[Illustration: MER DE GLACE, MONT BLANC. _Frontispiece._]
GREATEST
WONDERS
of the WORLD
_AS SEEN AND DESCRIBED
BY FAMOUS WRITERS_
EDITED AND TRANSLATED
By ESTHER SINGLETON
AUTHOR OF
“TURRETS, TOWERS AND TEMPLES,” “GREAT PICTURES,”
“PARIS,” AND “A GUIDE TO THE OPERA,” AND TRANSLATOR
OF THE MUSIC DRAMAS OF RICHARD WAGNER
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD
LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor
Nos. 91 to 115 BIBLE HOUSE
Copyright, 1900, By Dodd, Mead & Co.
Copyright, 1906, By Louis Klopsch
Preface
In my former collections of objects of interest to the tourist, I
have confined myself to masterpieces of painting and architecture.
The success of those books has encouraged me to carry the idea still
further and make a compilation of pleasurable and striking impressions
produced upon thoughtful travellers by a contemplation of the wonders
of nature.
The range is somewhat limited, for I have confined myself to the
description of the grand, the curious and the awe-inspiring in nature,
leaving the beauties of landscape for future treatment. Those who miss
the Lakes of Killarney or the vine-clad hills of the Rhine therefore
will remember that in the following pages I have purposely neglected
beautiful scenery.
The professional traveller, by which I mean the emissary of a
scientific society, appears very seldom here, because it is the effect
produced rather than the topographical or detailed description that
I have sought. I hope this book will appeal to that large class of
readers that takes pleasure in travelling by imagination, as well as to
those who have actually seen the objects described and pictured here.
It is interesting to note the difference between the old and the modern
travellers. The day of the Marco Polos has passed; the traveller of
old seemed to feel himself under an obligation to record marvels and
report trifling details, while the modern traveller is more concerned
about describing or analyzing the effect produced upon himself. He
feels it encumbent upon him to exhibit æsthetic appreciation. For this
tendency we have to thank Gautier and his humble follower D’Amicis.
Thackeray and Dickens write of their journeyings in a holiday spirit;
Kipling is a stimulating combination of the flippant and the devout;
Shelley is quite up to date; and Fromentin and Gautier always speak
in terms of the palette. Thus we get an additional pleasure from
the varied literary treatment of nature’s wonders--apart from their
intrinsic interest.
Though there is a great deal of information in the following pages, I
have generally avoided what is simply instructive; my aim has been to
suit all tastes.
For the kind permission to use _The Mammoth Cave_, _Fuji-San_ and _The
Antarctic_, and _The Yellowstone_, my best thanks are due to Messrs.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co., and Mr. Rudyard
Kipling.
E. S.
New York, _September, 1900_.
Contents
The Blue Grotto of Capri 1
Alexandre Dumas.
Mount Blanc and Chamouni 7
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The Dead Sea 15
Pierre Loti.
Mount Vesuvius 25
Charles Dickens.
The Falls of the Rhine 39
Victor Hugo.
In Arctic and Antarctic Seas 46
I. Lord Dufferin.
II. W. G. Burn Murdoch.
The Desert of Sahara 55
Eugène Fromentin.
Fingal’s Cave 62
I. Sir Walter Scott.
II. John Keats.
In the Himalayas 71
G. W. Steevens.
Niagara Falls 79
I. Anthony Trollope.
II. Charles Dickens.
Fuji-San 90
Sir Edwin Arnold.
The Cedars of Lebanon 98
Alphonse de Lamartine.
The Giant’s Causeway 103
William Makepeace Thackeray.
The Great Glacier of the Selkirks 113
Douglas Sladen.
Mauna Loa 118
Lady Brassey.
Trollhätta 129
Hans Christian Andersen.
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado 134
C. F. Gordon-Cumming.
The Rock of Gibraltar 139
Augustus J. C. Hare.
Thingvalla 144
Lord Dufferin.
Land’s End and Logan Rock 152
John Ayrton Paris.
Mount Hekla 160
Sir Richard F. Burton.
Victoria Falls 169
David Livingstone.
The Dragon-Tree of Orotava 179
Alexander von Humboldt.
Mount Shasta 183
J. W. Boddam-Wheatham.
The Lagoons of Venice 189
John Ruskin.
The Cataracts of the Nile 199
Amelia B. Edwards.
In the Alps 205
Théophile Gautier.
The Vale of Kashmir 212
Andrew Wilson.
The Lake of Pitch 220
Charles Kingsley.
The Lachine Rapids 228
Douglas Sladen.
Lake Rotorua 232
H. R. Haweis.
The Big Trees of California 239
C. F. Gordon-Cumming.
Gersoppa Falls 248
W. M. Yool.
Etna 254
Alexandre Dumas.
