellor, Francis Bacon, and he confirmed
them in their customary rights. John Forrest, George
B 2

244 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
Browne, and Stephen Birkhead, were among the bonds
men. Stephen Birkhead' s bond for . a second payment is
now in the chest at Lowhouse.
The Charbrook statesmen were specially favoured,
they and their neighbours at ' Amylside ' paying only
half and two-thirds the fines paid on change of lord or
tenant by other tenants of the Richmond fee. In all
tenements of the fee, if daughters are left and no son,
the eldest daughter succeeds without subdivision, and
this it is that has kept the tenements and the families
together. A widow, too, of customary right holds her
deceased husband's tenement during chaste widowhood,
another means of keeping a family together. In this
case, as the border service could not be performed by
the tenant in person, the lord took as a heriot the best
beast on the holding.
Charbrook, like Amylside, was a forest. The Lady
Margaret had to pay out 2?. 3s. a year to the foresters
of Charbrook, and 3?. Is. 6d. to the bowbearer there.
When the ' old park ' was disparked it was divided
among the tenants, with a special arrangement to give
a piece that bore wood to each tenant who had no wood
on his holding.
It remained to call on the great storehouse of
ancient lore, Mr. George Browne,1 the king of the dale,
as some ladies had described him, the statesman to
whom the parish is indebted for the preservation and
1 The coincidence of name is accidental

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 245
the copy of the registers. Here indeed was a feast of
good things — manor rolls, marriage contracts, volume
after volume of letters and drafts of letters bound in
order, and, collected on one sheet, the autographs of all
the adult males of five generations, from the owner, the
fourth George in succession, up to Benjamin Browne,
whose marriage with Elizabeth Birkett made the owner
and the collector fourth cousins. As to the house,
there never was such an oak house. From the entrance
hall to the top landing nothing could be seen but oak,
old oak : oak clocks, oak chairs, oak chests, oak floors,
oak doors, oak cupboards, oak buffets, oak partitions,
oak walls, oak staircases. The staircases were particu
larly engaging, two parallel flights on each story up
to a half-way landing, and then a single flight doubling
back between them to the actual landing ; all standing
open and clear, so that from the bottom you- saw the
double and single flights crossing and recrossing in the
air. The splendour of the carving was beyond descrip
tion, especially in the case of the great bedstead and
the cradle, carrying inscriptions and an early date. To
the eye of the collector, and perhaps in fact, there was
no piece more interesting than the great chair which
commemorated the marriage of Benjamin Browne and
Elizabeth Birkett, with the appropriate inscriptions — :
all in relief, of course, though that may be a contradic
tion in terms — and on the back two shields, one bearing
the double-necked eagle displayed,1 for Browne, and the
1 Not the usual arms.

246 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
other the Birkett arms, on a field sable three garbs
proper within a bordure or. This house, again, is
photographed by every one. It is called Townend, and
the statesman's phloxes are as fine in their way as his
oak. Here the collector was shewn original letters and
deeds and admissions of his ancestors, and was informed
that the dashing cavalry general of the Southern States
in the war between North and South was grandson of a
Forrest who went out to ' Charles Town ; ' and elsewhere
he learned that a well-known Australian statesman — in
a different sense — was the grandson of another.
' The Forrests came from Kanturside to Charbrook
about 1700, and their tradition is that they came
originally from Scotland.' So the collector was in
formed. As Kanturside was for a few days the col
lector's metropolis, it was a natural thing to inspect
the registers there. The mere sight of them is delight
ful. They only begin in 1642, but for the first
hundred years they were kept on long narrow pieces
of parchment, each new piece sewed on to the end of
the previous piece when required. They are in three
separate rolls, each many yards long, and are written
on both sides. The lengths of the pieces vary greatly.
In the oldest roll the average length is about a foot,
and the longest piece is about 22 inches. In the
middle roll the pieces reach 28 and 30 inches in length.
The most recent roll consists of pieces about 21 inches
long. The breadth is from 4|- to 4| inches.
John Forrest was soon found. Indeed, there were

