Letters From Baghdad Page 13
We reached Aflea, which is one of the wonders of the Lebanon. The river Adonis — for this is the site of the Venus and Adonis legend — springs out of a great cave high up in the cliff and round the cave are several other springs, starting straight out of the rock and foaming down into the valley, falling in 3 or 4 cascades into deep blue pools and hurrying away under planes and walnut trees. The water is ice-cold; I have just been bathing in it. It's a very hot close night. We are going to dine outside my tent. There is such a roar of water! The moon is shining on the great cliffs and the steep steep banks of the valleys and mountain sides, up which climb black companies of cypresses, and there are little twinkling lights on all the hills... .
Friday, 8th There came one from the village this morning to tell me about the road. I said You will come with us, oh my uncle?" He replied, "Upon my head and eyes, oh my sister." So I returned to my breakfast well pleased. But when it came to getting on my horse, Hanna told me that the Metawaileh (he belonged to that peculiar Muhammadan sect — please note that in the plural the accent is on the second syllable — Metawaileh; this puzzled me a good deal at first!) had retired, saying that he had business, an excuse so palpably absurd that it was almost rude of him not to find a better. Well, we had to start Off over the hills alone, leaving our guide of yesterday, Martin, to take the mules straight to Reifun. The result was we went a long 'giro,' an hour or more out of Our road, Charlotte, Hanna and I, and then we found a charming gentleman called Masa, pasturing his flocks on the hill-side, and he mounted his mare and came with us — a Christian he was, as all the people are in this country, the Metawaileh being merely servants here. At last, after an appalling road, we came into a great amphitheatre of hills and saw the Roda Bridge, our object, in front of us, and all our path, and here Masa left us, after stoutly refusing to be tipped. We got to the natural bridge at 12 and lunched there, and very wonderful it was, with a rushing torrent flowing under it. We set off again at 1 and rode over hill and down valley by road, perfectly indescribable. I have been on worse, but never for so long. The rhododendron was flowering and masses of yellow broom, and the hills were terraced for mulberry and vine right up to the summit. After we had gone about 2 hours I saw that my horse was lame and, on examination, found that he had lost a shoe. Fortunately we were near a village, so that we could stop and put things right-all the horses needed looking to, and no wonder. I talked to the village people while we waited-charming people they all were, Maronites, most intelligent. Lots of them emigrate to America.
Saturday, 10th. And so to-day. We set off about 7-it was already fearfully hot, we walked 3 hours leading our horses, over the devilish road. Then we got on to the carriage road to Beyrout and followed it all along the coast arriving at 3 about. We shall go to Jaffa to-morrow, as there is a boat and I am anxious to get home. But you know, dearest Father, I shall be back here before long! One doesn't keep away from the East when one has got into it this far.
CHAPTER VII
1901-1902 - SWITZERLAND-SYRIA-ENGLAND
To F.B.
REDCAR, March 5th, 1901.
[She had been on the golf links.]
It was a regular March day with a bitter wind. The pools of water on the links were as blue as the cracks in a glacier and the wind shivered them into steely lines. They reminded me of a simile in an Arab war song — "the folds of their coats of mail were like the surface of a pool which is struck by the pressing wind... ."
[Gertrude does not seem to have left England again until the late summer of 1901 when she returns to Switzerland for some more climbing.]
To H. B.
GRINDELWALD, Sunday, 1901.
