THE VALE OF CHAMONIX
We saw everything that there was to see at Zermatt--the relics of the
early climbers in the little museum; the pathetic graveyard where the
victims of their mad ambition are commemorated, and the Imfeld
relief-maps of the surrounding region. Here I had my first experience
in what one might call mountain-climbing by proxy; we took the
electric train up to the Gornergrat. Sir John Lubbock says:--
“It is impossible to give any idea in words of the beauty of these
high snow-fields. The gently curving surfaces, which break with abrupt
edges into dark abysses or sink gently to soft depressions or meet one
another in ridges, the delicate shadows in the curved hollows, the
lines of light on the crests, the suggestion of easy movement in the
forms, with the sensation of complete repose to the eye, the snowy
white with an occasional tinge of the most delicate pink, make up a
scene of which no picture or photograph can give more than a very
inadequate impression, and form an almost irresistible attraction to
all true lovers of nature.”
It is perfectly true: words fail to express one’s feelings.
Just earth and rocks and snow and ice and light and shade. What power
must have been exerted to squeeze those mighty strata and tip them up
and bend them over and hurl them against one another. Everything is
relative, and I find I can imagine what an ant might feel when
climbing over the furrows of a plowed field. The earth itself seems so
small when poised in the universe--just a microscopic atom, and the
mightiest mountains are only the wrinkles of an apple. Yet here we
were ten thousand feet above the sea with a vast panorama of mountains
on every side. More than a score of Horns, besides Jochs and Cime and
Grats and Gabeln; twenty of them are more than four thousand meters
high; Monte Rosa topping them all with her four thousand six hundred
and thirty-eight meters. Somehow mountains do not sound so high when
expressed in meters, but one does not belong to Metrical Societies
without being consistent! A dozen immense glaciers pour their
cracking, dazzling, monstrous streams of liquid solidity down, for
ever changing yet, like rivers of waters, for ever the same. Year
after year appear the great crevasses where the glacier tumbles over a
precipice and becomes a cataract of ice, yet remains the same. Verily
the mountains themselves, seen by the great eye of the Father of Time
are moving; he sees that the whole crest of the Alps is slowly moving
northward: this is proved by the fact that one side is steeper than
the other.
It is rather amusing to see how many persons have been disgusted with
their first view of a glacier. They are covered, in many cases, with
mud, and look dirty and unkempt. They plow out the rocks; great
showers of boulders fall down on them, and especially where they have
flowed down to the melting level and begun to deposit their freight,
making what are called terminal moraines, they are not white and
glittering. But, seen from a distance, the glaciers of the high Alps
are most impressive. And to think that a very slight lowering of the
average temperature of the year would bring these great cold snaky
monsters over the habitations of men again. The ice-age might once
more be renewed and wipe out our civilization.
While we were on the Gornergrat I saw and heard an avalanche. A
small snow-ball may start one. Roaring louder and louder with
thunderous echoes it hurls itself down the steep incline, and, like a
colossal, titanic bomb-shell, it bursts into the valley. The noise
made by a snow-slide from a steep roof is startling enough, but
imagine it multiplied a thousand times,--as if the top of the world
were tumbling. It is impossible to estimate the thousands of tons of
ice and snow that go dashing and crashing and smashing into the
valleys. It is Nature engaged in her slow but certain work of
destruction. The bombardment of the avalanches is one of the most
impressive phenomena in the mountains.
[Illustration: ON THE GLACIER.]
I do not know whether Tennyson ever climbed to the Gornergrat, but he
gives a picture of Monte Rosa which is well worth remembering:--
“I climbed the roofs at break of day;
Sun-smitten Alps before me lay,
I stood among the silent statues
And statued pinnacles, as mute as they.
“How faintly flushed, how phantom fair
Was Monte Rosa hanging there
A thousand shadowy-penciled valleys
And snowy dells in the golden air.”
I had a pensive longing to spend the whole summer among this giant
Brotherhood of peaks, making excursions to one after another--provided
the weather allowed. From each summit, from each col and shoulder,
there would be a different aspect of mountain scenery; different
cloud-effects; different sunsets; different risks and different
escapes. I do not know how many chances there are of putting hundred
franc notes into the pockets of guides. But the zest of discovery is
gone; all climbing now is only imitation and repetition, and it is of
no use to regret the old days or to repine because one must turn one’s
back on the possibilities of adventure.
We returned as we came. As the train stopped at Stalden Will told me
of a wonderful excursion he had enjoyed the preceding year. He and two
German friends of his, one a professor, the other a doctor, had walked
up to Saas-Fee and ascended the Allalinhorn.
