OF THE SCULPTURE OF MOUNTAINS:--SECONDLY, THE CENTRAL PEAKS.
Sec. 1. In the 20th paragraph of the last chapter, it was noticed that
ordinarily the most irregular contortions or fractures of beds of rock
were found in the districts of most elevated hills, the contortion or
fracture thus appearing to be produced at the moment of elevation. It
has also previously been stated that the hardness and crystalline
structure of the material increased with the mountainous character of
the ground; so that we find as almost invariably correlative, the
_hardness_ of the rock, its _distortion_, and its _height_; and, in like
manner its _softness_, _regularity_ of _position_, and _lowness_. Thus,
the line of beds in an English range of down, composed of soft chalk
which crumbles beneath the fingers, will be as low and continuous as in
_a_ of Fig. 16 (p. 151); the beds in the Jura mountains, composed of
firm limestone, which needs a heavy hammer stroke to break it, will be
as high and wavy as at _b_; and the ranges of Alps, composed of slaty
crystallines, yielding only to steel wedges or to gunpowder, will be as
lofty and as wild in structure as at _c_. Without this beneficent
connection of hardness of material with height, mountain ranges either
could not have existed, or would not have been habitable. In their
present magnificent form, they could not have existed; and whatever
their forms, the frequent falls and crumblings away, which are of little
consequence in the low crags of Hastings, Dover, or Lyme, would have
been fatal to the population of the valleys beneath, when they took
place from heights of eight or ten thousand feet.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.]
Sec. 2. But this hardening of the material would not have been sufficient,
by itself, to secure the safety of the inhabitants. Unless the reader
has been already familiarized with geological facts, he must surely have
been struck by the prominence of the _bedded_ structure in all the
instances of mountain form given in the preceding chapter; and must have
asked himself, Why are mountains always built in this masonry-like way,
rather than in compact masses? Now, it is true that according to present
geological theories, the bedded structure was a necessary consequence of
the mode in which the materials were accumulated; but it is not less
true that this bedded structure is now the principal means of securing
the stability of the mass, and is to be regarded as a beneficent
appointment, with such special view. That structure compels each
mountain to assume the safest contour of which under the given
circumstances of upheaval it is capable. If it were all composed of an
amorphous mass of stone as at A, Fig. 19, a crack beginning from the
top, as at _x_ in A, might gradually extend downwards in the direction
_x y_ in B, until the whole mass, indicated by the shade, separated
itself and fell. But when the whole mountain is arranged in beds, as at
C, the crack beginning at the top stops in the uppermost bed, or, if it
extends to the next, it will be in a different place, and the detached
blocks, marked by the shaded portions, are of course still as secure in
their positions as before the crack took place. If, indeed, the beds
sloped towards the precipice, as at D, the danger would be greater; but
if the reader looks to any of the examples of mountain form hitherto
given, he will find that the universal tendency of the modes of
elevation is to cause the beds to slope _away_ from the precipice, and
to build the whole mountain in the form C, which affords the utmost
possible degree of security. Nearly all the mountains which rise
immediately above thickly peopled districts, though they may appear to
be thrown into isolated peaks, are in reality nothing more than flattish
ranks of rock, terminated by walls of cliff, of this perfectly safe
kind; and it will be part of our task in the succeeding chapter to
examine at some length the modes in which sublime and threatening forms
are almost deceptively assumed by arrangements of mountain which are in
themselves thus simple and secure.
Sec. 3. It, however, fell within the purpose of the Great Builder to give,
in the highest peaks of mountains, examples of form more strange and
majestic than any which could be attained by structures so beneficently
adapted to the welfare of the human race. And the admission of other
modes of elevation, more terrific and less secure, takes place exactly
in proportion to the increasing presence of such conditions in the
locality as shall render it on other grounds unlikely to be inhabited,
or incapable of being so. Where the soil is rich and the climate soft,
the hills are low and safe;[52] as the ground becomes poorer and the air
keener, they rise into forms of more peril and pride; and their utmost
terror is shown only where their fragments fall on trackless ice, and
the thunder of their ruin can be heard but by the ibex and the eagle.
Sec. 4. The safety of the lower mountains depends, as has just been
observed, on their tendency to divide themselves into beds. But it will
easily be understood that, together with security, such a structure
involves some monotony of aspect; and that the possibility of a rent
like that indicated in the last figure, extending itself without a
check, so as to detach some vast portion of the mountain at once, would
be a means of obtaining accidental forms of far greater awfulness. We
find, accordingly, that the bedded structure is departed from in the
central peaks; that they are in reality gifted with this power, or, if
we choose so to regard it, affected with this weakness, of rending
downwards throughout into vertical sheets; and that to this end they are
usually composed of that structureless and massive rock which we have
characterized by the term "compact crystalline."