... I'm enjoying myself madly — I had a very interesting day on the Schreckhorn yesterday. We went up from here on Friday to the Schwartzegg Hut and lunched on the way at a little place called the Baregg. After we had been at the nice comfy hut about an hour (during which time I had seen a friendly marmot — he sat for some time on a rock looking at me and then hopped thoughtfully away) there arrived two young men Gerard and Eric Collier with their guides... . We had a most cheerful evening and retired to bed on our shelf at 8:30 BY 11:30 we were off. "Schreckhorn!", said one of the Colliers' guides like an omnibus conductor, and we walked off into the night. Till 4 we climbed up a series of snow couloirs and small arêtes, a little steep cutting, but all quite easy; then we got on to the rocks and sat down to breakfast till the dawn came. It was bitter cold. We then had 2 hours of arête, one or two nice traverses at the top, but the rock very rotten and requiring great care. The Colliers did it in excellent style. At 6 we got out into sunshine on a snow saddle and saw down the other side. I was beginning to think that the Schreckhorn had an absurd reputation, but the hour of arête from the saddle to the top made me alter my opinion. It's a capital bit of rock climbing, a razor edge going quite steep down, snow on one side and rock on the other, not quite solid so that you have to take the greatest care, and with a couple of very fine bits of climbing in it. It raises the Schreckhorn into the first class among mountains, though it's rather low down in its class. After 5 minutes of wondering what was going to happen next, I found my head and my feet and had a thoroughly enjoyable hour. We got to the top at 7 and the Colliers about a quarter of an hour later... We parted at the Schrund, they going over Grimsel way. I took the snow couloir, which was rather imprudent; we glissaded down as hard as ever we could go and good luck was with us, for not one stone fell while we were in it. We got down to the hut at 12. Here rather a comic incident occurred. We had left provisions and wood for our return and imagine our feelings at finding 3 Frenchmen burning our wood and making our tea! I said very politely that I was delighted to entertain them, but that I hoped they would let us have some of the tea, since it was really ours. They looked rather black, but made no apologies, nor did they thank me and I went away to change my things outside. When I came back they had gone, but they left the following entry in the visitors' book, "Nous sommes montés au refuge sans guides. Vue splendide! mais quelle faim! Heureusement nous avons trouvé du thé." I completed the entry by adding, "NB. It was my tea! " and signing my name... . But for the moment all our thoughts are turned to the virgin arête on the Fingeraarhorn and we are going up to the Schwartzegg to have a shot at it. It has been tried unsuccessfully 3 times; I don't suppose we shall manage it, but we shall have an amusing time over it. We keep it a deadly secret!... .
To F.B.
KURHAUS, ROSENLAUI, BERNER OBERLAND, August, 1901.
I am established for a day or two in this enchanting spot, having been driven out of the higher mountains by a heavy snowfall on Monday, which renders the big things impossible for a day or two. Here, there is a fascinating little rock range, which can be done in almost any weather. So I walked over on Tuesday by the Great Scheidegg and was at once received into the bosom of the Collier family... We spent Tuesday afternoon playing cricket, the whole family and I, with fir tree branches for stumps, and large butterfly nets handy to fish out the balls when they went into the river! Yesterday my guides and I were up at 4 and clambered up on to the Engelhorn range to take a good look round and see what was to be done. It was the greatest fun, very difficult rock work, but all quite short. We hammered in nails and slung ropes and cut rock steps-mountaineering in miniature. Finally we made a small peak that had not been done before, built a cairn on it and solemnly christened it. Then we explored some very difficult rock couloirs, found the way up another peak which we are going to do one of these days... I shall probably stay here till Sunday morning which will give the snow time to get right. Then I shall return to my great schemes... .
To H.B.
ROSENLAUI, Sunday, 8th September, 1901.
