<p><SPAN name="ch39" id="ch39"></SPAN></p>
<h2> CHAPTER XXXIX </h2>
<h3> [We Travel by Glacier] </h3>
<p><br/></p>
<p>A guide-book is a queer thing. The reader has just seen what a man who
undertakes the great ascent from Zermatt to the Riffelberg Hotel must
experience. Yet Baedeker makes these strange statements concerning this
matter:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><br/> 1. Distance—3 hours.<br/> 2. The road cannot be
mistaken.<br/> 3. Guide unnecessary.<br/> 4. Distance from
Riffelberg Hotel to the Gorner Grat, one hour and a half.<br/> 5.
Ascent simple and easy. Guide unnecessary.<br/> 6. Elevation of
Zermatt above sea-level, 5,315 feet.<br/> 7. Elevation of Riffelberg
Hotel above sea-level, 8,429 feet.<br/> 8. Elevation of the Gorner
Grat above sea-level, 10,289 feet.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>I have pretty effectually throttled these errors by sending him the
following demonstrated facts:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><br/> 1. Distance from Zermatt to Riffelberg Hotel, 7 days.<br/> 2.
The road <i>can</i> be mistaken. If I am the first that did it, I want the
credit of it, too.<br/> 3. Guides <i>are</i> necessary, for none but a
native can read those finger-boards.<br/> 4. The estimate of the
elevation of the several localities above sea-level is pretty
correct—for Baedeker. He only misses it about a hundred and
eighty or ninety thousand feet.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>I found my arnica invaluable. My men were suffering excruciatingly, from
the friction of sitting down so much. During two or three days, not one of
them was able to do more than lie down or walk about; yet so effective was
the arnica, that on the fourth all were able to sit up. I consider that,
more than to anything else, I owe the success of our great undertaking to
arnica and paregoric.</p>
<p>My men are being restored to health and strength, my main perplexity, now,
was how to get them down the mountain again. I was not willing to expose
the brave fellows to the perils, fatigues, and hardships of that fearful
route again if it could be helped. First I thought of balloons; but, of
course, I had to give that idea up, for balloons were not procurable. I
thought of several other expedients, but upon consideration discarded
them, for cause. But at last I hit it. I was aware that the movement of
glaciers is an established fact, for I had read it in Baedeker; so I
resolved to take passage for Zermatt on the great Gorner Glacier.</p>
<p>Very good. The next thing was, how to get down the glacier comfortably—for
the mule-road to it was long, and winding, and wearisome. I set my mind at
work, and soon thought out a plan. One looks straight down upon the vast
frozen river called the Gorner Glacier, from the Gorner Grat, a sheer
precipice twelve hundred feet high. We had one hundred and fifty-four
umbrellas—and what is an umbrella but a parachute?</p>
<p>I mentioned this noble idea to Harris, with enthusiasm, and was about to
order the Expedition to form on the Gorner Grat, with their umbrellas, and
prepare for flight by platoons, each platoon in command of a guide, when
Harris stopped me and urged me not to be too hasty. He asked me if this
method of descending the Alps had ever been tried before. I said no, I had
not heard of an instance. Then, in his opinion, it was a matter of
considerable gravity; in his opinion it would not be well to send the
whole command over the cliff at once; a better way would be to send down a
single individual, first, and see how he fared.</p>
<p>I saw the wisdom in this idea instantly. I said as much, and thanked my
agent cordially, and told him to take his umbrella and try the thing right
away, and wave his hat when he got down, if he struck in a soft place, and
then I would ship the rest right along.</p>
<p>Harris was greatly touched with this mark of confidence, and said so, in a
voice that had a perceptible tremble in it; but at the same time he said
he did not feel himself worthy of so conspicuous a favor; that it might
cause jealousy in the command, for there were plenty who would not
hesitate to say he had used underhanded means to get the appointment,
whereas his conscience would bear him witness that he had not sought it at
all, nor even, in his secret heart, desired it.</p>
<p>I said these words did him extreme credit, but that he must not throw away
the imperishable distinction of being the first man to descend an Alp per
parachute, simply to save the feelings of some envious underlings. No, I
said, he <i>must</i> accept the appointment—it was no longer an invitation,
it was a command.</p>
<p>He thanked me with effusion, and said that putting the thing in this form
removed every objection. He retired, and soon returned with his umbrella,
his eye flaming with gratitude and his cheeks pallid with joy. Just then
the head guide passed along. Harris's expression changed to one of
infinite tenderness, and he said:</p>
<p>"That man did me a cruel injury four days ago, and I said in my heart he
should live to perceive and confess that the only noble revenge a man can
take upon his enemy is to return good for evil. I resign in his favor.
