THE PASSAGE OF THE ALPS.
The Rhone--Plains of Dauphiny--Mont Blanc and the "Reds"--Landscape
by Night--Democratic Club in the _Diligence_--Approach the
Alps--Festooned Vines--Begin the Ascent--Chamberry--Uses of War--An
Alpine Valley--Sudden Alternations of Beauty and
Grandeur--Travellers--Evening--Grandeur of Sunset--Supper at
Lanslebourg--Cross the Summit at Midnight--Morning--Sunrise among
the Alps--Descent--Italy.
It was wearing late on an evening of early October 1851 when I crossed
the Rhone on my way to the Alps. It had rained heavily during the day,
and sombre clouds still rested on the towers of Lyons behind me. The
river was in flood, and the lamps on the bridge threw a troubled gleam
upon the impetuous current as it rolled underneath. It was impossible
not to recollect that this was the stream on the banks of which Irenaeus,
the disciple of Polycarp, himself the disciple of John, had, at almost
the identical spot where I crossed it, laboured and prayed, and into the
floods of which had been flung the ashes of the first martyrs of Gaul.
These murky skies formed no very auspicious commencement of my journey;
but I cherished the hope that to-morrow would bring fair weather, and
with fair weather would come the green valleys and gleaming tops of the
Alps, and, the day after, the sunny plains of Italy. This fair vision
beckoned me on through the deep road and the scudding shower.
We struck away into the plains of Dauphiny,--those great plains that
stretch from the Rhone to the Alps, and which offer to the eye, as seen
from the heights that overhang Lyons, a vast and varied expanse of wood
and meadow, corn-field and vineyard, city and hamlet, with the snowy
pile of Mont Blanc rising afar in the horizon. On the previous evening I
had climbed these heights, so stately and beautiful, with convents
hanging on their sides, and a chapel to Mary crowning their summit, to
renew my acquaintance, after an interval of some years' absence, with
the monarch of the Alps. I was greatly pleased to find, especially in
these times, that my old friend had not grown "red." Since I saw him
last, changes not a few had passed upon Europe, and more than one
monarch had fallen; but Mont Blanc sat firmly in his seat, and wore his
icy crown as proudly as ever.
Since my former visit to Lyons the "Reds" had made great progress in all
the countries at the foot of the Alps. Their party had been especially
progressive in Lyons; so much so as to affect the nomenclature of the
hills that overlook that city on the north. That hill, which is nearly
wholly covered with the houses and workshops of the silk-weavers, is now
known as the "red mountain," its inhabitants being mostly of that
faction; while the hill on the west of it, that, namely, which I had
ascended on the evening before, and which is chiefly devoted to
ecclesiastical persons and uses, is called the "white mountain." But
while men had been changing their faith, and hills their names, Mont
Blanc stood firmly by his old creed and his old colours. There he was,
dazzlingly, transcendently white, defying the fuller's art to whiten
him, and shading into dimness the snowy robe of the priest; looking
with royal majesty over his wide realm; standing unchanged in the midst
of a theatre of changes; abiding for ever, though kingdoms at his feet
were passing away; pre-eminent in grace and glory amidst his princely
peers; and looking the earthly type of that eternal and all-glorious
One, who stands supreme and unapproachable amid the powers, dominions,
and royalties of the universe.
The night wore on without any noticeable event, or any special
interruption, save what was occasioned necessarily by our arrival at the
several stages, and the changes consequent thereon of horses and
postilions. There was a rag of a moon overhead,--at least so one might
judge from the hazy light that struggled through the fog,--by the help
of which I kept watching the landscape till past midnight. Then a spirit
of drowsiness invaded me. It was not sleep, but sleep's image, or
sleep's counterfeit,--an uneasy trance, in which a confused vision of
tall trees, with their head in the clouds, and very long and very narrow
fields, marked off by straight rows of very upright poplars, and large
heavy-looking houses, with tall antique roofs, kept marching past,
without variety and without end. I would wake up at times and look out.
