cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, are as fresh and
plain as if they had been executed yesterday. Here are subjects of
still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses, and the like;
familiar classical stories, or mythological fables, always forcibly
and plainly told; conceits of cupids, quarrelling, sporting, working
at trades; theatrical rehearsals; poets reading their productions to
their friends; inscriptions chalked upon the walls; political squibs,
advertisements, rough drawings by school-boys; everything to people and
restore the ancient cities in the fancy of their wondering visitor.
Furniture, too, you see, of every kind--lamps, tables, couches;
vessels for eating, drinking, and cooking; workmen’s tools, surgical
instruments, tickets for the theatre, pieces of money, personal
ornaments, bunches of keys found clinched in the grasp of skeletons,
helmets of guards and warriors; little household bells, yet musical
with their old domestic tones.
The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the interests
of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. The looking,
from either ruined city, into the neighbouring grounds overgrown
with beautiful vines and luxuriant trees; and remembering that house
upon house, temple on temple, building after building, and street
after street, are still lying underneath the roots of all the quiet
cultivation, waiting to be turned up to the light of day; is something
so wonderful, so full of mystery, so captivating to the imagination,
that one would think it would be paramount, and yield to nothing else.
To nothing but Vesuvius; but the mountain is the genius of the scene.
From every indication of the ruin it has worked, we look, again, with
an absorbing interest to where its smoke is rising up into the sky. It
is beyond us, as we thread the ruined streets: above us, as we stand
upon the ruined walls; we follow it through every vista of broken
columns, as we wander through the empty court-yards of the houses; and
through the garlandings and interlacings of every wanton vine. Turning
away to Pæstum yonder, to see the awful structures built, the least
aged of them hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, and standing
yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon the wild malaria-blighted plain--we
watch Vesuvius as it disappears from the prospect, and watch for it
again, on our return, with the same thrill of interest: as the doom and
destiny of all this beautiful country, biding its terrible time.
It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring day, when we return
from Pæstum, but very cold in the shade: insomuch, that although we may
lunch pleasantly, at noon, in the open air, by the gate of Pompeii, the
neighbouring rivulet supplies thick ice for our wine. But, the sun is
shining brightly; there is not a cloud or speck of vapour in the whole
blue sky, looking down upon the Bay of Naples; and the moon will be at
the full to-night. No matter that the snow and ice lie thick upon the
summit of Vesuvius, or that we have been on foot all day at Pompeii,
or that croakers maintain that strangers should not be on the mountain
by night, in such an unusual season. Let us take advantage of the fine
weather; make the best of our way to Resina, the little village at
the foot of the mountain; prepare ourselves, as well as we can on so
short a notice, at the guide’s house; ascend at once, and have sunset
half-way up, moonlight at the top, and midnight to come down in!
At four o’clock in the afternoon there is a terrible uproar in the
little stable-yard of Signore Salvatore, the recognized head-guide,
with the gold band around his cap; and thirty under-guides, who are all
scuffling and screaming at once, are preparing half-a-dozen saddled
ponies, three litters, and some stout staves for the journey. Every
one of the thirty quarrels with the other twenty-nine, and frightens
the six ponies; and as much of the village as can possibly squeeze
itself into the little stable-yard participates in the tumult, and gets
trodden on by the cattle.
After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would suffice for
the storming of Naples, the procession starts. The head-guide, who is
liberally paid for all the attendants, rides a little in advance of
the party; the other thirty guides proceed on foot. Eight go forward
with the litters that are to be used by and by; and the remaining
two-and-twenty beg.
We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights of
stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, and the vineyards
on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak, bare region, where
the lava lies confusedly in enormous rusty masses: as if the earth
had been plowed up by burning thunder-bolts. And now we halt to see
the sun set. The change that falls upon the dreary region, and on the
whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes on--and the
unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around, who that has
witnessed it can ever forget!
