The professor went around like a man who had seen a vision. He was exalted in his classroom. Finally he unearthed a rock on which was inscribed the Hebrew word for Jehovah. “No,” said Professor Beringer. “I am right. My opponents who uphold the false doctrine of slow evolution are wrong. All life is the work of a creator. He has not only been kind enough to leave evidence here but has appended his signature to make it official.”
On this basis, the professor published his book, profusely illustrated. The title page presented a pyramid of the fossils surmounted by the stone with Jehovah written on it. He dedicated the book to the Prince of Würzburg.
When one of the students raised the shout of derision that grew and swept Germany when the book appeared, the poor professor destroyed all the copies of his book he could reach, tried to buy up the others and died shortly after of a broken heart.
There is no record of any other exposed impostor dying of a broken heart from Count Berty Gregory, who posed in Toronto years ago as an Austrian nobleman and was discovered to have been a stable groom, down to Jacques Richtor, the boy wanderer of the north, who duped reporters and bush authorities with his tale until he was unmasked as a runaway lad from the States. They don’t die of broken hearts, these impostors.
For there is some strange force inside of them that forces them to be impostors. They might die of a broken heart if they could not live their lives of the imagination.
Swiss Avalanches
The Toronto Star Weekly
January 12, 1924
Far below in the valley town André heard the great roar.
It came in a loud crack and then a terrible roar like the end of the world.
“Up your way, André,” said the postmaster sagely.
Two men standing in the post office looked at André queerly.
“I would not live up there for all the money in the canton,” one man said.
The postmaster laughed.
“There is no one fears the mountains like a mountaineer.”
He handed André his pile of papers and weighed out two pounds of sauerkraut from the barrel. “I hope you will find everything well, André.”
“Don’t worry about me,” André said, and slinging his ruck-sack on his back, opened the door out into the bright Alpine sunshine.
Towing his skis behind him on a cord about his waist, André started in his bent-kneed, mountaineer’s stride up the steep, icy road that wound up the valley. He was very worried. He knew what that roar meant. It was an avalanche.
In the spring the avalanches fall with a certain regularity. They have their established paths. You see these paths in the summer, bare swaths cut through the forests on a steep hillside. Many of the spring avalanches fall the same date almost each year. Nearly all of the big ones have familiar names—nicknames given to them because of the familiarity that breeds contempt.
But winter avalanches have no nicknames. They come suddenly and terribly and they bring death.
So André trudged up the road until it swung off in a direction that did him no good. Then he stamped into his skis, shot down the clamps and thrust along, up the valley, holding just that upward grade he could make comfortably without slipping back.
For miles he went steadily up in the tireless, thrusting climb that makes the ski for the mountaineer what the canoe is to the Indian or the snowshoe to the trapper of the barren lands of the north. Suddenly he came around a bend in the valley onto the work of the avalanche he had heard in the town. He thanked God he had not yet married Helza in the village.
The valley was wiped out. Instead there was the most snow André had ever seen in his life. It rose sheer ahead of him, two hundred feet high. A gigantic rubble of snow, like the crest of a flood, towering, frozen, immovable. Trunks of trees projected from it.
On the right, the side of the mountain was bare. There had been a sharp slipping crack and all the snow had roared away from the side of the mountain with the same instantaneous rush that snow sliding off the roof has, to pour down into the valley its weight of thousands of tons, turning over and over and finally piling up and up into this mass.
André looked up at it from below and felt very small. Where was his house, he wondered. It had been directly in the path of the avalanche. His heart was heavy. It would be a long time now before he could marry.
He started to climb up the left side of the valley. This was a great avalanche. It had wiped him out completely. He might as well have a look at it.
Up he zigzagged until he was level with the height of the avalanche. Then he saw something. About a hundred yards above him, on the opposite side of the valley from where he had left it, was his house! It looked a little tipsy, it was true. But it was right side up. There it was. No mistake.
André was frightened. He did not know whether to start down the valley in a long rush to town or to go down on his knees. He compromised. He crossed himself and started for the house. There it was. All right. Everything inside. Just a little crockery broken.
“It was evidently a sign to me,” thought André, “that this side of the valley is better. In the spring I will dig new foundations here. But I wish the Bon Dieu had also removed my barn in safety.”
What had happened was the great wind from the falling avalanche had lifted the house on it as though the rush of air were a solid thing and deposited it on the far side of the valley three hundred yards away.
Avalanches seldom do good deeds like that. I have seen an iron bridge, weighing I do not know how many tons, that had been lifted two hundred feet up the side of an Alpine valley by the rush of wind from a great falling snowslide. Again I have seen a swath of forest that had been scoured bare, the tree trunks cut off at the base as though they were matchsticks.
Kipling wished the name of “Our Lady of the Snows” on to Canada, and Canadians have been stepping out from under it ever since. There is plenty of snow in Canada. Or rather there has been until this winter. But east of the Rockies there are no avalanches.
