The history of mountaineering contains nothing more dramatic than the epic of the Matterhorn. There is no mountain which appeals so readily to the imagination. Its unique form has drawn poetic rhapsodies from the most prosaic. “Men,” says Mr. Whymper, “who ordinarily spoke or wrote like rational beings when they came under its power seemed to quit their senses, and ranted, and rhapsodied, losing for a time all common forms of speech. Even the sober De Saussure was moved to enthusiasm.”

If the Matterhorn could thus inspire men before the most famous siege in Alpine history had clothed its cliffs in romance, how much more must it move those for whom the final tragedy has become historical? The first view of the Matterhorn, and the moment when the last step is taken on to the final crest, are two moments which the mountaineer never forgets. Those who knew the old Zermat are unpleasantly fond of reminding us that the railway train and the monster hÔtels have robbed Zermat of its charm; while the fixed ropes and sardine tins—[Those dear old sardine tins! Our Alpine writers would run short of satire if they could not invoke their aid]—have finally humiliated the unvanquished Titan. It may be so; but it is easy enough to recover the old atmosphere. You have only to visit Zermat in winter when the train is not running. A long trudge up twenty miles of shadowed, frosty valley, a little bluff near Randa, and the Matterhorn soars once more into a stainless sky. There are no clouds, and probably not another stranger in the valley. The hÔtels are closed, the sardine tins are buried, and the Matterhorn renews like the immortals an undying youth.

The great mountain remained unconquered mainly because it inspired in the hearts of the bravest guides a despairing belief in its inaccessibility. “There seemed,” writes Mr. Whymper, “to be a cordon drawn round it up to which one might go, but no further. Within that line gins and efreets were supposed to exist—the wandering Jew and the spirits of the damned. The superstitious natives in the surrounding valleys (many of whom firmly believed it to be not only the highest mountain in the Alps, but in the world) spoke of a ruined city on the summit wherein the spirits dwelt; and if you laughed they gravely shook their heads, told you to look yourself to see the castle and walls, and warned one against a rash approach, lest the infuriated demons from their impregnable heights might hurl down vengeance for one’s derision.”

Those who have a sense for the dramatic unities will feel that, for once in a way, Life lived up to the conventions of Art, and that even a great dramatist could scarcely have bettered the materials afforded by the history of the Matterhorn. As the story unfolds itself one can scarcely help attributing some fatal personality to the inanimate cliffs. In the Italian valley of Breuil, the Becca, as the Matterhorn used to be called, was for centuries the embodiment of supernatural terror. Mothers would frighten their children by threats that the wild man of the Becca would carry them away. And if the children asked how the Matterhorn was born, they would reply that in bygone years there dwelt a giant in Aosta named Gargantua, who was once seized with a longing for the country beyond the range of peaks that divide Italy from Switzerland. Now, in those far off times, the mountains of the great barrier formed one uniform ridge instead of (as now) a series of peaks. The giant strode over this range with one step. As he stood with one foot in Switzerland and the other in Italy, the surrounding rocks fell away, and the pyramid of cliffs caught between his legs alone remained. And thus was the Matterhorn formed. There were many such legends; the reader may find them in Whymper and Guido Rey. They were enough to daunt all but the boldest.

The drama of the Matterhorn opens appropriately enough with the three men who first showed a contempt for the superstitions that surrounded the Becca. The story of that first attempt is told in Guido Rey’s excellent monograph on the Matterhorn, a monograph which has been translated by Mr. Eaton into English as spirited as the original Italian. This opening bout with the Becca took place in 1858. Three natives of Breuil, the little Italian valley at the foot of the Matterhorn, met before dawn at the chÂlet of Avouil. Of these, Jean Jacques Carrel was in command. He was a mighty hunter, and a fine mountaineer. The second, Jean Antoine Carrel, “il Bersaglier,” was destined to play a leading part in the conflict that was to close seven years later. Jean Antoine was something more than a great guide. He was a ragged, independent mountaineer, difficult to control, a great leader, but a poor follower. He was an old soldier, and had fought at Novara. The third of these young climbers was AimÉ Gorret, a young boy of twenty destined for the Church. His solitary rambles among the hills had filled him with a passionate worship of the Matterhorn.

