Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the Years 1860-69

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PART I.


CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.


BEACHY HEAD.


On the 23d of July, 1860, I started for my first tour in the Alps. As we
steamed out into the Channel, Beachy Head came into view, and recalled a
scramble of many years ago. With the impudence of ignorance, my brother
and I, schoolboys both, had tried to scale that great chalk cliff. Not the
head itself—where sea-birds circle, and where the flints are ranged so
orderly in parallel lines—but at a place more to the east, where the
pinnacle called the Devil’s Chimney had fallen down. Since that time we
have been often in dangers of different kinds, but never have we more
nearly broken our necks than upon that occasion.

In Paris I made two ascents. The first to the seventh floor of a house in
the Quartier Latin—to an artist friend, who was engaged, at the moment of
my entry, in combat with a little Jew. He hurled him with great good-will
and with considerable force into some of his crockery, and then
recommended me to go up the towers of Notre Dame. Half an hour later I
stood on the parapet of the great west front, by the side of the leering
fiend which for centuries has looked down upon the great city. It looked
over the Hôtel Dieu to a small and commonplace building, around which
there was always a moving crowd. To that building I descended. It was
filled with chattering women and eager children, who were struggling to
get a good sight of three corpses which were exposed to view. It was the
Morgue. I quitted the place disgusted, and overheard two women discussing
the spectacle. One of them concluded with, “But that it is droll;” the
other answered approvingly, “But that it is droll;” and the Devil