It is dark when, after winding for some time over the broken ground,
we arrive at the foot of the cone: which is extremely steep, and seems
to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot where we dismount. The
only light is reflected from the snow, deep, hard, and white, with
which the cone is covered. It is now intensely cold, and the air is
piercing. The thirty-one have brought no torches, knowing that the moon
will rise before we reach the top. Two of the litters are devoted to
the two ladies; the third, to a rather heavy gentleman from Naples,
whose hospitality and good nature have attached him to the expedition,
and determined him to assist in doing the honours of the mountain. The
rather heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men; each of the ladies
by half-a-dozen. We who walk make the best use of our staves; and so
the whole party begin to labour upward over the snow--as if they were
toiling to the summit of an antediluvian Twelfth-cake.
We are a long time toiling up; and the head-guide looks oddly about
him when one of the company--not an Italian, though an habitué of the
mountain for many years: whom we will call, for our present purpose,
Mr. Pickle of Portici--suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and
the usual footing of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will
surely be difficult to descend. But the sight of the litters above,
tilting up and down, and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers
continually slip and tumble, diverts our attention; more especially
as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman is, at that moment,
presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with his head downward.
The rising of the moon soon afterward, revives the flagging spirits
of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual watchword,
“Courage, friend! It is to eat macaroni!” they press on, gallantly, for
the summit.
From tingeing the top of the snow above us with a band of light,
and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while we have
been ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the whole white
mountain-side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the
distance, and every village in the country round. The whole prospect
is in this lovely state, when we come upon the platform on the
mountain-top--the region of Fire--an exhausted crater formed of great
masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous
waterfall, burned up; from every chink and crevice of which hot,
sulphurous smoke is pouring out: while, from another conical-shaped
hill, the present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the
end, great sheets of fire are streaming forth: reddening the night with
flame, blackening it with smoke, and spotting it with red-hot stones
and cinders, that fly up into the air like feathers, and fall down like
lead. What words can paint the gloom and grandeur of this scene!
The broken ground; the smoke; the sense of suffocation from the
sulphur; the fear of falling down through the crevices in the
yawning ground; the stopping, every now and then, for somebody who
is missing in the dark (for the dense smoke now obscures the moon);
the intolerable noise of the thirty; and the hoarse roaring of the
mountain; make it a scene of such confusion, at the same time, that we
reel again. But, dragging the ladies through it, and across another
exhausted crater to the foot of the present Volcano, we approach close
to it on the windy side, and then sit down among the hot ashes at its
foot, and look up in silence; faintly estimating the action that is
going on within, from its being full a hundred feet higher, at this
minute, than it was six weeks ago.
There is something in the fire and roar that generates an irresistible
desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest long, without starting off,
two of us, on our hands and knees, accompanied by the head-guide, to
climb to the brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in. Meanwhile,
the thirty yell, as with one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding,
and call to us to come back; frightening the rest of the party out of
their wits.
What with their noise, and what with the trembling of the thin crust
of ground, that seems about to open underneath our feet, and plunge
us into the burning gulf below (which is the real danger, if there be
any); and what with the flashing of the fire in our faces, and the
shower of red-hot ashes that is raining down, and the choking smoke and
sulphur; we may well feel giddy and irrational, like drunken men. But,
we contrive to climb up to the brim, and look down, for a moment, into
the Hell of boiling fire below. Then, we all three come rolling down;
blackened, and singed, and scorched, and hot, and giddy: and each with
his dress alight in half-a-dozen places.
You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of descending
is by sliding down the ashes: which, forming a gradually increasing
ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a descent. But, when we have
crossed the two exhausted craters on our way back, and are come to this
precipitous place, there is (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige of
ashes to be seen; the whole being a smooth sheet of ice.
In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join hands,
and make a chain of men; of whom the foremost beat, as well as they
can, a rough track with their sticks, down which we prepare to follow.
