and poor, than I ever recollect to have seen. The contrast indeed
between the subjects of the King of Sardinia and the citizens of the
independent republics of Switzerland, affords a powerful illustration of
the blighting mischiefs of despotism, within the space of a few miles.
They have mineral waters here, _eaux savonneuses_, they call them. In
the evening we had some difficulty about our passports, but so soon as
the syndic heard my companion's rank and name, he apologized for the
circumstance. The inn was good. During our voyage, on the distant height
of a hill, covered with pine-forests, we saw a ruined castle, which
reminded me of those on the Rhine.
We left Evian on the following morning, with a wind of such violence as
to permit but one sail to be carried. The waves also were exceedingly
high, and our boat so heavily laden, that there appeared to be some
danger. We arrived however safe at Mellerie, after passing with great
speed mighty forests which overhung the lake, and lawns of exquisite
verdure, and mountains with bare and icy points, which rose immediately
from the summit of the rocks, whose bases were echoing to the waves.
We here heard that the Empress Maria Louisa had slept at Mellerie,
before the present inn was built, and when the accommodations were those
of the most wretched village, in remembrance of St. Preux. How beautiful
it is to find that the common sentiments of human nature can attach
themselves to those who are the most removed from its duties and its
enjoyments, when Genius pleads for their admission at the gate of Power.
To own them was becoming in the Empress, and confirms the affectionate
praise contained in the regret of a great and enlightened nation. A
Bourbon dared not even to have remembered Rousseau. She owed this power
to that democracy which her husband's dynasty outraged, and of which it
was however in some sort the representative among the nations of the
earth. This little incident shews at once how unfit and how impossible
it is for the ancient system of opinions, or for any power built upon a
conspiracy to revive them, permanently to subsist among mankind. We
dined there, and had some honey, the best I have ever tasted, the very
essence of the mountain flowers, and as fragrant. Probably the village
derives its name from this production. Mellerie is the well known scene
of St. Preux's visionary exile; but Mellerie is indeed inchanted ground,
were Rousseau no magician. Groves of pine, chesnut, and walnut
overshadow it; magnificent and unbounded forests to which England
affords no parallel. In the midst of these woods are dells of lawny
expanse, inconceivably verdant, adorned with a thousand of the rarest
flowers and odorous with thyme.
The lake appeared somewhat calmer as we left Mellerie, sailing close to
the banks, whose magnificence augmented with the turn of every
promontory. But we congratulated ourselves too soon: the wind gradually
increased in violence, until it blew tremendously; and as it came from
the remotest extremity of the lake, produced waves of a frightful
height, and covered the whole surface with a chaos of foam. One of our
boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted in holding the
sail at a time when the boat was on the point of being driven under
water by the hurricane. On discovering his error, he let it entirely go,
and the boat for a moment refused to obey the helm; in addition, the
rudder was so broken as to render the management of it very difficult;
one wave fell in, and then another. My companion, an excellent swimmer,
took off his coat, I did the same, and we sat with our arms crossed,
every instant expecting to be swamped. The sail was however again held,
the boat obeyed the helm, and still in imminent peril from the immensity
of the waves, we arrived in a few minutes at a sheltered port, in the
village of St. Gingoux.
I felt in this near prospect of death a mixture of sensations, among
which terror entered, though but subordinately. My feelings would have
been less painful had I been alone; but I know that my companion would
have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with humiliation, when I
thought that his life might have been risked to preserve mine. When we
arrived at St. Gingoux, the inhabitants, who stood on the shore,
unaccustomed to see a vessel as frail as ours, and fearing to venture at
all on such a sea, exchanged looks of wonder and congratulation with our
boatmen, who, as well as ourselves, were well pleased to set foot on
shore.
St. Gingoux is even more beautiful than Mellerie; the mountains are
higher, and their loftiest points of elevation descend more abruptly to
the lake. On high, the aerial summits still cherish great depths of snow
in their ravines, and in the paths of their unseen torrents. One of the
highest of these is called Roche de St. Julien, beneath whose pinnacles
the forests become deeper and more extensive; the chesnut gives a
peculiarity to the scene, which is most beautiful, and will make a
picture in my memory, distinct from all other mountain scenes which I
have ever before visited.