Pike’s Peak and the Garden of the Gods 263
Iza Duffus Hardy.
The Great Geysir of Iceland 268
Sir Richard F. Burton.
The Rapids of the Danube 275
William Beattie.
The Mammoth Cave 283
Bayard Taylor.
Stromboli 295
Alexandre Dumas.
The High Woods 302
Charles Kingsley.
The Yo-semité Valley 323
C. F. Gordon-Cumming.
The Golden Horn 342
Alphonse de Lamartine.
The Yellowstone 352
Rudyard Kipling.
Illustrations
Mer de Glace, Mont Blanc _Switzerland_ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Blue Grotto _Italy_ 4
Chamouni, Mer de Glace _Switzerland_ 12
The Dead Sea _Palestine_ 20
Mount Vesuvius _Italy_ 28
The Falls of the Rhine _Germany_ 40
An Ice Floe _Antarctic_ 52
The Desert of Sahara _Africa_ 60
Fingal’s Cave _Scotland_ 64
The Himilayas _India_ 72
Niagara Falls _North America_ 80
Niagara Falls in Winter _North America_ 88
Fuji-San _Japan_ 92
The Cedars of Lebanon _Syria_ 100
The Giant’s Loom, Giant’s Causeway _Ireland_ 104
The Keystone, Giant’s Causeway _Ireland_ 108
The Great Glacier of the Selkirks _Canada_ 116
Lava Cascade Flow _Hawaii_ 124
Trollhätta _Sweden_ 132
Canyon of the Colorado _North America_ 136
The Rock of Gibraltar _Spain_ 140
The Rock of Gibraltar _Spain_ 144
Thingvalla _Iceland_ 148
Rocking Stones, Land’s End _England_ 156
Falls of the Zambesi _Africa_ 172
The Dragon-Tree _Teneriffe_ 180
Mount Shasta _North America_ 184
The City of the Lagoons _Italy_ 192
First Cataract of the Nile _Africa_ 200
Mont Blanc _Switzerland_ 208
Aiguille du Dru, Alps _Switzerland_ 210
The Vale of Kashmir _India_ 216
The Lachine Rapids _Canada_ 228
Lake Rotorua _New Zealand_ 232
The Big Trees of California _North America_ 240
Gersoppa Falls _India_ 248
Etna _Sicily_ 256
The Garden of the Gods _America_ 264
The Iron Gates of the Danube _Turkey_ 280
The High Woods _South America_ 304
The Yo-semité Valley _North America_ 328
The Golden Horn _Turkey_ 344
Costing Springs, Yellowstone _North America_ 352
WONDERS OF THE WORLD
THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI
(_ITALY_)
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
We were surrounded by five and twenty boatmen, each of whom exerted
himself to get our custom: these were the _ciceroni_ of the Blue
Grotto. I chose one and Jadin another, for you must have a boat and a
boatman to get there, the opening being so low and so narrow that one
cannot enter unless in a very small boat.
The sea was calm, nevertheless, even in this beautiful weather it broke
with such force against the belt of rocks surrounding the island that
our barks bounded as if in a tempest, and we were obliged to lie down
and cling to the sides to avoid being thrown into the sea. At last,
after three-quarters of an hour of navigation, during which we skirted
about one-sixth of the island’s circumference, our boatmen informed
us of our arrival. We looked about us, but we could not perceive the
slightest suspicion of a grotto until we made out with difficulty a
little black, circular point above the foaming waves: this was the
orifice of the vault.
The first sight of this entrance was not reässuring: you could not
understand how it was possible to clear it without breaking your
head against the rocks. As the question seemed important enough for
discussion, I put it to my boatman, who replied that we were perfectly
right in remaining seated now, but presently we must lie down to avoid
the danger. We had not come so far as this to flinch. It was my turn
first; my boatman advanced, rowing with precaution and indicating that,
accustomed as he was to the work, he could not regard it as exempt
from danger. As for me, from the position that I occupied, I could see
nothing but the sky; soon I felt myself rising upon a wave, the boat
slid down it rapidly, and I saw nothing but a rock that seemed for a
second to weigh upon my breast. Then, suddenly, I found myself in a
grotto so marvellous that I gave a cry of astonishment, and I jumped up
so quickly to look about me that I nearly capsized the boat.
In reality, before me, around me, above me, under me, and behind me
were marvels of which no description can give an idea, and before
which, the brush itself, the grand preserver of human memories, is
powerless. You must imagine an immense cavern entirely of azure, just
as if God had amused himself by making a pavilion with fragments of
the firmament; water so limpid, so transparent, and so pure that you
seemed floating upon dense air; from the ceiling stalactites hanging
like inverted pyramids; in the background a golden sand mingled with
submarine vegetation; along the walls which were bathed by the water
there were trees of coral with irregular and dazzling branches; at
the sea-entrance, a tiny point--a star--let in the half-light that
illumines this fairy palace; finally, at the opposite end, a kind of
stage arranged like the throne of a splendid goddess who has chosen one
of the wonders of the world for her baths.