There was the same picture before me. I would fall back into my trance
again, and, an hour or so after, I would again wake up; still the
identical picture was there. I could not persuade myself that the
_diligence_ had moved from the spot, despite the rumbling of its wheels
and the jingling of the horses' bells. All night long the same
changeless picture kept moving on and on, ever passing, yet never past.
I may be said to have crossed the Alps amid a torrent of curses. My
place was in the _banquette_, the roomiest and loftiest part of the
lofty _diligence_, and which, perched in front, and looking down upon
the inferior compartments of the _diligence_, much as the attics of a
three-storey house look down upon the lower suits of apartments,
commands a fine view of the country, when it is daylight and clear
weather. There sat next me in the _banquette_ a young Savoyard, who
travelled with us as far as Chamberry, in the heart of the Alps; and on
the other side of the Savoyard sat the _conducteur_. This last was a
Piedmontese, a young, clever, obliging fellow, with a voluble tongue,
and a keen dark eye in his head. Scarce had we extricated ourselves from
the environs of Lyons, or had got beyond the reach of the guns that look
so angrily down upon it from the heights, till these two broke into a
conversation on politics. The conversation soon warmed into an energetic
and vehement discussion, or philippic I should rather say. Their
discourse was far too rapid, and I was too unfamiliar with the language
in which it was uttered to do more than gather its scope and drift. But
I could hear the names of France and Austria repeated every other
sentence; and these names were sure to be followed by a volley of
curses, fierce, scornful, and defiant. Austria was cursed,--France was
cursed: they were cursed individually,--they were cursed
conjunctly,--once, again, and a hundred times. What were the politics of
the passengers in the other compartments of the diligence I know not;
but little did they wot that they had a democratic club overhead, and
that more treason was spouted that night in their company than might
have got us all into trouble, had there been any evesdropper in any
corner of the vehicle. When I chanced to awake, they were still at it.
The harsh grating sound of the anathemas haunted me during my sleep
even. It was like a rattling hail-shower, or like the continuous
corruscations of lightning,--the lightning of the Alps. Had it been
possible for the authorities to know but a tithe of what was spoken
that night by my two neighbours, their journey would have been short:
they would have been shot at the next station, to a certainty.
With the night, the dream-like landscape, and the maledictory harangues
which had haunted me during the darkness, passed away, and the morning
found us nearing the mountains. The Alps open upon you by little. One
who has never climbed these hills imagines himself standing at their
feet, and looking up the long unbroken vista of fields, vineyards,
forests, and naked rocks, to the eternal snows of their summit. Not so.
They do not come marching thus upon you in all their grandeur to
overwhelm you. To see them thus, you must stand afar off,--at least
fifty miles away. There you can take in the whole at a glance, from the
beauteous fringe of stream, and hamlet, and woodland, that skirts their
base, to the white serrated line that cuts so sharply the blue of the
firmament. Nearer them,--unless, indeed, in the great central valleys,
where you can see the icy fields hanging in the firmament at an awful
distance above you,--their snow-clad summits are invisible, being hidden
by an intervening sea of ridges, that are strewn over with rocks, or
wave darkly with pines.
As we approached the mountains, they offered to the eye a beauteous
chain of verdant hills, with the morning mists hanging on their sides.
The torrents were in flood from the recent rains; the woods had the rich
tints of autumn upon them; but the charm of the scene lay in the
beautiful festoonings of the vine. The uplands before me were barred by
what I at first took to be long horizontal layers of fleecy cloud. On a
nearer approach, these turned out to be the long branchy arms of the
vine. The vine-stock is made to lean against the cut trunk of a chestnut
or poplar tree, and its branches are bent horizontally, and extended
till they meet those of the neighbouring vine-stock, which have been
similarly dealt with. In this way, continuous lines of luxuriant
foliage, with pendulous blood-red clusters in their season, may be made
to run for miles together along the hill-side. There might be from
thirty to forty parallel lines in those I now saw. Tinted with the
morning sun, and relieved against the deep verdure of the mountain, they
appeared like stripes of amber, or floating lines of cloud fringed with
gold.