Without proper provisions or gear, these three light-hearted knights set forth gaily on their quest. They mistook the way; and, reaching a spot that pleased them, they wasted hours in hurling rocks down a cliff—a fascinating pursuit. When they reached the point now known as the TÊte du Lion (12,215 feet) they contemplated the Matterhorn which rose definitely beyond an intervening gap. They looked at their great foe with quiet assurance. The Becca would not run away. Nobody else was likely to try a throw with the local giant. One day they would come back and settle the issue. There was no immediate hurry.

In 1860 a daring attempt was made by Messrs. Alfred, Charles, and Sanbach Parker of Liverpool. These bold climbers dispensed with guides, and had the wisdom to attack the east face that rises above Zermat. All the other early explorers attacked the Italian ridge; and, as will be seen, the first serious assault on the eastern face succeeded. Lack of time prevented the Parkers from reaching a greater height than 12,000 feet; nor were they more successful in the following year, but they had made a gallant attempt, for which they deserve credit. In 1860 another party had assailed the mountain from Italy, and reached a height of about 13,000 feet. The party consisted of Vaughan Hawkins and Prof. Tyndall, whom he had invited to join the party, with the guides J. J. Carrel and Bennen.

In 1861 Edward Whymper, who had opened his Alpine career in the previous year, returned to the Alps determined to conquer two virgin summits of the Alps, the Matterhorn and the Weishorn. On arriving at Chatillon, he learned that the Weishorn had been climbed by Tyndall, and that Tyndall was at Breuil intending to add the Matterhorn to his conquests. Whymper determined to anticipate him. He arrived at Breuil on August 28, with an Oberland guide, and inquired for the best man in the valley. The knowing ones with a voice recommended Jean Antoine Carrel, a member of the first party to set foot on the Matterhorn. “We sought, of course, for Carrel, and found him a well-made, resolute looking fellow, with a certain defiant air which was rather taking. Yes, he would go. Twenty francs a day, whatever the result, was his price. I assented. But I must take his comrade. As he said this, an evil countenance came forth out of the darkness, and proclaimed itself the comrade. I demurred, and negotiations were broken off.”

At Breuil, they tried to get another man to accompany them but without success. The men they approached either would not go or asked a prohibitive price. “This, it may be said once and for all, was the reason why so many futile attempts were made on the Matterhorn. One guide after another was brought up to the mountain and patted on the back, but all declined the business. The men who went had no heart in the matter, and took the first opportunity to turn back. For they were, with the exception of the man to whom reference will be made [J. A. Carrel] universally impressed with the belief that the summit was entirely inaccessible.”

Whymper and his guide bivouacked in a cowshed; and as night approached they saw J. A. Carrel and his companion stealing up the hillside. Whymper asked them if they had repented, and would join his party. They replied that they had contemplated an independent assault. “Oh, then, it is not necessary to have more than three.” “Not for us.” “I admired their pluck and had a strong inclination to engage the pair, but finally decided against it. The companion turned out to be J. J. Carrel. Both were bold mountaineers; but Jean Antoine was incomparably the better of the two, and was the finest rock climber I have ever seen. He was the only man who persistently refused to accept defeat, and who continued to believe, in spite of all discouragements, that the great mountain was not inaccessible, and that it could be ascended from the side of his native valley.”