At this moment the entire grotto assumed a deeper hue, darkening as the
earth does when a cloud passes across the sun at brightest noontide.
It was caused by Jadin, who entered in his turn and whose boat closed
the mouth of the cavern. Soon he was thrown near me by the force of the
wave that had lifted him up; the grotto recovered its beautiful shade
of azure; and his boat stopped tremblingly near mine, for this sea, so
agitated and obstreperous outside, breathes here as serenely and gently
as a lake.
In all probability the Blue Grotto was unknown to the ancients. No
poet speaks of it, and certainly, with their marvellous imagination,
the Greeks would not have neglected making of it the palace of
some sea-goddess with a musical name and leaving some story to us.
Suetonius, who describes for us with so much detail the Thermes and
baths of Tiberius, would certainly have devoted a few words to this
natural pool which the old emperor would doubtless have chosen as
the theatre for some of his monstrous pleasures. No, the ocean must
have been much higher at that epoch than it is at present, and this
marvellous sea-cave was known only to Amphitrite and her court of
Sirens, Naïads, and Tritons.
But sometimes Amphitrite is angered with the indiscreet travellers who
follow her into this retreat, just as Diana was when surprised by
Actæon. At such times the sea rises suddenly and closes the entrance
so effectually that those who have entered cannot leave. In this case,
they must wait until the wind, which has veered from east to west,
changes to south or north; and it has even happened that visitors,
who have come to spend twenty minutes in the Blue Grotto, have had to
remain two, three, and, even four, days. Therefore, the boatmen always
carry with them a certain portion of a kind of biscuit to nourish the
prisoners in the event of such an accident. With regard to water,
enough filters through two or three places in the grotto to prevent any
fear of thirst. I bestowed a few reproaches upon my boatman for having
waited so long to apprise me of so disquieting a fact; but he replied
with a charming _naïveté_:
“_Dame! excellence!_ If we told this to the visitors at first, only
half would come, and that would make the boatmen angry.”
I admit that after this accidental information, I was seized with
a certain uneasiness, on account of which I found the Blue Grotto
infinitely less delightful than it had appeared to me at first.
Unfortunately, my boatman had told me these details just at the moment
when I was undressing to bathe in this water, which is so beautiful and
transparent that to attract the fisherman it would not need the song
of Goethe’s poetical Undine. We were unwilling to waste any time in
preparations, and, wishing to enjoy ourselves as much as possible, we
both dived.
[Illustration: BLUE GROTTO, CAPRI.]
It is only when you are five or six feet below the surface of the
water that you can appreciate its incredible purity. Notwithstanding
the liquid that envelops the diver, no detail escapes him; he sees
everything,--the tiniest shell at the base of the smallest stalactite
of the arch, just as clearly as if through the air; only each object
assumes a deeper hue.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, we clambered back into our boats
and dressed ourselves without having apparently attracted one of the
invisible nymphs of this watery palace, who would not have hesitated,
if the contrary had been the case, to have kept us here twenty-four
hours at least. The fact was humiliating; but neither of us pretended
to be a Telemachus, and so we took our departure. We again crouched in
the bottom of our respective canoes, and we went out of the Blue Grotto
with the same precautions and the same good luck with which we had
entered it: only it was six minutes before we could open our eyes; the
ardent glare of the sun blinded us. We had not gone more than a hundred
feet away from the spot we had visited before it seemed to have melted
into a dream.
We landed again at the port of Capri. While we were settling our
account with our boatmen, Pietro pointed out a man lying down in the
sunshine with his face in the sand. This was the fisherman who nine or
ten years ago discovered the Blue Grotto while looking for _frutti di
mare_ along the rocks. He went immediately to the authorities of the
island to make his discovery known, and asked the privilege of being
the only one allowed to conduct visitors to the new world he had found,
and to have revenue from those visitors. The authorities, who saw in
this discovery a means of attracting strangers to their island, agreed
to the second proposition, and since that time this new Christopher
Columbus has lived upon his income and does not trouble to conduct the
visitors himself; this explains why he can sleep as we see him. He is
the most envied individual in the island.
As we had seen all that Capri offered us in the way of wonders, we
stepped into our launch and regained the _Speronare_, which, profiting
by several puffs of the land breeze, set sail and gently glided off in
the direction of Palermo.
_Le Speronare: Impressions de Voyage_ (Paris, 1836).
MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI
(_SWITZERLAND_)
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
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 aërial 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 6,000
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 them. 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.
