* UMASS/AMHERST * 1 312066 0344 2693 3 ':.;.'':'-"-.: ,:'.-'. : '. "".':. '. -'C- C. D. CUNNINGHAM TAIN ABNEY F.R.S. '~*~**r%**t« iDaDDDnanDDDDnDDDDaDDnDaDnnnDDnp , o* J?**.!., *«nst UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LIBRARY DQ 824 C82 DDODDDDDODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDQDDDD THE PIONEERS OF THE ALPS C. D. CUNNINGHAM Captain W. de W. ABNEY, C.B., R.E., F.R.S. SECOND EDITION B ST ON ESTES AND LAURIAT. 1SSS TREASURE ROiOM C7I + JOHNS nOL'SE, C To Sir FRANCIS OTTIWELL ADAMS, K.C.M.G., C.B. Her Britannic Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Swiss Confederation, &c, &c, &c. Honorary Member of the Alpine Club THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/pioneersofalps1859cunn PREFACE Tn the pages now presented to the reader will be found a collection of sketches of the lives and of portraits of those who first conquered the great peaks, opened out the mountain highways, and who may fairly be said to have "made possible that sport which so many of us enjoy every year in the Alps —men who are, or have been in their day, undoubtedly great guides. The present is a singularly favourable time for forming such a collection, as in addition to the portraits of those guides who have perfected the Art of Climbing, and who are still among us, we are able to obtain the likenesses of many of those who took the largest share in the work of exploring the Alps after the commencement of systematic mountaineering. The first point on which a decision was required was as to the mountain centres to which the selection of guides should be limited. For several reasons we resolved to confine ourselves to Grindelwald, Zermatt, Chamonix, and their surroundings. Had we gone further afield, there are three names at least which, as a matter of course, must have had a place in this work—Hans Grass, Gaspard pere, and Santo Siorpaes. The next matter was an extremely difficult one to decide, viz. the selection from among the living guides of those who should rank amongst the pioneers. Most amateurs spend the majority of their seasons in the Alps with the same leading guide, and although they may have been together on the rope with other guides, or seen them at work on the same mountain, there are but a limited number, even among the oldest and most experienced climbers, who have had opportunities of really observing and making a fair comparison between all the guides who may be considered to hold a foremost place in the craft. As an instance of this we may mention that the present editor of the Alpine Journal laughingry told one of us, that he had only once seen Melchior Anderegg, and that from a window ! It appeared to us that the most impartial course to pursue was to take the opinion of a selected number of working members of the Alpine Club, whose knowledge of the qualifications of the guides was more than ordinarily extended, and who must be considered as representative men. We accordingly requested ten members to give us their advice, and out of them the eight following responded to our invitation. Their names are a sufficient guarantee — — PIONEERS OF THE ALPS. for the value and impartiality of their opinions, representing as they do the various epochs of climbing from the formation of the Alpine Club to the present time : Mr. G. S. Barnes. Mr. C. B. Mathews. Mr. W. B. Davidson. Mr. A. W. Moore. Mr. J. Walker Hartley. Mr. H. Pasteur. Mr. H. Seymour Hoare. My. Horace Walker. A skeleton list of guides was sent to each (none knew the names of the others who were giving their opinion), with, the request that they would mark with a " D," as " doubtful," those guides of whom they had the slightest doubt as to their being on the list, to strike out those names which they considered should not appear, and also to add any names which our scroll-list had failed to give, but which, in their opinion, should have been inserted. The result of the balloting lists was as follows, giving a -| mark for those names followed by a D. : Fifteen guides had eight votes (maximum), five guides seven and a half, two guides seven, and one guide, Josef Mooser, six and a half votes. It would be invidious to other guides to state further the results of the ballot ; we can only say that it left no possible doubt in our minds as to our having obtained a consensus of opinion strongly in favour of the twenty-two we have given, and to which number we had resolved and felt bound to limit ourselves. It will thus be seen that we ourselves have taken no part in the selection of the guides ; we pledged ourselves to be bound by the opinion of our referees. Our endeavour has been that the biographical notices of the living guides should be written either by the amateurs with whom their names will always be associated, or by those who have had ample opportunities of