As we arrived here early, we took a _voiture_ to visit the mouth of the
Rhone. We went between the mountains and the lake, under groves of
mighty chesnut trees, beside perpetual streams, which are nourished by
the snows above, and form stalactites on the rocks, over which they
fall. We saw an immense chesnut tree, which had been overthrown by the
hurricane of the morning. The place where the Rhone joins the lake was
marked by a line of tremendous breakers; the river is as rapid as when
it leaves the lake, but is muddy and dark. We went about a league
farther on the road to La Valais, and stopped at a castle called La Tour
de Bouverie, which seems to be the frontier of Switzerland and Savoy, as
we were asked for our passports, on the supposition of our proceeding to
Italy.
On one side of the road was the immense Roche de St. Julien, which
overhung it; through the gateway of the castle we saw the snowy
mountains of La Valais, clothed in clouds, and on the other side was the
willowy plain of the Rhone, in a character of striking contrast with the
rest of the scene, bounded by the dark mountains that overhang Clarens,
Vevai, and the lake that rolls between. In the midst of the plain rises
a little isolated hill, on which the white spire of a church peeps from
among the tufted chesnut woods. We returned to St. Gingoux before
sunset, and I passed the evening in reading Julie.
As my companion rises late, I had time before breakfast, on the ensuing
morning, to hunt the waterfalls of the river that fall into the lake at
St. Gingoux. The stream is indeed, from the declivity over which it
falls, only a succession of waterfalls, which roar over the rocks with a
perpetual sound, and suspend their unceasing spray on the leaves and
flowers that overhang and adorn its savage banks. The path that
conducted along this river sometimes avoided the precipices of its
shores, by leading through meadows; sometimes threaded the base of the
perpendicular and caverned rocks. I gathered in these meadows a nosegay
of such flowers as I never saw in England, and which I thought more
beautiful for that rarity.
On my return, after breakfast, we sailed for Clarens, determining first
to see the three mouths of the Rhone, and then the castle of Chillon;
the day was fine, and the water calm. We passed from the blue waters of
the lake over the stream of the Rhone, which is rapid even at a great
distance from its confluence with the lake; the turbid waters mixed with
those of the lake, but mixed with them unwillingly. (_See Nouvelle
Heloise, Lettre 17, Part 4._) I read Julie all day; an overflowing, as
it now seems, surrounded by the scenes which it has so wonderfully
peopled, of sublimest genius, and more than human sensibility. Mellerie,
the Castle of Chillon, Clarens, the mountains of La Valais and Savoy,
present themselves to the imagination as monuments of things that were
once familiar, and of beings that were once dear to it. They were
created indeed by one mind, but a mind so powerfully bright as to cast a
shade of falsehood on the records that are called reality.
We passed on to the Castle of Chillon, and visited its dungeons and
towers. These prisons are excavated below the lake; the principal
dungeon is supported by seven columns, whose branching capitals support
the roof. Close to the very walls, the lake is 800 feet deep; iron rings
are fastened to these columns, and on them were engraven a multitude of
names, partly those of visitors, and partly doubtless of the prisoners,
of whom now no memory remains, and who thus beguiled a solitude which
they have long ceased to feel. One date was as ancient as 1670. At the
commencement of the Reformation, and indeed long after that period, this
dungeon was the receptacle of those who shook, or who denied the system
of idolatry, from the effects of which mankind is even now slowly
emerging.
Close to this long and lofty dungeon was a narrow cell, and beyond it
one larger and far more lofty and dark, supported upon two unornamented
arches. Across one of these arches was a beam, now black and rotten, on
which prisoners were hung in secret. I never saw a monument more
terrible of that cold and inhuman tyranny, which it has been the delight
of man to exercise over man. It was indeed one of those many tremendous
fulfilments which render the “pernicies humani generis” of the great
Tacitus, so solemn and irrefragable a prophecy. The gendarme, who
conducted us over this castle, told us that there was an opening to the
lake, by means of a secret spring, connected with which the whole
dungeon might be filled with water before the prisoners could possibly
escape!
