steam ahead instead of reversing the steam flow, with the result that the automatic braking arrangement, unable to withstand the sudden strain, broke down and the two cogwheels mounted out of the centrally placed rack, enabling the train to career down completely out of control. Once the cog-wheels had disengaged from the rack the driver was powerless, and there was nothing left for him to do to avert catastrophe. Owing to rain and snow the blinds in both the coaches were securely fastened down, and none of the passengers were able to jump out to safety. The fireman saved himself, as did also the conductor of the first coach; the driver bravely remained at his post and was killed. The conductor of the second coach could have saved himself also, but instead he crawled along the footboard of his coach, uncoupled it from the first coach, crawled back again, and putting on the brake pulled the coach up as it was about to follow the fore part of the train over the edge of the viaduct. For this act of surpassing courage and promptitude of mind he was awarded the Legion of Honour. The engine left the rails, as already stated, at the second bend of the S-shaped viaduct, and plunged through the parapet, dragging with it the first coachful of passengers. The drop at that point is about thirty feet on to the steep boulder-strewn mountain-side, and the coach was practically dashed to pieces upon a large pointed boulder. The weather was now perfect; there was not a cloud in the sky, and best of all the north wind-a sure sign of fair weather in the Alps-was blowing. At last we had the conditions for our climb. Four days provisions at least were necessary, and we spent a long time in cutting down the weight of food and equipment to the absolute minimum. Every article and luxury that was not an essential was ruthlessly ejected from our rucksacks, with the one exception of a small camera, until our burdens were reduced to a weight of some thirty pounds per man. On the afternoon of 30th August we walked up the Mer de Glâce to the Réquin hut. The weather was beautiful that evening, and we stood long outside the hut watching the calm passage of sunset along the peaks. Two other Englishmen, Mr E. V. Slater and Mr G. S. Sansom, were also stopping at the hut, and we enjoyed a pleasant pleasant evening in their company. We slept but little, not on account of the excitement that always precedes a great climb, but because of torture from innumerable fleas and insects of even lower orders, and we were thankful to leave the hut at an early hour and trudge up the Géant Glacier to the inn on the Col du Géant. The weather was irreproach able, but the north wind kept us moving briskly until the sun smiled from over the Dent du Géant. 66 We sat down to second breakfast under the rocks of the Vierge, the lonely 'Virgin" who stands watch and ward over the snowfields of the Géant Glacier. A little distance away a large party of men were wandering, apparently aimlessly, among the labyrinth of crevasses. We could not understand their object, until we suddenly realised that they were searching for the three lost Italians. From the point where we halted, the upper portion of Mont Blanc's south-east face was in full view over the intermediate crest of the Tour Ronde ridge. Long and earnestly we studied it through the small but excellent monocular carried by Graham Brown. A magnificent couloir descends from under the summit of Mont Blanc to the most westerly bay of the Upper Brenva Glacier. High up, this couloir is split into two arms by a bending rock ridge. The right fork of the Y so formed is comparatively short. The ridge ends above in the steep ice slopes beneath the point where the ice wall is breached. In order to reach the bending ridge we must traverse across the foot of the right-hand branch couloir to the lower Could the 200 feet high ice extremity of the bending ridge. wall running across the brow Thence it looked possible to of the mountain be surmounted follow the ridge up to the or turned? Unless we were point where the upper ice assured that there was some slopes appeared feasible. possibility of overcoming it, we Through the telescope these were resolved not to attempt upper ice slopes seemed of an the climb. In such circum- easy angle, but the telescope stances it would degenerate from lied to us. Once on the bending legitimate mountaineering to a ridge, however, we should be gamble, and mountains have no safe from the avalanches of ice sympathy with the gambler. and stones that sweep down the But, as we gazed, we were over- two couloirs on either side of it. joyed to see that at one point But the branch couloir must be the wall petered out into a crossed early if we were not smooth unbroken ice slope to run the gauntlet from these the sole breach in the fortifica- ice and stone avalanches, which tion. "But the decision," wrote the sun would detach as soon Graham Brown in his private as it touched the upper part of account of the climb, "must the mountain. To do this a VOL. CCXXIV.-NO. MCCCLIII. A 2 secure bivouac place as high as possible was essential, and to discover this bivouac was our problem for the morrow. All the afternoon we were faced by that terrible view: the enormous ramparts of the Pétéret ridge to Mont Blanc de Courmayeur, the Italian summit of Mont Blanc, and the 5300 feet wall of Mont Blanc sweeping round to the Col de la Brenva. How cold and repelling it looked when the sun had left it, and the fear of it sank into both of us. Had one of us weakened then, the resolution of both would have failed, but neither of us liked to voice his fears to the other. We tore ourselves away, and passing round to the other side of the hut, rested our minds on the sunny prospect of green hills stretching away at the foot, and the afternoon light changing imperceptibly to gold on the distant snows of Monte Rosa. So the day passed, with not a solitary cloud pennon to usher it out. We slept comfortably in real beds until we were awakened at 2.30 A.M. by the hateful clamour of an alarm clock. Glum and silent we ate the breakfast the obliging and kindly proprietor prepared for us, packed our rucksacks, strapped on our "Eckenstein crampons, and at 3.30 A.M. stepped out into the night. There was no moon, and far beneath the lights of Courmayeur blinked in feeble contrast to the ghostly banner of the Milky Way drawn across the breadth of Heaven. In order to approach the foot of Mont Blanc, it was necessary to cross the Tour Ronde ridge to the west of the Tour Ronde and descend to the upper basin of the Brenva Glacier. The Col du Trident, by which we intended to traverse the ridge, is itself a first-class