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Table of Contents
Learning Reactive Programming with Java 8
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
Why subscribe?
Free access for Packt account holders
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the example code
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. An Introduction to Reactive Programming
What is reactive programming?
Why should we be reactive?
Introducing RxJava
Downloading and setting up RxJava
Comparing the iterator pattern and the RxJava Observable
Implementing the reactive sum
Summary
2. Using the Functional Constructions of Java 8
Lambdas in Java 8
Introducing the new syntax and semantics
Functional interfaces in Java 8 and RxJava
Implementing the reactive sum example with lambdas
Pure functions and higher order functions
 Pure functions
Higher order functions
RxJava and functional programming
Summary
3. Creating and Connecting Observables, Observers, and Subjects
The Observable.from method
The Observable.just method
Other Observable factory methods
The Observable.create method
Subscribing and unsubscribing
Hot and cold Observable instances
The ConnectableObservable class
The Subject instances
Summary
4. Transforming, Filtering, and Accumulating Your Data
Observable transformations
Transformations with the various flatMap operators
Grouping items
Additional useful transformation operators
Filtering data
Accumulating data
Summary
5. Combinators, Conditionals, and Error Handling
Combining the Observable instances
The zip operator
The combineLatest operator
The merge operator
The concat operator
The conditional operators
The amb operator
The takeUntil(), takeWhile(), skipUntil(), and skipWhile()
conditional operators
The defaultIfEmpty( ) operator
Handling errors
The return and resume operators
The retrying technique
An HTTP client example
 Summary
6. Using Concurrency and Parallelism with Schedulers
RxJava's schedulers
Debugging Observables and their schedulers
The interval Observable and its default scheduler
Types of schedulers
The Schedulers.immediate scheduler
The Schedulers.trampoline scheduler
The Schedulers.newThread scheduler
The Schedulers.computation scheduler
The Schedulers.io scheduler
The Schedulers.from(Executor) method
Combining Observables and schedulers
The Observable<T> subscribeOn(Scheduler) method
The Observable<T> observeOn(Scheduler) operator
Parallelism
Buffering, throttling, and debouncing
Throttling
Debouncing
The buffer and window operators
The backpressure operators
Summary
7. Testing Your RxJava Application
Testing using simple subscription
The BlockingObservable class
The aggregate operators and the BlockingObservable class
Testing with the aggregate operators and the BlockingObservable
class
Using the TestSubscriber class for in-depth testing
Testing asynchronous Observable instances with the help of the
TestScheduler class
Summary
8. Resource Management and Extending RxJava
Resource management
Introducing the Observable.using method
Caching data with Observable.cache
Creating custom operators with lift
 Composing multiple operators with the Observable.compose
operator
Summary
Index
Learning Reactive
Programming with Java 8
Learning Reactive
Programming with Java 8
Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in

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www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author

Nickolay Tsvetinov

Reviewers

Samuel Gruetter

Dávid Karnok

Timo Tuominen

Shixiong Zhu

Commissioning Editor

Veena Pagare

Acquisition Editor

Larrisa Pinto

Content Development Editor

Adrian Raposo

Technical Editor

Abhishek R. Kotian

Copy Editors

Brandt D'mello

Neha Vyas
Project Coordinator

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Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

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Production Coordinator

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Cover Work

Conidon Miranda
About the Author
Nickolay Tsvetinov is a professional all-round web developer at
TransportAPI—Britain's first comprehensive open platform for
transport solutions. During his career as a software developer, he
experienced both good and bad and played with most of the popular
programming languages—from C and Java to Ruby and JavaScript.
For the last 3-4 years, he's been creating and maintaining single-
page applications (SPA) and the backend API architectures that
serve them. He is a fan of open source software, Rails, Vim, Sinatra,
Ember.js, Node.js, and Nintendo. He was an unsuccessful musician
and poet, but he is a successful husband and father. His area of
interest and expertise includes the declarative/functional and
reactive programming that resulted in the creation of ProAct.js
(http://proactjs.com), which is a library that augments the JavaScript
language and turns it into a reactive language.

First of all, I want to thank my wife, Tanya. I wrote this book

because she told me that I was capable of doing this. She was
with me all these months; I worked late at night and on
weekends, but she didn't mind that. She also helped me with the
content of this book. Thank you, Tanya; I love you and I dedicate
this book to you. I want to thank my baby girl, Dalia. She is the
one who makes me learn and do new things. One day, I want her
to be proud of me—she is my sun. I want to thank my colleagues
from TransportAPI, especially Dave, who helped me with my
English, and Jonathan and Martin, who gave me the courage to
finish the book.

