A GLACIER AND AVALANCHE.
Alpine Horn--Beggars--The Rosenlaui Glacier--Beautiful Views--Glorious
Mountain Scenes--Mrs. Kinney's "Alps"--A Lady and Babe--The Great
Scheidek--Grindelwald--Eagle and Bear--Battle with Bugs--Wengern
Alp--A real Avalanche--The Jungfrau.
A beautiful Chamois was standing on the ledge of rock that overhung the
path as I turned away from the Reichenbach Fall, and I was pleased to
see so fine a specimen of the animal whose home is the Alps and whose
pursuit has for ages been the delight of the mountaineer. He would have
sprung from crag to crag at my approach and soon disappeared, had he not
been held by a string in the hand of a boy who expected a few coppers
for showing the animal. This is but one of a hundred ways and means of
begging adopted by the Swiss peasantry. Of all ages from the infant to
extreme decrepitude, they plant themselves along the highways of travel,
and by every possible pretext seek to obtain the pence of the traveller.
Some are glad to have a poor cretin or a case of goitre in the family,
that they may have an additional plea to put in for charity. Others sing
or play on some wretched instrument, and the traveller would cheerfully
pay them something to be silent, that he may enjoy the beauties of the
world around him without the torment of their music. But the Alpine Horn
makes music to which the hills listen. A wooden tube nearly ten feet
long and three inches in diameter, curved at the mouth which is slightly
enlarged, is blown with great strength of lungs, and the blast at first
harsh and startling is caught by the mountain sides and returned in
softened strains, echoing again and again as if the spirits of the wood
were answering to the calls of the dwellers in the vales. The man who
was blowing, had but one hand, and after a single performance, or one
blast, he held out that hand for his pay, and then returned to his
instrument, making the hills to resound again with his wild notes.
The Rosenlaui valley into which we now enter is a green and sunny plain,
where the verdure is as rich and the fruits as fair as if there were no
oceans of never melting ice and hills of snow lying all around and above
it. On either side the bare mountains rise perpendicularly: the
Engel-Horner or Angel's Peaks sending their shining summits so far into
the heavens that the pagans would make them the thrones of gods, and the
Well-Horn, and Wetter-Horn, bleak and cold, but now resplendent in a
brilliant sun light. A small but very comfortable inn is fitted up in
this valley with conveniences for bathing, and a few invalids are always
here for the benefit of the air, scenery and the mountain baths. We
rested at the tavern, and then walked a mile out of the way to see the
Glacier of the Rosenlaui. After a short ascent we entered a fine forest,
and followed the gorge through which the glacier torrent is rushing: an
awful gorge a thousand feet deep it seemed to me, and if some mighty
shock has not rent these rocks, and opened the way for the waters that
are now roaring in those dark mysterious depths, they must have been a
thousand years in wearing out the channel for themselves. A slight
bridge is thrown across the ravine, and a terrible pleasure there is in
standing on it and listening to the mad leaps of rocks which the
peasants are prepared to launch into the abyss, for the amusement of
travellers. I shuddered at the thought of falling, and felt a glow of
pleasing relief when I was away from the tempting verge. I never could
explain to myself the source of that half formed desire which so many,
perhaps all have, of trying the leap when standing on the brow of a
cataract, the verge of a precipice, the summit of a lofty tower. It is
often a question whether persons who have thus perished, designed to
commit suicide or not. It is not unlikely that some are suddenly seized
with this undefined desire to make the trial: the mind is wrought into a
frenzy of excitement, dizziness ensues, and in a moment of fear, desire
and delirium the irresponsible victim leaps into the gulf. Many of the
fearful passes of the Alps have their local tragedies of this sort, and
I was not disposed to add another. We soon climbed to the foot of the
glacier. We have come to a mountain of emerald. The sun is shining on
it, at high noon. The melting waters have cut a glorious gateway of
solid crystal: we step within and beneath the arch. A ledge of ice
affords a standing place for the cool traveller who may plant his pike
staff firmly and look over into the depths where the torrent has wrought
its passage and from which the mists are curling upwards. The sunlight
streams through the blue domes of these caverns, long icicles sparkle in
the roof, and jewels, crowns and thrones of ice are all about me in this
crystal cave. Its outer surface is remarkable for the purity of the ice,
its perfect freedom from that deposit of earth and broken stone which
mars the beauty of most of the glaciers of Switzerland. Great white
wreaths are twisted on its brow, and on its bosom palaces and towers are
brilliant in the sunlight; and from the side of it the Well-horn and
Wetter-horn rise like giants from their bed, and stretch themselves away
into the clouds. No sight among the Alps had so charmed me with its
beauty and sublimity. These hills of pure ice, this great gateway only
less bright in the sun than the gates of pearl, cold indeed, but with
flowers and evergreens cheating the senses into the feeling that this is
not real, it must be a reproduction of fabled palaces and hills of
diamonds, and mountains of light. I am sure that I do not exaggerate:
the memory of it now that I recur to it after many days is of great
glory, such as the eye never can see out of Switzerland, and the forms
of beauty and the thoughts of majesty, awakened as I stood before and
beneath and upon this glacier, must remain among the latest images that
will fade from the soul.