Carrel was something more than a great guide. He remained a soldier long after he had laid down his sword. He was, above all, an Italian, determined to climb the Matterhorn by the great Italian ridge, to climb it for the honour of Italy, and for the honour of his native valley. The two great moments of his life were those in which he heard the shouts of victory at Colle di Santiarno, and the cries of triumph on the summit of the Italian ridge. Whymper, and later Tyndall, found him an awkward man to deal with. He had the rough, undisciplined nature of the mountain he loved. He looked on the Matterhorn as a kind of preserve, and was determined that he and no other should lead on the final and successful ascent. Whymper’s first attempt failed owing to the poor qualities of his guide; and the Carrels were not more successful.

During the three years that followed, Whymper made no less than six attempts to climb the Matterhorn. On one occasion he climbed alone and unaided higher than any of his predecessors. Without guides or companions, he reached a height of 13,500 feet. There is little to be said for solitary climbing, but this feat stands out as one of the boldest achievements of the period. The critics of solitary scrambling need, however, look no further than its sequel for their moral. In attempting to negotiate a corner on the TÊte du Lion, Whymper slipped and fell. He shot down an ice slope, slid and bounded through a vertical height of about 200 feet, and was eventually thrown against the side of a gully where it narrowed. Another ten feet would have taken him in one terrific bound of 800 feet on to the glacier below. The blood was pulsing out of numerous cuts. He plastered up the wounds in his head with a lump of snow before scrambling up into a place of safety, where he promptly fainted away. He managed, however, to reach Breuil without further adventure. Within a week he had returned to the attack.

He made two further attempts that year which failed for various reasons; but he had the satisfaction of seeing Tyndall fail when success seemed assured. Tyndall had brought with him the great Swiss guide Bennen, and a Valaisian guide named Walter Anton. He engaged Jean Antoine and CÆsar Carrel. They proposed to attack the mountain by the Italian ridge. Next morning, somebody ran in to tell Whymper that a flag had been seen on the summit. This proved a false alarm. Whymper waited through the long day to greet the party on their return. “I could not bring myself to leave, but lingered about as a foolish lover hovers round the object of his affections even after he has been rejected. The sun had set before the men were discerned coming over the pastures. There was no spring in their steps—they, too, were defeated.”

Prof. Tyndall told Whymper that he had arrived “within a stone’s-throw of the summit”—the mountain is 14,800 feet high, 14,600 feet had been climbed. “He greatly deceived himself,” said Whymper, “for the point which he reached is no less than 800 feet below the summit. The failure was due to the fact that the Carrels had been engaged in a subordinate capacity.” When they were appealed to for their opinion, they replied: “We are porters, ask your guides.” Carrel always determined that the Matterhorn should be climbed from Italy, and that the leader of the climb should be an Italian. Bennen was a Swiss and Carrel had been engaged as a second guide. Tyndall and Whymper found it necessary to champion their respective guides, Carrel and Bennen; and a more or less heated controversy was carried on in the pages of The Alpine Journal.

The Matterhorn was left in peace till the next year, but, meanwhile, a conspiracy for its downfall was hatched in Italy. The story is told in Guido Rey’s classic book on the Matterhorn, a book which should be read side by side with Whymper’s Scrambles, as it gives the Italian version of the final stages in which Italy and England fought for the great prize. In 1863, some leading Italian mountaineers gathered together at Turin to found an Italian Alpine Club. Amongst these were two well-known scientists, Felice Giordano and Quintino Sella. They vowed that, as English climbers had robbed them of Monte Viso, prince of Piedmontese peaks, Italy should have the honour of conquering the Matterhorn, and that Italians should climb it from Italy by the Italian ridge. The task was offered to Giordano, who accepted it.

In 1863 Whymper and Carrel made another attempt on the Matterhorn, which was foiled by bad weather. In the next year, the mountain was left alone; but the plot for its downfall began to mature. Giordano and Sella had met Carrel, and had extracted from him promises of support. Carrel was, above all, an Italian, and, other things being equal, he would naturally prefer to lead an Italian, rather than an English, party to the summit.

