_THE GRIMSEL AND THE ÆGGISCHHORN._
This Grimsel is a weird region--a monument carved with hieroglyphics
more ancient and more grand than those of Nineveh or the Nile. It is a
world disinterred by the sun from a sepulchre of ice. All around are
evidences of the existence and the might of the glaciers which once
held possession of the place. All around the rocks are carved, and
fluted, and polished, and scored. Here and there angular pieces of
quartz, held fast by the ice, inserted their edges into the rocks and
scratched them like diamonds, the scratches varying in depth and width
according to the magnitude of the cutting stone. Larger masses, held
similarly captive, scooped longitudinal depressions in the rocks over
which they passed, while in many cases the polishing must have been
effected by the ice itself. A raindrop will wear a stone away; much
more would an ice surface, squeezed into perfect contact by enormous
pressure, rub away the asperities of the rocks over which for ages it
was forced to slide. The rocks thus polished by the ice itself are so
exceedingly smooth and slippery that it is impossible to stand on them
where their inclination is at all considerable. But what a world it
must have been when the valleys were thus filled! We can restore the
state of things in thought, and in doing so we submerge many a mass
which now lifts its pinnacle skyward. Switzerland in those days could
not be so grand as it is now. Pour ice into those valleys till they are
filled, and you eliminate those contrasts of height and depth on which
the grandeur of Alpine scenery depends. Instead of skiey pinnacles and
deep-cut gorges we should have an icy sea dotted with dreary islands
formed by the highest mountain-tops.
In the afternoon I strolled up to the Siedelhorn. As I stood upon the
broken summit of the mountain the air was without a cloud; and the
sunbeams fell directly against the crown and slopes of the Galenstock
at the base of which lay the glacier of the Rhone. The level sea of
_névé_ above the great ice-cascade, the fall itself, and the terminal
glacier below the fall were all apparently at hand. At the base of the
fall the ice undergoes an extraordinary transformation; it reaches this
place more or less amorphous, it quits it most beautifully laminated,
the change being due to the pressure endured at the bottom of the fall.
The wrinkling of the glacier here was quite visible, the dwindling
of the wrinkles into bands, and the subdivision of these bands into
lines which mark the edges of the laminæ of which the glacier at this
place is made up. Beyond, amid the mountains at the opposite side of
the Rhone valley, lay the Gries glacier, half its snow in shadow,
and half illuminated by the sinking sun. Round farther to the right
were the Monte Leone and other grand masses, the grandest here being
the Mischabel with its crowd of snowy cones. Jumping a gap in the
mountains, we hit the stupendous cone of the Weisshorn, which slopes to
meet the inclines of the Mischabel, and in the wedge of space carved
out between the two the Matterhorn lifts its terrible head.
Wheeling farther in the same direction, we at length strike the mighty
spurs of the Finsteraarhorn, between two of which lies the Oberaar
glacier. Here is no turmoil of crevasses, no fantastic ice-pinnacles,
nothing to indicate the operation of those tremendous forces by which
a glacier sometimes rends its own breast. The grimmest giant of the
Oberland closes the view at the head of the Lauteraar glacier--the
Schreckhorn, whose cliffs on this side no mountaineer will ever scale.
Between the Schreckhorn and Finsteraarhorn a curious group of peaks
encircle a flat snow-field, from which the sunbeams are flung in
blazing lines. Immediately below is the Unteraar glacier, with a long
black streak upon its back, bent hither and thither, like a serpent
wriggling down the valley. Beyond it and flanking it is a ridge of
mountains with a crest of vertical rock, hacked into indentations which
suggest a resemblance to a cock’s comb. To the very root of the comb
the mountains have been planed by the ancient ice.
A scene of unspeakable desolation it must have been when not
Switzerland alone, but all Europe, was thus encased in frozen
armour--when a glacier from Ben Nevis dammed the mouth of Glenroy,
and Llanberis and Borrodale were ploughed by frozen shares sent down
by Snowdon and Scawfell--when from the Reeks of Magillicuddy came the
navigators which dug out space for the Killarney lakes, and carved
through the mountains the Gap of Dunloe.[8] Evening came, and I moved
downwards, over heaped boulders and tufted alp; down with headlong
speed over the rounded rocks of the Grimsel, making long springs at
intervals, over the polished inclines, and reaching the hospice as the
bell rings its inmates to their evening meal.