We proceeded with a contrary wind to Clarens, against a heavy swell. I
never felt more strongly than on landing at Clarens, that the spirit of
old times had deserted its once cherished habitation. A thousand times,
thought I, have Julia and St. Preux walked on this terraced road,
looking towards these mountains which I now behold; nay, treading on the
ground where I now tread. From the window of our lodging our landlady
pointed out “le bosquet de Julie.” At least the inhabitants of this
village are impressed with an idea, that the persons of that romance had
actual existence. In the evening we walked thither. It is indeed Julia's
wood. The hay was making under the trees; the trees themselves were
aged, but vigorous, and interspersed with younger ones, which are
destined to be their successors, and in future years, when we are dead,
to afford a shade to future worshippers of nature, who love the memory
of that tenderness and peace of which this was the imaginary abode. We
walked forward among the vineyards, whose narrow terraces overlook this
affecting scene. Why did the cold maxims of the world compel me at this
moment to repress the tears of melancholy transport which it would have
been so sweet to indulge, immeasurably, even until the darkness of night
had swallowed up the objects which excited them?
I forgot to remark, what indeed my companion remarked to me, that our
danger from the storm took place precisely in the spot where Julie and
her lover were nearly overset, and where St. Preux was tempted to plunge
with her into the lake.
On the following day we went to see the castle of Clarens, a square
strong house, with very few windows, surrounded by a double terrace that
overlooks the valley, or rather the plain of Clarens. The road which
conducted to it wound up the steep ascent through woods of walnut and
chesnut. We gathered roses on the terrace, in the feeling that they
might be the posterity of some planted by Julia's hand. We sent their
dead and withered leaves to the absent.
We went again to “the bosquet de Julie,” and found that the precise spot
was now utterly obliterated, and a heap of stones marked the place where
the little chapel had once stood. Whilst we were execrating the author
of this brutal folly, our guide informed us that the land belonged to
the convent of St. Bernard, and that this outrage had been committed by
their orders. I knew before, that if avarice could harden the hearts of
men, a system of prescriptive religion has an influence far more
inimical to natural sensibility. I know that an isolated man is
sometimes restrained by shame from outraging the venerable feelings
arising out of the memory of genius, which once made nature even
lovelier than itself; but associated man holds it as the very sacrament
of his union to forswear all delicacy, all benevolence, all remorse, all
that is true, or tender, or sublime.
We sailed from Clarens to Vevai. Vevai is a town more beautiful in its
simplicity than any I have ever seen. Its market-place, a spacious
square interspersed with trees, looks directly upon the mountains of
Savoy and La Valais, the lake, and the valley of the Rhone. It was at
Vevai that Rousseau conceived the design of Julie.
From Vevai we came to Ouchy, a village near Lausanne. The coasts of the
Pays de Vaud, though full of villages and vineyards, present an aspect
of tranquillity and peculiar beauty which well compensates for the
solitude which I am accustomed to admire. The hills are very high and
rocky, crowned and interspersed with woods. Water-falls echo from the
cliffs, and shine afar. In one place we saw the traces of two rocks of
immense size, which had fallen from the mountain behind. One of these
lodged in a room where a young woman was sleeping, without injuring her.
The vineyards were utterly destroyed in its path, and the earth torn up.
The rain detained us two days at Ouchy. We however visited Lausanne, and
saw Gibbon's house. We were shewn the decayed summer-house where he
finished his History, and the old acacias on the terrace, from which he
saw Mont Blanc, after having written the last sentence. There is
something grand and even touching in the regret which he expresses at
the completion of his task. It was conceived amid the ruins of the
Capitol. The sudden departure of his cherished and accustomed toil must
have left him, like the death of a dear friend, sad and solitary.