And now we come to the closing scenes. In 1865 Whymper returned to the attack, heartily tired of the Italian ridge. With the great guides Michel Croz and Christian Almer, Whymper attempted to reach the summit by a rock couloir that starts from near the Breuiljoch, and terminates high up on the Furggen arÊte. This was a mad scheme; and the route they chose was the most impracticable of all the routes that had ever been attempted on the Matterhorn. Even to-day, the great couloir has not been climbed, and the top half of the Furggen ridge has only been once ascended (or rather outflanked on the Italian side), an expedition of great danger and difficulty. Foiled in this attempt, Whymper turned his attention to the Swiss face. The eastern face is a fraud. From the Riffel and from Zermat, it appears almost perpendicular; but when seen in profile from the Zmutt glacier it presents a very different appearance. The average angle of the slope as far as “the shoulder,” about 13,925 feet, is about thirty degrees. From here to the summit the angle steepens considerably but is never more than fifty degrees. The wonder is that Whymper, who had studied the mountain more than once from the Zmutt glacier, still continued his attempts on the difficult Italian ridge.

On the 8th of June 1865, Whymper arrived in Breuil, and explained to Carrel his change of plan. He engaged Carrel, and made plans for his attack on the Swiss face, promising Carrel that, if that failed, they should return to the Italian ridge. Jean Antoine told Whymper that he would not be able to serve him after the 11th, as he was engaged to travel “with a family of distinction in the valley of Aosta.” Whymper asked him why he had not told him this before; and he replied that the engagement had been a long-standing one, but that the actual day had not been fixed. Whymper was annoyed; but he could find no fault with the answer, and parted on friendly terms with Carrel. But the family of distinction was no other than Giordano. “You are going to leave me,” Whymper had said to Carrel, “to travel with a party of ladies. The work is not fit for you.” Carrel had smiled; and Whymper had taken the smile as a recognition of the implied compliment. Carrel smiled because he knew that the work he had in hand was more fitted for him than for any other man.

On the 7th, Giordano had written to Sella:

“Let us, then, set out to attack this Devil’s mountain; and let us see that we succeed, if only Whymper has not been beforehand with us.” On the 11th, he wrote again: “Dear Quintino, It is high time for me to send you news from here. I reached Valtournanche on Saturday at midday. There I found Carrel, who had just returned from a reconnoitring expedition on the Matterhorn, which had proved a failure owing to bad weather. Whymper had arrived two or three days before; as usual, he wished to make the ascent, and had engaged Carrel, who, not having had my letters, had agreed, but for a few days only. Fortunately, the weather turned bad, Whymper was unable to make his fresh attempt; and Carrel left him, and came with me together with five other picked men who are the best guides in the valley. We immediately sent off our advance guard with Carrel at its head. In order not to excite remark, we took the rope and other materials to Avouil, a hamlet which is very remote and close to the Matterhorn; and this is to be our lower base.... I have tried to keep everything secret; but that fellow, whose life seems to depend on the Matterhorn, is here suspiciously prying into everything. I have taken all the competent men away from him; and yet he is so enamoured of the mountain that he may go with others and make a scene. He is here in this hÔtel, and I try to avoid speaking to him.”

Whymper discovered on the 10th the identity of the “family of distinction.” He was furious. He considered, with some show of justification, that he had been “bamboozled and humbugged.”

The Italian party had already started for the Matterhorn, with a large store of provisions. They were an advance party designed to find and facilitate the way. They would take their time. Whymper took courage. On the 11th, a party arrived from Zermat across the ThÉodule. One of these proved to be Lord Francis Douglas, who, a few days previously, had made the second ascent of the Gabelhorn, and the first from Zinal. Lord Francis was a young and ambitious climber; and he was only too glad to join Whymper in an attack on the Swiss face of the Matterhorn. They crossed to Zermat together on the 12th, and there discovered Mr. Hudson, a great mountaineer, accompanied by the famous guide Michel Croz, who had arrived at Zermat with the Matterhorn in view. They agreed to join forces; and Hudson’s friend Hadow was admitted to the party. Hadow was a young man of nineteen who had just left Harrow. Whymper seemed doubtful of his ability; but Hudson reassured him by remarking that Mr. Hadow had done Mont Blanc in less time than most men. Peter Taugwalder, Lord Francis’s guide, and Peter’s two sons completed the party. On the 13th of July they left Zermat.