I am now going to give you a history of my adventures. Friday: we set out before dawn, the mists lying low everywhere on the sporting chance of finding fine weather above them. We walked up the hour and a half of steep wood which is the Preface to every climb here, and got to our familiar scene of action, a rocky valley called the
Ochsenthal. Our problem was to find a pass over a precipitous wall of rock at he S. end of it. Now this rock wall had been pronounced impossible by the two experts of these parts and by their Guide,. We cast round and finally decided on a place where the rock wall was extremely smooth, but worn by a number of tiny water channels, sometimes as much as 3 inches deep by 4 across. These gave one a sort of handhold and foothold. just as we started up it began to snow a little. The first 100 feet were very difficult and took us three quarters of an hour. The rock was excessively smooth and in one place there was a wall some 6 feet high where Ulrich had to stand on Heinrich's shoulder. Above this 100 feet it went comparatively easily and in an hour we found ourselves in a delightful cave, so deep that it sheltered us from the rain and sleet which was not falling thick. Here we breakfasted, gloomily enough. After breakfast things looked a little better and we decided to go on though it was still raining. The next bit was easy, rocks and grass and little ridges, but presently we found ourselves on the wrong side of a smooth arête which gave us no hold at all. We came down a bit, found a possible traverse and got over with some difficulty. A rotten couloir and a still more rotten chimney and we were on the top of the pass, rh. 2000. from the cave. We were pleased with ourselves! It was a fine place; about 2000 feet of arête, less perhaps, between the great peak of the Engelhorn on the right and a lower peak on the left, which is the final peak of that arête of 4 peaks we did the other day. We called this 5th peak of our arête the Klein Engelhorn... The whole place up there is marked with chamois paths, no one, I expect, having ever been there before to disturb them. There is, however, an old old cairn on the low slopes of the Engelhorn, made by some party who, having come over the Engelhorn, tried to traverse down the N. side and turned back at this place. We know that neither the N. nor the S. side of the Gemse Sattel, as we have called it, has ever been done. Indeed the S. side may be impossible, but I don't think it is. They say it is, but we know that the experts may be mistaken. It was snowing so hard that we decided we could do no more that day and returned by the way we had come... We got down the smooth rocks with the help of the extra rope. It was most unpleasant, for the water was streaming down the couloirs in torrents and we had to share the same couloirs with it. It ran down one's neck and up one's sleeves and into ones boots — disgusting! However, we got down and ran home through the woods. In the afternoon it cleared and at dawn on Saturday we were off again. We went again to the top of the Gemse Sattel; it was a beautiful day and we knew our way and did the rocks in an hour and ten minutes less than we had taken the day before. Here we breakfasted and at 10 we started off to make a small peak on the right of the saddle which we had christened beforehand the Klein Engelhorn. We clambered up an easy little buttress peak which we called the Gemse Spitz and the Klein Engelhorn came into full view. It looked most unencouraging; the lower third was composed of quite smooth perpendicular rocks, the next piece of a very steep rock wall with an ill-defined couloir or two, the top of great upright slabs with deep gaps between them. It turned out to be quite as difficult as it looked. We got down the Gemse Spitz on to a small saddle, did a very difficult traverse forwards and upwards above the smooth precipitous rocks, scrabbled up a very shallow crack and halted at the bottom of a smooth bit of overhanging rock. The great difficulty of it all was that it was so exposed, you couldn't ever get Yourself comfortably wedged into a chimney, there was nothing but the face of the rock and up you had to go. For this reason I think it more difficult than the Simili Stock. Well, here we were on an awfully steep place under the overhanging place. Ulrich tried it on Heinrich's shoulder and could not reach any hold. I then clambered up on to Heinrich, Ulrich stood on me and fingered up the rock as high as he could. It wasn't high enough. I lifted myself a little higher — always with Ulrich on me, mind! — and he began to raise himself by his hands. As his foot left my shoulder I put up a hand straightened out my arm and made a ledge for him. He called out, "I don't feel at all safe — if you move we are all killed." I said, "All right, I can stand here for a week," and up he went by my shoulder and my hand. It was just high enough. Once up he got into a fine safe place and it was now my turn. I was on Heinrich's shoulder with one foot and with one on the rock. Ulrich could not help me because he hadn't got my rope-I had been the last on the rope, you see, and I was going up second, so that all I had was the rope between the two guides to hold on to. It was pretty hard work, but I got up. Now we had to get Heinrich up. He had a rope round his waist and my rope to hold, but no shoulder, but he could not manage it. The fact was, I think, that he lost his nerve, anyhow, he declared that he could not get up, not with 50 ropes, and there was nothing to do but to leave him. He unroped himself from the big rope and we let down the thin rope to him, with which he tied himself, while we fastened our end firmly onto a rock. There we left him like a second Prometheus — fortunately there were no vultures about! So Ulrich and I went on alone and got as far as the top of the first great slab which was a sort of gendarme.
[I must add as a footnote to this letter that when Gertrude came home to us and related the thrilling ascent, still more exciting naturally in the telling, she told us that after it was over Ulrich had said to her, "If, when I was standing on your shoulders and asked you if you felt safe, you had said you did not, I should have fallen and we should all have gone over." And Gertrude replied to him, "I thought I was falling when I spoke."]