I want to thank Astea Solutions, as they gave me space to write,

as well as my parents, Georgi and Dimana, who did the same for
me on weekends. Finally, I want to thank all my friends who
supported me—Simeon, Rosen, Deyan, Pavel, my sister, Marina,
and many more.
Thank you!
About the Reviewers
Samuel Gruetter holds a BSc degree in computer science from
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. As
a student assistant and member of the Scala team at EPFL, he
developed RxScala, which is a Scala adaptor for the RxJava
Reactive Extensions library. In this way, he contributed to RxJava.
He was also a teaching assistant for the Principles of Reactive
Programming massive open online course on Coursera, which is the
first online course on reactive programming.

Dávid Karnok is a research assistant and PhD student at the

Research Laboratory on Engineering and Management Intelligence
of the Institute for Computer Science and Control of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences.

He has been working with Java and related core technologies since
2005 to bring Java's benefits to manufacturing and logistic
companies.

He was the first to port Microsoft's Rx.NET framework to Java back

in 2010; however, the concept was so ahead of its time that his
library didn't catch much attention until Netflix came out with the
independent RxJava port in 2013. He joined the project not much
later and is a core collaborator and has contributed to about 30
percent of the code in the library over the years. With several years
of reactive programming experience and as a core developer of
RxJava, he frequently answers questions about the library on Stack
Overflow, where he reviews pull requests on the RxJava GitHub
project page and posts bug fixes and enhancements on a regular
basis.

Timo Tuominen develops large-scale software projects from

conception to completion for clients, including major telcos and
device manufacturers. As the technical lead, he has created dozens
of products and services both for consumer and business use.
Working with Futurice, he started using RxJava in 2013 and
designed one of the first pure RxJava architectures on Android. His
novel approach was a result of the uncompromising functional
reactive programming principles that he applied to an existing
platform. Several apps and thousands of code commits later, he is
now convinced that RxJava and FRP represent a new and better
way to build software.

I would like to dedicate this book to everyone who has put up

with my RxJava innovations.

Shixiong Zhu is an RxJava committer and also maintains the

RxScala project. He received his master's of science degree in
computer science from Peking University, China. After that, he joined
MicroStrategy and worked on several big data projects. He has also
worked on the infrastructure team at Xiaomi. Currently, he is living in
Beijing and working on the Apache Spark project, which is a fast and
general platform for large-scale data processing.
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Preface
Reactive programming has been around for decades. There has
been a few implementations of reactive programming from the time
Smalltalk was a young language. However, it has only become
popular recently and it is now becoming a trend. Why now you ask?
Because it is good for writing fast, real-time applications and current
technologies and the Web demand this.

I got involved in it back in 2008, when the team I was part of was
developing a multimedia book creator called Sophie 2. It had to be
fast and responsive so we created a framework called Prolib, which
provided objects with properties which could depend on each other
(in other words, we implemented bindings for Swing and much more
—transformations, filtering, and so on). It felt natural to wire the
model data to the GUI like this.

Of course, this was far away from the functional-like approach that
comes with RX. In 2010, Microsoft released RX and, after that,
Netflix ported it to Java—RxJava. However, Netflix released RxJava
to the open source community and the project became a huge
success. Many other languages have their port of RX and many
alternatives to it. Now, you can code using reactive programming on
your Java backend and wire it to your RxJava's frontend.

This book tries to explain to you what reactive programming is all

about and how to use it with RxJava. It has many small examples
and it explains concepts and API details in small steps. After reading
this book, you will have an idea of RxJava, functional programming,
and the reactive paradigm.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, An Introduction to Reactive Programming, will introduce
you to the concept of reactive programming and will tell you why you
should learn about it. This chapter contains examples that
demonstrate how RxJava incorporates the reactive programming
concept.

Chapter 2, Using the Functional Constructions of Java 8, will teach

you how to use the new lambda constructions of Java 8. It will
explain some functional programming concepts and will show you
how to use them with RxJava in your reactive programs.

Chapter 3, Creating and Connecting Observables, Observers, and

Subjects, will show you the basic building blocks of the RxJava
library called the Observables. You will learn the difference between
'hot' and 'cold' Observables and how to subscribe to and
unsubscribe from them using a subscription instance.