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 247
two. One was born in 1684, too late by a few years
for the Charbrook John. He had a sister Agnate, and
was son of Edwarde fforrest of the Nook End and Elen
his wife. The other was the right John. He was
born or baptized in the closing days of 1659, and was
brother of the Edwarde above. They were sons of
Edwarde fforrest of the Nook End and Margrett his
wife. As their oldest son was born in 1651, Edward
and Margrett would be born about 1630 at the latest,
and it was no use looking further for them in registers
which began in 1642. A search in the chest at Low-
house gave another generation ; for an agreement dated
1633 was found, respecting the woods in Ambleside, to
which Edward Forrest above Stock (i.e. of Nook End)
and John Forrest below Stock were parties. The
Stock is a stream that runs through Ambleside.
One of the entries pointed to a tragedy of some
kind, for the deaths at the time were far too few for a
period of epidemic. Perhaps the tragic circumstances
spoiled the parson's grammar: 'May the 11th was
Margrett wife of Edward Forrest and Richard his son
were buried.' But, indeed, having once begun with a
' was,' the entry would have made Margrett wife of both
father and son, without the ' were.'
Another entry pointed towards the Scottish tradi
tion: ' Gawen fforrest was baptized 18 January 1671.'
Besides this Gawen, there were in the earlier genera
tions Gawen Birkett and Gawen Reay, and Robert
Birkett married Janet Rea in 1682. The spellings are

248 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
worth the notice of those who are interested either in
the name Wray — like the collector — or in the name
Reay. Gawen, son of 'Gawen Wrey,' was baptized
November 10, 1678; his brother Thomas, son of
' Gawen Reay,' of Brathay, was baptized November 23,
1684. Here we have Rea, Reay, and Wrey for one
and the same family. Near Carlisle we find a spelling
which combines two of these — Wreay. Again, Low
Wray and High Wray and Wray's Castle are well-
known places on the banks of Turnmere ; and Wrays-
holme Tower near Cartmel was the fortified keep of the
Harringtons, built in the fifteenth century, and for
feited at Bosworth to Henry's stepfather Stanley.
Enquiry shewed that the Nook End was still a
known place, and to it the collector naturally found his
way. The little farmhouse was evidently much older
than the earliest of the Register rolls. It is the
furthest house on Tieal Head, approached by a pic
turesque road that becomes a footpath at Nook End,
leading to the Red Screes. The tenement is no longer
the residence of a statesman. It has one roof for a
.large and lofty kitchen, and another for the stairs.
The rest is a long rectangle. The ground floor is all
one, with a partition of black panelled oak across it.
A panelled door in the middle of the partition leads
from the ' house ' to the ' parlour,' just as a door leads
from the hall to the combination-room in the colleges
in Cambridge of the older type. ' Combination-room '
is quite modern, and ' the common chamber ' is the old

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 249
phrase — probably because the fire was there, at which
all the actual members of the society had a right to
warm themselves in common. No early college in
Oxford had this arrangement of rooms, the Oxford
ground-plans being less like those of the domestic
houses of the period. Magnificent Oxford was always
more lifty than modest Cambridge. The simple
division of the ground floor at Nook End into ' house '
and ' parlour ' — or dining-room and withdrawing-room,
as they said in later times and larger houses — is the
old English plan. The upper story and the stairs
were all of oak, as at Townend, but very rough and
rude. In none of the four bedrooms could any initials
or dates be discovered. Only there was in one of them
the very largest oak chest any one ever set eyes on.
The tradition is that it took ten men to get it upstairs.
To look at it and at the stairs, one would say it must
have been built in the room.
And there, at Nook End, looking down onto Tieal
Water and Mossmere, the collector had to leave the
shades of this line of ancestors, in all the mystery of
the tradition — still fresh, still held among their de
scendants — that they were a fallen family and came
from Scotland.
Later investigations shewed that Lowfold came to
the Birkheads by marriage with the heiress, Elizabeth
Airey, in 1628. The Ayrays go up to Edward III.,
when they intermarried with the Gilpins, ancestors of
Bernard Gilpin, the Apostle of the North. Lowhouse,

250 COLLECTING ANCESTORS
the older of the two Lowhouses,1 was already the home
of the Birkheads in 1476, when George, probably son-in-
law of Richard Gilpin, was Bailiff of Charbrook. And
Robert Forrest of ' Emilsyd ' was found getting married
in 1589. The Lowhouse chest further shewed that the Nook
End property, curiously enough, had once gone with
Lowfold. Edward Forrest had sold it before 1670 to
Thomas Brathwaite of Ambleside Hall. Thomas's sister,
Dorothy Sandys, succeeded to Nook End, and to her
daughter Bridget Sandys it descended. She married
Christopher Birkett of Lowfold about 1688, and Chris
topher's son sold Nook End in 1716; otherwise it
would have descended to Robert Forrest of Lowfold,
the great-grandson of Edward, who sold it to the
Brathwaites. This property played an important part
in the Chancery suit which caused the enactment of
the Statute (29 Charles II.) of Frauds and Perjuries.
Thomas Brathwaite conveyed to his sister Dorothy the
lands in Ambleside above Stock, late purchased of
Edward Forrest, and divers other parcels, with some
complicated cross arrangements as between her and
her cousin Brathwaite Otway, son of Thomas's niece,
Lady Otway of Ingmire. Scholarships at St. John's,
Cambridge, were concerned, and many gifts to churches
and charities. The whole arrangements of Thomas so
baffled the Court of Chancery, that the Statute above
named was passed, to declare what contracts of this
1 Shewn in the frontispiece.