Sec. 5. This, indeed, is not universal. It happens sometimes that toward
the centre of great hill ranges ordinary stratified rocks of the
coherent groups are hardened into more compact strength than is usual
with them; and out of the hardened mass a peak, or range of peaks, is
cut as if out of a single block. Thus the well known Dent du Midi of
Bex, a mountain of peculiar interest to the English travellers who crowd
the various inns and pensions which now glitter along the shores of the
Lake of Geneva at Vevay, Clarens, and Montreux, is cut out of horizontal
beds of rock which are traceable in the evening light by their dark and
light lines along its sides, like courses of masonry; the real form of
the mountain being that of the ridge of a steep house-roof, jagged and
broken at the top, so that, seen from near St. Maurice, the extremity of
the ridge appears a sharp pyramid. The Dent de Morcles, opposite the
Dent du Midi, has been already noticed, and is figured in Plate 29, Fig.
4. In like manner, the Matterhorn is cut out of a block of nearly
horizontal beds of gneiss. But in all these cases the materials are so
hardened and knit together that to all intents and purposes they form
one solid mass, and when the forms are to be of the boldest character
possible, this solid mass is unstratified, and of compact crystalline
rock.
Sec. 6. In looking from Geneva in the morning light, when Mont Blanc and
its companion hills are seen dark against the dawn, almost every
traveller must have been struck by the notable range of jagged peaks
which bound the horizon immediately to the north-east of Mont Blanc. In
ordinary weather they appear a single chain, but if any clouds or mists
happen to float into the heart of the group, it divides itself into two
ranges, lower and higher, as in Fig. 1, Plate 29, of which the uppermost
and more distant chain is the real crest of the Alps, and the lower and
darker line is composed of subordinate peaks which form the south side
of the valley of Chamouni, and are therefore ordinarily known as the
"Aiguilles of Chamouni."
[Illustration: J. Ruskin. J.C. Armytage
29. Aiguille Structure.]
Though separated by some eight or nine miles of actual distance, the two
ranges are part of one and the same system of rock. They are both of
them most notable examples of the structure of the compact crystalline
peaks, and their jagged and spiry outlines are rendered still more
remarkable in any view obtained of them in the immediate neighborhood of
Geneva, by their rising, as in the figure, over two long slopes of
comparatively flattish mountain. The highest of these is the back of a
stratified limestone range, distant about twenty-five miles, whose
precipitous extremity, nodding over the little village of St. Martin's,
is well known under the name of the Aiguille de Varens. The nearer line
is the edge of another limestone mountain, called the Petit Saleve,
within five miles of Geneva. And thus we have two ranges of the
crystalline rocks opposed to two ranges of the coherents, both having
their distinctive characters, the one of vertical fracture, the other of
level continuousness, developed on an enormous scale. I am aware of no
other view in Europe where the essential characteristics of the two
formations are so closely and graphically displayed.
Sec. 7. Nor can I imagine any person thoughtfully regarding the more
distant range, without feeling his curiosity strongly excited as to the
method of its first sculpture. That long banks and fields of rock should
be raised aslope, and break at their edges into cliffs, however
mysterious the details of the operation may be, is yet conceivable in
the main circumstances without any great effort of imagination. But the
carving of those great obelisks and spires out of an infinitely harder
rock; the sculpture of all the fretted pinnacles on the inaccessible and
calm elevation of that great cathedral,--how and when was this wrought?
It is necessary, before the extent and difficulty of such a question can
be felt, to explain more fully the scale and character of the peaks
under consideration.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.]
[Illustration: FIG. 21.]