My companion gathered some acacia leaves to preserve in remembrance of
him. I refrained from doing so, fearing to outrage the greater and more
sacred name of Rousseau; the contemplation of whose imperishable
creations had left no vacancy in my heart for mortal things. Gibbon had
a cold and unimpassioned spirit. I never felt more inclination to rail
at the prejudices which cling to such a thing, than now that Julie and
Clarens, Lausanne and the Roman Empire, compelled me to a contrast
between Rousseau and Gibbon.
When we returned, in the only interval of sunshine during the day, I
walked on the pier which the lake was lashing with its waves. A rainbow
spanned the lake, or rather rested one extremity of its arch upon the
water, and the other at the foot of the mountains of Savoy. Some white
houses, I know not if they were those of Mellerie, shone through the
yellow fire.
On Saturday the 30th of June we quitted Ouchy, and after two days of
pleasant sailing arrived on Sunday evening at Montalegre.
S.
LETTER IV.
To T. P. ESQ.
ST. MARTIN—SERVOZ—CHAMOUNI—MONTANVERT—MONT BLANC.
Hôtel de Londres, Chamouni,
July 22d, 1816.
Whilst you, my friend, are engaged in securing a home for us, we are
wandering in search of recollections to embellish it. I do not err in
conceiving that you are interested in details of all that is majestic or
beautiful in nature; but how shall I describe to you the scenes by which
I am now surrounded? To exhaust the epithets which express the
astonishment and the admiration—the very excess of satisfied
astonishment, where expectation scarcely acknowledged any boundary, is
this, to impress upon your mind the images which fill mine now even till
it overflow? I too have read the raptures of travellers; I will be
warned by their example; I will simply detail to you all that I can
relate, or all that, if related, would enable you to conceive of what we
have done or seen since the morning of the 20th, when we left Geneva.
We commenced our intended journey to Chamouni at half-past eight in the
morning. We passed through the champain country, which extends from Mont
Salève to the base of the higher Alps. The country is sufficiently
fertile, covered with corn fields and orchards, and intersected by
sudden acclivities with flat summits. The day was cloudless and
excessively hot, the Alps were perpetually in sight, and as we advanced,
the mountains, which form their outskirts, closed in around us. We
passed a bridge over a stream, which discharges itself into the Arve.
The Arve itself, much swollen by the rains, flows constantly to the
right of the road.
As we approached Bonneville through an avenue composed of a beautiful
species of drooping poplar, we observed that the corn fields on each
side were covered with inundation. Bonneville is a neat little town,
with no conspicuous peculiarity, except the white towers of the prison,
an extensive building overlooking the town. At Bonneville the Alps
commence, one of which, clothed by forests, rises almost immediately
from the opposite bank of the Arve.
From Bonneville to Cluses the road conducts through a spacious and
fertile plain, surrounded on all sides by mountains, covered like those
of Mellerie with forests of intermingled pine and chesnut. At Cluses the
road turns suddenly to the right, following the Arve along the chasm,
which it seems to have hollowed for itself among the perpendicular
mountains. The scene assumes here a more savage and colossal character;
the valley becomes narrow, affording no more space than is sufficient
for the river and the road. The pines descend to the banks, imitating
with their irregular spires, the pyramidal crags which lift themselves
far above the regions of forest into the deep azure of the sky, and
among the white dazzling clouds. The scene, at the distance of half a
mile from Cluses, differs from that of Matlock in little else than in
the immensity of its proportions, and in its untameable, inaccessible
solitude, inhabited only by the goats which we saw browsing on the
rocks.
Near Maglans, within a league of each other, we saw two waterfalls. They
were no more than mountain rivulets, but the height from which they
fell, at least of _twelve_ hundred feet, made them assume a character
inconsistent with the smallness of their stream. The first fell from the
overhanging brow of a black precipice on an enormous rock, precisely
resembling some colossal Egyptian statue of a female deity. It struck
the head of the visionary image, and gracefully dividing there, fell
from it in folds of foam more like to cloud than water, imitating a veil
of the most exquisite woof. It then united, concealing the lower part of
the statue, and hiding itself in a winding of its channel, burst into a
deeper fall, and crossed our route in its path towards the Arve.