Chapter 4, Transforming, Filtering, and Accumulating Your Data, will

walk you through the basic reactive operators, which you will learn
how to use to achieve step-by-step computations. This chapter will
give you an idea of how to transform the events the Observables
emit, how to filter only the data we need, and how to group,
accumulate, and process it.

Chapter 5, Combinators, Conditionals, and Error Handling, will

present you with more complex reactive operators, which will allow
you to master observable chaining. You will learn about the
combining and conditional operators and how the Observables
interact with each other. This chapter demonstrates the different
approaches to error handling.

Chapter 6, Using Concurrency and Parallelism with Schedulers, will

guide you through the process of writing concurrent and parallel
programs with RxJava. This will be accomplished by the RxJava
Schedulers. The types of Schedulers will be introduced and you will
come to know when and why to use each one of them. This chapter
will present you with a mechanism that will show you how to avoid
and apply backpressure.

Chapter 7, Testing Your RxJava Application, will show you how to

unit test your RxJava applications.

Chapter 8, Resource Management and Extending RxJava, will teach

you how to manage the resources used as data sources by your
RxJava applications. We will write our own Observable operators
here.
What you need for this book
In order to run the examples, you will need:

Java 8 installed, which you can download from Oracle's site

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-
downloads-2133151.html
Gradle to build the project—2.x, which you can download from
https://gradle.org/downloads
Eclipse to open the project. You will also need the Gradle plugin
for Eclipse, which can be downloaded from the Eclipse
MarketPlace. Of course, you can use Gradle from the command
line and go through the code with Vim or any other arbitrary text
editor
Who this book is for
If you are a Java developer who knows how to write software and
would like to learn how to apply your existing skills to reactive
programming, this book is for you.

This book can be helpful to anybody no matter if they are beginners,

advanced programmers, or even experts. You don't need to have
any experience with either Java 8's lambdas and streams or with
RxJava.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish
between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of
these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames,

file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter
handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts
through the use of the include directive."

A block of code is set as follows:

Observable
.just('R', 'x', 'J', 'a', 'v', 'a')
.subscribe(
System.out::print,
System.err::println,
System.out::println
);

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code

block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

Observable<Object> obs = Observable

.interval(40L, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
.switchMap(v ->
Observable
.timer(0L, 10L, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
.map(u -> "Observable <" + (v + 1) + "> : "
+ (v + u)))
);
subscribePrint(obs, "switchMap");

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you
see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in
the text like this: "Interfaces of this type are called functional
interfaces."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Piracy
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of True Tales of
Mountain Adventures: For Non-Climbers

Young and Old

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: True Tales of Mountain Adventures: For Non-Climbers Young

and Old

Author: Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond

Release date: May 21, 2013 [eBook #42758]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRUE TALES OF

MOUNTAIN ADVENTURES: FOR NON-CLIMBERS YOUNG AND OLD
***
 Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original
document have been preserved.
The Errata have been corrected with modified links from
the List of Illustrations.
The Preface listed as being on page vii is on page ix.

TRUE TALES OF MOUNTAIN

ADVENTURE
 Melchior Anderegg 1894.

Frontispiece.

TRUE TALES OF
MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE
 FOR NON-CLIMBERS YOUNG AND OLD

BY

MRS AUBREY LE BLOND

(MRS MAIN)

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
1903

(All rights reserved.)

TO

MR EDWARD WHYMPER
WHOSE SPIRITED WRITINGS AND GRAPHIC PENCIL FIRST
AWAKENED
AN INTEREST IN MOUNTAINEERING AMONGST THOSE WHO
HAD NEVER CLIMBED, I DEDICATE THESE TRUE TALES
FROM THE HILLS, THE MATERIAL FOR SOME OF
THE MOST STRIKING OF WHICH I OWE
TO HIS GENEROSITY.
 PREFACE

There is no manlier sport in the world than mountaineering.

