John Tyndall to Faraday   23 August 1865

Geneva, | 23rd. Aug. 1865.

My dear Mr. Faraday,

During the last five or six weeks I have thought many times thought of writing to you, but not until the conclusion of my excursion do I put my thought into execution. Many months ago I promised our friend DelaRive to attend the meeting of the Swiss Savants at Geneva. It is the Jubilee of the Society - a kind of Swiss British Association. Dumas, Schoenbein, Wöhler, Dove¹, Clausius² and many others celebrities are here, and the meeting thus far has been a very pleasant one. It will end to-day, tomorrow I dine with Marignac³, and the next day I turn my face homewards.

Through some mistake I suppose on Smith’s part I have had no letters sent to me either to Zermatt or to Geneva, so that I am entirely ignorant of the condition of my friends at home I thought to remedy matters by writing to Mr. Barrett from Zermatt, asking him to forward my letters to Geneva and to write to me himself: but I have had no reply. The post in this latter case, is I suppose the delinquent.

I went to Zermatt soon after the occurrence of that terrible accident. I had been informed that Lord Francis Douglas’s⁴ Mother⁵ suffered much from the idea of her son not having been found⁶. I therefore resolved to make an effort to regain the body. I proposed to climb to the point from which they fell, fix irons there in the rocks, attach ropes to the irons, and descend by the ropes along the precipices, examining the mountain right and left of the line of ascent. Nearer than Geneva ropes were not to be found; so I sent a man to that city, to select and purchase two thousand feet of rope of the best quality. It was bought and carried to Zermatt. I also engaged a man who had been accustomed to blast rocks, and who was (also) an able mountaineer. His business was to bore holes in the cliffs, fix iron and steel jumpers there, to which the ropes were to be attached. All my arrangements were made. As far as ideas went, my plans were complete; so I waited at Zermatt for fine weather. I waited eighteen days, but the weather was abominable throughout. Heavy snow had fallen and covered the rocks of the Matterhorn; the said snow had been partially melted and refrozen, thus covering the rocks in thick envelopes of ice, and rendering them a hundred times more dangerous than ordinary. Day after day moreover heavy clouds swathed the mountain, and discharged themselves at intervals in hail and snow against its sides. Not until hope deferred had made the heart sick did I quit the place, and I do not know that I should have quitted it so soon, had it not been for my engagements with our friend DelaRive to attend the Jubilee of the Helvetic Natural Society.

Will you present my kindest regards to Mrs. Faraday and Miss Barnard. I hope to find you all in good health on my return.

Yours ever | John Tyndall