The way being fearfully steep, and none of the party: even of the
thirty: being able to keep their feet for six paces together, the
ladies are taken out of their litters, and placed, each between two
careful persons; while others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to
prevent their falling forward--a necessary precaution, tending to the
immediate and hopeless dilapidation of their apparel. The rather heavy
gentleman is adjured to leave his litter too, and be escorted in a
similar manner; but he resolves to be brought down as he was brought
up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble
all at once, and that he is safer so than trusting to his own legs.
In this order, we begin the descent: sometimes on foot, sometimes
shuffling on the ice: always proceeding much more quietly and slowly
than on our upward way: and constantly alarmed by the falling among
us of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole
party, and clings pertinaciously to anybody’s ankles. It is impossible
for the litter to be in advance, too, as the track has to be made;
and its appearance behind us, overhead--with some one or other of the
bearers always down, and the rather heavy gentleman with his legs in
the air--is very threatening and frightful. We have gone on thus;
a very little way, painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and
regarding it as a great success--and have all fallen several times,
and have all been stopped, somehow or other, as we were sliding
away--when Mr. Pickle, of Portici, in the act of remarking on these
uncommon circumstances as quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls,
disengages himself with quick presence of mind, from those about him,
plunges away head foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the whole
surface of the cone!
Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help him, I see him
there, in the moonlight--I have had such a dream often--skimming over
the white ice like a cannonball. Almost at the same moment, there is
a cry from behind; and a man who has carried a light basket of spare
cloaks on his head, comes rolling past at the same frightful speed,
closely followed by a boy. At this climax of the chapter of accidents,
the remaining eight-and-twenty vociferate to that degree, that a pack
of wolves would be music to them!
Giddy and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle of Portici
when we reach the place where we dismounted, and where the horses
are waiting; but, thank God, sound in limb! And never are we likely
to be more glad to see a man alive, and on his feet, than to see him
now--making light of it too, though sorely bruised and in great pain.
The boy is brought into the Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are
at supper, with his head tied up; and the man is heard of some hours
afterwards. He, too, is bruised and stunned, but has broken no bones;
the snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger blocks of rock and
stone, and rendered them harmless.
After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing fire, we again
take horse, and continue our descent to Salvatore’s house--very slowly,
by reason of our bruised friend being hardly able to keep the saddle,
or endure the pain of motion. Though it is so late at night, or early
in the morning, all the people of the village are waiting about the
little stable-yard when we arrive, and looking up the road by which we
are expected. Our appearance is hailed with a great clamour of tongues,
and a general sensation, for which, in our modesty, we are somewhat
at a loss to account, until turning into the yard, we find that one
of a party of French gentlemen, who were on the mountain at the same
time, is lying on some straw in the stable with a broken limb; looking
like Death and suffering great torture; and that we were confidently
supposed to have encountered some worse accident.
So “well returned and Heaven be praised!” as the cheerful Vetturino,
who has borne us company all the way from Pisa says with all his heart!
And away with his ready horses into sleeping Naples!
It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo singers and
beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, and universal
degradation; airing its Harlequin suit in the sunshine, next day and
every day; singing, starving, dancing, gaming on the seashore; and
leaving all labour to the burning mountain, which is ever at its work.
_Pictures from Italy_ (London, 1845).
THE FALLS OF THE RHINE
(_GERMANY_)
VICTOR HUGO
My friend, what shall I say to you? I have just come from seeing that
strange thing. I am only a few steps from it. I hear the noise of it.
I am writing to you without knowing what falls from my thoughts. Ideas
and images accumulate there pell-mell, hastening, jostling and bruising
each other, and disappearing in vapour, in foam, in uproar, and in
clouds.
Within me there is an immense ebullition. It seems to me that I have
the Falls of the Rhine in my brain.
I write at random, just as it comes. You must understand if you can.
You arrive at Laufen. It is a castle of the Thirteenth Century, a very
beautiful pile and of a very good style. At the door there are two
gilded wyverns with open mouths. They are roaring. You would say that
they are making the mysterious noise you hear.
You enter.