It was the Mont Cenis route I was traversing,--the least rugged of all
the passes of the Alps, and the same by which Hannibal, as some suppose,
passed into Italy. The day cleared up into one of unusual brilliancy. We
began to ascend by a path cut in the rock of the mountain, having on our
left an escarpment of limestone several hundred feet high, and on our
right a deep gorge, with a white foaming torrent at its bottom. The
frontier chain passed, we descended into a rich valley, with a fine
stream flowing through it, and the poor town of Les Echelles hiding from
view in one of its angles. These noble valleys are sadly blotted by
filth and disease. The contrast offered betwixt the noble features of
nature and the degraded form of man is painful and humiliating. Bowed
down by toil, stolid with ignorance, disfigured with the goitre, struck
with cretinism, the miserable beings around you do more to sadden you
than all that the bright air and glorious hills can do to exhilarate
you.
The valley where we now were was a complete _cul de sac_. It was walled
in all round by limestone hills of great height, and the eye sought in
vain for visible outlet. At length one could see a white line running
half-way up the mountain's face, and ending in an opening no bigger than
a pigeon-hole. We slowly climbed this road,--for road it was; and when
we came to the diminutive opening we had seen from the valley below, it
expanded into a tunnel,--one of the great works of Napoleon,--which ran
right through the mountain, and brought us out on the other side. We now
traversed a narrow and rocky ravine, which at length expanded into a
magnificent valley, rich in vines and fruit-trees of all kinds, and
overhung by lofty mountains. On this plain, surrounded by the living
grandeur of nature, and the faded renown of its monastic and
archiepiscopal glory, and half-buried amid foliage and ruins, sits
Chamberry, the capital of Savoy.
At Chamberry our route underwent a change. Beauty now gave place to
grandeur; but still a grandeur blended with scenes of exquisite
loveliness. These I cannot stay to describe at length. The whole day was
passed in winding and climbing among the hills. We toiled slowly to rise
above the plains we had left, and to approach the region where winter
spreads out her boundless sea of ice and snow. We followed the
magnificent road which we owe to the genius of Napoleon. The fruits of
Marengo are gone. Austerlitz is but a name. But the passes of the Alps
remain. "When will it be ready for the transport of the cannon?"
enquired Napoleon respecting the Simplon road. War is a rough pioneer;
but without such a pioneer to clear the way the world would stand still.
Look back. What do you see throughout the successive ages? War, with his
red eye, his iron feet, and his gleaming brand, marching in the van; and
commerce, and arts, and Christianity, following in the wake of this
blood-besmeared Anakim. Such has ever been the order of procession.
Mankind in the mass are a sluggish race, and will march only when the
word of command is sounded from iron-throated, hoarse-voiced war. Look
at the Alps. What do you see? A gigantic form, busy amid the blinding
tempests and the eternal ice of their summits. With herculean might he
rends the rocks and levels the mountains. Who is he, and what does he
there? That is war, in the person of Napoleon, hewing a path through
rocks and glaciers, for the passage of the Bible and the missionary.
Under the reign of the Mediator the promise to Christianity is, All is
yours. War is yours, and Peace is yours.
As we passed on, innumerable nooks of beauty opened to the eye, and
romantic peaks ever and anon shot up before us. Now the path led along a
meadow, with its large bright flowers; and now along the brink of an
Alpine river, with its worn bed and tumultuous floods. Now it rounded
the shoulder of a hill; and now it lost itself in some frightful gorge,
where the overhanging mountain, with its drapery of pine forests, made
it dark as midnight almost. You emerge into daylight again, and begin
the same succession of green meadow, pine-clad hill, foaming torrent,
and black gorge. Thus you go onward and upward. At length white Alps
begin to look down upon you, and give you warning that you are nearing
those central regions where eternal winter holds his seat amid pinnacles
of ice and wastes of snow.