Sec. 8. The valley of Chamouni, largely viewed, and irrespectively of minor
ravines and irregularities, is nothing more than a deep trench, dug
between two ranges of nearly continuous mountains,--dug with a
straightness and evenness which render its scenery, in some respects,
more monotonous than that of any other Alpine valley. On each side it is
bordered by banks of turf, darkened with pine forest, rising at an even
slope to a height of about 3000 feet, so that it may best be imagined
as a kind of dry moat, which, if cut across, would be of the form
typically shown in Fig. 20; the sloping bank on each side being about
3000 feet high, or the moat about three fifths of a mile in vertical
depth. Then, on the top of the bank, on each side, and a little way back
from the edge of the moat, rise the ranges of the great mountains, in
the form of shattered crests and pyramids of barren rock sprinkled with
snow. Those on the south side of the valley rise another 3000 feet above
the bank on which they stand, so that each of the masses superadded in
Fig. 21 may best be described as a sort of Egyptian pyramid,[53] of the
height of Snowden or Ben Lomond, hewn out of solid rock, and set on the
shoulder of the great bank which borders the valley. Then the Mont
Blanc, a higher and heavier cluster of such summits, loaded with deep
snow, terminates the range. Glaciers of greater or less extent descend
between the pyramids of rock; and one, supplied from their largest
recesses, even runs down the bank into the valley. Fig. 22[54] rudely
represents the real contours of the mountains, including Mont Blanc
itself, on its south side. The range of peaks, _b_, _p_, m, is that
already spoken of, known as the "Aiguilles of Chamouni." They form but a
very small portion of a great crowd of similar, and, for the most part,
larger peaks which constitute the chain of Mont Blanc, and which receive
from the Savoyards the name of Aiguilles, or needles, in consequence of
their peculiarly sharp summits. The forms of these Aiguilles, wonderful
enough in themselves, are, nevertheless, perpetually exaggerated both by
the imagination of the traveller, and by the artists whose delineations
of them find most frank acceptance. Fig. 1 in Plate 30 is faithfully
copied from the representation given of one of these mountains in a
plate lately published at Geneva. Fig. 2 in the same plate is a true
outline of the mountain itself. Of the exaggerations in the other I
shall have more to say presently; meantime, I refer to it merely as a
proof that I am not myself exaggerating, in giving Fig. 22 as showing
the general characters of these peaks.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.]
Sec. 9. This, then, is the problem to be considered,--How mountains of such
rugged and precipitous outline, and at the least 3000 feet in height,
were originally carved out of the hardest rocks, and set in their
present position on the top of the green and sloping bank which sustains
them.
"By mere accident," the reader replies. "The uniform bank might as
easily have been the highest, and the broken granite peaks have risen
from its sides, or at the bottom of it. It is merely the chance
formation of the valley of Chamouni."
Nay; not so. Although, as if to bring the problem more clearly before
the thoughts of men, by marking the structure most where the scenery is
most attractive, the formation is more distinct at Chamouni than
anywhere else in the Alpine chain; yet the general condition of a
rounded bank sustaining jagged or pyramidal peaks is more or less
traceable throughout the whole district of the great mountains. The most
celebrated spot, next to the valley of Chamouni, is the centre of the
Bernese Oberland; and it will be remembered by all travellers that in
its principal valley, that of Grindelwald, not only does the summit of
the Wetterhorn consist of a sharp pyramid raised on the advanced
shoulder of a great promontory, but the two most notable summits of the
Bernese Alps, the Schreckhorn and Finsteraarhorn, cannot be seen from
the valley at all, being thrown far back upon an elevated plateau, of
which only the advanced head or shoulder, under the name of the
Mettenberg, can be seen from the village. The real summits, consisting
in each case of a ridge starting steeply from this elevated plateau, as
if by a new impulse of angry or ambitious mountain temper, can only be
seen by ascending a considerable height upon the flank of the opposite
mass of the Faulhorn.
Sec. 10. And this is, if possible, still more notably and provokingly the
case with the great peaks of the chain of Alps between Monte Rosa and
Mont Blanc. It will be seen, by a glance at any map of Switzerland, that
the district which forms the canton Valais is, in reality, nothing but a
ravine sixty miles long, between that central chain and the Alps of the
cantons Fribourg and Berne. This ravine is also, in its general
structure, merely a deeper and wider _moat_ than that already described
as forming the valley of Chamouni. It lies, in the same manner, between
two _banks_ of mountain; and the principal peaks are precisely in the
same manner set back upon the tops of these banks; and so provokingly
far back, that throughout the whole length of the valley not one of the
summits of the chief chain can be seen from it. That usually pointed out
to travellers as Monte Rosa is a subordinate, though still very colossal
mass, called the Montagne de Saas; and this is the only peak of great
size discoverable from the valley throughout its extent; one or two
glimpses of the snows, not at any eminent point, being caught through
the entrances of the lateral valleys of Evolena, &c.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.]