You are in the courtyard of a castle. It is no longer a castle, it is
a farm. Hens, geese, turkeys, dirt; a cart in a corner; and a vat of
lime. A door opens. The cascade appears.
Marvellous spectacle!
Frightful tumult! That is the first effect. Then you look about
you. The cataract cuts out the gulfs which it fills with large white
sheets. As in a conflagration, there are some little peaceful spots
in the midst of this object of terror; groves blended with foam;
charming brooks in the mosses; fountains for the Arcadian Shepherds
of Poussin, shadowed by little boughs gently agitated.--And then
these details vanish, and the impression of the whole returns to you.
Eternal tempest! Snow, vital and furious. The water is of a strange
transparency. Some black rocks produce sinister aspects under the
water. They appear to touch the surface and are ten feet down. Below
the two principal leaps of the falls two great sheaves of foam spread
themselves upon the river and disperse in green clouds. On the other
side of the Rhine, I perceive a tranquil group of little houses, where
the housekeepers come and go.
As I am observing, my guide tells me: “Lake Constance froze in the
winter of 1829 and 1830. It had not frozen for a hundred and four
years. People crossed it in carriages. Poor people were frozen to death
in Schaffhausen.”
I descended a little lower towards the abyss. The sky was grey and
veiled. The cascade roared like a tiger. Frightful noise, terrible
rapidity! Dust of water, smoke and rain at the same time. Through this
mist you see the cataract in its full development. Five large rocks cut
it into five sheets of water of diverse aspects and different sizes.
You believe you see the five worn piers of a bridge of Titans. In the
winter the ice forms blue arches upon these black abutments.
[Illustration: THE FALLS OF THE RHINE.]
The nearest of these rocks is of a strange form; it seems as if the
water issued full of rage from the hideous and impassive head of an
Hindu idol with an elephant’s head. Some trees and brambles, which
intermingle at its summit, give it bristling and horrible hair.
At the most awe-inspiring point of the Falls, a great rock disappears
and reäppears under the foam like the skull of an engulfed giant,
beaten for six thousand years by this dreadful shower-bath.
The guide continues his monologue: “The Falls of the Rhine are one
league from Schaffhausen. The whole mass of the river falls there at a
height of seventy feet.”--
The rugged path which descends from the castle of Laufen to the
abyss crosses a garden. At the moment when I passed, deafened by the
formidable cataract, a child, accustomed to living with this marvel of
the world, was playing among the flowers.
This path has several barriers, where you pay a trifle from time to
time. The poor cataract should not work for nothing. See the trouble it
gives! It is very necessary that with all the foam that it throws upon
the trees, the rocks, the river, and the clouds, that it should throw a
few sous into the pocket of some one. That is the least it can do.
I came along this path until I reached a kind of balcony skilfully
poised in reality right over the abyss.
There, everything moves you at once. You are dazzled, made dizzy,
confused, terrified, and charmed. You lean on a wooden rail that
trembles. Some yellow trees,--it is autumn,--and some red quick-trees
surround a little pavilion in the style of the Café Turc, from which
one observes the horror of the thing. The women cover themselves with
an oil-skin (each one costs a franc). You are suddenly enveloped in a
terrible, thundering and heavy shower.
Some pretty little yellow snails crawl voluptuously over this dew on
the rail of the balcony. The rock that slopes beyond the balcony weeps
drop by drop into the cascade. Upon this rock, which is in the centre
of the cataract, a troubadour-knight of painted wood stands leaning
upon a red shield with a white cross. Some man certainly risked his
life to plant this doubtful ornament in the midst of Jehovah’s grand
and eternal poetry.
The two giants, who lift up their heads, I should say the two largest
rocks, seem to speak. The thunder is their voice. Above an alarming
mound of foam you see a peaceful little house with its little orchard.
You would say that this terrible hydra is condemned to carry eternally
upon his back that sweet and happy cabin.