It is true that all the sports Englishmen take part in are manly, but
mountaineering is different from others, because it is sport purely for
the sake of sport. There is no question of beating any one else, as in
a race or a game, or of killing an animal or a bird as in hunting or
shooting. A mountaineer sets his skill and his strength against the
difficulty of getting to the top of a steep peak. Either he conquers
the mountain, or it conquers him. If he fails, he keeps on trying till
he succeeds. This teaches him perseverance, and proves to him that
anything is possible if he is determined to do it.
In mountaineering, all the party share the pleasures and the
dangers. Every climber has to help the others. Every climber has to
rely both on himself and on his companions.
Mountaineering makes a person quick in learning how to act in
moments of danger. It cultivates his presence of mind, it teaches
him to be unselfish and thoughtful for others who may be with him.
It takes him amongst the grandest scenery in the world, it shows
him the forces of nature let loose in the blinding snow-storm, or the
roaring avalanche. It lifts him above all the petty friction of daily life,
and takes him where the atmosphere is always pure, and the
outlook calm and wide. It brings him health, and leaves him
delightful recollections. It gives him friends both amongst his fellow-
climbers, and in the faithful guides who season after season
accompany him. It is a pursuit which he can commence early in life,
and continue till old age, for the choice of expeditions is endless,
and ascents of all scales of difficulty and of any length are easily
found.
That I do not exaggerate the joys and the benefits of
mountaineering will be borne out by those extracts from the true
tales from the hills of which this book chiefly consists. Some may
think I have dwelt at undue length on the catastrophes which have
darkened the pages of Alpine history. I do not apologize. If in one
single instance any one who reads these pages becomes afterwards
a climber, and takes warning from anything I have told him, I am
amply justified.
It has been difficult in a work like this to know always what to
include and what to omit. My guiding principle has been to give
preference to descriptions which are either so exciting by reason of
the facts narrated, or else so brilliantly and wittily written, that they
cannot fail to excite the reader's interest. To these I have added four
chapters, those on mountaineering, on glaciers, on avalanches, and
on the guides of the Alps, which may help to make climbing more
intelligible to those who have never attempted it.
My warm thanks are due to Sir Leslie Stephen, Messrs Whymper,
Tuckett, Charles Pilkington, and Clinton Dent who have rendered the
production of this book possible by allowing me to quote at
considerable length from their writings; also to Messrs Longman who
have permitted me to make extracts from works of which they hold
the copyright, and to Messrs Newnes and Messrs Hutchinson for
their kind permission to re-print portions of my articles which have
appeared in their publications.
I am also under a debt of gratitude to Mr Philip Gosset, who has not
only allowed me to reprint his account of the avalanche on the Haut-
de-Cry, but has also most kindly placed his wide knowledge of
glaciers at my disposal by offering to revise the chapter I have
written on that subject in this book.
Dr Kennedy, whose beautiful edition of Mr Moore's diary, "The Alps in
1864," recently appeared, has generously given me permission to
make any extracts I desire from it.
Colonel Arkwright, whose brother perished on Mont Blanc in 1866,
has been good enough to allow me to reproduce a most interesting
and hitherto unpublished photograph of the relics discovered in
1897.
The illustrations, except those connected with the Arkwright
accident, and a view of the Matterhorn, by the late Mr W. F. Donkin,
are from photographs by me. By them I have tried rather to show
how climbers carry out their mountaineering than to illustrate any
particular locality.
In my own writings I have adopted, in the spelling of names of
places, the modern official forms, but, of course, when quoting I
have kept to those followed by each writer.
If, in the following pages, I have given any pleasure to those who
have never scaled a peak, or have perhaps recalled happy days
amongst the mountains to a fellow-climber, it will be a very real
gratification to me.

