Strange incidents befel Professor Forbes, and his companions, in their
travels through the Alps of Savoy. On one occasion, they got so near a
thundercloud, as to be highly electrified by induction, with all the
angular stones round them hissing like points near a powerful electrical
machine; on another, whilst crossing one of the loftiest passes, the Col
de Collon, they discovered a dark object lying on the snow, which proved
to be the body of a man, with the clothes hard-frozen and uninjured.
"The effect on us all," says the Professor, "was electric; and had not
the sun shone forth in its full glory, and the very wilderness of
eternal snow seemed gladdened under the serenity of such a summer's day,
as is rare at these heights, we should certainly have felt a deeper
thrill, arising from the sense of personal danger. As it was, when we
had recovered our first surprise, and interchanged our expression of
sympathy for the poor traveller, and gazed with awe on the disfigured
relics of one who had so lately been in the same plight with ourselves,
we turned and surveyed, with a stronger sense of sublimity than before,
the desolation by which we were surrounded; and became still more
sensible of our isolation from human dwellings, human help, and human
sympathy, our loneliness with nature, and as it were, the more immediate
presence of God."
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