Excited by what I had seen and mindless of the path by which I had
ascended, I threw myself back upon my Alpen-stock and slid down the face
of a long shelving rock, leaping when I could, and gliding when the way
was smooth, and reached the bridge and the ravine in safety, though the
guides insisted that the longest way around was the surest way down. We
are now at the foot of lofty mountains. The warm sun is loosening the
masses of snow and ice and we are constantly hearing the roar of the
avalanches. At first it startles us, as if behind the clear blue sky
above us there is a gathering storm: the sound comes rushing down and
multiplied by echoes themselves re-echoed from the surrounding hills,
the thunder is forgotten in the majesty of this music of the mountains.
We see nothing from which these voices came. There are valleys beyond
these peaks where perhaps the foot of man has never trod, and He who
directs the thunderbolt when it falls, is guiding these ice-falls into
the depths of some abyss where they may not crush even one of the least
of the creatures of his care. It is grand to hear them and feel that
they will not come nigh us. Our path is now so far from the base of this
precipitous mountain that if those snow caps fall, and we are constantly
wishing that they would, we should be in no peril, and so we ride on
with hearts full of worship, rejoicing in the thoughts of Him who built
these high places, and whose praise is uttered in the silence of all
these speechless peaks, and shouted in the avalanche in tones which seem
to be reverberated all around the world. One of our own poets, with a
soul in harmony with the greatness as well as the beauty of this
scenery, exclaims in view of these towering heights--
Eternal pyramids, built not with hands,
From linked foundations that deep-hidden lie,
Ye rise apart, and each a wonder stands!
Your marble peaks, that pierce the clouds so high,
Seem holding up the curtain of the sky.
And there, sublime and solemn, have ye stood
While crumbling Time, o'erawed, passed reverent by--
Since Nature's resurrection from the flood,
Since earth, new-born, again received God's plaudit, "Good!"
*
Vast as mysterious, beautiful as grand!
Forever looking into Heaven's clear face,
Types of sublimest Faith, unmoved ye stand,
While tortured torrents rave along your base:
Silent yourselves, while, loosed from its high place,
Headlong the avalanche loud thundering leaps!
Like a foul spirit, maddened by disgrace,
That in its fall the souls of thousands sweeps
Into perdition's gulf, down ruin's slippery steeps.
Dread monuments of your Creator's power!
When Egypt's pyramids shall mouldering fall,
In undiminished glory ye shall tower,
And still the reverent heart to worship call,
Yourselves a hymn of praise perpetual;
And if at last, when rent is Law's great chain,
Ye with material things must perish all,
Thoughts which ye have inspired, not born in vain,
In immaterial minds for aye shall live again.
My mind was full of such thoughts as these, so finely clothed in Mrs.