Appoint him."</p>
<p>I threw my arms around the generous fellow and said:</p>
<p>"Harris, you are the noblest soul that lives. You shall not regret this
sublime act, neither shall the world fail to know of it. You shall have
opportunity far transcending this one, too, if I live—remember
that."</p>
<p>I called the head guide to me and appointed him on the spot. But the thing
aroused no enthusiasm in him. He did not take to the idea at all.</p>
<p>He said:</p>
<p>"Tie myself to an umbrella and jump over the Gorner Grat! Excuse me, there
are a great many pleasanter roads to the devil than that."<br/> <br/>
<br/> <br/></p>
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<p><br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<p>Upon a discussion of the subject with him, it appeared that he considered
the project distinctly and decidedly dangerous. I was not convinced, yet I
was not willing to try the experiment in any risky way—that is, in a
way that might cripple the strength and efficiency of the Expedition. I
was about at my wits' end when it occurred to me to try it on the
Latinist.</p>
<p>He was called in. But he declined, on the plea of inexperience, diffidence
in public, lack of curiosity, and I didn't know what all. Another man
declined on account of a cold in the head; thought he ought to avoid
exposure. Another could not jump well—never <i>could</i> jump well—did
not believe he could jump so far without long and patient practice.
Another was afraid it was going to rain, and his umbrella had a hole in
it. Everybody had an excuse. The result was what the reader has by this
time guessed: the most magnificent idea that was ever conceived had to be
abandoned, from sheer lack of a person with enterprise enough to carry it
out. Yes, I actually had to give that thing up—while doubtless I
should live to see somebody use it and take all the credit from me.</p>
<p>Well, I had to go overland—there was no other way. I marched the
Expedition down the steep and tedious mule-path and took up as good a
position as I could upon the middle of the glacier—because Baedeker
said the middle part travels the fastest. As a measure of economy,
however, I put some of the heavier baggage on the shoreward parts, to go
as slow freight.</p>
<p>I waited and waited, but the glacier did not move. Night was coming on,
the darkness began to gather—still we did not budge. It occurred to
me then, that there might be a time-table in Baedeker; it would be well to
find out the hours of starting. I called for the book—it could not
be found. Bradshaw would certainly contain a time-table; but no Bradshaw
could be found.</p>
<p>Very well, I must make the best of the situation. So I pitched the tents,
picketed the animals, milked the cows, had supper, paregoricked the men,
established the watch, and went to bed—with orders to call me as
soon as we came in sight of Zermatt.</p>
<p>I awoke about half past ten next morning, and looked around. We hadn't
budged a peg! At first I could not understand it; then it occurred to me
that the old thing must be aground. So I cut down some trees and rigged a
spar on the starboard and another on the port side, and fooled away upward
of three hours trying to spar her off. But it was no use. She was half a
mile wide and fifteen or twenty miles long, and there was no telling just
whereabouts she <i>was</i> aground. The men began to show uneasiness, too, and
presently they came flying to me with ashy faces, saying she had sprung a
leak.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p><br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<p>Nothing but my cool behavior at this critical time saved us from another
panic. I ordered them to show me the place. They led me to a spot where a
huge boulder lay in a deep pool of clear and brilliant water. It did look
like a pretty bad leak, but I kept that to myself. I made a pump and set
the men to work to pump out the glacier. We made a success of it. I
perceived, then, that it was not a leak at all. This boulder had descended
from a precipice and stopped on the ice in the middle of the glacier, and
the sun had warmed it up, every day, and consequently it had melted its
way deeper and deeper into the ice, until at last it reposed, as we had
found it, in a deep pool of the clearest and coldest water.</p>
<p>Presently Baedeker was found again, and I hunted eagerly for the
time-table. There was none. The book simply said the glacier was moving
all the time. This was satisfactory, so I shut up the book and chose a
good position to view the scenery as we passed along. I stood there some
time enjoying the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did not seem
to be gaining any on the scenery. I said to myself, "This confounded old
thing's aground again, sure,"—and opened Baedeker to see if I could
run across any remedy for these annoying interruptions. I soon found a
sentence which threw a dazzling light upon the matter. It said, "The
Gorner Glacier travels at an average rate of a little less than an inch a
day." I have seldom felt so outraged. I have seldom had my confidence so
wantonly betrayed. I made a small calculation: One inch a day, say thirty
feet a year; estimated distance to Zermatt, three and one-eighteenth
miles. Time required to go by glacier, <i>a little over five hundred years!</i> I
said to myself, "I can <i>walk</i> it quicker—and before I will patronize
such a fraud as this, I will do it."</p>
<p>When I revealed to Harris the fact that the passenger part of this glacier—the
central part—the lightning-express part, so to speak—was not
due in Zermatt till the summer of 2378, and that the baggage, coming along
the slow edge, would not arrive until some generations later, he burst out
with:</p>
<p>"That is European management, all over! An inch a day—think of that!