COLLECTING ANCESTORS 251
kind were valid, and what were not. The only pro
perty that came out as quite correctly conveyed was
the Nook End. Thomas had an eye to the Univer
sities. His collection of 322 coins of the Roman
Emperors was given to Oxford in 1674.

252

PONTRESINA '
There are some interesting questions about the name
of Pontresina, both in itself and in its relation to the
position of the place, to which satisfactory answers have
not been given. And the older parts of the village,
where the external traces of the past lie, present pro
blems of some difficulty.
Has the name anything to do with a bridge ? Why
should the place be named from a bridge, when the
only bridge there ' leads nowhere ' ? Why should the
old part of the village, and the old church, have been
placed ' up there out of the way ' ? What was the old
1 watch-tower ' meant to watch ? These questions are
capable of consistent answers, and a good deal turns
upon the answers ; or, rather, the answers turn upon a
good many considerations, some at least of which are
not devoid of general interest to any one who visits the
place. The detailed features of the Upper Engadine are
so familiar to thousands of people now, that deductions
drawn from them will be readily followed by many readers.
Whether they will be accepted is another matter.
Speaking broadly, the views which it is proposed to
1 National Review, May 1895.

PONTRESINA 253
maintain are these. First, that there was a great lake
filling the plain between Samaden and the foot of the
rising ground of Pontresina, so that there was no land-
way between the two ; no means of crossing from one
side to the other of the main Engadine valley here,
except by boat. Second, that the approach from the
Lower Engadine, and from the lower parts of the Upper
Engadine, to the passage into Italy by the Bernina,
was by a road which hugged the base of the mountains
on the opposite side of the valley from that on which
the road from Ponte to Samaden runs. This old road
ran from Ponte through Camogask, and so to Pontresina
round the shoulder of the Muottas Muraigl and the
Schafberg. Third, that the way to the Bernina, for
places between the Maloya and St. Moritz, was by a
road which crossed the Inn between Campfer and St.
Moritz, and passed by the Statzer See over the Muottas
Celerinas, crossing the Roseg water by a low bridge,
and thence over the Punt Ota — the high bridge — of
Pontresina. Fourth, that these two roads met exactly
at the place where the old five-sided tower of Pontresina
now stands, with the old church and the earliest houses
of the old village, and ran thence, as one road, to the
Bernina. The watch-tower would thus command all
the roads connected with the Bernina, standing at the
point of trifurcation, and also the main road up and
down the Engadine on that side of the valley. And the
bridge of Pontresina would be the one key of this latter
road, and also of all passage between the Bernina and

254 PONTRESINA
the upper part of the Upper Engadine. From ' watch
ing nothing,' the old tower will then have watched
everything. From ' leading nowhere,' the high bridge
will have been second in importance to no bridge in the
old Engadine.
The key to the argument is the great lake between
Samaden and the rising ground of Pontresina on the
opposite side of the valley. It is impossible to examine,
with any sort of care, the line of the Inn from Celerina
to Bevers without seeing that such a lake did at one
time exist. The great carriage-road from Samaden
towards Pontresina is, of course, new. This road is
clearly carried across a flat level, in parts still little
better than a swamp, through which the Inn glides
swift-foot ; it is only on very great occasions that its
demeanour recalls the Iser rolling rapidly. The path
way from Celerina to the bridge at the foot of the
Schlucht of the Inn has still to be carried on a raised
way. These parts of the valley are almost as level as a
billiard table, from the foot of the hills on one side to
the foot of the hills on the other. The eminence on
which the old church of St. Gian now stands, with its
two picturesque towers, was evidently once an island,
and completely surrounded by water. There are no
buildings on this broad level, and no signs of any.
The modern Samaden stands sufficiently above the lake
boundary, and the old Samaden stood considerably
higher up still, where the pretty little old church and
cemetery now stand. The only difficulty is found