Kinney's words, when I met a party, of ladies and gentlemen, and one of
the ladies was borne along in a chair, with a babe in her arms! Here was
a contrast, and a suggestive sight. It was certainly the pursuit of
knowledge under difficulties, but I could readily understand that having
overcome every obstacle in her strong desire to see the Alps, and to see
them now, she was enjoying them perhaps more than any one of the group
around her. And I did not fail to admire the energy of soul that in its
love of nature, and its thirsting after these mighty manifestations of
power and beauty, was equal to all the difficulties that opposed her
way. Whether ladies may make these difficult passes, which must be made
to see the inner life and real character of Switzerland, is merely a
question of dollars and cents. The feeblest may be borne as tenderly as
this infant was on its mother's breast, and the most delicate will
gather health and strength from the bracing mountain air, and new life
will be inspired in the midst of these exciting scenes. To see
Switzerland on wheels is impracticable. Its brightest glories are hid
away in regions of perpetual ice and snow, where no traveller passes
except to _see_. The highways of trade are not here. This is a secret
place of the Most High, where from the foundation of the world, he has
wrapt himself in storms and clouds, and thundered among the hills, and
has been admired only by those who have come here expressly to behold
his works. The solitude of such scenery adds intensely to the sense of
the sublime. Mountains all around us and God! To be alone with him
anywhere is to be near him: in the midnight, or on the ocean or the
desert, it is a heart-luxury to feel that only God is near; that his
presence fills immensity, and his Spirit pervades all matter and all
space. But to stand in the midst of these great Alps, hoary patriarchs,
monuments compared with which the pyramids are children of a day, is to
stand in the high places of his dominions and to be raised by his own
hand into audience with him at whose presence these mountains shall one
day flow down like water and melt away. _Heinrich_, my young German
friend, was peopling them continually with the creatures of Grecian
mythology, and his classic history often led him to speak of the lofty
seats of divinities where ancient poets had planted the council halls of
the gods. I loved to believe that God had made these hills for himself,
and as the people who dwell among them have no heart to appreciate them,
pilgrims from all lands are flocking here, and offering the incense of
praise at the foot of these high altars. How they do lead the soul along
upward toward the great white throne! How like that throne is yonder
peak in snowy purity shining now in this bright sun. It is very
glorious, and no human footstep ever trod the summit. God sits there
alone. Let us admire and adore. He is fearful in praises, doing wonders!
Who is like unto him, a great God, and a great King!
But this is not getting on with the journey. You have the privilege of
skipping my _reflections_ as you read; but to travel without reflection,
common as it is, is not my way--and if you would feel the sights that
meet the eye in this world of wonders, you must indulge me in pausing
now and then, to muse. All this time we have been going steadily up the
Great Scheidek, and have now stopped at a small house, with the word
tavern painted on it in two or three different languages. An apology for
a dinner we got after waiting for it till an appetite for supper came.
The view from this height into the Grindelwald valley is enchanting. The
descent is so steep that we were willing to leave the mules and walk
down, holding back by the alpenstock, and resting often to enjoy the
sight, into the valley below. And now we have come to another glacier,
in the midst of a sunny slope, stretching down into the bosom of verdant
pasturage where herds are grazing and flowers are blossoming, and women
and children are laboring under a burning sun. It is hard to believe,
even as we stand at the foot of it, that this is everlasting ice: a
segment of the frozen zone let fall into the lap of summer, and sleeping
here age after age, perishing continually, but renewed day by day, so
that it seems unchanged. It is a wonderful growth and decay; and the
greater wonder to my mind, and one that does not diminish, is that so
much life and beauty can exist and flourish in the midst of this eternal
cold.--Yet there is a greater contrast even here. We are coming into the
valley, and there another, called the Upper Glacier lies, and yet that
is not to furnish the contrast of which I speak. It is in the wide and
wonderful difference between this people and their country! Degenerate,
ignorant, begging and demoralized, this people seem, and indeed are,
unworthy of such a land as this. They have a history, but Switzerland
was, and is not. The race has run down.--Disease and hardships have
reduced the stock, till now we rarely meet a fine-looking man, never a
fine-looking woman, as we cross the mountains and traverse the valleys
of this noble country.
The vale of Grindelwald, into which we have now descended, is one of the
most fertile, picturesque, and quiet in Switzerland. It is a place to
stay in. The hotels, of which there are two, are crowded to overflowing.
We sent our guide ahead to get room for us, but he failed. There was no
room for us at the inn. We paused first at the _Eagle_, a very
good-looking establishment, and the balcony running across the front of
it was filled with good-looking people--but there were as many there as
the house would hold, and we had to go on to the _Bear_. And the Bear
would not let us in. The very best the landlord could do, was to give us
a room with three beds in it, in a _cottage_ across the way, where we
would be quiet and comfortable. We went over. Up stairs, by as dark,
narrow, dirty, ricketty, dangerous and disagreeable a passage as I had
made among the mountains, we were led by a tall, skinny, slatternly
woman, with a tallow candle in her fingers, and shown into our treble
chamber. For the first time we were in such a house as the better class
of peasants occupy in Switzerland. It had been taken by the proprietor
of the hotel, as a sort of makeshift when his hotel was overflowing--the
lower part of it was his bake and wash house, and this room was reserved
for lodgings. I was worn out with the journey of the day, and glad
enough to stretch myself on any thing that ventured to call itself a
bed. The walls of the chamber around and above were rude boards, and the
bare floor had been trodden a hundred years without feeling. The
furniture was a mixture of the broken chairs of the hotel and the
superannuated relics of the cottage, an amusing study, which helped to
pass away half an hour, while our prison keeper, the ugly old woman, was
scaring up something for us to eat. Bread and milk, with some cheese so
strong that we begged her to take it off, made a frugal repast, but
sweet to a hungry man: this mountaineering does give a man an
appetite--and then he sleeps so well after eating. Alas! my dreams were
short; a band of bloodthirsty villains attacked me in the dead of night,
and for four hours I fought them tooth and nail. The battle made real
the poet's description of another scene--
"Though hundreds, thousands bleed,
Still hundreds, thousands, more succeed."