Sec. 11. Nor is this merely the consequence of the great _distance_ of the
central ridge. It would be intelligible enough that the mountains should
rise gradually higher and higher towards the middle of the chain, so
that the summit at _a_ in the upper diagram of Fig. 23 should be
concealed by the intermediate eminences _b_, _c_, from the valley at
_d_. But this is not, by any means, the manner in which the concealment
is effected. The great peaks stand, as at _a_ in the lower diagram,
jagged, sharp, and suddenly starting out of a comparatively tame mass
of elevated land, through which the trench of the valley of the Rhone is
cut, as at _c_. The subdivision of the bank at _b_ by thousands of
ravines, and its rise, here and there, into more or less notable
summits, conceal the real fact of the structure from a casual observer.
But the longer I stayed among the Alps, and the more closely I examined
them, the more I was struck by the one broad fact of their being a vast
Alpine plateau, or mass of elevated land, upon which nearly all the
highest peaks stood like children set upon a table, removed, in most
cases, far back from the edge of the plateau, as if for fear of their
falling. And the most majestic scenes in the Alps are produced, not so
much by any violation of this law, as by one of the great peaks having
apparently walked to the edge of the table to look over, and thus
showing itself suddenly above the valley in its full height. This is the
case with the Wetterhorn and Eiger at Grindelwald, and with the Grande
Jorasse, above the Col de Ferret. But the raised bank or table is always
intelligibly in existence, even in these apparently exceptional cases;
and, for the most part, the great peaks are not allowed to come to the
edge of it, but remain like the keeps of castles far withdrawn,
surrounded, league beyond league, by comparatively level fields of
mountain, over which the lapping sheets of glacier writhe and flow,
foaming about the feet of the dark central crests like the surf of an
enormous sea-breaker hurled over a rounded rock, and islanding some
fragment of it in the midst. And the result of this arrangement is a
kind of division of the whole of Switzerland into an upper and lower
mountain-world; the lower world consisting of rich valleys bordered by
steep, but easily accessible, wooded banks of mountain, more or less
divided by ravines, through which glimpses are caught of the higher
Alps; the upper world, reached after the first steep banks, of 3000 or
4000 feet in height, have been surmounted, consisting of comparatively
level but most desolate tracts of moor and rock, half covered by
glacier, and stretching to the feet of the true pinnacles of the chain.
Sec. 12. It can hardly be necessary to point out the perfect wisdom and
kindness of this arrangement, as a provision for the safety of the
inhabitants of the high mountain regions. If the great peaks rose at
once from the deepest valleys, every stone which was struck from their
pinnacles, and every snow-wreath which slipped from their ledges, would
descend at once upon the inhabitable ground, over which no year could
pass without recording some calamity of earth-slip or avalanche; while,
in the course of their fall, both the stones and the snow would strip
the woods from the hill sides, leaving only naked channels of
destruction where there are now the sloping meadow and the chestnut
glade. Besides this, the masses of snow, cast down at once into the
warmer air, would all melt rapidly in the spring, causing furious
inundation of every great river for a month or six weeks. The snow being
then all thawed, except what lay upon the highest peaks in regions of
nearly perpetual frost, the rivers would be supplied, during the summer,
only by fountains, and the feeble tricklings on sunny days from the high
snows. The Rhone under such circumstances would hardly be larger at
Lyons than the Severn at Shrewsbury, and many Swiss valleys would be
left almost without moisture. All these calamities are prevented by the
peculiar Alpine structure which has been described. The broken rocks and
the sliding snow of the high peaks, instead of being dashed at once to
the vales, are caught upon the desolate shelves or shoulders which
everywhere surround the central crests. The soft banks which terminate
these shelves, traversed by no falling fragments, clothe themselves with
richest wood; while the masses of snow heaped upon the ledge above them,
in a climate neither so warm as to thaw them quickly in the spring, nor
so cold as to protect them from all the power of the summer sun, either
form themselves into glaciers, or remain in slowly wasting fields even
to the close of the year,--in either case supplying constant, abundant,
and regular streams to the villages and pastures beneath, and, to the
rest of Europe, noble and navigable rivers.
Sec. 13. Now, that such a structure is the best and wisest possible, is,
indeed, sufficient reason for its existence; and to many people it may
seem useless to question farther respecting its origin. But I can hardly
conceive any one standing face to face with one of these towers of
central rock, and yet not also asking himself, Is this indeed the actual
first work of the Divine Master on which I gaze? Was the great precipice
shaped by His finger, as Adam was shaped out of the dust? Were its
clefts and ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the letters were on
the Tables of the Law, and was it thus left to bear its eternal
testimony to His beneficence among these clouds of heaven? Or is it the
descendant of a long race of mountains, existing under appointed laws of
birth and endurance, death and decrepitude?