E. LE BLOND.
67, The Drive,
Brighton, Oct. 30th, 1902.
 CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE vii.
I. WHAT IS MOUNTAINEERING? 1
II. A FEW WORDS ABOUT GLACIERS 7
III. AVALANCHES 15
IV. THE GUIDES OF THE ALPS 22
V. THE GUIDES OF THE ALPS (Continued) 50
VI. AN AVALANCHE ON THE HAUT-DE-CRY—A RACE 59
FOR LIFE
VII. CAUGHT IN AN AVALANCHE ON THE 72
MATTERHORN—THE ICE-AVALANCHE OF THE
ALTELS—AN AVALANCHE WHICH ROBBED A LADY
OF A GARMENT
VIII. LOST IN THE ICE FOR FORTY YEARS 92
IX. THE MOST TERRIBLE OF ALL ALPINE TRAGEDIES 107
X. A WONDERFUL SLIDE DOWN A WALL OF ICE 113
XI. AN ADVENTURE ON THE TRIFT PASS—THE 122
PERILS OF THE MOMING PASS
XII. AN EXCITING PASSAGE OF THE COL DE PILATTE 134
XIII. AN ADVENTURE ON THE ALETSCH GLACIER—A 142
LOYAL COMPANION—A BRAVE GUIDE
 XIV. A WONDERFUL FEAT BY TWO LADIES—A 153
PERILOUS CLIMB
XV. A FINE PERFORMANCE WITHOUT GUIDES 170
XVI. THE PIZ SCERSCEN TWICE IN FOUR DAYS—THE 194
FIRST ASCENT BY A WOMAN OF MONT BLANC
XVII. THE ASCENT OF A WALL OF ICE 208
XVIII. THE AIGUILLE DU DRU 221
XIX. THE MOST FAMOUS MOUNTAIN IN THE ALPS— 250
THE CONQUEST OF THE MATTERHORN
XX. SOME TRAGEDIES ON THE MATTERHORN 268
XXI. THE WHOLE DUTY OF THE CLIMBER—ALPINE 289
DISTRESS SIGNALS
GLOSSARY 293
INDEX 295
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
Melchior Anderegg, 1894 Frontispiece
Climbers Descending the Ortler 2
The Aletsch Glacier from Bel Alp 7
General View of a Glacier 8
A Glacier Table: after a Storm 11
A Crevassed Glacier 13
An Avalanche near Bouveret: a Tunnel through an 17
Avalanche
Edouard Cupelin 22
Descending a Rock Peak near Zermatt 31
A Big Crevasse: the Gentle Persuasion of the Rope 37
A Typical Couloir: the Ober Gabelhorn: the Wrong 42
Way to Descend: Very Soft Snow
Piz Palü: Hans and Christian Grass 44
Christian Almer, 1894 54
An Avalanche Falling 59
Eiger and Mönch from Lauberhorn 66
Avalanche Falling from the Wetterhorn 79
On Monte Rosa 83
Mr Whymper: Mrs Aubrey Le Blond: Group on a 85
High Peak in Winter
Mrs Aubrey Le Blond and Joseph Imboden: 89
Crossing a Snow Couloir
Mont Blanc: Nicolas Winhart: a Banker of Geneva: 92
the Relics of the Arkwright Accident
Alpine Snow-Fields 108
A Start by Moonlight: Shadows at Sunrise: a 136
Standing Glissade: a Sitting Glissade
On a Snow-Covered Glacier 148
Martin Schocher and Schnitzler 150
Exterior of a Climber's Hut: Interior 157
The Meije: Ascending a Snowy Wall 171
Top of Piz Scerscen: Party Descending Piz Bernina: 194
On a Mountain Top: Descent of a Snow-Ridge
Hard Work: Setting Out in a Long Skirt 204
A Steep Icy Slope: On the Top of a Pass 216
A Slab of Rock: Negotiating a Steep Passage 225
The Family of Herr Seiler, Zermatt: Going to 250
Zermatt in the Olden Days
The Guides' Wall, Zermatt 259
The Zermatt Side of the Matterhorn: Rising Mists 260
A Bitterly Cold Day: The Matterhorn from the Zmutt 265
Side
Jost, Porter of Hotel Monte Rosa, Zermatt 268
Hoar Frost in the Alps 274
 ERRATA

The plate labelled to face page 225, to face page 11.

The plate labelled to face page 5, to face page 83.

TRUE TALES OF MOUNTAIN

ADVENTURE
 CHAPTER I
WHAT IS MOUNTAINEERING?