How many of the foe found that night a bed of death in my bed, I cannot
say, as we took no account of the slain, but the conflict was sanguinary
and the destruction of life was immense. The sun rose upon the battle
field, but it was hard to say which was the victor. Exhausted quite as
much by the night's exertions as the travels of the previous day, I rose
to address myself to the journey. The rapacious landlord of the Bear
charged us the same price for our lodgings that was paid by those who
had the best rooms in his house, and I told him we were willing to pay
him for the privilege of hunting in his grounds, which we had greatly
enjoyed for several hours. He was too slow to take my meaning, but when
he did, he had no idea there was any harm in a few fleas. All these
mountain sides are covered with the huts of the shepherds, where during
a part of the year a man remains to tend the flocks, and he takes with
him some coarse food to last him during the months of his stay. The
shepherds and their families live in the midst of their dogs and cattle,
and fleas are no worse to them than they are to us. It only served to
amuse the landlord of the _Bear_, when we related to him the sufferings
of the night, and besought him never to expose travellers to such
annoyances again.
The ascent of the _Faulhorn_ is made from Grindelwald. It is a mountain
eight thousand feet high, and the view from the summit is said to be an
ample reward for the five hours' walk or ride which is necessary to gain
it. The long and glorious range of the Bernese Alps stands majestically
in sight, and there are not wanting those who declare the prospect
superior to that which is had on the Rigi. I took it on trust, and
having loftier summits still before me, was willing to leave the
Faulhorn. And I was willing to leave Grindelwald too--glad to escape the
scene of my midnight sufferings, but I doubt not that at the _Eagle_
(and not at the Bear) we might have spent a day or two very pleasantly
in this charming vale. And how soon are these little vexations of life
forgotten. They are worth mentioning only to remind us how foolish it is
to be vexed at trifles, which in a single day are with the things that
happened a hundred years ago. Thus moralizing and half sorry that I had
made any complaint of my quarters for the night, I mounted my horse and
set off to cross
_The Wengern Alp._
The ride through the vale in the early morning was refreshing. Parties
of travellers were emerging from cottages where they had found beds, and
winding their way by the bridle paths, in various directions, on foot
and on horseback, all seeking to see the world of Switzerland, and all
enjoying themselves with the various degrees of ability which had been
given them. We crossed the lesser _Sheideck_, and stopped on the ridge
of it at a small house of refreshment to eat Alpine strawberries and
milk. The berries are small and have very little of the strawberry
taste, but are quite a treat in their way. They were apparently more
abundant here than we had seen them elsewhere, and with plenty of milk
they made a capital lunch. Well for us that we had the milk before a
dirty boy who was playing at the door when we came up, plunged his mouth
and nose into the milkpan and took a long drink, only withdrawing when
his father wished to dip some out for a lady who had just arrived. Had
she seen the operation, she would have declined the draught, but where
"Ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise."
We rested a few moments only at this chalet, and then pushed on, passing
a forest, or the ruins of a forest, which the avalanches had mown down
as grass. The stumps, and here and there a scraggy tree were the
witnesses of the desolation that had been wrought. From the height we
are crossing we have one of the most magnificent of Alpine views. The
Jungfrau stands before us clad in white raiment, beautiful as a bride
adorned for her husband: in the sunlight she is dazzling and seems so
near to heaven, and so pure in her vestal robes, that we are willing to
believe the gateway must be there. The name of this mountain Jungfrau,
or the Virgin, is given, on account of the peculiar beauty and purity of
the peak which until 1812 had never been sullied by the foot of man.
