The pioneers of the Alps

240 Pages·2010·17.84 MB·English

by  Cunningham, C. D

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THE
PIONEERS OF THE ALPS
CUNNINGHAM
C. D.
Captain W. de W. ABNEY, C.B., R.E., F.R.S.
SECOND EDITION
B STON
ESTES AND LAURIAT.
1SSS
TREASUREROiOM
C7I +
JOHNSnOL'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