“We had to go down, before we went up,” said Will. “There is a bridge
which crosses the Matter-Visp, and after getting to the other side we
followed up through the Saastal by a path which gives you the most
enchanting pictures of tumbling water-falls. We spent the night at
Saas-Grund and the next morning early reached Saas-Fee, which, I
think, affords one of the finest views in Switzerland. The glacier
called the Fee is perfectly surrounded with magnificent peaks--I can’t
remember half of them; but they are all from ten to thirteen thousand
feet high. The Alphubel is over fourteen thousand. We took guides and
went up the Allalinhorn. There were six of us roped together and it
was over snow all the way. The pass is nearly twelve thousand feet up,
and cold. But the view from the rounded summit well repaid us for our
pains. Directly across, so that one could almost leap it, is the
jagged peak of the Rimpfischhorn, its black dorsal fin sticking out of
the dazzling snow as ugly, though not so prominently uprising, as the
Matterhorn. Switzerland,” he added, “for a little country has more ups
and downs in it than any other in the world.”
* * * * *
At Visp our Moto was waiting for us. Some of the people whom we met
did not believe that we had been permitted to ascend the Rhône valley,
as it had been at one time closed to motor-cars. But either the report
of what the French are doing to attract wealthy travellers by building
_La route des Alpes_ wholly in French territory from Paris to Nice or
a realization of the direct loss of patronage caused by illiberal
motor-laws has changed some of the interpretations of them. In parts
of Switzerland it is perfectly justifiable to shut automobiles out.
Where the roads are narrow and are used largely by pedestrians or for
driving cattle and there is real danger it is probably for the
interest of the many for the few to be subjected to restraint. Even
the hotel-keepers of the Grisons and of the Bernese Oberland agree
that more are benefited by excluding motor-cars than by admitting
them, for there are a thousand that go by horses or on foot to every
hundred that come in automobiles.
We had to go back to Martigny, and as we were so near we went to see
the Gorges du Trient. This is a colossal fissure from one hundred and
eighty to three hundred meters deep, and frequently not more than a
couple of meters across. The only access is by a wooden gallery nearly
half a mile long hung on iron cramps and supports, while far below
rushes the torrent with a deafening roar.
From Martigny one follows a zigzagging road over the Col de la Forclaz
and then passes Argentière over the Col des Montets to Chamonix. The
chief feature is the Tête Noire which Miss Havergal, who climbed it,
declares “is a magnificent high level valley or gorge, winding for
four or five hours at a good height along mountains with as
picturesque a combination of heights and depths, rocks, torrents,
cascades, pine trees, ferns, flowers and precipices as exists
anywhere.”
For the first time on our trip we had trouble with the Moto. First one
of the front tires burst with a report that woke the echoes like a
gun. Then, when going down a long incline, the brakes caused so much
friction that we nearly got on fire; but by waiting for a while the
danger was passed and we reached Chamonix safely.
The name of Chamonix, or, as the French spell it, Chamouni, is derived
from the Latin _campus munitus_, _champs muni_, the fortified field.
The earliest mention of the name in the modern form is found in an
atlas of 1595; but in 1091, Aymon, Count of Geneva, bestowed the
valley on the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Michel de la Cluse; it was
then called by its Latin name. Three hundred years later a priory was
founded there, which, in the early part of the Sixteenth Century, came
into the jurisdiction of the Canons of Sallanches, who so maltreated
the peasantry that at last they rose in revolt, destroyed the
monastery and wrought their freedom. It was occasionally visited in
the Seventeenth Century, but in 1741 two Englishmen, Pococke and
Windham, with six others and five servants, went there from Geneva.
The feud between the Chamoniards and the monks of Sallanches had, in
some way, made people believe that the valley was inhabited by
brigands, and the Pococke-Windham party went armed and camped out in
the open air with sentinels posted. Their bravery is commemorated in
the “Englishmen’s Stone,” bearing their names and the date. The
following year Pierre Martel, the son of a Geneva shoemaker, hearing
about their wonderful adventures among the glaciers, was moved to see
them for himself. He wrote an account of his journey and for the first
time gave a name to Mont Blanc. What a pity he did not give a better
one! He set the fashion of visiting “the glaciers” and people began to
come more and more, to see them and to study them.