Rising like a pyramid above the surrounding heights thirteen thousand
seven hundred and forty-eight feet, and seeming to be as smooth as if
cut with a chisel out of solid marble, she stands there sublimely
beautiful, to be gazed at and admired. Lord Byron has made this region
the scene of some of his most terrible passages, and I was forcibly
impressed as I read them with the _contrast_, not the similarity,
between his emotions and my own in the midst of these mountains. Here he
conceived some of those images never read in his Manfred without a
shudder. In his Journal he says "the clouds rose from the opposite
valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the ocean
of hell during a spring-tide--it was white and sulphury, and
immeasurably deep in appearance." Then in Manfred he does it into verse:
"The mists boil up around the glaciers: clouds
Rise curling fast beneath me white and sulphury,
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell
Whose every wave breaks on a living shore,
Heap'd with the damn'd like pebbles."
None but a mind surcharged with horrors, a mind which all bad things
inhabit, could find such images to convey its emotions in view of these
sights of grandeur, beauty, and glory. The mists were curling along up
the precipices as I have seen incense in a great cathedral, mounting the
lofty columns, and curling among the arches, a symbol of the praise that
goes up from the hearts of worshippers to the God of heaven. These white
clouds, not "sulphury"--so far from being suggestive of hell-waves, were
heavenly robes rather, and as the sun now nearly at noon, was filling
them with light, I loved to watch them, and then look away up to the
summit of the mountains around me, rejoicing in the manifestations which
the King of kings was making of himself in this dwelling among the
munitions of rocks. With these thoughts full on me as I rode along the
verge of the tremendous ravine that separates the Wengern Alp from the
Jungfrau, we reached a small inn, on the brow of the ravine, where large
parties, chiefly English people, were ravening for dinner. This house
has been planted here in the Jungfrau, that travellers may rest
themselves in its beauty, and watch for the avalanches that now and then
come thundering down its precipitous sides. Streams of water are in some
places pouring down. The music of the fall is constantly heard, and
every five or ten minutes the roar of a snow-slide thunders on the ear.
Few of them are seen. They break away from crags that are out of sight,
and plunge into dark abysses where the eye of man does not follow them.
But this is just the time of day when we might look for one, for it is
past noon when the sun's power is the greatest, and if the great
toppling mass which seems to be holding on with difficulty would but let
go its cold death grasp and come headlong into this mighty grave at the
base of the mountain, it would be a sight worth coming to Switzerland to
see.
We watched and wished, and the more we watched, the more it would not
come. During the half hour we had sat wrapped up in our blankets, gazing
at the cold snow hills, and shivering in the bleak winds, the dinner had
been in preparation, and despairing of getting something to see, we
determined like sensible people, to have something to eat. The long
table was filled with hungry travellers, and all had forgotten in the
enjoyment of dinner the wonders of the Alps, when suddenly the alarm was
given, "_Laweenen_," the "_Avalanche_." Servants dropped the dishes and
ran, gentlemen and ladies following them rushed from the table, over
chairs and each other, crowding for the doors and windows: and had there
been danger of a sudden overwhelming of the house, and the destruction
of all the inhabitants, we could not have fled in greater haste and
confusion than we now did, to see the descending "thunderbolt of snow."
All eyes were upon one point where a stream like powdered marble was
pouring from one of the gullies far up the Jungfrau and lodging on a
ledge. It differed in no respect from a stream of snow, nor indeed from
one of water which is perfectly white in the distance when a small
cascade is dangling from the rocks. Yet we are told, and there is no
reason to doubt that this stream is made up of vast blocks of ice and
masses of snow, dashed constantly into smaller fragments as it comes
"rushing amain down," but still weighing each of them many tons, and
capable of dealing destruction to forests and villages if they stood in
its path. We looked on in silence, and with disappointment mingled with
awe. The stream that had rested for a while on one ledge now began to
flow again, and the roar of the torrent increased every instant, filling
the air with its reverberations, which were caught by distant mountains
and sent back in sharp echoes, and again in deep toned voices that
seemed to shake the sky. But I was disappointed. It was just what I did
not expect, although I had read enough of them to be prepared for what
was to come. This was _said to be_ one of the grandest scenes this
season! Of course we believed it, and report it accordingly. Grand
indeed it was, and when we consider that at least four miles are between
us and the hill side down which it is rushing, it is not surprising that
the masses of ice should be blended into a steady and liquid stream.
Certainly I prefer to see such a torrent at a distance, to being
sufficiently near it to run any risk of being buried alive in an icy
grave.