Sec. 14. There can be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself answers
audibly by the murmur of some falling stone or rending pinnacle. It is
_not_ as it was once. Those waste leagues around its feet are loaded
with the wrecks of what it was. On these, perhaps, of all mountains, the
characters of decay are written most clearly; around these are spread
most gloomily the memorials of their pride, and the signs of their
humiliation.
"What then were they once?"
The only answer is yet again,--"Behold the cloud."
Their form, as far as human vision can trace it, is one of eternal
decay. No retrospection can raise them out of their ruins, or withdraw
them beyond the law of their perpetual fate. Existing science may be
challenged to form, with the faintest color of probability, any
conception of the original aspect of a crystalline mountain; it cannot
be followed in its elevation, nor traced in its connection with its
fellows. No eyes ever "saw its substance, yet being imperfect;" its
history is a monotone of endurance and destruction: all that we can
certainly know of it, is that it was once greater than it is now, and it
only gathers vastness, and still gathers, as it fades into the abyss of
the unknown.
Sec. 15. Yet this one piece of certain evidence ought not to be altogether
unpursued; and while, with all humility, we shrink from endeavoring to
theorize respecting processes which are concealed, we ought not to
refuse to follow, as far as it will lead us, the course of thought which
seems marked out by conspicuous and consistent phenomena. Exactly as the
form of the lower mountains seems to have been produced by certain
raisings and bendings of their formerly level beds, so the form of these
higher mountains seems to have been produced by certain breakings away
from their former elevated mass. If the process appears in either case
doubtful, it is less so with respect to the higher hills. We may not
easily believe that the steep limestone cliffs on one side of a valley,
now apparently secure and steadfast, ever were united with the cliffs on
the other side; but we cannot hesitate to admit that the peak which we
see shedding its flakes of granite, on all sides of it, as a fading rose
lets fall its leaves, was once larger than it is, and owes the present
characters of its forms chiefly to the modes of its diminution.
Sec. 16. Holding fast this clue, we have next to take into consideration
another fact of not less importance,--that over the whole of the rounded
banks of lower mountain, wherever they have been in anywise protected
from the injuries of time, there are yet visible the tracks of ancient
glaciers. I will not here enter into detail respecting the mode in which
traces of glaciers are distinguishable. It is enough to state that the
footmark, so to speak, of a glacier is just as easily recognizable as
the trail of any well-known animal; and that with as much confidence as
we should feel in asserting that a horse had passed along a soft road
which yet retained the prints of its shoes, it may be concluded that the
glaciers of the Alps had once triple or quadruple the extent that they
have now; so that not only the banks of inferior mountains were once
covered with sheets of ice, but even the great valley of the Rhone
itself was the bed of an enormous "Mer de Glace," which extended beyond
the Lake of Geneva to the slopes of Jura.[55]
Sec. 17. From what has already been noted of glacier action, the reader
cannot but be aware that its universal effect is to round and soften the
contours of the mountains subjected to it; so that a glacier may be
considered as a vast instrument of friction, a white sand-paper, applied
slowly but irresistibly to all the roughnesses of the hill which it
covers. And this effect is of course greatest when the ice flows
fastest, and contains more embedded stones; that is to say, greater
towards the lower part of a mountain than near its summit.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
Suppose now a chain of mountains raised in any accidental form, only of
course highest where the force was greatest,--that is to say, at the
centre of the chain,--and presenting any profile such as _a_, Fig. 24;
terminated, perhaps, by a broken secondary cliff, and the whole covered
with a thick bed of glacier, indicated by the spotted space, and moving
in the direction of the arrows. As it wears away the mountain, not at
all at the top, but always more and more as it descends, it would in
process of time reduce the contour of the flank of the hill to the form
at _b_. But at this point the snow would begin to slide from the central
peak, and to leave its rocks exposed to the action of the atmosphere.
Supposing those rocks disposed to break into vertical sheets, the summit
would soon cleave itself into such a form as that at _x_; and the
flakes again subdividing and falling, we should have conditions such as
at _y_. Meanwhile the glacier is still doing its work uninterruptedly on
the lower bank, bringing the mountain successively into the outlines _c_
and _d_, in which the forms _x_ and _y_ are substituted consecutively
for the original summit. But the level of the whole flank of the
mountain being now so much reduced, the glacier has brought itself by
its own work into warmer climate, and has wrought out its own
destruction. It would gradually be thinned away, and in many places at
last vanish, leaving only the barren rounded mountains, and the tongues
of ice still supplied from the peaks above.