On the 14th of July Giordano wrote a short letter every line of which is alive with grave triumph. “At 2 p.m. to-day I saw Carrel & Co., on the top of the Matterhorn.” Poor Giordano! The morrow was to bring a sad disappointment; and his letter dated the 15th of July contains a pregnant sentence: “Although every man did his duty, it is a lost battle, and I am in great grief.”

This is what had happened. Whymper and his companions had left Zermat on the 13th at half-past five. The day was cloudless. They mounted leisurely, and arrived at the base of the actual peak about half-past eleven. Once fairly on the great eastern face, they were astonished to find that places which looked entirely impracticable from the Riffel “were so easy that they could run about.” By mid-day they had found a suitable place for the tent at a height of about 11,000 feet. Croz and young Peter Taugwalder went on to explore. They returned at about 3 p.m. in a great state of excitement. There was no difficulty. They could have gone to the top that day and returned.... “Long after dusk, the cliffs above echoed with our laughter, and with the songs of the guides, for we were happy that night in camp, and feared no evil.”

Whymper’s story is told with simplicity and restraint. He was too good a craftsman to spoil a great subject by unnecessary strokes. They started next day before dawn. They had left Zermat on the 13th, and they left their camp on a Friday (the superstitious noted these facts when the whole disastrous story was known). The whole of the great eastern slope “was now revealed, rising for 3000 feet like a huge natural staircase. Some parts were more and others were less easy; but we were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment.... For the greater part of the way there was no need for the rope, and sometimes Hudson led, and sometimes myself.” When they arrived at the snow ridge now known as “The Shoulder,” which is some 500 feet below the summit, they turned over on to the northern face. This proved more difficult; but the general angle of the slope was nowhere more than forty degrees. Hadow’s want of experience began to tell, and he required a certain amount of assistance. “The solitary difficult part was of no great extent.... A long stride round a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more. The last doubt had vanished. The Matterhorn was ours. Nothing but 200 feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted.”

But they were not yet certain that they had not been beaten. The Italians had left Breuil four days before. All through the climb, false alarms had been raised of men on the top. The excitement became intense. “The slope eased off; at length we could be detached; and Croz and I, dashing away, ran a neck-and-neck race which ended in a dead heat. At 1.40 p.m. the world was at our feet, and the Matterhorn was conquered.”

No footsteps could be seen; but the summit of the Matterhorn consists of a rudely level ridge about 350 feet in length, and the Italians might have been at the further end. Whymper hastened to the Italian summit, and again found the snow untrodden. They peered over the ridge, and far below on the right caught sight of the Italian party. “Up went my arms and hat. ‘Croz, Croz, come here!’ ‘Where are they, monsieur?’ ‘There, don’t you see them, down there.’ ‘Ah, the coquins, they are low down.’ ‘Croz, we must make those fellows hear us.’ They yelled until they were hoarse. ‘Croz, we must make them hear us, they shall hear us.’” Whymper seized a block of rock and hurled it down, and called on his companion to do the same. They drove their sticks in, and soon a whole torrent was pouring down. “There was no mistake about it this time. The Italians turned and fled.”

III.—THE MATTERHORN FROM THE NORTH-WEST.

T and B are the points marked T and B in I. and II. Z Z Z Z is the Zmutt ridge. B C D E F is the great Italian South-west ridge. B is the Italian summit. C the point where Tyndall turned back on his last attempt. D the Italian shoulder now known as “Pic Tyndall.” E the “cravette.” F the Col du Lion, and G the TÊte du Lion. The Italian route ascends to the Col du Lion on the further side, and then follows the Italian ridge.