Mountaineering is not merely walking up hill. It is the art of getting

safely up and down a peak where there is no path, and where steps
may have to be cut in the ice; it is the art of selecting the best line
of ascent under conditions which vary from day to day.
Mountaineering as a science took long to perfect. It is more than a
century since the first ascent of a big Alpine peak was accomplished,
and the early climbers had but little idea of the dangers which they
were likely to meet with. They could not tell when the snow was
safe, or when it might slip away in an avalanche. They did not know
where stones would be likely to fall on them, or when they were
walking over one of those huge cracks in the glacier known as
crevasses, and lightly bridged over with winter snow, which might
break away when they trod on it. However, they soon learnt that it
was safer for two or more people to be together in such places than
for a man to go alone, and when crossing glaciers they used the
long sticks they carried as a sort of hand-rail, a man holding on to
each end, so that if one tumbled into a hole the other could pull him
out. Of course this was a very clumsy way of doing things, and
before long it occurred to them that a much better plan would be to
use a rope, and being all tied to it about 20 feet apart, their hands
were left free, and the party could go across a snow-field and
venture on bridged-over crevasses in safety.
At first both guides and travellers carried long sticks called
alpenstocks. If they came to a steep slope of hard snow or ice, they
hacked steps up it with small axes which they carried slung on their
backs. This was a very inconvenient way of going to work, as it
entailed holding the alpenstock in one hand and using the axe with
the other. So they thought of a better plan, and had the alpenstock
made thicker and shorter, and fastened an axe-head to the top of it.
This was gradually improved till it became the ice-axe, as used to-
day, and as shown in many of my photographs. This ice-axe is useful
for various purposes besides cutting steps. If you dig in the head
while crossing a snow-slope, it acts as an anchor, and gives
tremendous hold, while to allude to its functions as a tin-opener, a
weapon of defence against irate bulls on Alpine pastures, or as a
means for rapidly passing through a crowd at a railway station, is
but to touch on a very few of its admirable qualities.
 Climbers descending a Snow-clad Peak (the
Ortler).

When people first climbed they went in droves on the mountains, or

I should say rather on the mountain, for during the first half of the
nineteenth century Mont Blanc was the object of nearly all the
expeditions which set out for the eternal snows. After some years,
however, it was found quite unnecessary to have so many guides
and porters, and nowadays a party usually numbers four, two
travellers and two guides, or three, consisting generally of one
traveller and two guides, or occasionally five. Two is a bad number,
as should one of them be hurt or taken ill, the other would have to
leave him and go for help, though one of the first rules of
mountaineering is that a man who is injured or indisposed must
never be left alone on a mountain. Again, six is not a good number;
it is too many, as the members of the party are sure to get in each
other's way, pepper each other with stones, and waste no end of
time in wrangling as to when to stop for food, when to proceed, and
which way to go up. A good guide will run the concern himself, and
turn a deaf ear to all suggestions; but the fact remains that six
people had better split up and go on separate ropes. And if they
also, in the case of rock peaks, choose different mountains, it is an
excellent plan. The best of friends are apt to revile each other when
stones, upset from above, come whistling about their ears.
The early mountaineers were horribly afraid of places which were at
all difficult to climb. Mere danger, however, had no terrors for them,
and they calmly encamped on frail snow-bridges, or had lunch in the
path of avalanches. After a time the dangerous was understood and
avoided, and the difficult grappled with by increased skill, until about
the middle of the nineteenth century there arose a class of experts,
little, if at all, inferior to the best guides of the present day.
The most active and intelligent of the natives of Chamonix, Zermatt,
and the Bernese Oberland now learnt to find their way even on
mountains new to them. Some were chamois hunters, and
accustomed to climb in difficult places. Others, perhaps, had when
boys minded the goats, and scrambled after them in all sorts of
awkward spots. Others, again, had such a taste for mountaineering
that they took to it the very first time they tried it. Of these last my
own guide, Joseph Imboden, was one, and later on I will tell you of
the extraordinary way in which he began his splendid career.

On a Rock Ridge near the top of Monte Rosa.

The Schallihorn may be seen in the top

right-hand corner of the picture.

It is from going with and watching how good guides climb that most
people learn to become mountaineers themselves. Nearly all take
guides whenever they ascend difficult mountains, but some are so
skilful and experienced that they go without, though few are ever
good enough to do this quite safely.
I am often asked why people climb, and it is a hard question to
answer satisfactorily. There is something which makes one long to
mountaineer more and more, from the first time one tries it. All
climbs are different. All views from mountains are different, and
every time one climbs one is uncertain, owing to the weather or the
possible state of the peak, if the top can be reached or not. So it is
always a struggle between the mountain and the climber, and
though perseverance, skill, experience, and pluck must give the
victory to the climber in the end, yet the fight may be a long one,
and it may be years before a particularly awkward peak allows one
to stand on its summit.
Perhaps, if you have patience to read what follows, you may better
understand what mountaineering is, and why most of those who
have once tried it become so fond of it.

The Aletsch Glacier from Bel Alp.

The medial moraine is very conspicuous.