We did not, as we intended, visit the _Glacier de Boisson_ to-day,
although it descends within a few minutes’ walk of the road, wishing
to survey it at least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier which comes
close to the fertile plain, as we passed, its surface was broken
into a thousand unaccountable figures: conical and pyramidical
crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its
surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendour, overhang the
woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier winds upwards from the
valley, until it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced
above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt flung over
the black region of pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere
magnitude of proportion: there is a majesty of outline; there is an
awful grace in the very colours which invest these wonderful shapes--a
charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the reality
of their unutterable greatness.
Yesterday morning we went to the source of the Arveiron. It is
about a league from this village; the river rolls forth impetuously
from an arch of ice, and spreads itself in many streams over a vast
space of the valley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations. The
glacier by which its waters are nourished, overhangs this cavern and
the plain, and the forests of pine which surround it, with terrible
precipices of solid ice. On the other side rises the immense glacier of
Montanvert, fifty miles in extent, occupying a chasm among mountains
of inconceivable height, and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that they
seem to pierce the sky. From this glacier we saw as we sat on a rock,
close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, masses of ice detach
themselves from on high, and rush with a loud dull noise into the vale.
The violence of their fall turned them into powder, which flowed over
the rocks in imitation of waterfalls, whose ravines they usurped and
filled.
In the evening I went with Ducrée, my guide, the only tolerable person
I have seen in this country, to visit the glacier of Boisson. This
glacier, like that of Montanvert, comes close to the vale, overhanging
the green meadows and the dark woods with the dazzling whiteness
of its precipices and pinnacles, which are like spires of radiant
crystal covered with a network of frosted silver. These glaciers flow
perpetually into the valley, ravaging in their slow but irresistible
progress the pastures and the forests which surround them, performing
a work of desolation in ages, which a river of lava might accomplish
in an hour, but far more irretrievably; for where the ice has once
descended, the hardiest plant refuses to grow; if even, as in some
extraordinary instances, it should recede after its progress has once
commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward, at the rate of a
foot each day, with a motion that commences at the spot where, on the
boundaries of perpetual congelation, they are produced by the freezing
of the waters which arise from the partial melting of the eternal
snows. They drag with them from the regions whence they derive their
origin, all the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense
accumulations of sand and stones. These are driven onwards by the
irresistible stream of solid ice; and when they arrive at a declivity
of the mountain, sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw
one of these rocks which had descended in the spring (winter here is
the season of silence and safety) which measured forty feet in every
direction.
The verge of a glacier, like that of Boisson, presents the most vivid
image of desolation that it is possible to conceive. No one dares to
approach it; for the enormous pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall,
are perpetually reproduced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at
one extremity, are overthrown and shattered to a wide extent at its
base. There is something inexpressibly dreadful in the aspect of the
few branchless trunks, which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand
in the uprooted soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and
stones. Within this last year, these glaciers have advanced three
hundred feet into the valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, that they
have their periods of increase and decay: the people of the country
hold an opinion entirely different; but as I judge, more probable. It
is agreed by all, that the snow on the summit of Mont Blanc and the
neighbouring mountains perpetually augments, and that ice, in the form
of glaciers, subsists without melting in the valley of Chamouni during
its transient and variable summer. If the snow which produces this
glacier must augment, and the heat of the valley is no obstacle to the
perpetual existence of such masses of ice as have already descended
into it, the consequence is obvious; the glaciers must augment and will
subsist, at least until they have overflowed this vale.
I will not pursue Buffon’s sublime but gloomy theory--that this globe
which we inhabit will at some future period be changed into a mass of
frost by the encroachment of the polar ice, and of that produced on the
most elevated points of the earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy
of Ahriman, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, among
these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible
magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts
around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, avalanches,
torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at
once the proof and symbols of his reign;--add to this, the degradation
of the human species--who in these regions are half-deformed or
idiotic, and most of whom are deprived of anything that can excite
interest or admiration. This is a part of the subject more mournful and
less sublime; but such as neither the poet nor the philosopher should
disdain to regard.
This morning we departed on the promise of a fine day, to visit the
glacier of Montanvert. In that part where it fills a slanting valley,
it is called the Sea of Ice. This valley is 950 toises, or 7,600 feet
above the level of the sea. We had not proceeded far before the rain
began to fall, but we persisted until we had accomplished more than
half of our journey, when we returned, wet through.
* * * * *
Chamouni, July 25th.
