MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING IN THE DOLOMITES,* No class of men have ever
emulated Alexander more than the mountaineers. "New peaks to conquer" has been their motto since they first made the Alps their own ; and the ambitious cyclist only follows in less dangerous and poetic paths when he strives after fresh conquests for his wheel- The fever of the Alps has won votaries more devoted than almost any other of the exercise-fevers, and the constant change of scenery and experience which accompanies them upon their way supplies the never-failing stimulant of mind to keep the energies at work during the intervals of climbing. The percentage of accidents is wonderfully small, apt to impress when they happen, just as railway accidents do, by the sensational nature of their usual surroundings. And the present writer has it upon the authority of one of the oldest and experienced members of the Alpine Club, that the want of observance of ordinary caution and foresight, and neglect of some one of the established rules, is respon- sible for almost all the accidents that do occur. To observe the minutest care in details, and the closest inspection both of axe and rope, and to be content throughout with slow and equable np-hill pace in the easy places where the temptations to long strides are pressing, are among the elementary precautions which the rides prescribe. Who amongst us whose recollection of humorous portraiture goes back to the famous travels of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, but recalls Doyle's two delightful drawings of the long man Jones as he outpaced his companions at starting, and the same pedestrian carried back, exhausted, by their support P "Poor Jones! Who would have thought he ever could be tired ? "
But it is not with such elementary mountaineering as this that Mr. Davies is concerned. He is a climber of the most -advanced and accomplished kind, fearless and cautious both, according to the laws to which we have alluded. Of his favourite guide, Luigi Bernhard, one of the few who had ascended the notable Ffinffingerspitze, or Peak of the Five Fingers, when he undertook it, he writes that he is also " of the too few who appear to balance a high degree of enterprising -courage with a caution in details which never slumbers." And under this skilful guidance he undertook the ascent of the singular peak which in appearance, from the spirited and suggestive sketches with which the author has himself adorned his work, so fitly represents its name. Viewed from the northern side, it takes so exactly the shape of the hand -extended in an upward direction, as to vie with the closest of Nature's best-known imitations in rock. The Peak of the Five
• Dolomite Strongholds : the Last Untrodden Alrune Peeks. An Account of Ascents of the Croda di La go, the Little and Great Zinnem, the Cinque Torri, the Fanffingersp,tzo, and the Langkofel. Ily the Rev..T. Banger Davies, M.A., Member of the Alpine Club. With Map and Illustrations by the Author. London:
.Cleorge Boll and Sons.
Fingers is the centre of the Fassa group, and the whole of Mr. Davies's attack on the stronghold is a matter for interesting description. At the village of Livinalungo, he entered upon the last preliminary stage of his drive :—
"My new vehicle was a marvel of power within strait limits. In bodily shape between a costermonger's cart and a coffin, it was nearly as strong as a steel ram, and a heavy keel of stout timber running from end to end inclines me more towards the nautical resemblance. It might have served for a kind of a mountain monitor, tossing merrily along (not on billows, but) on four tight little wheels, two a long way in front and two a long way behind, all utterly springless. My bag and I popped up and down in the hold ; sometimes I fell upon the strapped cushion and retained the seat, sometimes I was ousted by Gladstone.' The comparative smoothness at the start was like the calmer water of the harbour's mouth, but where the Livinalungo commune or parish terminated, there the road ended and the breakers began. True, a braid of footpaths cut the turf as far as Araba, a settlement strewn about on the grassy slope, but hero all traces ended. Gaily we launched out over the sea of turf, and aiming for the lowest dip of the mountain range, continued for miles of comparatively easy going. Here and there a brook with steep banks had to be rushed,' when of course I viewed the process from outside. In one such place the horse jumped down first; as he put his fore-feet upon the opposite bank the front wheels of the vehicle thumped down into the stream, the contents were hurled in all directions, but the trap held together. There was then a pause for breath ; next, with a mighty effort the game little nag sprang upon the bank, bringing down the bind wheels with a burst and a crack that jerked the front ditto half out of the stream, and then a nimble second spring secured them. Another short pause, and again a brave dash, and the whole construction was once more upon the level sward."
Drawing in full view of the range after this, Mr. Davies gives us a good example of an unaffected power of graphic description :—
" Where the bright Dolomite summits caught the setting sun a fiery glow of rosy pink, seen nowhere else in the world, seemed to shine through the peaks as if the rock were an ember all aglow. The shadows of this strange rock are pale cobalt-blue, deepening into purple, and as I saw them that evening, the Fassa Dolomites, with the giant hand of the Ffinffinger, afforded the most unworld- like scene of brilliant beauty and unapproachable weirdness it had over been my lot to behold. Apparently hanging in the air at times, they lingered before us for some hours, until with the sinking sun they vanished."