PONTRESINA 255
in the lower parts of the village of Celerina. These
lowpr parts would have been very near or in the water.
But here tradition comes to our aid. Ludwig, with no
idea of a lake, records a Volkssage, to the effect that
the village of Celerina used to stand higher up, on the
hillside. Perhaps the remarkable terracing of the hill
sides, here and above Samaden, points to the petite
culture of this earlier period. The phenomenon calls for
some such explanation.
This idea of two levels of residence, a lower level
succeeding a higher, is throughout illustrated by the
signs of lake boundaries. Immediately below Samaden,
towards Bevers, the boundaries of a primary and larger
lake, and of a secondary and smaller, are very clear.
The great delta from the Beversthal, on the highest
point of which stands the village of Bevers, forced its
way gradually into the primary lake, and in time
formed a dam which narrowed the lake and drove the
water into a contracted course on the further side of the
valley. On that further side there were two smaller
deltas, from the Champagna and Musella gorges ; and
in these there are plain marks of erosion, caused by the
run of the narrowed water. At some time the level of
the water was suddenly and greatly lowered, and the
narrowed lake at this point became a rapid river.
On the other side of the Bevers delta, passing down
the Engadine, the lake opened out again, at a rather
lower level. The effect of the intrusion of the delta
was in fact almost exactly that of the intrusion of the

256 PONTRESINA
great delta of Silvaplana into the lake there ; the lake
below Bevers evidently corresponded very closely in its
conditions to the present lake of Campfer. Below
Bevers, as above, the two levels of boundary are clear.
Lower down still, only one set of boundaries is marked,
a primary lake having filled the whole breadth of the
valley to the steep mountain foot on the left side, where
the road now is, leaving perhaps on the right side room
for a road.
A little lower down, the great dam which formed
the lower boundary of the great lake or succession of
lakes is unmistakable. It is the delta of Camogask,
which pushes out from the right side of the valley and
meets the smaller delta of Ponte from the Albula.
This forms the first effective dam since the Schlucht
of the Inn at the end of the lake of St. Moritz. Here,
for the first time, the water was narrow enough, and
the ground firm enough, for a bridge ; hence the
emphatic Ponte, or ad Pontem, which is the only name
of the village, a village which in early times owed its
existence to the bridge, and was in other respects of no
significance. Here, then, the lake ended ; and here, accordingly,
we must look into the question of the roadways.
Almost immediately below Ponte, the rock comes
straight down upon the present course of the river, not
leaving room for a carriage-road without blasting. On
the crest of this rock stands the castle Guardaval, the
guardian of the valley of the Upper Engadine against

PONTRESINA 257
hostile approach from the Lower Engadine, formerly
part of the county of Tyrol. It was on this account
that the Bishops of Chur, lords of the Upper Engadine,
built the fortress and named it Guardaval. It guarded
the road from the Lower Engadine, and the bifurcation
just above, at Ponte, where one branch followed the
course of the present road to Samaden, while the other,
now practically disused, crossed the Inn, and passed
through Camogask to Pontresina, and so to the Bernina.
Modern conditions have made Ponte a more impor
tant place than Camogask. But that is a complete in
version of their former positions ; indeed, Ponte may be
said not to have existed in comparison with Camogask.
The Albula route, as every one knows, comes down into
Ponte, and there joins the great road up and down the
Engadine, not using the bridge of Ponte at all. Camo
gask lies quite away on the other side of the water and
of the valley, practically having nothing to do with the
Albula, or the road up and down the Engadine, or any
other road of any sort of importance. But when the
Romauntsch Statutes of the Upper Engadine were
made, Camogask was responsible for the Albula, and
Ponte was not mentioned in this or in any other con
nection. Statute 125, of the Civil Statutes, orders that
villages which have the roads of the passes shall protect
them ; these villages are, Ghiamuesg per Alvra, Pontra-
sine per Bernina, Silvaplana per Jullia, that is, Camo
gask for the Albula, Pontresina for the Bernina, Silva
plana for the Julier. Thus Camogask was treated as
s