Sec. 18. Such is the actual condition of the Alps at this moment. I do not
say that they have in reality undergone any such process. But I think it
right to put the supposition before the reader, more with a view of
explaining what the appearance of things actually is, than with any wish
that he should adopt either this or any other theory on the subject. It
facilitates a description of the Breche de Roland to say, that it looks
as if the peer had indeed cut it open with a swordstroke; but it would
be unfair to conclude that the describer gravely wished the supposition
to be adopted as explanatory of the origin of the ravine. In like
manner, the reader who has followed the steps of the theory I have just
offered, will have a clearer conception of the real look and anatomy of
the Alps than I could give him by any other means. But he is welcome to
accept in seriousness just as much or as little of the theory as he
likes.[56] Only I am well persuaded that the more familiar any one
becomes with the chain of the Alps, the more, whether voluntarily or
not, the idea will force itself upon him of their being mere remnants of
large masses,--splinters and fragments, as of a stranded wreck, the
greater part of which has been removed by the waves; and the more he
will be convinced of the existence of two distinct regions, one, as it
were, below the ice, another above it,--one of subjected, the other of
emergent rock; the lower worn away by the action of the glaciers and
rains, the higher splintering and falling to pieces by natural
disintegration.
Sec. 19. I press, however, neither conjecture nor inquiry farther; having
already stated all that is necessary to give the reader a complete idea
of the different divisions of mountain form. I proceed now to examine
the points of pictorial interest in greater detail; and in order to do
so more conveniently, I shall adopt the order, in description, which
Nature seems to have adopted in formation; beginning with the mysterious
hardness of the central crystallines, and descending to the softer and
lower rocks which we see in some degree modified by the slight forces
still in operation. We will therefore examine: 1. the pictorial
phenomena of the central peaks; 2. those of the summits of the lower
mountains round them, to which we shall find it convenient to give the
distinguishing name of crests; 3. the formation of Precipices, properly
so called; then, the general aspect of the Banks and Slopes, produced by
the action of water or of falling debris, on the sides or at the bases
of mountains; and finally, remove, if it may be, a few of the undeserved
scorns thrown upon our most familiar servants, Stones. To each of these
subjects we shall find it necessary to devote a distinct chapter.
FOOTNOTES
[52] It may be thought I should have reversed these sentences, and
written where the hills are low and safe, the climate is soft, &c.
But it is not so. No antecedent reason can be shown why the Mont
Cervin or Finsteraarhorn should not have risen sharp out of the
plains of Lombardy, instead of out of glaciers.
[53] I use the terms "pyramid" and "peak" at present, in order to
give a rough general idea of the aspect of these hills. Both terms,
as we shall see in the next chapter, are to be accepted under
limitation.
[54] This coarse sketch is merely given for reference, as I shall
often have to speak of the particular masses of mountain, indicated
by the letters in the outline below it; namely--
_b._ Aiguille Blaitiere. _p._ Aiguille du Plan.
_m._ Aiguille du Midi. M. Mont Blanc (summit).
_d._ Dome du Goute. _g._ Aiguille du Goute.
_q_ and _r_ indicate stations only. T. Tapia.
C. Montagne de la Cote. _t._ Montagne de Taconay.
[55] The glacier tracks on the gneiss of the great angle opposite
Martigny are the most magnificent I ever saw in the Alps; those
above the channel of the Trient, between Valorsine and the valley of
the Rhone, the most interesting.
[56] For farther information respecting the glaciers and their
probable action, the reader should consult the works of Professor
Forbes. I believe this theory of the formation of the upper peaks
has been proposed by him, and recently opposed by Mr. Sharpe, who
believes that the great bank spoken of in the text was originally a
sea-bottom. But I have simply stated in this chapter the results of
my own watchings of the Alps; for being without hope of getting time
for available examination of the voluminous works on these subjects,
I thought it best to read nothing (except Forbes's most important
essay on the glaciers, several times quoted in the text), and
therefore to give, at all events, the force of independent witness
to such impressions as I received from the actual facts; De
Saussure, always a faithful recorder of those facts, and my first
master in geology, being referred to, occasionally, for information
respecting localities I had not been able to examine.