Five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles! But I am not a bit
surprised. It's a Catholic glacier. You can tell by the look of it. And
the management."</p>
<p>I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it was in a Catholic
canton.</p>
<p>"Well, then, it's a government glacier," said Harris. "It's all the same.
Over here the government runs everything—so everything's slow; slow,
and ill-managed. But with us, everything's done by private enterprise—and
then there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it. I wish Tom
Scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab once—you'd see it
take a different gait from this."</p>
<p>I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there was trade enough
to justify it.</p>
<p>"He'd <i>make</i> trade," said Harris. "That's the difference between governments
and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do. Tom Scott would
take all the trade; in two years Gorner stock would go to two hundred, and
inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers under the hammer
for taxes." After a reflective pause, Harris added, "A little less than an
inch a day; a little less than an <i>inch</i>, mind you. Well, I'm losing my
reverence for glaciers."</p>
<p>I was feeling much the same way myself. I have traveled by canal-boat,
ox-wagon, raft, and by the Ephesus and Smyrna railway; but when it comes
down to good solid honest slow motion, I bet my money on the glacier. As a
means of passenger transportation, I consider the glacier a failure; but
as a vehicle of slow freight, I think she fills the bill. In the matter of
putting the fine shades on that line of business, I judge she could teach
the Germans something.</p>
<p>I ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land journey to
Zermatt. At this moment a most interesting find was made; a dark object,
bedded in the glacial ice, was cut out with the ice-axes, and it proved to
be a piece of the undressed skin of some animal—a hair trunk,
perhaps; but a close inspection disabled the hair-trunk theory, and
further discussion and examination exploded it entirely—that is, in
the opinion of all the scientists except the one who had advanced it. This
one clung to his theory with affectionate fidelity characteristic of
originators of scientific theories, and afterward won many of the first
scientists of the age to his view, by a very able pamphlet which he wrote,
entitled, "Evidences going to show that the hair trunk, in a wild state,
belonged to the early glacial period, and roamed the wastes of chaos in
the company with the cave-bear, primeval man, and the other Ooelitics of
the Old Silurian family."<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p><br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<p>Each of our scientists had a theory of his own, and put forward an animal
of his own as a candidate for the skin. I sided with the geologist of the
Expedition in the belief that this patch of skin had once helped to cover
a Siberian elephant, in some old forgotten age—but we divided there,
the geologist believing that this discovery proved that Siberia had
formerly been located where Switzerland is now, whereas I held the opinion
that it merely proved that the primeval Swiss was not the dull savage he
is represented to have been, but was a being of high intellectual
development, who liked to go to the menagerie.</p>
<p>We arrived that evening, after many hardships and adventures, in some
fields close to the great ice-arch where the mad Visp boils and surges out
from under the foot of the great Gorner Glacier, and here we camped, our
perils over and our magnificent undertaking successfully completed. We
marched into Zermatt the next day, and were received with the most lavish
honors and applause. A document, signed and sealed by the authorities, was
given to me which established and endorsed the fact that I had made the
ascent of the Riffelberg. This I wear around my neck, and it will be
buried with me when I am no more.</p>
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