258 PONTRESINA
the village at the foot of the Albula, with no mention
of Ponte. Indeed, Statute 122 declares that the duty
of Camogask in respect of this pass was set out in an
instrument of arrangement between it and the Grand
Commune. This throws the centre of gravity, or of
importance, to the right (southern) side of the Upper
Engadine at this point.
Not only so. There is interesting evidence that even
for the road on the left side of the valley, where the
present great road runs from Ponte to Bevers, Camogask
had responsibility, while Ponte was not even men
tioned. The evidence is found in Statute 114 of the
Civil Statutes. My quotations are made from the very
handsome manuscript copy in the possession of Madame
Saratz, formerly of the Steinbock, which Madame
allowed me to study at my leisure, day after day, in her
pretty rooms at the upper end of the village. Statute
114 regulates the Bridge on the great road at the
Fontana Merla, ' the throstles' spring ; ' or, as there are
no throstles, 'the spring in the morass,' as Kymric
scholars unromantically say. This bridge the heirs of
Antoni Itaun were bound to make and maintain, as well
as the way over it, to the satisfaction of a representative
of Bevers and a representative of Camogask. Thus,
though Camogask is now, so far as main roads are con
cerned, a completely deserted place, and the bridge of
Ponte, once so important that it stamped its name on
the village that grew up about it, ' leads nowhere,' as
they say of Pontresina bridge, except to Camogask,

PONTRESINA 259
Camogask was originally the place of main importance.
That is an important link in our argument, as we shall
see later.
The great lake, or succession of lakes at descending
levels, which can thus be argued out from the appear
ance of the ground, receives an unexpected support from
Campell's History of Rhaetia, printed in German in 1849
from Campell's Latin Manuscript of 1570, preserved at
Chur. Speaking of Madulein and Camogask, which he
knew intimately, he remarks that according to tradition
there was once a great lake, occupying the valley from
this point to Celerina, before the Inn broke its way
through the rocks below Scanfs.
Taking the lake, or series of lakes, as an established
fact, there would be no direct access by road from the
Samaden side to the Pontresina side, at any point
between Camogask and St. Moritz. That means that
the road to the Bernina passed through Camogask, keep
ing along the lower parts of the foot of the mountains
till it reached Pontresina. This old road can be seen
still, near Pontresina itself, and it leads straight to the
old watqh-tower there. That the road should keep as
high up above the lower ground as the mountain sides
would allow it to do, was a necessity of the situation
which is of general importance in considering the pro
bable course of old roads. The lower part of the ground
between the rock and the water-courses and lakes must
have been soaking in water. You find it out at this
very spot, if you are tempted to walk across the pretty
S 2

260 PONTRESINA
meadows of the Acla Stifler, carpeted with flowers that
warn the skilled explorer. The Romauntsch ground-plan
of the commune marks the place Paliids, very signifi
cantly. From the tower, the continuation of the old road
may still be seen, passing on towards the Bernina above
the present road. And, also from the tower, a third old
road, described now in parts as only a way for cattle,
passagio per hestiame, goes down by zig-zags to the Punt
Ota of Pontresina, passing thence across the Roseg
water, and by the Statzer See and St. Moritz to the
bridge which has probably from very early times existed
over the Inn between St. Moritz and Campfer. Thus
the tower of Pontresina stood at a trifurcation of road,
each road of the three being a road of chief importance.
Three of its five faces, those which include the rectan
gular part of the tower, exactly front these three roads.
Its position and function are thus accounted for. The
tower of Guardaval commanded in like manner a tri
furcation of road, one leading to the Lower Engadine,
and the others taking different sides of the lake. In
each case, too, a bridge played an important part, the
bridge of Ponte, and the bridge of Pontresina. Guar
daval guarded also the Albula, indirectly.
The evident signs of a large primary lake and
smaller secondary lakes, none of them now existing, in
dicate two great catastrophes : two great burstings of
dams somewhere. It is probable that we have the key
to these catastrophes in the lake of St Moritz, and it is

PONTRESINA 261
possible that Pontresina contributed something. On
the north side of the lake of St. Moritz, comparatively
high up on the way to the Kulm road, there is an old
delta, from the little gorge above the village. It is now
left high and dry far above the surface of the lake ; but
its level top shews the height at which the water of the
lake stood when the delta was being formed. In those
days the rocky dam at the head of the Schlucht was of
course much higher than now. The first bursting of
the great dam, when the lake stood at the level of the
old delta, would let down into the lake of Samaden an
enormous volume of water, that would carry all before it
when its pressure was applied at the dam of Camogask.
The second level of the lake of St. Moritz, at which it
must have stood for a long time, is quite as clearly
marked. A second catastrophe, due to a second burst
ing of the dam at the head of the Schlucht, would clear
away the lowered dam at Camogask, and it possibly
gave to that place its name of Campovasto. The lakes
of Silvaplana and Siis would not appear to have been
largely affected by the second of these physical changes,
if the interesting delta of Isola may be taken as an in
dication of the old level. The primary lake, at least,
probably filled the valley from the Maloya to St. Moritz.
The great chalet town of Gravas Alvas, which so few
people visit, shews where the main road used to run,
quite above the present valley. It is just possible that
the Statzer See is a relic of the original lake of St.
Moritz, which must have extended far in that direction,