Let us take an individual picture. The road has made a sudden turn; and
a valley, hitherto concealed by the mountains, opens unexpectedly. It is
some three or four miles long; and the road traverses it straight as the
arrow's flight, till it loses itself amid the rocks and foliage at the
bottom of the mountain which you see lying across the valley. On this
hand is a stream of water, clear as crystal; on that is the ridgy, wavy,
lofty mass of a purple Alp. The bright air and light incorporate, as it
were, with the substance of the mountain, and spiritualize it, so that
it looks of mould intermediate betwixt the earth and the firmament. The
path is bordered with the most delicious verdure, fresh and soft as a
carpet, and freckled with the dancing shadows of the trees. On this
hand is a chalet, with a vine climbing its wall and mantling its
doorway; on that is a verdant knoll, planted a-top with chestnut trees;
and from amidst their rich, massy foliage, the little spire of the
church, with its glittering vane, looks forth. Near it is the cure's
house, buried amidst flower-blossoms, the foliage of vines, and the
shadows of the sycamore and chestnut. There is not a spot in the little
valley which beauty has not clothed and decked with the most painstaking
care; while grandeur has built up a wall all round, as if to keep out
the storms that sometimes rage here. It looks so quiet and tranquil, and
is so shut in from the great world outside, that one thinks of it as a
spot which happy beings from another sphere might come to visit, and
where he might list the melody of their voices, as they walk at
even-tide amid the bowers of this earthly Eden.
The road makes another turn, and the scene is changed in a moment,--in
the twinkling of an eye. The happy valley is gone,--it has vanished like
a dream; and a scene of stern, savage, overpowering sublimity rises
before you. Alp is piled upon Alp, chasms yawn, torrents growl, jutting
rocks threaten; and far over head is the dark pine forest, amid which
you can descry, perhaps, the frozen billows of the glacier, or have
glimpses of those still higher and drearier regions where winter sits on
her eternal throne, and holds undivided sway. Your farther progress is
completely barred. So it looks. A cyclopean wall rises from earth to
heaven. The gate of rock by which you entered seems to have closed its
ponderous jaws behind you, and shut you in,--there to remain till some
supernatural power rend the mountains and give you egress. The mood of
mind changes with the scene. The beauty soothed and softened you; now
you grow impulsive and stern. The awful forms around you blend with the
soul, as it were, and impart something of their own vastness to it. You
feel yourself carried into the very presence of that Power which sank
the foundations of the mountains in the depths of the earth, and built
up their giant masses above the clouds; which hung the avalanche on
their brow, clove their unfathomable abysses, poured the river at their
feet, and taught the forked lightning to play around their awful icy
steeps. You seem to hear the sound of the Almighty's footsteps still
echoing amid these hills. There passes before you the shadow of
Omnipotence; and a great voice seems to proclaim the Godhead of Him "who
hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven
with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and
weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance."
The road was comparatively solitary. We passed at times a waggoner, who
was conveying the produce of the plains to some village among the
mountains; and then a couple of pedestrians, with the air of tradesmen,
on their way perhaps to a Swiss town to seek employment; and next a
cowherd, driving home his herds from the glades of the forest; and now
an occasional gendarme would present himself, and force you to remember,
what you would willingly have forgotten amid such scenes, that there
were such things as armies in the world; and sometimes the long, dark
figure of the cure, reading his breviary to economize time, might be
seen gliding along before you, representative of the murky superstition
that still fills these valleys, and which, indeed, you can read in the
stolid face of the Savoyard, as he sits listlessly under the broad
easings of his cottage roof.
Anon the evening came, walking noiselessly upon the mountains, and
shedding on the spirit a not unpleasant melancholy. The Alps seemed to
grow taller. Deep masses of shade were projected from summit to summit.