The young scientist De Saussure was one of the first to make a study
of glacial action. Then, in 1762, the young Duc d’Enville made a study
of the glaciers of Savoy, and wrote an interesting account of them,
which may be found in the Annuaire du Club Alpin for 1893. Seventy
years later Professor Forbes began to make scientific studies of the
motion of the glaciers and was the first to discover that they were
really rivers of ice moving like other rivers, faster in the centre
than at the sides. He calculated that their daily progress was ten
inches near the top, twenty-five inches near the bottom, at the
centre, and sixteen inches at the sides. He discovered in the ice,
fragments of wood which were recognized as belonging to a ladder which
De Saussure had left at the upper end of the Mer de Glace in 1788.
They had been brought down five thousand meters in forty-five years.
In 1837 Louis Jean Rodolphe Agassiz, whom America claims as one of her
glories, though he was born on Lake Morat “In the pleasant Pays de
Vaud,” read a paper before the Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences
meeting at Neuchâtel, in which he propounded the now-accepted theory.
As it was opposed he made tests of the motion of the glaciers at
Chamonix, at Zermatt and near the Grimsel-Pass. He spent a number of
years in this work, assisted by Count de Pourtalès and others. All
sorts of tests were made but the proof of time is absolutely
convincing.
Thus in 1820 a party had reached the upper end of the Grand Plateau
and were just starting up the “ancien passage” when the snow on which
they were climbing began to slide. All of them were swept down to the
edge of the great crevasse which they had safely crossed a short time
before. Three of the guides were swallowed up in it. In 1861 the
remains of their bodies began to appear at the lower end of the
Glacier des Bossons, more than a kilometer from the place. Bits of
clothing, a cooked leg of mutton, a forearm with its hand came into
sight. One of the surviving guides was present when they were
discovered and exclaimed:--“Who would have thought I should once more
shake hands with my good comrade again!” These remains had travelled
more than one hundred and fifty meters a year for forty-one years.
De Saussure’s monument stands on the east bank of the Arve; Balmat’s
on the other side, near the church.
The valley of Chamonix is supposed to be due to glacial action. Those
who have studied it show that it is a part of the great folding up of
the Jurassic strata nipt in between crystalline rocks by the
tremendous lateral compression to which Switzerland was subjected as
the earth cooled and shrank. The Valais, the Urserental and the
region of the Vorder Rhein belong to the same cosmic cataclysm.
[Illustration: “JAGGED NEEDLES AND PINNACLES OF CRUEL ROCK.”]
The great-great-grandchildren of that prehistoric glacier still
inhabit the mountain-valleys. The greatest of them is the Mer de
Glace, on which every visitor must set his foot. Farther up the valley
is l’Argentière, which stretches from side to side between the rugged
mighty ridges that lift themselves into fantastic jagged needles and
pinnacles of cruel rock. It is at least a hundred meters deep, and one
can look down into vivid blue crevasses and hear the rushing of the
ever-wearing waters far below. The five glaciers make the five streams
which the poets sing about. At one time the Glacier des Bois dammed
the Arve, but in time the persistent river cut through it, forming the
Passage des Tines, which has a height of one hundred and seventy
meters. The great erratic blocks of granite scattered through the
valley are mute witnesses of the ancient days. The eye that can read
will see all along the faces of the cliffs the hieroglyphics of the
ice.
This is what William Cullen Bryant says about the Arve. By the way, I
noticed that while Coleridge pronounced it in two syllables, Shelley
gives it one. So does Bryant:--
“Not from the sands or cloven rocks,
Thou rapid Arve! thy waters flow;
Nor earth within its bosom locks
Thy dark, unfathomable wells below.
Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream
Begins to move and murmur first
Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam,
Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.
“Born where the thunder and the blast,
And morning’s earliest light are born,
Thou rushest swoln and loud and fast
By these low homes as if in scorn:
Yet humbler springs yield purer waves;
And brighter, glassier streams than thine,
Sent up from earth’s unlighted caves,
With heaven’s own beam and image shine.
“Yet stay! for here are flowers and trees;
Warm rays on cottage roofs are here,
And laugh of girls and hum of bees,--
Here linger till thy waves are clear.
Thou heedest not, thou hastest on;
From steep to steep thy torrent falls,
Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone,
It rests beneath Geneva’s walls.”
“That expression, ‘rests beneath Geneva’s walls,’ seems to me
singularly inappropriate,” said I. “I did not know it rested
anywhere.”
“By the way,” said Will, “it is a curious thing: almost all visitors
to the Rhône valley remember the river as a greyish muddy-looking
stream; yet it is true, for seven months of the year it runs with a
clear current, of a greenish colour very much like Niagara’s. I
suppose it does its work of disintegration mainly in the summer, when
it has the help of the sun.”
Chamonix, which so short a time ago was almost a lost valley, is now
the very centre of the mercenary traffic in Nature’s most marvellous
mysteries. One may reach dizzy heights now by the railway, and there
are restaurants a mile above the sea.