This glacier is about a mile in width.
 CHAPTER II
A FEW WORDS ABOUT GLACIERS

Of all the beautiful and interesting things mountain districts have to

show, none surpass the glaciers.
Now a glacier is simply a river of ice, which never melts away even
during the hottest summer. Glaciers form high up on mountains,
where there is a great deal of snow in winter, and where it is never
very hot even in summer. They are also found in northern lands,
such as Greenland, and there, owing to the long cold winter and
short summer, they come down to the very level of the sea.
A glacier is formed in this way: There is a heavy fall of snow which
lies in basins and little valleys high up on the mountain side. The air
is too cold for it to melt, and as more falls on the top of it the mass
gets pressed down. Now, if you take a lump of snow in your hand
and press it, you get an icy snow-ball. If you squeeze anything you
make it warmer. The pressing down of the great mass of snow is like
the squeezing of the ball in your hand. It makes it warmer, so that
the snow first half melts and then gradually becomes ice. You bring
about this change in your snow-ball in a moment. Nature, in making
a glacier, takes much longer, so that what was snow one year is only
partly ice the next—it is known as nevé—and it is not until after
several seasons that it becomes the pure ice we see in the lower
part of a glacier.
One would fancy that if a quantity of snow falls every winter and
does not all melt, the mountains must grow higher. But though only
a little of the snow melts, it disappears in other ways. Some is
evaporated into the atmosphere; some falls off in avalanches. Most
of it slowly flows down after forming itself into glaciers. For glaciers
are always moving. The force of gravity makes them slide down over
their rocky beds. They flow so slowly that we cannot see them
move, in fact most of them advance only a few inches a day. But if a
line of stakes is driven into the ice straight across a glacier, we shall
notice in a few weeks that they have moved down. And the most
interesting part of it is that they will not have moved evenly, but
those nearest the centre will have advanced further than those at
the side. In short, a glacier flows like a river, the banks keeping back
the ice at the side, as the banks of a river prevent it from running so
fast at the edge as in the middle.

General View on the Lower Part of a Large

Glacier.
 The surface is ice, not snow. The snow-
line may be seen further up.

A large glacier is fed by such a gigantic mass of snow that it is in its

upper part hundreds of feet thick. Of course when it reaches warmer
places it begins to melt. But the quantity of ice composing it is so
great that it takes a long time before it disappears, and a big glacier
sometimes flows down far below the wild and rocky parts of
mountains and reaches the neighbourhood of forests and corn-fields.
It is very beautiful at Chamonix to see the white, glittering ice of the
Glacier des Bossons flowing in a silent stream through green
meadows.
The reason that mountaineers have to be careful in crossing glaciers
is on account of the holes, cracks, or, to call them by their proper
name, crevasses, which are met with on them. Ice, unlike water, is
brittle, so it splits up into crevasses whenever the glacier flows over
a steep or uneven rocky bed. High up, where snow still lies, these
chasms in the ice are often bridged over, and if a person ventures on
one of these snow bridges it may break, and he may fall down the
crevasse, which may be so deep that no bottom can be found to it.
He is then either killed by the fall or frozen to death. If, as I have
explained before, several climbers are roped together, they form a
long string, like the tail of a kite, and not more than one is likely to
break through at a time. As the rope is—or ought to be—kept tightly
stretched, he cannot fall far, and is easily pulled out again.
The snow melts away off the surface of the glacier further down in
summer. It is on this bare, icy stream, scarred all over with little
channels full of water running merrily down the melting rough
surface, that the ordinary tourist is taken when he visits a glacier
during his summer trip to Switzerland.
A Glacier Table (page 11).
 Taken in Mid-Winter on reaching the
Lower Slopes of a Mountain after a terrific
Storm of Snow and Wind. The local Swiss
snow-shoes were used during part of the
ascent.