Pine forest, and green vale, and dashing torrent, and quiet hamlet, all
retired from view, as if they wished to go to sleep beneath the friendly
shadows. A deep and reverent silence stole over the Alps, as if the
stillness of the firmament had descended upon them. Over all nature was
shed this spirit of quiet and profound tranquillity. Every tree was
motionless. The murmur of the brook, the wing of the bird, the creak of
our diligence, the voices of the postilion and _conducteur_, all felt
the softening influence of the hour.
But mark! what glory is this which begins to burn upon the crest of the
snowy Alps? First there comes a flood of rosy light, and then a deep
bright crimson, like the ruby's flash or the sapphire's blaze, and then
a circlet of flaming peaks studs the horizon. It looks as if a great
conflagration were about to begin. But suddenly the light fades, and
piles of cold, pale white rise above you. You can scarce believe them to
be the same mountains. But, quick as the lightning, the flash comes
again. A flood of glory rolls once more along their summits. It is a
last and mighty blaze. You feel as if it were a struggle for life,--as
if it were a war waged by the spirits of darkness against these
celestial forms. The struggle is over: the darkness has prevailed. These
mighty mountain torches are extinguished one after one; and cold,
ghastly piles, of sepulchral hue, which you shiver to look up at, and
which remind you of the dead, rise still and calm in the firmament above
you. You feel relieved when darkness interposes its veil betwixt you and
them. The night sets in deep, and calm, and beautiful, with troops of
stars overhead. The voice of streams, all night long, fills the silent
hills with melodious echoes.
We now threaded the black gorge of the Arc, passing, unperceived in the
darkness, Fort Lesseillon, which, erecting its tiers of batteries above
this tremendous natural fosse, looks like a mailed warrior guarding the
entrance to Italy. It was eleven o'clock, and we were toiling up the
mountain. We had left all human habitations far below, as we thought,
when suddenly we were startled by a peal of village bells. Never had
bells sounded sweeter in my fancy than those I now heard in these dreary
regions. These were the convent bells of the little village of
Lanslebourg, which lies at the foot of the summit of the Mont Cenis.
Here we were to sup. It was a sort of Arbour in the midst of the hill
Difficulty, where we Pilgrims might refresh ourselves before beginning
our last and steepest ascent. It was a most substantial repast, as all
suppers in that part of the world are; and we had the pleasure of
thinking that we were perhaps the highest supper party in Europe. It was
our last meal before crossing the mountain, and passing from the modern
to the ancient world; for the ridge of the Alps is the limit that
divides the two. On this side are modern times; on that are the dark
ages. You retrograde five full centuries when you step across the line.
We ate our supper, as did the Israelites their last meal in Egypt, with
our loins girded,--scarce even our greatcoats put off, and our staff in
our hand.
Now for the summit. We started at midnight. Above us was an ebon vault,
studded thick with large bright stars. Around us was the awful silence
of the mountains. The night was luminous; for in that elevated region
darkness is unknown, save when the storm-cloud shrouds it. Of our party,
some betook them to the diligence, and were carried over asleep; others
of us, leaving the vehicle to follow the road, which zig-zags up to the
summit, addressed ourselves to the old route, which winds steeply
upward, now through forests of stunted firs, now over a matting of
thick, short grass, and now over the bare debris-strewn scalp of the
mountain. The convent bells followed us with their sweet chimes up the
hill, and formed a link between us and the living world below. The
echoes of our voices were strangely loud. They rung out in the thin
elastic air, as if all we said had been caught up and repeated by some
invisible being,--some genius of the mountains. The hours wore away; and
so delighted were we with the novelty of our position,--climbing the
summits of the Alps at midnight,--that they seemed but so many minutes.