I went to the extremity of the balcony; I leaned against the rock. The
sight became still more terrible. It was a frightful descent of water.
The hideous and splendid abyss angrily throws a shower of pearls in
the face of those who dare to regard it so near. That is admirable.
The four great heaps of the cataract fall, mount, and fall again
without ceasing. You would believe that you were beholding the four
lightning-wheels of the storm-chariot.
The wooden bridge was laid under water. The boards were slippery. Some
dead leaves quivered under my feet. In a cleft of the rock, I noticed a
little tuft of dried grass. Dry under the cataract of Schaffhausen! in
this deluge, it missed every drop of water! There are some hearts that
may be likened to this tuft of grass. In the midst of a vortex of human
prosperity, they wither of themselves. Alas! this drop of water which
they have missed and which springs not forth from the earth but falls
from heaven, is Love!
How long did I remain there, absorbed in that grand spectacle? I could
not possibly tell you. During that contemplation the hours passed in my
spirit like the waves in the abyss, without leaving a trace or memory.
However, some one came to inform me that the day was declining. I
climbed up to the castle and from there I descended to the sandy shore
whence you cross the Rhine to gain the right bank. This shore is below
the Falls, and you cross the river at a few fathoms from the cataract.
To accomplish this, you risk yourself in a little boat, charming,
light, exquisite, adjusted like the canoe of a savage, constructed of
wood as supple as the skin of a shark, solid, elastic, fibrous, grazing
the rocks every instant and hardly escaping--being managed like all the
small boats of the Rhine and the Meuse with a hook and an oar in the
form of a shovel. Nothing is stranger than to feel in this little boat
the deep and thunderous shocks of the water.
As the bark moved away from the bank, I looked above my head at
the battlements covered with tiles and the sharp gable ends of the
_château_ that dominates the precipice. Some fishermen’s nets were
drying up on the stones on the bank of the river. Do they fish in this
vortex? Yes, without doubt. As the fish cannot leap over the cataract,
many salmon are caught here. Moreover, where is the whirlpool in which
man will not fish?
Now I will recapitulate my intense and almost poignant sensations.
First impression: you do not know what to say, you are crushed as by
all great poems. Then the whole unravels itself. The beauties disengage
themselves from the cloud. Altogether it is grand, sombre, terrible,
hideous, magnificent, unutterable.
On the other side of the Rhine, the Falls are made to turn mill-wheels.
Upon one bank, the castle; upon the other, the village, which is called
Neuhausen.
It is a remarkable thing that each of the great Alpine rivers, on
leaving the mountains, has the colour of the sea to which it flows.
The Rhône, escaping from the Lake of Geneva, is blue like the
Mediterranean; the Rhine, issuing from Lake Constance, is green like
the ocean.
Unfortunately the sky was overcast. I cannot, therefore, say that I saw
the Falls of Laufen in all their splendour. Nothing is richer nor more
marvellous than that shower of pearls of which I have already told you.
This should be, however, even more wonderful when the sun changes these
pearls to diamonds and when the rainbow plunges its emerald neck into
the foam like a divine bird that comes to drink in the abyss.
From the other side of the Rhine, whence I am now writing, the
cataract appears in its entirety, divided into five very distinct
parts, each of which has its physiognomy quite apart from the others,
and forming a kind of crescendo. The first is an overflowing from a
mill; the second, almost symmetrically composed by the work of the
wave and time, is a fountain of Versailles; the third, a cascade; the
fourth, an avalanche; and the fifth, chaos.
A last word and I will close this letter. Several paces from the Falls,
you explore a calcareous rock, which is very beautiful. In the midst of
one of the quarries that are there a galley-slave, in stripes of grey
and black, with pick-axe in his hand and a double chain on his feet,
looked at the cataract. Chance seems to delight itself sometimes in
placing in antitheses, sometimes sad and sometimes terrible, the work
of nature and the work of society.
_Le Rhin_ (Paris, 1846).
IN ARCTIC SEAS
LORD DUFFERIN