262 PONTRESINA
Even in historic times, long since the secondary
series of lakes ceased to exist, there have been great
catastrophes due to the influx of water. Chiampel could
never look at the bridge of Siis without tears. For
there, on August 28th, 1566, his wife was carried off the
bridge itself by a vehement flood, and washed away.
Her body was found with a mass of debris, but quite
uninjured, twelve leagues down the river, in Tyrol.
How well the day and the month, August 28th, tell those
who know the Engadine that there had been the wonted
fall of snow, only heavier than usual, followed by a blaz
ing sun !
It remains to shew that the bridge of Pontresina was
the only means of crossing the water by road, between
the Morteratsch and the great lake of Samaden.
Persons wishing to reach the Bernina from the Enga
dine, and not coming by way of Camogask, must in those
days cross at some point the stream which runs through
Pontresina, and is called the Bernina, the Flatz, and other
local names. And they must cross it at some point
between its embouchure in the lake of Samaden, and
the point where the Bernina Fall and the water from the
Morteratsch join. Now, when the ground, so familiar
to English people, is examined, it is seen that the whole
of this line of water-system was occupied by two lakes,
with the great gorge of Pontresina between them ; and
that a bridge over the gorge was the only means of get
ting across by road.
In this case, as in the cases already dealt with, there

PONTRESINA 263
are clear and interesting indications of a primary and
secondary lake. Below Pontresina the stream evidently
found itself, on issuing from the gorge, forming part of
a long and not very broad lake, into which the water
from the Roseg also flowed. On one side of this lake
the ground is the property of Celerina ; on the other, of
Pontresina. This may probably be taken as indicating
that at some point of the lower part of the Inn-Schlucht
there- was a light bridge, so that the Celerina people
could get round the head of the lake of Samaden, and
cross the Inn at the Schlucht, to reach their more dis
tant possessions across the water. This lower of the two
Pontresina lakes extended as far as the natural dam of
rock still to be seen below the Acla Stifler, with a
Schlucht on a small scale still traversing it, making a
curiously sharp angle halfway through. Almost im
mediately below the outlet from this ancient dam, the
stream ran into the marshy side of the lake of Samaden,
as can be seen clearly on inspection. It is an interest
ing confirmation of this theory that the territory of the
commune of Pontresina ends exactly here, where once
the lake evidently began ; so that the old boundaries of
Pontresina were the water-course or narrow lake down
to the embouchure, and then the margin of the great
lake. They still keep to those lines. The primary lake
between this point and Pontresina was of much larger
dimensions so far as breadth and depth were concerned.
Above Pontresina there was the same arrangement —
a secondary lake, long and rather narrow ; a primary

264 PONTRESINA
lake, much broader and deeper. The signs of this at
the point where the water now enters the very striking
gorge of the Schlucht are of great interest. The water
rushes in these days through a chasm which was once
solid rock and formed the dam of the secondary lake.
It must have poured over this dam in a fine fall, until
at length a sufficient amount of disintegration had
taken place, and the dam burst, reducing the lake to
the present stream. The dam of the primary lake was
some few yards further down the gorge. The rock
which formed it stands up boldly still, and down below,
at the level of the water in the gorge, the remains of
this earlier dam are still to be seen. When the primary
lake was in existence, there must have been a magnifi
cent fall of water, over this great barrier of rock, into
the unapproachable depths of the Schlucht.
Passing up the valley, towards the foot of the Mor
teratsch, it is quite clear that the existing fields are the
bottom of a lake gradually shallowing towards the inflow
of water. The lake was no doubt narrowed by the
great delta from the rocks between Piz Chalchagn and
Piz Misaun, but a good deal of this is comparatively
late. The Romauntsch name of the broad level of low-
lying ground here, and of the wooden bridge that now
spans the stream, is Runtumas ; and this word appears
to have some connection with the smoke or vapour of
water. The fields which lie higher, on a level with the
present Bernina road, are all called Islas, Islas dadains
la resgia (beyond the saw mill), Islas sur, Islas suott, and