My nephew happened to be personally acquainted with M. Fidèle Eugster,
whose fertile brain devised a scheme for building solid pylons over
which should run an aerial line from Chamonix up to the Aiguille du
Midi, three thousand eight hundred and forty-two meters--only a little
less than nine hundred and sixty-five meters less than the monarch
himself. He happened to be there himself and he invited Will and me to
ride up as far as the construction-car went. Ruth contented herself
with watching us and taking a walk about town. The car, seating twenty
persons, starts from Chamonix and swings up two thousand meters over
the twenty-seven of these immense pylons already constructed. They
are from twenty-five to seventy-five meters apart. The power-station,
where there are electric motors of seventy-five horse-power each, is
near Pierre Pointue at a height of one thousand six hundred and
seventy-nine meters. From there over twenty-four more pylons a cable
one thousand four hundred meters long took us to the foot of the
Aiguille. There we got into a smaller basket-car and were swung up to
a protogen pinnacle directly opposite the Grands Mulets. From there we
were taken to the first tension-pylon which breaks the enormous
stretch to the Col du Midi, where the terminal station will be
constructed. It is a tremendous swoop of between eight and nine
hundred meters and the last stathmos will be nearly six hundred more.
The car glissades down the curves; then the cable pulls it up the
incline. It is like a series of gigantic scallops but there is no
shock, no jar; only a clicking as you pass the pylons.
Next to my flight in the hydro-aeroplane this was the greatest
experience of my life. What can I say of that swoop through the air?
Words utterly fail. Below lay the valley with its thickly clustered
hotels and houses and the ramifications of the rushing rivers and
streams like veins in a dissected hand. Below us lay the glacier with
its séracs diminished to etchings. All around rose the haughty
Brotherhood scornfully watching the machinations of puny,
mighty-minded man. They know that they can sometimes catch him
napping, but only his body can they hurt. His soul is bigger and
grander than their icy hearts. They can fling down avalanches and hurl
enormous boulders or bullet-like stones at him, tearing themselves to
pieces in their blind fury to do so, but here he is above them. They
can’t shake off the shackles which his genius and his power fasten to
their gigantic frames. Atlas must bear the Earth on his shoulders and
there is no Perseus to relieve him of the weight.
Compared to the cost of some of the other Swiss roads this aerial line
is comparatively inexpensive. It has been estimated that twenty-four
million francs will build it and equip it. Its success will doubtless
cause other “inaccessible peaks” to be harnessed in the same way. All
the difficulty and most of the danger--I suppose one might be struck
by lightning or die of heart-failure on the way up--and a vast amount
of time, will be eliminated.
While we were in the valley we had a most glorious sunset. I will not
attempt to describe the indescribable; there are no terms to
differentiate the tints that glowed on the clouds and the shades of
lavender and violet and royal purple. There is nothing more impressive
than to see the outburst of cloud masses from a mountain-valley rising
dark and stormy and then, as it were, putting on the panoply of their
royal state--furnished them by their servant the sun. I recalled
Moore’s poem on Mont Blanc at sunset:--
“’Twas at this instant--while there glowed
This last, intensest gleam of light--
Suddenly thro’ the opening road
The valley burst upon my sight!
That glorious valley with its lake
And Alps on Alps in clusters swelling,
Mighty and pure and fit to make
The ramparts of a godhead’s dwelling.
“I stood entranced--as rabbins say.
This whole assembled, gazing world
Will stand upon that awful day
When the ark’s light aloft unfurled
Among the opening clouds shall shine
Divinity’s own radiant sign!
“Mighty Mont Blanc, thou wert to me
That minute, with thy brow in heaven,
As sure a sign of deity
As e’er to mortal gaze was given.
Nor ever, were I destined yet
To live my life twice o’er again,
Can I the deep-felt awe forget,
The dream, the trance that rapt me then.”
We went through the paces demanded of visitors to the valley. We made
excursions to the Glacier des Bossons especially to see the little
lake which so exquisitely mirrors Mont Blanc--so detestible the
artificial ruins which insult its beauty!--we even paid our franc to
penetrate the artificial grotto in the ice--and we went as far as the
Cascade du Dard. We went also to Flegère for the sake of its
extraordinary panoramic view; but I thought best of all was the
Brévent which faces so closely the whole range.
We reluctantly left the wonderful valley and returned to Lausanne by
the way of Cluses, where we had our watches set, thence across to
Bonneville, down to Geneva and along the lake. We were warmly welcomed
by the three children who, however, had been well looked after by the
trustworthy French bonne.