The Sun.
London, England, 1867-08-02 00:00:00

ALPINE ACCIDENTS.

" Who repeats in tones of sorrow the names of
friend or relative that has perished among the soli-
tudes of the Higher Alps? The Junfrau's spotless
snow, the crested summit of the Wetterhorn, Monte
Rasa's craggy peaks, are all guiltless of the travel-
ler's blood. These and many other lofty pinnacles
of Switzerland have welcomed the adventurous
mountaineer, and death or severe accident is un-
known." Thus hardly more than ten years ago wrote
a true-hearted gentleman, a skilled and dauntless
cragsman, whose early fate, and not his only, stands
out the saddest emphasis of contrast to his words.
The Matterhorn catastrophe, in which he pedalled
with his lamented companions, is far from stand-
ing alone on the black list which has accusuulated
siuce those words were penned. At that time six-
and-thirty years had softened down the recollection
of the fatal accident to Hamel's party on 'Mont
Blanc, and six-and-twenty that of the loss of two
Englishmen near the Col du Bonhomie in a tour-
mente. But only some three years more had passed
when a series of fatal seasons commenced with the
loss of Archdeacon Hardwick in descending from
the Pic de Sauvegarde, near the Porte de Venasque
in the Pyrenees, and of M. Grotto on the Findelen
Glacier near Zermatt. These accidents occurred
in 1859. In the year following we were'
again saddened by the fatal accident in descend-
ing from the Col du Geant to Courmayeur, in
which three young Englishmen and a guide perished;
and before the last notes of that mournful in-
telligence had quite died away we had to mourn
the loss of Mr. Watson in a crevasse on the
Winacher Ferner in the Tyrol. The marvellous
escape of Mr. Birkbeck, jun., on the northern
glacier of Miage in 1861, after a slide from the Col
to a point a full third of a mile vertically lower, is
well known. In the same year a French lady,
descending the Gemini on a mule, was thrown over
the edge of the precipice and killed. Mr. Long-
man, jun, also had .a narrow escape in 1862
on the Aletsch Glacier, where he fell into a deep
crevasse. The same year Bennen and his friend
Professor Tyndall, aided by Sir John Lubbock,
rescued a porter from a crevasse in the Aletsch
Glacier, in which he had been wedged for more
than an hour, entirely covered up by the snow and
icicles which he had carried with him in his fall.
Then followed a year of respite from fatal acci-
dent. But on the 28th February, 1864, a traveller,
with the famous guide • Bennen and a porter,
perished on the Haut de Cry near Sion, in an ava-
lanche, three of the party escaping. The same year
a porter was lost in a crevasse on Mont Blanc,
and Professor Tyndall and two friends, with the
guides Jenni and Walther, had a narrow escape
from worse than bruises on the Morteratsch Glacier.
A still more terrible record belongs to the two fol-
lAbowrinntghnsneast
byon lightning In the
on the s e
first,
thenhildtehantrhn
wasof Mrs.
fol-
lowed by the catastrophe on the Matterhorn, and
that almost immediately by the loss of Mr. Kny-
vett Wilson on the Riffelhorn, while the lapse of
another ten days saw a third fatal accident on
Monte Rosa by an avalanche, from which, however,
all the party escaped except one of the porters.
These three fatal occurrences took place within a
fortnight on ground which might be swept by a
radius of less than five miles. But still three
more deaths were due to that year. In the
the a s o
fol-
lowing month Herr Hupner, of Dresden, perished
with his guide on
Erlangen found a graveTitlis in a; crevd asse,tudent
descend-
f
ing the Gross Venediger Spitz. Last year was
hardly less fatal. Besides the two accidents
and horse
carriage n Mont Blanc, which resulted in the loss of
five lives, three ladies, with the
and there
which convoyed them, were precipitated into the
Tamina between Ragatz and Pfeffers,
was at least o:ie other loss of life on the borders of
the Lake Lucerne. This is a fearful array of
casualties for only eight seasons, nor can it be
regarded as absolutely complete. Bat if we set it
down that about 22 travellers and 11 guides or
porters have perished in Alpine expeditions in the
—Quarterly Review, new number.
last eight years we shill not be far from the,truth.