The weather promising ill, our mountaineer devoted a day of rest to sketching, and in trying to imagine to himself the sort of existence which children must lead in the utter isolation of the valley where he lay in wait for his mountain ; but philo- sophically concluding from observation that they pitied him as much as he did them, he diverged into the reflection that man's conception of the actual misery of the animal creation, " based upon a scientific knowledge of the whole, and luridly illuminated by our own sensitiveness and imagination," is about on a par with this for error. No remarks whatever upon the subject of animals having led up to this, we feel rather more at a loss as to Mr. Davies's philosophical attainments than as to his faculties as observer, artist, or mountaineer. It is as if he suddenly felt obliged to indulge in a sentiment, and had not quite made up his mind to what it was to relate.
The Peak of the Five Fingers, as a kind of Dolomite Matterhorn, defied many assaults for a series of years. In 1888, Herr Dr. Darmstadter, of Berlin, made an attempt on the south-east side, accompanied by our author's friend, Luigi Bernhard, and another guide, and from the Daumenscharte, or " junction of the thumb " with the other digits, succeeded in
climbing 200 ft. up the wall of the second finger. Thence, how- ever, the party were desirous to retrace their steps, as the rocky ante which came next was extremely steep and disentegrated,
and seemed to the doctor too friable and dangerous. In the summer of 1889, the Prussian doctor repeated his attempts more than once, publishing his experiences on each occasion, and kindling, as our author expresses it, "the mountaineering appetite for the inaccessible " by declaring that the peak could never be conquered except under conditions exceptionally favourable, or by artificial aids. In the same year the moun- tain defeated several attacks by two rival invaders from Vienna and Botzen, and for 1890 she was let alone, except for two attempts, one by Mr. Norman Neruda, which was stopped by the unmelted ice, and another by Messrs. Schmitt and Santner, the self-same champions of Botzen. and Vienna, who on August 18th that summer achieved the summit, and
published a very short account of the climb in the Austrian, Alpine Times, which caused a sensation, as Mr. Davies tells us, in every Alpine club in Europe. Herr Schmitt's denial).
tion, strong as it was—and it is republished in the book before us—justifies Mr. Davies's account of it as free from all self- assertion, though it ends with a kind of challenge to the climbing world. "The expedition is by far the most difficult which I have ever undertaken. In no other peak are there so many difficult nor so many dangerous places to overcome. Who will bring down our cards ? " In twelve months more the mountain justified her conqueror's estimate, and it is characteristic of our age that the second triumph over its difficulties in September, 1891, was achieved by a woman. To Madame Imminck, of Amsterdam, " one of the most accomplished mountaineers of the age," belong the second honours ; while curiously enough, Mr. Norman Neruda accom- plished the ascent by another route at practically the same time, each party hearing the voices of the other "mysteriously sounding through the rock-riven heart of the peak." Herr Helversen, of Vienna—the Germans, so far, seem to have had the peak very much to themselves—was the first to print a detailed description of the ascent of the Five-Finger Mountain, and that, too, is set out at length in Mr. Davies's pages. "At about the same time, a week after Madame Imminck, and a week before Dr. Helversen, Mr. H. T. T. Wood conquered on behalf of England from yet another side, that of the south- east, and Mr. Davies, in 1892, was the next to Mr. Wood. He gives a full and noteworthy account of it, the most novel feature to mountaineers being probably the time record. Messrs. Schmitt and Santner accomplished their whole expedition in 16 hours 35 minutes; Mr. Norman Neruda in 15 hours 25 minutes ; Dr. Helversen in 17 hours ; and Mr. Davies in 11 hours ; certainly a great advance in the matter of rapidity. The next attempt to Mr. Davies's, by Herr Stiickler, of Stuttgart, terminated fatally, partly through the inevitable rashness which attends these abortive efforts.
The work ends with an account of the ascent of another of the peaks, the Langkofel ; and we are edified by reading of the reunion of the party with some hundred Hungarian, Austrian, and Italian guests at the Hotel Rossi at St. Ulrich, where there were no British, yet English was so generally spoken, that an irate Bohemian doctor left it in disgust, on the ground that no other language was to be heard. As we read different books of travels, nothing puzzles us more than the wide discrepancies as to the relative predominance of each especial tongue. Mr. Davies's book ends with a spirited eulogium on his favourite sport, which inspires us with more both of sympathy and admiration, than so far can the feats of the cyclist. "The only good climbing is safe climbing," he says modestly enough. For, as we study some of the drawings illustrative of the ascents—such, for instance, as that of Luigi Bernhard beginning on the Peak of the Five Fingers, we that stay at home are apt to experience some- thing like a shiver down the back, and to wonder what dangerous climbing may be like. It is even a little sugges- tive of the exploits of Mr. Haggard's famous climbers in She. But the book is a good book, and as far as description can really reproduce feats of the kind, it is, to our mind, very successful.
Previous page