The other waterfall was more continuous and larger. The violence with
which it fell made it look more like some shape which an exhalation had
assumed, than like water, for it streamed beyond the mountain, which
appeared dark behind it, as it might have appeared behind an evanescent
cloud.
The character of the scenery continued the same until we arrived at St.
Martin (called in the maps Sallanches) the mountains perpetually
becoming more elevated, exhibiting at every turn of the road more craggy
summits, loftier and wider extent of forests, darker and more deep
recesses.
The following morning we proceeded from St. Martin on mules to Chamouni,
accompanied by two guides. We proceeded, as we had done the preceding
day, along the valley of the Arve, a valley surrounded on all sides by
immense mountains, whose rugged precipices are intermixed on high with
dazzling snow. Their bases were still covered with the eternal forests,
which perpetually grew darker and more profound as we approached the
inner regions of the mountains.
On arriving at a small village, at the distance of a league from St.
Martin, we dismounted from our mules, and were conducted by our guides
to view a cascade. We beheld an immense body of water fall two hundred
and fifty feet, dashing from rock to rock, and casting a spray which
formed a mist around it, in the midst of which hung a multitude of
sunbows, which faded or became unspeakably vivid, as the inconstant sun
shone through the clouds. When we approached near to it, the rain of the
spray reached us, and our clothes were wetted by the quick-falling but
minute particles of water. The cataract fell from above into a deep
craggy chasm at our feet, where, changing its character to that of a
mountain stream, it pursued its course towards the Arve, roaring over
the rocks that impeded its progress.
As we proceeded, our route still lay through the valley, or rather, as
it had now become, the vast ravine, which is at once the couch and the
creation of the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between mountains
whose immensity staggers the imagination. We crossed the path of a
torrent, which three days since had descended from the thawing snow, and
torn the road away.
We dined at Servoz, a little village, where there are lead and copper
mines, and where we saw a cabinet of natural curiosities, like those of
Keswick and Bethgelert. We saw in this cabinet some chamois' horns, and
the horns of an exceedingly rare animal called the bouquetin, which
inhabits the desarts of snow to the south of Mont Blanc: it is an animal
of the stag kind; its horns weigh at least twenty-seven English pounds.
It is inconceivable how so small an animal could support so inordinate a
weight. The horns are of a very peculiar conformation, being broad,
massy, and pointed at the ends, and surrounded with a number of rings,
which are supposed to afford an indication of its age: there were
seventeen rings on the largest of these horns.
From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni.—Mont Blanc was before
us—the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around, closing
in the complicated windings of the single vale—forests inexpressibly
beautiful, but majestic in their beauty—intermingled beech and pine, and
oak, overshadowed our road, or receded, whilst lawns of such verdure as
I have never seen before occupied these openings, and gradually became
darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, but it was covered
with cloud; its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above.
Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with
Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high. I never
knew—I never imagined what mountains were before. The immensity of these
aerial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a
sentiment of extatic wonder, not unallied to madness. And remember this
was all one scene, it all pressed home to our regard and our
imagination. Though it embraced a vast extent of space, the snowy
pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our
path; the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth
below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which
rolled through it, could not be heard above—all was as much our own, as
if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others
as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our
spirits more breathless than that of the divinest.
As we entered the valley of Chamouni (which in fact may be considered as
a continuation of those which we have followed from Bonneville and
Cluses) clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6000
feet from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal not only Mont
Blanc, but the other _aiguilles_, as they call them here, attached and
subordinate to it. We were travelling along the valley, when suddenly we
heard a sound as of the burst of smothered thunder rolling above; yet
there was something earthly in the sound, that told us it could not be
thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the mountain
opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the
smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at intervals
the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent, which it
displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-coloured waters also spread
themselves over the ravine, which was their couch.