expedition, and had provided me with a stiff bout of step-cutting in steep hard ice on the occasion when I had ascended the Brenva route. We had, therefore, many hours of hard work in front of us before we reached the foot of our climb. According to doctors a man's vitality is lowest in the hours immediately preceding dawn, and the majority of deaths and suicides occur then. With this theory I entirely concur. More will power and mental effort is required by the mountaineer at this period than at any other. There should be a feeling of excitement and elation at the thought of what the day may bring forth, and there are those who pretend that they experience it, in much the same way that the recruit pretends a love of battle. Personally I tramp behind a lantern apathetically, marvelling at the incredible folly of mountaineering in general and myself in particular. But after an hour or so of slogging along the brain awakens to a sense of responsibility to the body, and I gradually begin to take an interest in my surroundings. The snow was soft and the wind warm as we breasted the Col des Flambeaux, and struck over the western bay of the Géant Glacier towards the Col du Trident. The snow became ever softer as we progressed, and soon, from merely stamping a track, we were sinking in up to our knees at every step. We waded on until we realised the immense time and labour involved in reaching the Col du Trident. We sat down hopelessly in the end; there was little to be done or said, and it was certain that we must postpone the climb. But at all events we were determined on obtaining a view of the lower part of our route, and with this object in view decided to spend the whole day, if needful, in ascending to the crest of the Tour Ronde ridge, the nearest point of which was the Aiguille de Toule immediately above us. It was still very dark, and as the ice we must cross looked considerably crevassed, we decided to await the dawn. The next hour of sitting on the snow was the dreariest that I have ever spent on a mountain. All our hopes had been dashed by this unexpected contretemps of soft snow, all our preparations seemed to have been made in vain; for who could expect the fine weather to continue to hold out indefinitely, and even the ever wonderful dawn tinge on the peaks was dismissed with a contemptuous snarl. At last it was light enough to see, and we proceeded uphill towards the Aiguille de Toule. satisfactory view of Mont Blanc. Seated on slabs of gneiss rock we munched our second breakfast; with the coming of the sun our grumpiness evaporated, and we set off in better spirits for the Tour Ronde. The Tour Ronde is beset on this, the eastern side, by an extensive sore of rotten rock, which is eating into the very vitals of the mountain, and scarcely did a minute pass but a mass was detached to thunder down to the Géant Glacier. We gave the locality a wide berth, for many tons fall daily, and the peak was visibly and continually rotting before our eyes. A steep ice slope of considerable length leads up to the eastern ridge of the Tour Ronde, but our sharp crampons, helped by the well-cut steps of a former party, saved us much labour with the ice-axe. As we topped the ridge Mont Blanc burst upon us in all its magnificence. Far beneath the riven Brenva Glacier crawls down to the meadows of the Val Veni. All day long and all night its shattered ice-falls rage at the imperious behest of gravity, and the grumble of their discontent echoes sullenly around the gaunt precipices that enclose them. Higher up the glacier relents, and at the head of the ice-falls is a little bay of snow, set like a peaceful strand 'twixt the frozen ice-billows and the huge face behind. To the right of the great couloir, at the point where it narrows, a conspicuous red We gained the peak without difficulty, but found that we must ascend to the summit of the Tour Ronde to obtain a buttress projects from the face. It looked perpendicular, and we were at once assured that hereat its base-was the ideal situation for our bivouac. Not only was it placed in an exactly suitable position for a rapid traverse of the branch couloir early in the morning, but it appeared to offer the only completely safe site for a bivouac on the whole of the south-east face of Mont Blanc. Every where else was likely to be swept by ice-avalanches from the fringe of hanging glaciers and ice-walls above. Two routes to the foot of it appeared possible. The first, by an upward traverse from the little col at the foot of the Brenva ridge; the second, directly from below. In either case this small col, which we have since named Col Moore in honour of the first conqueror of the Brenva route, must previously be reached. This red buttress is the key to the climb ; without its friendly protection the ascent would hardly be justifiable, and so delighted were we with it that we named it the "Red Sentinel," or "la Sentinelle Rouge. We had reached the east ridge of the Tour Ronde at 10 A.M. Many hours of daylight lay before us; the snow on all southerly slopes was good and hard; the weather was perfect. As one man we exclaimed, "We will go on." The Tour Ronde is no part of a rapid or easy route from the Col du Géant to the upper Brenva Glacier, and from the point on the ridge where we halted on first seeing Mont Blanc, a long broken ridge confronted us, offering the prospect of several hours' climbing. The alternative was a direct horizontal traverse over the southern slopes of the Tour Ronde, which would have the advantage of taking us to the Col Occidental de la Tour Ronde, whence it is possible to descend to the Brenva Glacier. The excellent condition of the snow enabled us to walk with confidence over slopes of fully 50° in angle. The last wavering doubt was dissipated; we were coming to grips with things. With our crampons biting well into the icy snow at every step, we passed steadily over the face of the Tour Ronde, probably the first party to undertake what would under icy conditions be a most hazardous route, but which was now perfectly safe, and an hour later found ourselves on the Col Occidental de la Tour Ronde, with nothing but steep snow slopes separating us from the Brenva Glacier and the base of our objective. Soon we reached the snow bay at the head of the Brenva Glacier, and walked across its gentle expanses to the foot of the Col Moore at the commencement of the Brenva ridge. The col was protected by a half-choked crevasse and a wall of ice, perhaps sixty feet high, artfully overlaid with slushy snow. It was cold work for the leader; at every step the snow had to be shovelled and scraped away in order that a sound foothold could be cut |