You will notice in most of the photographs of glaciers black streaks

along them, sometimes only near the sides, sometimes also in the
centre. These are heaps of stones and earth which have fallen from
the mountains bordering the glacier, and have been carried along by
the slowly moving ice. The bands in the centre have come there,
owing to the meeting higher up of two glaciers, which have joined
their side heaps of rubbish, and have henceforward flowed on as
one glacier. The bands of piled up stones are called moraines, those
at the edge being known as lateral moraines, in the centre as medial
moraines, and the stones which drop off the end (or snout) of a
glacier, as terminal moraines.
Besides these compact bands, we sometimes find here and there a
big stone or boulder by itself, which has rolled on to the ice. Often
these stones are raised on a pedestal of ice, and then they are called
"glacier-tables." They have covered the bit of ice they lie upon, and
prevented it from melting, while the glacier all round has gradually
sunk. After a time the leg of the table begins to feel the sun strike it
also. It melts away on the south side and the stone slips off. A party
of climbers, wandering about on a glacier at night or in a fog, and
having no compass, can roughly take their bearings by noticing in
what position these broken-down glacier-tables lie.
Occasionally sand has been washed down over the surface of the
ice, and a patch of it has collected in one place. This shields the
glacier from the sun, the surrounding ice sinks, and eventually we
find cones which are lightly covered with sand, the smooth ice
beneath being reached directly we scratch the surface with the point
of a stick.
It is difficult to realise the enormous size of a large glacier. The
Aletsch Glacier, the most extensive in the Alps, would, it has been
said, if turned to stone, supply building material for a city the size of
London.
With regard to the movement of glaciers, the entertaining author of
"A Tramp Abroad" mildly chaffs his readers by telling them that he
once tried to turn a glacier to account as a means of transport.
Accordingly, he took up his position in the middle, where the ice
moves quickest, leaving his luggage at the edge, where it goes
slowest. Thus he intended to travel by express, leaving his things to
follow by goods train! However, after some time, he appeared to
make no progress, so he got out a book on glaciers to try and find
out the reason for the delay. He was much surprised when he read
that a glacier moves at about the same pace as the hour hand of a
watch!
 A Distorted and Crevassed Glacier.

Showing the rough texture of the surface

of a Glacier below the Snow-line.

Many thousands of years ago there were glaciers in Scotland and

England. We are certain of this, as glaciers scratch and polish the
rocks they pass over as does nothing else. Stones are frozen into the
ice, and it holds them and uses them as we might hold and use a
sharply-pointed instrument, scratching the rock over which the
mighty mass is slowly passing. In addition to the scratches, the ice
polishes the rock till it is quite smooth, writing upon it in characters
never to be effaced the history of past events. Another thing which
proves to us that these icy rivers were in many places where there
are no glaciers now, is the boulders we find scattered about. These
boulders are sometimes of a kind of rock not found anywhere near,
and so we know that they must have been carried along on that
wonderful natural luggage-train, and dropped off it as it melted. We
find big stones in North Wales which must have come on a glacier
beginning in Scotland! Glacier-polished rocks are found along the
whole of the west coast of Norway, and there are boulders near
Geneva, in Switzerland, which have come from the chain of Mount
Blanc, 60 miles away.
So you see that the glaciers of the Alps are far smaller than they
were at one time, and that in many places where formerly there
were huge glaciers, there are to-day none. The Ice Age was the time
when these great glaciers existed, but the subject of the Ice Age is a
difficult and thorny one, which is outside the scope of my
information and of this book.
 CHAPTER III
AVALANCHES

Many of the most terrible accidents in the Alps have been due to
avalanches, and perhaps, as avalanches take place from different
causes and have various characteristics, according to whether they
are of ice, snow, or débris, some account of them may not be out of
place.
We may briefly classify them as follows:—

1. Ice avalanches, only met with on or near glaciers.

2. Dust avalanches, composed of very light, powdery snow.
3. Compact avalanches (Grund or ground avalanches, as the
Germans call them), consisting of snow, earth, stones,
trees, and anything which the avalanche finds in its path.
These take place only in winter and spring, while the two
other kinds happen on the mountains at any season.

An ice avalanche is easily understood when it is borne in mind that a

glacier is always moving. When this river of ice comes to the edge of
a precipice, or tries to crawl down a very steep cliff, it splits across
and forms tottering crags of ice, which lean over more and more till
they lose their balance and go crashing down the slope. Some of the
ice is crushed to powder by its fall, yet many blocks generally
survive, and are occasionally heaped up in such huge masses below
that they form another glacier on a small scale. If a party of
mountaineers passes under a place overhung by threatening ice,
they are in great danger, though at early morning, before the sun
has loosened the frozen masses, the peril is less. Sometimes, too, if
the distance to be traversed is very short and the going quite easy, it
is safe enough to dash quickly across.

A Tunnel 300 feet long through an Avalanche.

Tree trunks, etc., can be seen embedded

in it.
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