We have returned from visiting the glacier of Montanvert, or as it is
called, the Sea of Ice, a scene in truth of dizzying wonder. The path
that winds to it along the side of a mountain, now clothed with pines,
now intersected with snowy hollows, is wide and steep. The cabin of
Montanvert is three leagues from Chamouni, half of which distance is
performed on mules, not so sure footed, but that on the first day the
one I rode fell in what the guides call a _mauvais pas_, so that I
narrowly escaped being precipitated down the mountain. We passed over
a hollow covered with snow, down which vast stones are accustomed to
roll. One had fallen the preceding day, a little time after we had
returned: our guides desired us to pass quickly, for it is said that
sometimes the least sound will accelerate their descent. We arrived at
Montanvert, however, safe.
[Illustration: CHAMOUNI, MER DE GLACE.]
On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of unrelenting frost,
surround this vale: their sides are banked up with ice and snow,
broken, heaped high, and exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits are
sharp and naked pinnacles, whose overhanging steepness will not even
permit snow to rest upon them. Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and
there their perpendicular rifts, and shine through the driving vapours
with inexpressible brilliance: they pierce the clouds like things not
belonging to this earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass of
undulating ice, and has an ascent sufficiently gradual even to the
remotest abysses of these horrible deserts. It is only half a league
(about two miles) in breadth, and seems much less. It exhibits an
appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools
of a mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon its surface. The
waves are elevated about twelve or fifteen feet from the surface of
the mass, which is intersected by long gaps of unfathomable depth, the
ice of whose sides is more beautifully azure than the sky. In these
regions everything changes, and is in motion. This vast mass of ice has
one general progress, which ceases neither day nor night; it breaks
and bursts forever: some undulations sink while others rise; it is
never the same. The echo of rocks, or of the ice and snow which fall
from their overhanging precipices, or roll from their aërial summits,
scarcely ceases for one moment. One would think that Mont Blanc, like
the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood
forever circulated through his stony veins.
_Prose works_ (London, 1880).
THE DEAD SEA
(_PALESTINE_)
PIERRE LOTI
A sound of church bells follows us for a long time in the lonely
country as we ride away on horseback in the early morning towards
Jericho, towards the Jordan and the Dead Sea. The Holy City speedily
disappears from our eyes, hidden behind the Mount of Olives. There
are fields of green barley here and there, but principally regions
of stones and asphodels. Nowhere are there any trees. Red anemones
and violet irises enamel the greyness of the rough country, all rock
and desert. By a series of gorges, valleys, and precipices we follow
a gradually descending route. Jerusalem is at an altitude of eight
hundred metres and this Dead Sea to which we are going is four hundred
metres below the level of other seas.
If it were not for this way for vehicles upon which our horses walk so
easily, one would be tempted to call it every now and then Idumæa, or
Arabia.
This road to Jericho is, moreover, full of people to-day: Bedouins upon
camels; Arabian shepherds driving hundreds of black goats; bands of
Cook’s tourists on horseback, or in mule-chairs; Russian pilgrims, who
are returning on foot from the Jordan, piously carrying gourds filled
with water from the sacred river; numerous troops of Greek pilgrims
from the island of Cyprus, upon asses; incongruous caravans and strange
groups which we overtake or meet.
It is soon midday. The high mountains of the country of Moab which
lie beyond the Dead Sea, and which we have seen ever since we reached
Hebron like a diaphanous wall in the east seem to be as distant
as ever, although for three hours we have been advancing towards
them,--apparently fleeing before us like the visions of a mirage. But
they have grown misty and gloomy; all that was trailing in the sky like
light veils in the morning has gathered and condensed upon their peaks,
while a purer and more magnificent blue now extends above our heads.
Half-way from Jericho, we make the great halt in a caravansary, where
there are Bedouins, Syrians, and Greeks; then we again mount our horses
beneath a burning sun.
Every now and then, in the yawning gulfs far below us the torrent of
the Cedron is visible like a thread of foaming silver; its course here
is not troubled as beneath the walls of Jerusalem, and it rushes along
rapidly towards the Dead Sea, half-hidden in the deepest hollows of the
abysses.
The mountain slopes continue to run down towards this strange and
unique region, situated below the level of the sea, where sleep the
waters which produce death. It seems that one is made conscious of
something abnormal in this continuous descent by some unknown sense of
oddity and even giddiness suggested by these slopes. Growing more and
more grand and rugged, the country now presents almost the appearance
of a true desert. But the impression of immeasurable solitude is not
experienced here. And then there is always that road traced by human
hands and these continual meetings with horsemen and various passengers.
The air is already dryer and warmer than at Jerusalem, and the light
becomes more and more magnifying,--as is always the case when one
approaches places devoid of vegetation.
The mountains are ever more and more denuded and more cracked by the
dryness, opening everywhere with crevasses like great abysses. The heat
increases in proportion as we descend to the shore of the Dead Sea
which in summer is one of the hottest places in the world. A mournful
sun darts its rays around us upon the rocks, masses of stone, and pale
limestone where the lizards run about by the thousand; whilst over
beyond us, serving as a background for everything, stands ever the
chain of Moab, like a Dantesque wall. And to-day storm-clouds darken
and deform it, hiding its peaks, or carrying them up too high into the
sky and forming other imaginary peaks, thus producing the terror of
chaos.