Other countries regard snow as a blessing, not as a libel. In the mountains, it makes it possible to skid the timber down. It makes hard, smooth roads, it makes it possible to bring the mountain meadow hay, cut and cured in the summertime, down on big sledges with turned-up runners that the sledgeman runs between and leans against to make the hay sled turn to left or right.
Finally snow brings tourists. It brings them by the hundreds and thousands. So while Canada indignantly denies that she is “The Lady of the Snows,” we have the spectacle of five different countries in Europe all loudly clamoring that they have the most and the deepest snow in the civilized world. They spend thousands of dollars advertising their snowy claims too. But none of them ever mention the avalanches.
Avalanches are the skeleton in the winter sport’s closet. They cause ninety percent of the deaths in mountain skiing. If you have ever sat in the house and heard the sharp, rattling roar as a big chunk of snow slides off the roof, you know how quick an avalanche starts. They go off like a steel trap.
Skiers used to be advised, if they got into an avalanche, to try and turn and run directly down the slope and get ahead of it. That advice was written by some fireside-hint counselor.
You might exactly as well try to outrun a burst from a Lewis gun fired directly at your back as try to ski ahead of an avalanche. There is only one thing to do. Swim in it as though you were in the water and try and keep your head from being buried. If you can kick off your skis you will have a better chance of staying up. The whirling snow will seize on your skis and drag you under by them.
If the avalanche is from the side of a hill and spreads out into a flat valley, you have a good chance of coming through all right. But if it goes down into a steep gulch or steep valley, it will pile up and the unlucky skier who is caught is smothered if he is not crushed.
Although winter avalanches are much more tricky and difficult to figure than those that fall in the spring in the mountains, the person who is caught in one has a much bet
ter chance of surviving. For new-fallen winter powder snow weighs only about 150 pounds a cubic yard while old, wet, spring snow weighs about three-quarters of a ton per cubic yard.
Powder snow too is full of air. You can live for some time without suffocating if overwhelmed by a winter avalanche. But the heavy, wet, spring snow contains almost no air. All its weight is water, and if you are not crushed you are very liable to be drowned.
Plenty of skiers have escaped unhurt although carried down thousands of feet by an avalanche if they had been able to keep on the surface and if the snow has spread out onto a gradual slope. But last winter a young man was killed not far from where we were skiing by an avalanche which carried him only about fifty feet. In that rush, though, it took him over a precipice.
Your first avalanche is a terrific thing. It is the deadly suddenness of it that puts you out. You may be skiing down a slope running parallel with a mountain side when there is a C-R-A-C-K! The side of the mountain seems to drop sideways out from under you, the snow piles up in a rushing flood of sliding cakes and over and over you go.
That is a “wind-board” avalanche. Wind-board is treacherous stuff to ski on. It is a hard layer of snow that lies precariously on the main field. It has been hardened by the wind and often lies over pockets or bubbles that make patches that only need to be cut by the running blade of the ski to start avalanching.
It is not, of course, as dangerous as the great “ground avalanche,” such as played a trick on André’s house. But you cannot tell what it may carry you over if you are skiing in difficult country. It may be fatal to be carried twenty-five feet by a little windslab snowslide in the high Alps, whereas on some of the long ski slopes of the Dolomites you might be able to survive a half-mile avalanche ride.
One day last January, after a championship bob race on the Sonloup Les Avants course in which we had smashed our bob and lost the race through hitting a rut just at the final ice turn before the homestretch, when everybody felt sore and disappointed, and our one desire was to avoid commiserations and “better-luck-next-times,” young George O’Neil and I started off for the Dent de Jaman on skis.
Before you get to where skiing is possible, you have to hike, toting or towing your skis, up one of the stiffest, straight-up-and-down, heart-breaking stretches of road in the world. We got up into the open country above the shoulder of the mountain, crossed several avalanches, having a hard time picking our way over the huge snowfalls and then reached the long snowfields of the col, or saddle, of the mountain. By the time we were up under the edge of the Dent, a blunt, granite tooth like a miniature Matterhorn, it was dark and we had to run down in the dark.
The open fields were all right. But once we got into the descending road we made a beautiful mess of things. In the dark on the icy road we fell about every twenty yards. We fell hard and handsome. We fell into trees, each other, over the bank, on our faces, on our backs, and in several new styles.
Ultimately George’s ski came off in a fall and shot over the edge and down into a steep gulch below. He saw it strike the roof of a cabin below, in the faint moon that was now up, and skid on off and down. We made the rest of the trip on foot.
Next morning George was laid up and I started up the trail alone in a blinding snowstorm. I mushed on as fast as I could make it uphill, for the only chance of getting the ski lay in reaching the hut where it had hit in falling and see the direction the mark had made. Hadley [Hemingway] and Isabelle Simmons were following me up with a lunch.
As I reached the edge of the road where the ski had gone over, the snow turned to rain. Now the only reason more people do not get killed skiing is because the dangerous avalanches all fall during the rain—and anybody that has any sense doesn’t go out in the rain.