PONTRESINA 265
so on, pointing to a time when the secondary lake was
still, to some extent, in existence, and the stretches of
higher ground were recognised as islands.
When these two lakes, the one above and the other
below Pontresina, were full of water, the bridge, which
must in very early times have been thrown over the
beautiful gorge of Pontresina, was clearly the only
means of getting across between the Morteratsch glacier,
in its then more advanced state, and the great lake of
Samaden. The fortress represented by the old tower of
Pontresina, standing exactly at the junction of the road
crossing the bridge with the road from Camogask • to
the Bernina, would thus completely command the access
to the Bernina pass, from whichever direction people
came ; and would command with equal completeness
the passage up and down the Engadine, on this, the
southern side of the chain of lakes which ran from the
Maloya to Camogask. Its importance was thus second
to none in those regions, not even to that of Guardaval
itself. It may, perhaps, seem that too much is made of
the traffic, in early times, from the Maloya and the Val
Bregaglia to the Bernina. But, as a matter of fact,
there was an important amount of it. Thus, the com
mune of Bondo, in the Val Bregaglia, had considerable
holdings of pasturage on the hills which overhang the
Bernina road, some miles above Pontresina. They still
hold this pasturage ; and the herdsmen of Bondo, with
their sheep and cattle, make the long journey each
spring and autumn. Statute 1 24 fixes on Bondo the

266 PONTRESINA
maintenance of a part of the Bernina road, Ruotta
d'Barnina. ' A0 1588 di 8 Magio siin instantia da M1
(Mastrasl) Lurainz Vietzell, da que temp M1 dell' comoen,
haun 'Is Sig^ Vicari Joan Salis, M1 Gudaintz Flori
Planta, et M1 Martin Rascher da Samedan, cumando et
arbitro intraunter la vilia da Pontrasine da l'iina et la
vilia da Buond da I'otra vart, sco seque.' Pontresina is
to maintain the Punt d' Arias, still a well-known bridge
on the Bernina road ; and the men of Bondo are to
keep the road as far as their alps extend.
The tower of Pontresina was probably built before
Guardaval ; indeed, the evidence makes it practically
certain that it was, and this evidence is so interesting a
warning against scepticism about ' ancient remains,'
that it is worth mentioning. The masonry of the tower
is rude, as compared with the masonry at Guardaval,
or at Siis and Zernetz, at each of which places there are
old towers of careful masonry incorporated with houses
in the village. It happens, and it is a very fortunate
chance, that all of the six towers referred to are men
tioned by Chiampel, writing in 1570. One of them
was the home of his mother's family, at Siis, where he
lived for many years, beginning his ministry 350 years
ago. He exactly describes the two towers still standing
in Siis, and he calls them, even in his time, ' very old.'
In the same way at Zernetz, he describes the two
towers, again as ' very old.' The tower of Guardaval
he does not describe as ' very old ; ' he merely says it
was built in 1250 by Bishop Volkart of Chur. It was

PONTRESINA 267
only 320 years old when he wrote, only 290 when he
first knew it, and that he did not call ' very old.' The
others were much older than 1250. At Pontresina, he
says, there used to be a fortress, of which traces remain.
This exactly suits the marks of rude repair which have
been regarded as puzzling features of the tower of
Pontresina ; and the evidence generally is, as was re
marked above, a great warning against incredulity.
The towers were ' very old ' 350 years ago, in the
opinion of a man who knew very well what really old
towers were. They date from long before 1250. Asa
further example of the small amount of change which
has taken place since his time, it may be mentioned
that he describes, just as it is, the solitary wirthshaus
of las Agnas, the Alders, where the Hochgerichtsver-
sammlungen of the Upper Engadine were. And he
tells his readers that not far from the highest point of
the Bernina were three public-houses, still called the
Bernina-houses. The name of the old tower at Pontresina is said to
be Spaniola. It has therefore been credited with a
Spanish origin. That would make it very modern for
a tower that was probably an old part of the residence
of Tobias de Ponte Zarisino, at the time of his expulsion
from the Chancellorship of the County of the Upper
Engadine, in May, 1244. The two very ancient towers
in the Episcopal Court at Chur are called Marsol and
Spinol, names which Chiampel referred to the Roman
conquest and occupation of Rbaetia, as meaning Mars in