forming an estimate of their character and capacities. We have always asked our contributors to keep one object pro- minently before them—to draw the same accurate and faithful description of the guide's life and character as it has been our aim to give in the illustrations of their outward appearance. With the exception of the sketch of Ernile Rey, all the biographical notices of those guides which one of us has written were submitted to those who had spent many seasons in the Alps with them, and who, although themselves indisposed to provide us with the notices, were yet kind enough to give us the benefit of their criticism upon them. To these and to all those who have contributed biographical sketches we here formally express our thanks and sense of obligation. If there be any merit in this work, we feel that it is mainly due to their labours, which have been PREFACE. so freely given and largely used. The Editorial work and the revision of the proof has certainly been no light task to one of us. We feel that we must offer our most sincere aud cordial thanks to Mr. W. B. Davidson, who amid a constant pi'ess of official duties has nevertheless always been ready to give us his most welcome counsel and advice as regards the scope of the work, as well as his unwearying help and assistance in the preparation of these pages for the press. The photographic illustrations which have hitherto accompanied publications have, as a rule, been silver- prints, which are more or less fugitive, or by some per- manent process in which the artistic qualities are spoiled by a vulgar gloss. It has been our object to avoid both these defects, and the portraits have been printed from plates produced by photogravure, a process almost as old as photography itself, but which has only been rendered possible for a work of this kind by recent improve- ments. The illustrations, being in printers' ink, will last as long as the paper on which they arc printed. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In issuing a Second Edition of this volume, the Authors desire to convey their sincere thanks to Mr. G. E. Foster, Mr. J. Walker Hartley, Mr. C. E. Mathews, Mr. P. F. Tuckett, and the Rev. F. T. Wethered, for the valuable criticisms they have been so good as to make regarding the First Edition. The greater part of the corrigenda we have made has been at the suggestion of these gentlemen. The name of Mr. Thomas Middlemore was inadvertently omitted from the list of contributors in the First Edition, an error which we very much regret. CONTRIBUTORS, Clifford Allbutt, M.D. Frederick Gardiner. George S. Barnes. Rev. W. S. Green. Henry Cockbdrn. J. Walker Hartley. W. M. Conway. H. Seymour Hoare. Rev. W. A. B. Coolidge. T. S. Kennedy. C. T. Dent. J. Oakley Maund. W. B. Duffield. C. E. Mathews. James Eccles. William Mathews. G. E. Foster. Thomas Middi.emore. Douglas W. Fkeshfield. Rev. F. T. Wethered. CONTENTS. GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF MOUNTAINEERING- I. Period, ] 387— 1787 1 II. Period, 1788—1854 7 III. Period, 1855—1865 14 IV. Period, 1866—1885 26 V. Alpine Accidents . 30 VI. Mountaineering without Guides 37 VII. Mountaineering in Winter . 39 VIII. Ice-axe and Rope . 42 IX. Guidecraft . 48 THE TRAINING OF MOUNTAINEERS THE PORTRAITS- .... 61 GUIDES OF THE PRESENT DAY- Melchior Anderegg 64 Johann von Bergen 68 johann jaun . 71 Ulrica Lauener 79 Christian Lauener 81 Christian Almer 83 Johann Baumann 87 Peter Baumann 90 . PIONEERS OF THE ALPS. Ulrich Alher. Ulrich Kaufmann . Josef Imboden Aloys Pollingee Peter Knubel. Alexander Boegenei; Francois Devouassoud Francois Couttet . Michel Patot . Alphonse Patgt Edouard Cupelin Jean Joseph Maquignaz Jean-Antoine Carrel Emile Rey "IN ME MORIAM"— AUGUSTE BALMAT AUGUSTE SiMOND Christian Michel Peter Bohren. Franz Andermatten J. J. Bennen . Jakob Anderegg Michel Croz . Peter Rubi Johann Fischer Laurent Lanier Andreas Maurek Ferdinand Imseng APPENDIX . INDEX THE PIONEERS OF THE ALPS. t. tofoilj anir gMflpmmt of flmtntemming. I. PERIOD 1387—1787. The 17th of September, 1854, the date of the first ascent of the "Wetterhorn from Grindelwald, is a red-letter day in the history of modern mountaineering,—of mountaineering properly so called which is undertaken for its own sake, and entirely apart from the performing of some par- ticular feat, or from some special scientific object. If we look at the table of first ascents in Studer's ' tJber Eis und Schnee,' we shall see how few of the great peaks had been conquered previous to 1854, the most important among them being the Titlis in 1737, the Buet in 1770, Mont Velan in 1779, the Dent du Midi in 1784, Mont Blanc in 1786, the Jungfrau in 1811, the Finsteraarhorn in 1812, the Todi in 1824, the Gross Lauteraarhorn in 1842, and at various times several of the minor peaks of the Monte Rosa massif.