“D EAR HEART,” said Tommy, when Mr Barlow had finished his narrative, “what a number of accidents people are subject to in this world!” “It is very true,” answered Mr Barlow, “but as that is the case, it is necessary to improve ourselves in every possible manner, so that we may be able to struggle against them.” Thus quoted, from Sandford and Merton , a president of the Alpine Club. The following True Tales from the Hills, if they serve to emphasise not only the perils of mountaineering but the

I N a former work, I have given some details of the training of an Alpine guide, so I will not repeat them here. The mountain guides of Switzerland form a class unlike any other, yet in the high standard of honour and devotion they display towards those in their charge, one is reminded of two bodies of men especially deserving of respect and confidence, namely, the Civil Guards of Spain and the Royal Irish Constabulary. Like these, the Alpine guide oftentimes risks his health, strength—even his

T HERE are few instances so striking of the capacity of a party of thoroughly experienced mountaineers to get out of a really tight place, as was the outcome of the two days spent by Messrs Mummery, Slingsby, and Ellis Carr, on an ice slope in the Mont Blanc district. The party intended trying to ascend the Aiguille du Plan direct from the Chamonix valley. Mr Ellis Carr has generously given me permission to make use of his account, which I quote from The Alpine Journal . He relates the adventure

W E should never have got into such a position, but when definite orders are not carried out the General must not be blamed. The adventure might easily have cost all three of us our lives. This is how we came to be imperilling our necks on an incoherent snow-ridge 13,000 feet above the sea. It was the end of September, and my two guides and I were waiting at Zermatt to try the Dent Blanche, a proceeding which, later on, was amply justified by success. Much fresh snow had recently fallen, and the

O NE of the treasures of collectors of Alpine books is a small volume in Italian by Ignazio Somis. The British Museum has not only a copy of the original, but also a couple of translations, from one of which, published in 1768, I take the following account. I have left the quaint old spelling and punctuation just as they were; they accentuate the vividness and evident truth of this “True and Particular Account of the most Surprising preservation and happy deliverance of three women,” who were bu

“I T is now proper I should say something of the most marvellous circumstance, attending this very singular and surprising accident, I mean their manner of supporting life, during so long and close a confinement. I shall relate what I have heard of it from their own mouths, being the same, in substance, with what Count Nicholas de Brandizzo, intendant of the city and province of Cuneo, heard from them on the sixteenth of May, when, by order of our most benevolent sovereign, he repaired to Bergem

T HE following account of the ascent of Gestola, in the Central Caucasus, is taken from The Alpine Journal , and the author, Mr C. T. Dent, has most kindly revised it for this work, and has added a note as follows: “At the time (1886) when this expedition was made, the topography of the district was very imperfectly understood. The mountain climbed was originally described as Tetnuld Tau—Tau = Mountain. Since the publication of the original paper a new survey of the whole district has been carri

T HE accident in the Caucasus in 1888, by which Messrs Donkin and Fox and their two Swiss guides lost their lives, was one of the saddest that has ever happened in the annals of mountaineering. I will not dwell on it, but will rather pass on to the search expedition, a short account of whose operations will serve to illustrate how a thorough knowledge of mountaineering may be utilised in finding a conjectured spot in an unmapped region in the snow world. The year after the accident—for the seaso

P ROBABLY not half the narrow escapes experienced by climbers are ever described, even in the pages of the various publications of English and foreign Alpine Clubs, though when an accident by the breaking of a snow-cornice is just avoided, the incident is so terribly impressive that several accounts have found their way into print. Scarcely anything more startling than a certain occurrence on a ridge of the Mönch, which happened to the late Mr Moore and his two guides, Melchior and Jacob Andereg

M R CECIL SLINGSBY has kindly allowed me to extract the following admirable account of a guideless ascent with two friends of the Dent Blanche. It will be noticed that during a very cold night they “avoided” their “brandy-flask like poison.” When a climber is exhausted and help is near a flask of brandy is invaluable, but when a party has to spend a bitterly cold night in the open, it is madness to touch spirits at all. The effect of a stimulant is to quicken the action of the heart and drive th

I AM indebted to Mr Harold Spender, the author of a fine description of the accident in 1899 on the Dent Blanche, for permission to reprint the greater portion of it, and also to the proprietors of McClure’s Magazine and of The Strand Magazine , in which publications it first appeared. The safe return of one of the party is alluded to in The Alpine Journal as one of the most wonderful escapes in the whole annals of mountaineering. “Mr F. W. Hill, whose narrative in The Alpine Journal necessarily