In a certain deep valley, through which our way lies for a moment, shut
in without any view between vertical walls, some hundreds of camels
are at pasture, hanging like great fantastic goats to the flanks of
the mountains,--the highest perched one of all the troop silhouetted
against the sky.
Then we issue from this defile and the mountains of Moab reäppear,
higher then ever now and more obscured by clouds. Upon this sombre
background the near prospective of this desolate country stands
out very clearly; the summits are whitish and all around us blocks,
absolutely white, are delineated by the broiling sun with an extreme
hardness of outline.
Towards three o’clock, from the elevated regions where we still are,
we see before us the country that is lower than the sea, and, as
if our eyes had preserved the remembrance of ordinary levels, this
really seems not an ordinary plain, but something too low and a great
depression of the earth, the bottom of a vast gulf into which the road
is about to fall.
This sunken region has the features of the desert, with gleaming
grey wastes like fields of lava, or beds of salt; in its midst an
unexpectedly green patch, which is the oasis of Jericho,--and towards
the south, a motionless expanse with the polish of a mirror and the
sad hue of slate, which begins and loses itself in the distance with a
limitless horizon: the Dead Sea, enwrapped in darkness to-day by all
the clouds of the distance, by all that is heavy and opaque yonder
weighing upon the border of Moab.
The few little white houses of Jericho are gradually outlined in
the green of the oasis in proportion as we descend from our stony
summits, inundated with the sun. One would hardly call it a village.
It seems that there is not the least vestige of the three large and
celebrated cities that formerly successively occupied this site and
that in different ages were called Jericho. These utter destructions
and annihilations of the cities of Canaan and Idumæa seem to be for
the confounding of human reason. Truly a very powerful breath of
malediction and death must have passed over it all.
When we are finally down in the plain, an insufferable heat surprises
us; one would say that we had traversed an immense distance
southward,--and yet, in reality, we have only descended a few hundred
metres towards the bowels of the earth: it is to their depressed level
that the environs of the Dead Sea owe their exceptional climate.
Jericho is composed to-day of a little Turkish citadel, three or
four new houses built for pilgrims and tourists, half a hundred Arab
habitations of mud with roofing of thorny branches and a few Bedouin
tents. Round about them are gardens in which grow an occasional palm;
a wood of green shrubs traversed by clear brooks; some paths overrun
by grass, where horsemen in burnous caracole upon their horses with
long manes and tails. And that is all. Immediately beyond the wood the
uninhabitable desert begins; and the Dead Sea lies there very near,
spreading its mysterious winding-sheet above the engulfed kingdoms of
Sodom and Gomorrah. This Sea has a very individual aspect, and this
evening it is very funereal; it truly gives the impression of death,
with its heavy, leaden, and motionless waters between the deserts
of its two shores where great confused mountains mingle with the
storm-clouds hanging in the sky.
* * * * *
Sunday, April 8th.
From Jericho, where we passed the night, the Dead Sea seems very
near; one would think in 3 few minutes it would be easy to reach its
tranquil sheet,--which this morning is of a blue barely tinted with
slate, under a sky rid of all of yesterday’s clouds. Yet, to reach it,
almost two hours on horseback are still required, under a heavy sun,
across the little desert which, minus the immensity, resembles the
large one in which we have just spent so many days; towards this Sea,
which seems to flee in proportion as we approach, we descend by means
of a series of exhausted strata and desolate plateaux, all glittering
with sand and salt. Here we find a few of the odoriferous plants of
Arabia Petræa, and even the semblance of a mirage, the uncertainty as
to distances and the continual tremulousness of the horizon. We also
find here a band of Bedouins resembling very closely our friends of the
desert in their shirts with long pointed sleeves floating like wings,
and their little brown veils tied to the forehead with black cords, the
two ends of which stand up on the temples like the ears of an animal.
Moreover, these shores of the Dead Sea, especially on the southern
side, are frequented by pillagers almost as much as Idumæa.
We know that geologists trace the existence of the Dead Sea back to
the first ages of the world; they do not contest, however, that at the
period of the destruction of the accursed cities it must have suddenly
overflowed, after some new eruption, to cover the site of the Moabite
pentapolis. And it was at that time that was engulfed all this “Vale
of Siddim,” where were assembled, against Chedorlaomer, the kings
of Sodom, of Gomorrah, of Admah, of Zeboiim, and of Zoar (_Genesis_
xiv. 2, 3); all that “plain of Siddim” which “was well watered
everywhere,” like a garden of delight (_Genesis_ xiii. 10). Since these
remote times, this Sea has receded a little, without, however, its form
being sensibly changed. And, beneath the shroud of its heavy waters,
unfathomable to the diver by their very density, sleep strange ruins,
_débris_, which, without doubt, will never be explored; Sodom and
Gomorrah are there, buried in their dark depths.
