The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-03-07

accident is the famous accident to Mr..
Whympers party on the Matterhorn. 1t
is an old and well-known story, but one
may venture to repeat it in the briefest
possible outline.
1t happened on the way down, at the
point where the angle of inclination al
tiers, and the mountain suddenly becomes
sleeper. SO that the leaders of the party
were hidden from those above them. Mi
chel Croz, the guide, was in front. Then
followed Mr.. Hadow, the Rev. Charles
Hudson Lord Francis Douglas, the old
and young Tangwalder and Mr.. Whmy-
per himself The lame duck of the party
was Mr.. Hadow. He was tired out and
could hardly move. Croz was obliged to
keep close 90 him, in order to join his
feet into the proper footholds. He Slipped,
fell against Croz, and knocked him, too,
from his foothold. Croz fell 10 or L feet
through the air, and then the shock
came Instantly Hudson and Lord Fran
els Douglas were dragged from their
places, and the weight of the four falling
men came upon the other three, who
planted themselves firmly, and chung to
the rocks, the jerk coming on them as
one man. Even then nothing could have
saved them if the rope had held. But the
rope broke, and its parted strands sepa.
rated the living and the dead. There were
below, and three terror-stricken men
ciinGing to the Matterhorn crags
Lord Francis Doug. as, before his death
on the Matterhorn, had fallen off such an
arete on the dangerous Ober-Gabelhorn.
Happily. his guide, seeing him fall. did
the only thing possible to save both their
lives. He leaped over the arete on the
opposite side to that on which Lord
Francis Douglas had fallen. The two men
h aT.1 4. la.
across the ridge by the rope; they had
not let go of their ice-axes. and were
presently able to scramble upon onto it
again. Other guides have been known to
do the same thing, on the arete of Monte
Rosa, and on certain aretes in the Enga-
dine 1t is the only thing to be done
under the circumstances; but ii Is not
easy while sittirg at home to realize how
much presence of mind is needed to do It.
Turning to the second group of acct
dents-the cases in which the acc'd mt
occurs because something has fallen upon
the climber-we have to do with ava
lanches. These are avalanches of snow. of
ice and Of rock; but the snow avalanches
are the more frequent and the most i'm
portant.
Canon Girdlestone OF oxford relates how
he once sat down to lunch in the track
of such an avalanche and had only just
time to scurry out of the way before it
whizzed past; and that great climber, Mr..
Tuckett, once had a race with an ava
lanche on the Eiger Glacier.
This is one kind of avalanche accident.
Another and more common kind is when
the climbers themselves start the ava
lanche. They are traversing a slope of
ice on which a certain amount of fresh
snow has fallen; their footsteps loosen
the snow and set it sliding. 1t trips
them up and carries them down with it.
The slide ends in crevasse; the danger
is that they will fall into It., and that the
snow will follow them and bury them
alive. Yet there are men who have been
carried away by such avalanches and es-
capped alive. The most famous man who
underwent such experience was the late
Prof. Tyndall.
1t happened on the Piz Morteratsch, in
the Engadine, in 1864. The professor,
with two friends, Mr.. Hutchinson and
Mr.. Lee Warner, and two guides named
Jenni and Walter, had occasion to cross
a gully filled with hard ice coated with
new snow. The slope led straight down
onto a glacier with yawning crevasses in
ii. Jenni, who was a very famous guide,
ought to have known better than to VEN
ture in that gully. He had not led mis-
party very far onto ii when he realized
the danger and warned the others to tread
gingerly as a false step here might start
an avalanche"
THE word" says Prof. Tyndall was
scarcely uttered when | heard the sound
of fall behind me; then rush, and in
moment my two friends and their guide,
all apparently entangled together, whir-
red past me. l suddenly planted myself
to resist their shock, but in an instant
was in their wake, for their impetus was
irresistible. A moment afterward Jenni
was whirled away, and thus, in a twink
ling OF an eye. all five of us found our
selves riding downward with uncontroll-
able speed on the back of an avalanche
which a single slip had originated"
There was nothing to clutch at--no
means of arresting the descent. They
tried to put on the brake by grinding the
points Of their alpenstocks into the ice.
without the least result In a sense, as It
turned out, their very speed was their
salvation. 1t caused them to shoot over
the gaping crevasses into which they
would have tumbled helpless if they had
been going at a slower rate. But there
were other crevasses lower down. Could
they stop themselves before reaching
these? 1t was just a chance, and the
chance happened to be in their favor
I'VE came to rest so near the brow that
two or three seconds of our average mo-
ton of descent must have carried US
over. Had this occurred we should have
fallen into the chasms and been covered
up by the tail of the avalanche. Hutch
inson emerged from the snow with his
forehead bleeding; Jenni had a bit of
flesh removed from his hand by collision
against stone" 4" = No one, how
ever, was seriously hurt, though the pro-
fessor found that he had lost his watch.
Finally, there are the incidents which
are due 10 billiards. Mount Bland has
been the principal scene of these, for on
that the distances are great, the snow
fields are wide, and the chance of losing
your way is good. You may scoop your
self sort of shelter in the snow, and
walt; but you may freeze to death while
you are waiting. This was what happen
ed only a few years ago TO Prof. Nettle-
ship. OF Oxford, though the weather lift
ed in time fot the other members of the
party to be saved. A still graver case
occurred in 1870. when a party of three
American travellers, with sight guides. ell
persisted together In this manner. one of
thenl-Mr. T. Beans-had scrubbed a
fragmeutary diary Of his experience
which was subsequently found lying be-
side him. We may end this article nv
quoting It's concluding words:
Sept. (evening).-We have been on
Mount Blanc for two days In a terrible
snowstorm; we have lost our way and are
in a hole scooped out of the snow. at n
hight of 1900 feet: have no hope of de-
sceudng. Perhaps this b ok may be found
and forwarded. We have no food;
my feet are already frozen and am ex
l.