268 PONTRESINA
oculis and Spina in oculis, respectively war and a thorn
in the eyes of the Rhaetians. To this derivation Badeker
still stands. Martiola and Spiniola, or Spinola, are
more probable ; and the latter name may well have
made its way to Pontresina, which was so closely
representative of Chur in the Engadine. A diminutive
formed from a spine or ridge of rock at the foot of the
mountain, is not an unsuitable name for a tower built
of large stones in such a position.
As to Pontresina itself, the arguments advanced
above fully entitle it to a name derived from the bridge.
The bridge and its position are so striking, that, apart
from questions of importance, we might have accepted
that origin for the first syllable of the name. It is,
however, a little startling to find that the meadows
above the street of Pontresina are called Pontraschins,
as though here lurked the real origin of the name
Pontresina. Thus, the legal description of the field in
which the English Church stands is PontrascMn ziava
gio I'ova della magna, ' the meadow along the water
course of the scar.' But no one seems able to explain
this word, Pontraschin, except as being the same as
Pontresina; and not even the most Kymric scholar
derives Pontresina from anything but a bridge. The
Latin documents, from 1139 onwards, call the place
Pons Sarisina, Pons Saracenus, and so on ; and the
document still exists by which Otho L gave property
in 940 to the Bishops of Chur, to recoup them for losses
inflicted by the Saracens, The Pallioppi, father and

PONTRESINA 269
son, reject this derivation, and go to the Kymric for
Pons ercynia, the high bridge, or to the Latin for Pons
Sarcince, the toll bridge. Of the latter it may be said
that the payment of toll was so well understood from
very early times, throughout the middle ages, that the
loss of the idea conveyed by swrcinae and its replacing
by saracenus, is practically out of the question. From
the time of the touching inscription at Zurich to the
little son of the superintendent of the Roman toll of
two-and-a-half per cent, on goods passing into Gaul,
down to only the other day, tolls on bridges were never
an unknown or uncommon thing. Another view might
be taken by persons interested in the early Etruscans
who presumably peopled the Engadine ; their own name
for themselves was Rasenna; and that termination enna
and ena was characteristic. Pontresina might be
the bridge of the Rasenna, or it may have been that
Pontraschin was the pronunciation of Pontem rhatinum
or rhazinum. A study of the early forms of Romauntsch
words certainly seems to shew that the final um and am
were dropped in ordinary conversation, and not elided
in verse only. In documentary fact, however, Pontem
Saracenum holds the field.
After all, may not the name have been originally
more simple than any of these ? Who can say with
any certainty where is the beginning of the river Inn ?
At the Maloya, which is not in the Engadine but in
Bregaglia, they shew a poor little stream which they
call the Inn, Ova d'Oen. At Siis Maria they claim that

270 PONTRESINA
the Fex-thal is the source of the Inn. To the Latin-
speaking Italian coming over the pass from Poschiavo,
which place the returning traveller named Post claves,
as coming next after the keys of the pass, the question
on arriving at Pontresina was, Which route did he take ;
— that to Camogask, or that across the river? The
river and its lakes were to him at least as important as
either of the other sources of the Inn, and he may well
have called it the village ad pontem trans oenum. Pon-
trasine, the old Romauntsch spelling, favours that ; and
as for the modern name, tres is now the Romauntsch
form of trans. Some writers have maintained that the
first syllable of ' Engadine ' contains the name of the
river Inn, but the arguments are on the whole in favour
of the last syllable. The Romauntsch derivation is in cho
d'Oen, ' at the head of the Inn,' and they pronounce the
name ' Endjadine.' Celerina probably takes its name
from the Oenus, and the earliest spellings of Samaden,
in 1139 and 1177, are Samadene and Samadenus.
Porta spells it Summadoenus, but he is late, and not
in this respect of derivations trustworthy ; Chiampel,
two hundred years before him, had given Summo d'Oen
as- the derivation, but he again is not a trustworthy
guide in this respect. Looking at it all round, there is
a good deal to be said in favour of ' the bridge across
the Inn.'
' Murray,' by the way, robs the bridge of one of its
traditions. Speaking of Capella, near Scanfs, that ex
cellent book says, ' it was from this chapel . . . that

PONTRESINA 271
the images were cast into the river, and not at Pontresina,
as is often said.' The fact is that the Reformation in
the Engadine turned in many places upon getting rid
of the images, and a bridge over a roaring torrent was
a good means of getting rid of them. The images of
Pontresina were thus thrown over the high bridge into
the torrent. Porta gave the detail of the story in 1770
from the old chronicler. On these quaint stories of the
Reformation in the Engadine we have said a good deal
in a previous paper.

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