Ere we were aware, the night was past, and the dawn came upon us; and
with the dawn, new and stupendous glories burst forth. How fresh and
holy the young day, as it drew aside the curtains of the east, and
smiled upon the mountains! The valleys were buried under a fathomless
ocean of haze; but the pearly light, sown by the rosy hand of morn,
fringed the mountain ridges, and a multitudinous sea of silvery waves
spread out around us. The dawn stole on, waxing momentarily; and the
great white Alps, which had been standing all night around us so silent,
and cold, and sepulchral-like, in their snowy shrouds, now began to grow
palpable and less dream-like. The stars put out their fires as the pure
crystal light mounted into the sky. Each successive scene was
lovely,--inexpressibly lovely,--but momentary. We wished we could have
stereotyped it till we had had time to admire it; but while we were
gazing it had passed and was gone, like the other glories of the world.
But, lo! the sun is near. Mighty torch-bearers run before his chariot,
and cry to the rocks, the pine-forests, the torrents, the glaciers, the
vine-clad vales, the flower-enamelled glades, the rivers, the cities,
that their king is coming. Awake and worship! A mighty Alp, whose
loftier stature or more favourable position gives it the start of all
the others, has caught the first ray; and suddenly, as if an invisible
hand had kindled it, it rises into the firmament, a pyramid of flame,
soft, mild, yet gloriously bright, like a dome of living sapphire. While
you gaze, another flashes upon you, and another, and another, and at
length the whole horizon is filled with gigantic pyres. The stupendous
vision has risen so suddenly, that you almost look if you may see the
seraph which has flown round and kindled these mighty torches. The glory
is inexpressible, and on a scale so vast, that you have no words to
describe it. You can scarce believe it to be reflected light which gives
such glory to these mountains. They are so rosy, so vividly, intensely
radiant, that you feel as if that boundless effulgence emanated from
themselves,--were flowing forth from some hidden fountain of light
within. It is like no other scene of earthly glory you ever saw. You can
compare it only to some celestial city which has been let down from the
firmament upon the tops of the mountains, with its glittering turrets,
its domes of sapphire, and its wall of alabaster, needing no sun or
other source of earthly light to enlighten and glorify it. But while you
gaze, it is gone. The sun is up, and the mighty mountain-torches which
had carried the tidings of his coming to the countries beneath are
extinguished.
It was now full day, and we had reached the summit of the pass. Above us
were still the snow-clad peaks; but the road does not ascend higher. We
now crossed the frontier, and were in Italy. A little rocky plain
surrounded by weather-beaten peaks, a deep blue lake, and a sea of bare
ridges in front, were all that we saw of Italy. The road now began
sensibly to decline, and the diligence quickened its pace. We soon
reached the ridges before us, and began to descend over the brow of the
Alps, which are steep and perpendicular as a wall almost, on their
southern side. You first traverse a region covered with immense
lichen-clothed boulders; next come stretches of heath; then stunted
firs: by and by fruit and forest trees begin to make their appearance;
next comes the lovely acacia; and last of all the vine, tall and
luxuriant, veiling the peasant's cot with its shadow. The road is
literally a series of hanging stairs, which zig-zag down the face of the
mountain. At certain points the rock is perforated; at others it is hewn
into terraces; and at others the path rests on vast substructions of
masonry. Now an immense rock leans over the road, and now you find
yourself on the edge of some frightful precipice, with the gulph running
right down many thousands of feet, and a white torrent at the bottom,
boiling and struggling, but unable to make itself heard at that height
on the mountain. The turns are frequent and sharp; and the heavy,
overladen vehicle, in its furious downward career, gives a swing at
each, as if it would cut short the passage into Italy, and land the
passenger, sooner than he wishes, at the bottom. At length, after four
hours' riding, the descent is accomplished. The scene has changed in the
twinkling of an eye. The plain is as level as a floor. The warm
sun,--the brilliant sky,--the luxuriant vines,--the handsome
architecture,--the picturesque costumes,--the dark oval faces, and black
fiery eyes of the natives,--all tell you that it is a new world into
which you have entered,--that this is ITALY.