I promised to write from Chamouni, so to commence at the commencement.
Fancy me, on a broiling day in July, panting with the heat, gazing
from my window in Geneva upon Lake Leman, which reflects the sun like
a burning glass, and thinking whether in America, or any where else,
it was ever so hot before. This was quite a new view of the subject to
me, who had been warned in Paris only of the necessity of blanket
shawls, and had come to Switzerland with my head full of glaciers, and
my trunk full of furs.
While arranging my travelling preparations, Madame F. enters.
"Have you considered how cold it is up there?" she inquires.
"I am glad if it is cold any where," said I.
"Ah, you will find it dreadful; you will need to be thoroughly
guarded."
I suggested tippets, flannels, and furs, of which I already possessed
a moderate supply. But no; these were altogether insufficient. It was
necessary that I should buy two immense fur coats; one for C., and one
for myself.
I assure you that such preparations, made with the thermometer between
eighty and ninety, impress one with a kind of awe. "What regions must
they be," thought I to myself, "thus sealed up in eternal snows, while
the country at their feet lies scorching in the very fire!" A shadow
of incredulity mingled itself with my reflections. On the whole, I
bought but _one_ fur coat.
At this moment C. came up to tell me that W., S., and G. had all come
back from Italy, so that our party was once more together.
It was on the 5th of July that S. and I took our seats in the _coupé_
of the diligence. Now, this _coupé_ is low and narrow enough, so that
our condition reminded me slightly of the luckless fowls which I have
sometimes seen riding to the Cincinnati market in _coupés_ of about
equal convenience. Nevertheless, it might be considered a peaceable
and satisfactory style of accommodation in an ordinary country. But to
ride among the wonders of the Alps in such a vehicle is something like
contemplating infinity through the nose of a bottle. It was really very
tantalizing and provoking to me till C. was so obliging as to resign his
seat on top in my favor, and descend into _Sheol_, as he said. Then I
began to live; for I could see to the summit of the immense walls of rock
under which we were passing. By and by we were reminded, by the
examination of our passports, that we had entered Sardinia; and the
officers, being duly satisfied that we were not going to Chamouni to
levy an army among the glaciers, or raise a sedition among the
avalanches, let us pass free. The discretion and wisdom of this
passport system can never be sufficiently admired. It must be entirely
owing to this, that the Alps do not break out on Europe generally, and
tear it in pieces.
But the mountains--how shall I give you the least idea of them? Old,
sombre, haggard genii, half veiled in clouds, belted with pines, worn
and furrowed with storms and avalanches, but not as yet crowned with
snow. For many miles after leaving Geneva, the Mole is the principal
object; its blue-black outline veering and shifting, taking on a
thousand strange varieties of form as you approach it, others again as
you recede.
It is a cloudy day; and heavy volumes of vapor are wreathing and
unwreathing themselves around the gaunt forms of the everlasting
rocks, like human reasonings, desires, and hopes around the ghastly
realities of life and death; graceful, undulating, and sometimes
gleaming out in silver or rosy wreaths. Still, they are nothing but
mist; the dread realities are just where they were before. It is odd,
though, to look at these cloud caperings; quite as interesting, in its
way, as to read new systems of transcendental philosophy, and perhaps
quite as profitable. Yonder is a great, whiteheaded cloud, slowly
unrolling himself in the bosom of a black pine forest. Across the
other side of the road a huge granite cliff has picked up a bit of
gauzy silver, which he is winding round his scraggy neck. And now,
here comes a cascade right over our heads; a cascade, not of water,
but of cloud; for the poor little brook that makes it faints away
before it gets down to us; it falls like a shimmer of moonlight, or a
shower of powdered silver, while a tremulous rainbow appears at
uncertain intervals, like a half-seen spirit.
[Illustration: _of waterfalls._]
The cascade here, as in mountains generally, is a never-failing source
of life and variety. Water, joyous, buoyant son of Nature, is calling
to you, leaping, sparkling, mocking at you between bushes, and singing
as he goes down the dells. A thousand little pictures he makes among
the rocks as he goes; like the little sketch which I send you.
Then, the _bizarre_ outline of the rocks; well does Goethe call
them "the giant-snouted crags;" and as the diligence winds slowly on,
they seem to lean, and turn, and bend. Now they close up like a wall
in front, now open in piny and cloudy vistas: now they embrace the
torrent in their great, black arms; and now, flashing laughter and
babbling defiance through rifted rocks and uprooted pines, the torrent
shoots past them, down into some fathomless abyss. These old Alp
mothers cannot hold their offspring back from abysses any better than
poor earth mothers.