Here Ulrich shouted down to me, "It won't go!" My heart sank — after all this trouble to be turned back so near the top! Ulrich came down with a very determined face and announced that we must try lower down. We were now on the opposite side of the mountain from that on which we had left Heinrich. We went down a few feet and made a difficult traverse downwards above a precipice till we came to a chimney. I leant into the crack, Ulrich climbed on to my shoulder and got to the top. It was done! a few steps more brought us to the very top of all and we built a cairn and felt very proud. There was a difficult moment coming down the first chimney. We had left our thin rope with Heinrich, SO we had to sling the thick rope round a rock for Ulrich to come down on. But it was still wet from the day before and when we got to the bottom the rope stuck. He went up and altered its position and came down and it stuck again. Again he went up, and this time he detached it and threw it down to me and came down without a rope at all. I gave him a shoulder and a knee at the last drop. So we got back and rescued Heinrich and after a great deal of complicated rope work we reached the Gemse Sattel again after 4 hours of as hard rock climbing as it would be possible to find. Lunch was most agreeable. Our next business was to get up the Engelhorn by the arête up which I told you we saw the chamois climb the other day. This proved quite easy-it has not been done before, however-and at 3:30 we were on the top of the Engelhorn. Now we had to come down the other side — this is the way the Engelhorn is generally ascended. It's a long climb, not difficult, but needing care, especially at the end of a hard day when you have no finger tips left... It was 7 o'clock before we reached the foot of the rocks. It Was too late and too dark to think of getting down into the valley so we decided that we would sleep at the Engen Alp at a shepherd's hut. We wandered over Alps and Alps — not the ghost of a hut was to be found. It was an exquisite starry night and I had almost resigned myself to the prospect of spending the whole night on the mountain side, when suddenly our lantern showed us that we had struck a path. At 9:30 we hove up against a chalet nestled in to the mountain side and looking exactly like a big rock. We went in and found a tiny light burning. in a minute 3 tall shepherds, with pipes in their Mouths, joined us and slowly questioned us as to Where we had come from and whither we were going. We said we were going no further and would like to eat and sleep. One of the shepherds lighted a blazing wood fire and cooked a quantity of milk in a 3-legged cauldron and we fell to on bowls of the most delicious bread and milk I ever tasted. The chalet was divided into two parts by a wooden partition. The first Part was Occupied by some enormous pigs, there was also a ladder in it leading u
p to a bit of wooden floor under the roof where the fresh hay was kept. Here I slept. The other room had a long berth all down one side of it and a shelf along another filled with rows of great milk tins. The floors were just the hard earth and there was a wooden bench on which we ate and a low seat by it. I retired to my hayloft, wrapped myself in a new blanket and covered myself over with hay and slept soundly for 8 hours when my neighbours, the pigs, woke me by grunting loudly to be let out. The shepherd gave us an excellent breakfast of milk and coffee — we had our own bread and jam. It was so enchanting waking up in that funny little place high up on the mountain side with noisy torrents all round it, The goats came flocking home before we left: they had spent a night out on the mountains, having been caught somewhere in the dark and they bleated loud complaints as they crowded round the hut, licking the shepherd's hand. It was about 7:30 before Ulrich and I set off down the exquisite Urbach Thal; Heinrich had gone on before. We walked down for a couple of hours discussing ways up the Engelhorn and the Communal System! then we turned into the valley of the Aar and dropped down on to Innertkirchen in the green plain below. This is Ulrich's native place. We went to his home and found his old father, a nice old man of 70, who welcomed us with effusion. It was an enchanting house, an old wooden chalet dated 1749, with low rooms and long rows of windows, with muslin curtains, and geranium pots in them. All spotlessly clean. They gave me a large — well, lunch, it was 11:30, of eggs and tea and bread and cheese and bilberry jam, after which Ulrich and I walked up through the woods here and arrived at 2 in the afternoon. I don't think I have ever had two more delightful alpine days. To-morrow I go over to Grindelwald; the weather looks quite settled. Wednesday up to the hut, from whence on Wednesday night we try the Finsteraarhorn arête. If we do it we sleep at another hut On Thursday night, and at the Grimsel on Friday and Saturday. Sunday night we bivouac under the Lauteraarhorn and Monday try the arête to the Schreckhorn. Probably I should leave for England on Tuesday... .