The Washington times., 1911-07-10
GLACIER TO GIVE UP
BANKERS BODY It
HAS HELD FORYEARS
American Girl in Switzer,
land to Seek Remains of
Her Father.

CHAMONIX. Switzerland. July 10
Reverence for the memory OF her
father whom she scarcely knew. has
drawn Edith Randall across seas and
over snOw-capped mountains to this
little village, where next month she
hopes to wrest from the grasp Of the
Glacier des Bessons all that remains OF
John c. Randall.
Mr.. Randall, her father, was a
wealthy banker in Quincy. Mass, when,
on September 6, 1870. he. with a party
of two other tourists and nine guides,
asCended to the top of the glacier. They
were frozen to death. Somewhere near
the highest point in the great, slowly
moving sea of Ice which lay on Mont
Blanc the bodies were covered in snow.
Time after time the sorrowing family
in far away America have endeavored
to take again from the glacier that
which the ice had claimed for its own
Gold Availed Nothing.
After each failure the natives of the
Swiss village shook their heads and
declared that time and love and the
lavish spending of gold were as naught
to the slow-creeping. ever-changing
the part of the glacier which was once
the top-couId make the long, slow jour
ney to the village, the sorrowing rela-
tives of John c. Randall must wait be-
fore they could claim their dead.
But the natives know that IL mere
gold could wrest the burden of dead from
the glacier, Randall would long ago
have lain beneath a formal slab in quiet
Quincy beside his ancestors.
And so every hunter in the village;
every mountaineer whose alpinstock
has caught in the icy mountains back
of the hamlet, has been himself aself-
constituted watcher. eager to bring
tIdings of the progress of the ice field,
and alert for every sign which might
serve to indicate the probable timo
when the prey of the glacier can be
wrested from it.
The last attempt to recover the
bodies was made three years ago
when Miss Ethel Randall. a grand
daughter of the banker, came here,
and visited the spot where Mr.. Ran
dali. his two companions, and the
guides were overtaken in the binding
whtrI of an Alpine storm, and frozen
to death
Forty Years Must Elapse.
For more than three months she re-
mained here, seeking some trace of
the bodies, but the men OF Chamonix.
who know the Glacier des Bessons,
told her, as they had told her rela-
tives, that forty years must go by
before any hope of recovering the
body could be held.
A few months ago, the glacier be-
gan its more rapid summer movement.
The watchers on the Alps saw ard
made sure that by September that
part of the glacier in which the
bodies lie, will reach the village. Then
they sent over the seas the message
for which the mourners for John C.
Randall have waited through four
long decades of glacier creep.
Edith Randall the daughter. is now
in Chamonix. There will be weeks of
waiting even now before she can know
whether at last the hopes and the
prayers of herself and her family will
come to naught or whether John C.
Randall will at last rest in the soil
of Quincy. his home.
Guides On the Watch.
Miss Randall has employed guides
the best in this region. She has caus-
ed stations to be prepared along the
line of search. Stalwart mountaineers
are on the watch ready to send the
word as soon as the ice tomb of the
bankeu emerges from the mountain
pass, and scores of men to whon the
long watch of the Randalls has he
to recover the bodies.
There are others in Chamonix than
the Randalls who are waiting for the
glacier. They are the families of the
guides, and here in Chamonix it is
said that children of the two tourists
have learned of what the RandalIs arc
doing, and are Fastening here to aid
in the search.