There was a faint crease in the high piled snow on the roof of the hut about two hundred feet down the steep slide. I knew it must be the snowed-in mark made by the ski. As I sighted along it, I figured the ski would light below and run straight down until it hit a clump of willows that stuck up out of the bed of a mountain torrent that ran under the snow about a half a mile below.
Straight up above the road was a regular avalanche funnel of a valley. A narrow funnel of a valley rising almost straight up from the road to Cape au Moine. Furthermore I had heard that avalanche come down the year before. We had crossed it later and it has spread out right into this same mountain torrent’s bed.
It looked like a bad bet. But after thinking it over, I decided it was probably safe enough if I took off my skis and wallowed down. Any slope over 25 degrees will avalanche. But chamois tracks will sometimes cut across a slope of 40 or 50 degrees. Their legs sink in instead of setting the snow loose as a pair of skis do.
There is nothing chamois-like about size 11 skiing boots but the principle seemed the same. So I went down into the bed of the stream and there sure enough was the ski stuck in the bushes.
It was only about a half a mile climb up but it seemed like a hundred years wallowing up through the wet snow armpit deep. What made it seem so long was that wonderful super-avalanche trap all ready to spring, hanging straight up above as far as you could see. All the way up I kept thinking that the ski was only worth about fifteen francs anyway.
The girls were at the top, on the safe side of the road, soaked to the skin by the warm rain. We went into a hay barn built into the side of the mountain out of the avalanche track and put on dry sweaters out of the rucksacks and brought out the thermos bottle and the sandwiches.
While we sat in the dark hut, leaning back against the hay packed solid up to the roof and watching the rain through the open door fourteen avalanches came down. I counted them. No one else had such a personal interest in them as I had. But we were all very glad to get home. It was the warm rain’s doing. The mountaineers call the warm wind-rain Föhn. It sometimes comes in the midst of the coldest winter weather. It comes from nowhere and it goes back the same place. Sometimes it lasts for days. Other times for only an hour or so. But it always brings avalanches and it can be death to be out in.
After you have lived a long time in the mountains you see the mountain dwellers’ standpoint. I remember once in the spring we were crossing the St. Bernard Pass before it was open. In Bourg St. Pierre we wandered around the little town halfway up the pass while Hadley had a nap in the inn. Bourg is just below the snow line. There was a little cemetery with many graves. On most of the graves was this inscription, “Victim of the Mountain.”
“That’s odd,” said Chink. “Victim of the mountain. Sounds as though the mountain were a person.”
“How is it, Father?” I asked a priest. “Victim of the mountain?”
“He is the great enemy of the mountain-dwelling people,” answered the priest, looking down into the gorge the river cut below us. “It is different from the sea. The mountain does not help the mountain man. He is not his livelihood.”
“It is very strange, Father,” Chink said.
“Yes, it is very strange,” the priest said. “When one is young one goes always into the high mountains. These are all young men.” He pointed at the crosses. “But when one is older one knows better.” He smiled. “It is better to avoid an enemy such as the mountain. Yet we can never leave him. Perhaps in this, too, he shows he is our enemy.”
So This Is Chicago
The Toronto Star Weekly
January 19, 1924
Seven miles of dirty, wooden houses all alike stretching out on the great West Side.
Three fat men in the canyon of LaSalle Street painted like Indians, war bonnets on their heads, shivering in the cold wind and shouting, “Buy a string of beads. Real Indian beads. Make somebody happy.”
All the best-looking debutantes at a dance with their hair cut like members of the Brooklyn National League ball team.
The boys who went into LaSalle Street when you first went on the newspaper now all driving their own cars, all members of the club, and asking gloomily if you think there is any possible way they could make
a living in Paris.
Michigan Avenue, the most beautiful street in the world, smooth, dark and slippery, a skyline on one side through the snow and the gray lake on the other. The red and green lights of the signal towers winking the traffic forward or stopping it.
A poll of ten different Chicagoans on the subject of the drainage canal diverting the water necessary for Hydro revealing the general opinion, “Sure. You may be right. But what do the Canadians think they can do about it ?”
One of the best-selling records in Chicago homes, the reproduction of the voices of King George and Queen Mary broadcasting a speech to English children with “God Save the King” and “Home Sweet Home” on the reverse side, played by the band of the Cold-stream Guards.
Two cases of Scotch from the Atlantic seaboard delivered by express to a broker’s office marked as “Books” and opened and served by the special policeman of the brokerage firm, dressed in his blue uniform and wearing a star.
The cop who volunteered the information that the present mayor had closed up the beer saloons tight and seemed anxious to enter into conversation on the subject.
The Italian news dealer who refused to accept a Canadian quarter saying, “Us Americans ain’t got no use for them things.”
The Negro lady on the dining car coming home who ordered a plain steak, had it explained to her by the headwaiter that it would be $1.65 and she was sure when the turkey dinner was only a dollar. Had it re-explained to her by the waiter at the headwaiter’s request, “Here, Jim, make this lady understand that steaks cost a dollar sixty-five.” And finally paid her bill with a $50 note.
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