[Illustration: THE DEAD SEA.]
At present, the Dead Sea, terminated at the north by the sands we
cross, extends to a length of about eighty kilometres, between two
ranges of parallel mountains: to the east, those of Moab, eternally
oozing bitumen, which stand this morning in their sombre violet; to the
west, those of Judea, of another nature, entirely of whitish limestone,
at this moment dazzling with sunlight. On both shores the desolation is
equally absolute; the same silence hovers over the same appearances of
death. These are indeed the immutable and somewhat terrifying aspects
of the desert,--and one can understand the very intense impression
produced upon travellers who do not know the Arabia Magna; but, for
us, there is here only a too greatly diminished image of the mournful
phantasmagoria of that region. Besides, one does not lose altogether
the view of the citadel of Jericho; from our horses we may still
perceive it behind us, like a vague little white point, but still a
protector. In the extreme distance of the desert sands, under the
trembling network of mirage, appears also an ancient fortress, which is
a monastery for Greek hermits. And, finally, another white blot, just
perceptible above us, in a recess of the mountains of Judah, stands
that mausoleum which passes for the tomb of Moses--for which a great
Mohammedan pilgrimage is soon about to start.
However, upon the sinister strand where we arrive, death reveals
itself, truly sovereign and imposing. First, like a line of defence
which it is necessary to surmount, comes a belt of drift-wood, branches
and trees stripped of all bark, almost petrified in the chemical bath,
and whitened like bones,--one would call them an accumulation of great
vertebræ. Then there are some rounded pebbles as on the shore of every
sea; but not a single shell, not a piece of seaweed, not even a little
greenish slime, nothing organic, not even of the lower order; and
nowhere else has this ever been seen, a sea whose bed is as sterile as
a crucible of alchemy; this is something abnormal and disconcerting.
Some dead fish lie here and there, hardened like wood, mummified in the
naptha and the salts: fish of the Jordan which the current brought here
and which the accursed waters suffocated instantly.
And before us, this sea flees, between its banks of desert mountains,
to the troubled horizon with an appearance of never ending. Its
whitish, oily waters bear blots of bitumen, spread in large iridescent
rings. Moreover, they burn, if you drink them, like a corrosive liquor;
if you enter them up to your knees you have difficulty in walking, they
are so heavy; you cannot dive in them nor even swim in the ordinary
position, but you can float upon the surface like a cork buoy.
Once the Emperor Titus, as an experiment, had several slaves bound
together with iron chains and cast in, and they did not drown.
On the eastern shore, in the little sandy desert where we have just
been marching for two hours, a line of a beautiful emerald serpentines;
a few flocks and a few Arabian shepherds that are half bandits pass in
the far distance.
Towards the middle of the day we reënter Jericho, whence we shall not
depart until to-morrow morning, and there remain the tranquil hours of
the evening for us to go over the still oasis.
When we are seated before the porch of the little inn of Jericho in
the warm twilight, we see a wildly galloping horse, bringing a monk
in a black robe with long hair floating in the wind. He is one of the
hermits of the Mount of the Forty Days, who is trying to be the first
to arrive and offer us some little objects in the wood of Jericho and
shell rosaries from the Jordan.--At nightfall others come, dressed in
the same black robe, and with the same thin hair around their bandit’s
countenance, and enter the inn to entice us with little carvings and
similar chaplets.
The night is sultry here, and a little heavy, quite different to the
cold nights of Jerusalem, and just as the stars begin to shine a
concert of frogs begins simultaneously from every side, under the dark
entanglement of the balms of Gilead,--so continuous and, moreover, so
discreet is it, that it seems but another expression of the tranquil
silence. You hear also the barking of the sheep-dogs, below, on the
side of the Arabian encampments; then, very far away, the drum and the
little Bedouin flute furnish the rhythm for some wild fête;--and, at
intervals, but very distinctly, comes the lugubrious falsetto of a
hyena or jackal.
Now, here is the unexpected refrain of the coffee-houses of Berlin,
which suddenly bursts forth, in ironical dissonance, in the midst of
these light and immutable sounds of ancient evenings in Judea: the
German tourists who have been here since sunset, encamped under the
tents of agencies; a band of “Cook’s tourists” come to see and profane,
as far as they can, this little desert.
It is after midnight, when everything is hushed and the silence belongs
to the nightingales which fill the oasis with an exquisite and clear
music of crystal.
_Jerusalem_ (Paris, 1895).