[8] See chapter on ‘Killarney,’ p. 413.
On Saturday I ascended from Viesch to the Hotel Jungfrau on the slope
of the Æggischhorn, and in the evening walked up to the summit of the
mountain alone. As usual, I wandered unconsciously from the beaten
track, getting into a chaos of crags which had been shaken from the
heights. My ascent was quick, and I soon found myself upon the crest
of broken rocks which caps the mountain. The peak and those adjacent,
which are similarly shattered, exhibit a striking picture of the ruin
which nature inflicts upon her own creations. She buildeth up and
taketh down. She lifts the mountains by her subterranean energies, and
then blasts them by her lightnings and her frost. Thus grandly she
rushes along the ‘grooves of change’ to her unattainable repose. Is it
unattainable? The incessant tendency of material forces is toward final
equilibrium; and if the quantity of this tendency be finite, a time
of repose must come at last. If one portion of the universe be hotter
than another, a flux instantly sets in to equalise the temperatures;
while winds blow and rivers roll in search of a stable equilibrium.
Matter longs for rest; when is this longing to be fully satisfied? If
satisfied, what then? Rest is not perfection; it is death. Life is only
compatible with mutation; when equilibrium sets in life ceases, and the
world thenceforward is locked in everlasting sleep.
A wooden cross bleached by many storms surmounts the pinnacle of the
Æggischhorn, and at the base of it I now take my place and scan the
surrounding scene. Down from its birthplace in the mountains comes
that noblest of ice-streams the Great Aletsch glacier. Its arms are
thrown round the shoulders of the Jungfrau, while from the Monk and
the Trugberg, the Gletscherhorn, the Breithorn, the Aletschhorn, and
many another noble pile, the tributary snows descend and thicken into
ice. The mountains are well protected by their wintry coats, and hence
the quantity of _débris_ upon the glacier is comparatively small;
still, along it can be noticed dark longitudinal streaks, which are
incipient moraines. Right and left from these longitudinal bands sweep
finer curves, twisted here and there into complex windings, which mark
the lamination of the subjacent ice. The glacier lies in a curved
valley, the side towards which its convex curvature is turned is thrown
into a state of strain, the ice breaks across the line of tension,
a curious system of oblique glacier ravines being thus produced.
From the snow-line which crosses the glacier above the Faulberg a
pure snow-field stretches upward to the Col de la Jungfrau, which
unites the Maiden to the Monk. Skies and summits are to-day without a
cloud, and no mist or turbidity interferes with the sharpness of the
outlines. Jungfrau, Monk, Eiger, Trugberg, cliffy Strahlgrat, stately,
lady-like Aletschhorn, all grandly pierce the empyrean. Like a Saul of
mountains, the Finsteraarhorn overtops all his neighbours; then we have
the Oberaarhorn, with the river glacier of Viesch rolling from his
shoulders. Below is the Märjelin See, with its crystal precipices and
its floating icebergs, snowy white, sailing on a blue-green sea. Beyond
is the range which divides the Valais from Italy. Sweeping round,
the vision meets an aggregate of peaks which look, as fledglings to
their mother, towards the mighty Dom. Then come the repellent crags of
Mont Cervin, the idea of moral savagery, of wild untameable ferocity,
mingling involuntarily with our contemplation of the gloomy pile.
Next comes an object scarcely less grand, conveying it may be even a
deeper impression of majesty and might than the Matterhorn itself--the
Weisshorn, perhaps the most splendid object in the Alps. But beauty is
associated with its force, and we think of it, not as cruel, but as
grand and strong. Further to the right is the Great Combin; other peaks
crowd around him, while at the extremity of the curve along which the
gaze has swept rises the sovran crown of Mont Blanc. And now, as the
day sinks, scrolls of pearly clouds form around the mountain-crests,
and are wafted from them into the distant air. They are without
colour of any kind; but their grace of form and lustre are not to be
described.