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Updated: June 8, 2025
The record of that accursed summer sixteen years ago was long since obliterated in the history of Marcus Bauer, the emotional youth who made love to a village belle in Zermatt, and posed as an Austrian baron among the English and Italians who at that time formed the select band of climbers in the Valais.
But I told him to retain the guides and order them to follow us to Zermatt, because I meant to use them there. I said I could feel the spirit of adventure beginning to stir in me, and was sure that the fell fascination of Alp-climbing would soon be upon me.
When this lady reached the bottom, she had been on her feet twenty-three hours! Our guides, hired on the Gemmi, were already at Zermatt when we reached there. So there was nothing to interfere with our getting up an adventure whenever we should choose the time and the object. I resolved to devote my first evening in Zermatt to studying up the subject of Alpine climbing, by way of preparation.
About 6 P.M., we arrived at the snow upon the ridge descending toward Zermatt, and all peril was over. We frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried to them, but no sound returned.
"Yes," we said, "there is the flag-staff, but where is the flag?" "Here it is," he answered, pulling off his blouse and fixing it to the stick. It made a poor flag, and there was no wind to float it out, yet it was seen all around. They saw it at Zermatt at the Riffel in the Val Tournanche... . We remained on the summit for one hour One crowded hour of glorious life.
So we come to a rocky path, wild as one could wish, and descend, discoursing how good and fair an ordered world may be, but with a certain unformulated qualification in our minds about those thumb marks we have left behind. "Do you recall the Zermatt valley?" says my friend, "and how on earth it reeks and stinks with smoke?"
Everything for the use of the upper valley and Zermatt, now a place of considerable resort, must be carried by porters, or on horseback; and we pass or meet men and women, sometimes a dozen of them together, laboring along under the long, heavy baskets, broad at the top and coming nearly to a point below, which are universally used here for carrying everything.
It was full four o'clock in the afternoon before my cavalcade was entirely ready. At that hour it began to move. In point of numbers and spectacular effect, it was the most imposing expedition that had ever marched from Zermatt. I commanded the chief guide to arrange the men and animals in single file, twelve feet apart, and lash them all together on a strong rope.
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. 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.
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. I ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land journey to Zermatt.
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