A MONGST the many rock scrambles in the neighbourhood of St Martino in the Dolomites of Tyrol, the Rosetta when ascended by the western face can be counted on to awaken an interest in the most stolid of climbers. I am indebted to the courtesy of a girl friend for the loan of her mountaineering diary, and permission to make extracts from its very interesting contents, of which her account of an ascent of the Rosetta will, I feel sure, be read with keen enjoyment by climbers and non-climbers alike

I GNORANCE of what the future has in store is often not a bad thing. Had I realised that at the hour when we ought to have been at Zinal we should be sitting—and for the second time in one day—on the top of the Rothhorn, we should hardly have set out in so light-hearted a fashion from the little inn in the Trift Valley, above Zermatt, at 4 A.M. on 14th September 1895. The party consisted of my two guides, Joseph and Roman Imboden, father and son, and myself, and our idea was to cross the fine pe

I N a most interesting account of a mountain adventure which, by the courtesy of the writer, Sir H. Seymour King, I am enabled to reprint from The Alpine Journal , we are once more reminded that a party of thoroughly competent and robust mountaineers can come without evil after-effects out of a night of great hardship which would have undoubtedly proved fatal to ill-equipped and inexperienced amateurs and guides, such as those accompanying Mr Burckhardt, who perished from exposure on the Matterh

T HROUGH the kindness of Dr Kennedy, I am enabled to reprint from his new edition of The Alps in 1864 , by the late Mr A. W. Moore, an admirable account of the first passage of the Col de la Pilatte in Dauphiné. This expedition has become classical, thanks to Mr Whymper’s fine description of it, [9] so it is interesting to read what impression the adventures of the day made on another member of the party. The first part of the expedition was easy, but, wrote Mr Moore, “before getting near the fo

M R WHYMPER has also immortalised the first ascent of the Ecrins. Here is the account Mr Moore wrote in his diary of that eventful day: “It must be confessed that the higher we climbed, the greater became our contempt for our peak. It certainly seemed that, once over the bergschrund , we ought very soon to be on the top, and so persuaded was I of this, that I hazarded the opinion that by 9.30 we should be seated on the highest point. Whymper alone was less sanguine; and, probably encouraged by t

T HE fatal accident caused by lightning on the Wetterhorn in 1902 has emphasized the curious fact that, except on that occasion, and once before, many years ago, when Mrs Arbuthnot was killed on the Schildthorn, no lives [10] have been lost in a thunderstorm on the Alps. This is the more remarkable when we glance through books on mountaineering, and notice how often climbers have been exposed to the full fury of summer storms, and what narrow escapes they have had. In July 1863, Mr and Mrs Spenc

“S IR W. MARTIN CONWAY has been good enough to allow me to extract from The Alps from End to End the following account of the destruction of Elm. Mountain falls have a special interest for all who travel in Switzerland, where the remains of so many are visible. “The Himalayas are, from a geological point of view, a young set of mountain ranges; they still tumble about on an embarrassingly large scale. The fall, which recently made such a stir, began on 6th September 1893. That day the Maithana H

A LL must have noticed, summer after summer, in the daily papers, a recital from time to time under some such heading as, “Perils of the Alps,” of a variety of disasters to Germans or Austrians on mountains the names of which are unfamiliar to English people or even to English climbers. Many young men, of little leisure and of slight means, develop a passionate love for the peaks of their native land. The minor ranges of Austria and Germany offer few difficulties to really first-class, properly

I AM indebted to the editor of The Cornhill and the author of an article entitled “The Cup and the Lip” for permission to reprint portions of a paper containing much shrewd wisdom, several accounts of narrow escapes, and withal of a wittiness and freshness that brings to the reader a keen blast of Alpine air and the memory, if by chance he be a climber, of his own early days upon the mountains. enlarge-image A hot day in summer on a mountain top. A hot day in summer on a mountain top. enlarge-im

Alp A mountain pasture, usually with chalets tenanted only in summer. Arête A ridge. Bergschrund     A crevasse between the snow adhering to the rocks and the lower portion of the glacier. Col A pass between two peaks. Couloir A gully, usually filled with snow or stones. Crevasse A crack in a glacier, caused by the movement of the ice over an uneven bed or round a corner. Firn The snow of the upper regions, which is slowly changing into glacier ice. Grat A ridge. Joch A pass between two peaks. K