MOUNT VESUVIUS
(_ITALY_)
CHARLES DICKENS
A noble mountain pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong eminence,
traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo; the old town of Itrí,
like a device in pastry, built up, almost perpendicularly, on a hill,
and approached by long steep flights of steps; beautiful Mola di Gaëta,
whose wines, like those of Albano, have degenerated since the days of
Horace, or his taste for wine was bad: which is not likely of one who
enjoyed it so much, and extolled it so well; another night upon the
road at St. Agatha; a rest next day at Capua, which is picturesque, but
hardly so seductive to a traveller now as the soldiers of Prætorian
Rome were wont to find the ancient city of that name; a flat road among
vines festooned and looped from tree to tree; and Mount Vesuvius close
at hand at last!--its cone and summit whitened with snow; and its smoke
hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere of the day, like a dense
cloud. So we go, rattling down-hill, into Naples.
Capri--once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius--Ischia,
Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the
blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a
day: now close at hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest country
in the world is spread about us. Whether we turn towards the Miseno
shore of the splendid watery amphitheatre, and go by the Grotto of
Posilipo to the Grotto del Cane, and away to Baiæ: or take the other
way, towards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession of delights.
In the last-named direction, where, over doors and archways, there
are countless little images of San Gennaro, with his Canute’s hand
stretched out to check the fury of the Burning Mountain, we are
carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful Sea Beach, past
the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the ashes of the former town,
destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, within a hundred years, and
past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and macaroni manufactories;
to Castel-a-Mare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen,
standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here, the railroad
terminates; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken succession of
enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest
summit of St. Angelo, the highest neighbouring mountain, down to the
water’s edge--among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges and
lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills--and
by the bases of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with
handsome, dark-haired women at the doors--and pass delicious summer
villas--to Sorrento, where the poet Tasso drew his inspiration from
the beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb the heights above
Castel-a-Mare, and, looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the
crisp water glistening in the sun, and clusters of white houses in
distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to
dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset: with
the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain, with its smoke
and flame, upon the other, is a sublime conclusion to the glory of the
day.
Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and look up
the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis,
over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day,
away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance; and
lose all count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and
melancholy sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making
this quiet picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn,
the little familiar tokens of human habitation and every-day pursuits;
the chafing of the bucket rope in the stone rim of the exhausted
well; the track of carriage wheels in the pavement of the street; the
marks of drinking vessels on the stone counter of the wine-shop; the
amphoræ in private cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago,
and undisturbed to this hour--all rendering the solitude and deadly
lonesomeness of the place ten thousand times more solemn, than if the
volcano, in its fury, had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in
the bottom of the sea.
After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded the eruption,
workmen were employed in shaping out, in stone, new ornaments for
temples and other buildings that had suffered. Here lies their work,
outside the city gate, as if they would return to-morrow.
In the cellar of Diomede’s house, where certain skeletons were found
huddled together, close to the door, the impression of their bodies on
the ashes hardened with the ashes, and became stamped and fixed there,
after they had shrunk, inside, to scanty bones. So, in the theatre of
Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating on the stream when it was hot and
liquid, stamped its mimic features in it as it hardened into stone, and
now it turns upon the stranger the fantastic look it turned upon the
audiences in that same theatre two thousand years ago.
Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and in and out
of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers of the temples of a
religion that has vanished from the earth, and finding so many fresh
traces of remote antiquity: as if the course of Time had been stopped
after this desolation, and there had been no nights and days, months,
years, and centuries since: nothing is more impressive and terrible
than the many evidences of the searching nature of the ashes as
bespeaking their irresistible power, and the impossibility of escaping
them. In the wine-cellars, they forced their way into the earthen
vessels: displacing the wine, and choking them, to the brim, with
dust. In the tombs, they forced the ashes of the dead from the funeral
urns, and rained new ruin even into them. The mouths, and eyes, and
skulls of all the skeletons were stuffed with this terrible hail. In
Herculaneum, where the flood was of a different and a heavier kind, it
rolled in, like a sea. Imagine a deluge of water turned to marble, at
its height--and that is what is called “the lava” here.
[Illustration: MOUNT VESUVIUS.]
Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink of which we
now stand, looking down, when they came on some of the stone benches
of the theatre--those steps (for such they seem) at the bottom of
the excavation--and found the buried city of Herculaneum. Presently
going down, with lighted torches, we are perplexed by great walls of
monstrous thickness, rising up between the benches, shutting out the
stage, obtruding their shapeless forms in absurd places, confusing the
whole plan, and making it a disordered dream. We cannot, at first,
believe, or picture to ourselves, that this came rolling in, and
drowned the city; and that all that is not here has been cut away,
by the axe, like solid stone. But this perceived and understood, the
horror and oppression of its presence are indescribable.