There are phases in nature which correspond to every phase of human
thought and emotion; and this stern, cloudy scenery answers to the
melancholy fatalism of Greek tragedy, or the kindred mournfulness of
the Book of Job.
These dark channelled rocks, worn, as with eternal tears,--these
traces, so evident of ancient and vast desolations,--suggest the idea
of boundless power and inexorable will, before whose course the most
vehement of human feelings are as the fine spray of the cataract.
"For, surely, the mountain, falling, cometh to nought;
The rock is remored out of his place;
The waters wear the stones;
Thou washest away the things that grow out of the earth,
And thou destroyest the hopes of man;
Thou prevailest against him, and he passeth;
Thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away."
The sceptical inquirer into the mysteries of eternal things might
here, if ever, feel the solemn irony of Eliphaz the Temanite:--
"Should a wise man utter vain knowledge?
Should he reason with unprofitable talk?
Or with speeches that can do no good?
Art thou the first man that ever was born?
Or wast thou made before the hills?"
There are some of my fellow-travellers, by the by, who, if they
_had_ been made before the hills, would never have been much
wiser. All through these solemn passages and gorges, they are
discussing hotels, champagne, wine, and cigars. I presume they would
do the same thing at the gates of the Celestial City, if they should
accidentally find themselves there. It is one of the dark providences
that multitudes of this calibre of mind find leisure and means to come
among these scenes, while many to whom they would be an inspiration,
in whose souls they would unseal ceaseless fountains of beauty, are
forever excluded by poverty and care.
At noon we stopped at Sallenches, famous for two things; first, as the
spot where people get dinner, and second, where they take the
_char_, a carriage used when the road is too steep for the
diligence. Here S., who had been feeling ill all the morning, became
too unwell to proceed, so that we had to lie by an hour or two, and
did not go on with the caravan. I sat down at the room window to study
and sketch a mountain that rose exactly opposite. I thought to myself,
"Now, would it be possible to give to one that had not seen it an idea
of how this looks?" Let me try if words can paint it. Right above the
fiat roof of the houses on the opposite side of the street rose this
immense mountain wall. The lower tier seemed to be a turbulent swell
of pasture land, rolling into every imaginable shape; green billows
and dells, rising higher and higher in the air as you looked upward,
dyed here and there in bright yellow streaks, by the wild crocus, and
spotted over with cattle. Dark clumps and belts of pine now and then
rise up among them; and scattered here and there in the heights, among
green hollows, were cottages, that looked about as big as hickory
nuts.
Above all this region was still another, of black pines and crags; the
pines going up, and up, and up, till they looked no larger than pin
feathers; and surmounting all, straight, castellated turrets of rock,
looking out of swathing bands of cloud. A narrow, dazzling line of
snow crowned the summit.
You see before you three distinct regions--of pasture, of pine, of
bare, eternal sterility. On inquiring the name of the mountain, I was
told that it was the "Aiguille" something, I forget what; but I
discovered that almost all the peaks in this region of the Alps are
called Aiguille, (needle,) I suppose from the straight, sharp points
that rise at their summits.
There is a bridge here in Sallenches, from which, in clear weather,
one of the best views of Mont Blanc can be obtained--so they tell us.
To-day it is as much behind the veil, and as absolutely a matter of
faith as heaven itself. Looking in that direction you could not
believe that there ever had been, or could be, a mountain there. The
concealing clouds look as gray, as cool, and as absolutely unconscious
of any world of glory behind them as our dull, cold, every-day life
does of a heaven, which is, perhaps, equally near us. As we were
passing the bridge, however, a gust of icy wind swept down the course
of the river, whose chilly breath spoke of glaciers and avalanches.
Our driver was one of those merry souls, to be found the world over,
whose hearts yearn after talk; and when I volunteered to share the
outside seat with him, that I might see better, he inquired anxiously
if "mademoiselle understood French," that he might have the pleasure
of enlightening her on the localities. Of course mademoiselle could do
no less than be exceedingly grateful, since a peasant on his own
ground is generally better informed than a philosopher from elsewhere.
Our path lay along the banks of the Arve, a raving, brawling,
turbulent stream of muddy water. A wide belt of drifted, pebbly land,
on either side of it, showed that at times the torrent had a much
wider sweep than at present.
In fact, my guide informed me that the Arve, like most other mountain
streams, had many troublesome and inconvenient personal habits, such
as rising up all of a sudden, some night, and whisking off houses,
cattle, pine trees; in short, getting up sailing parties in such a
promiscuous manner that it is neither safe nor agreeable to live in
his neighborhood. He showed me, from time to time, the traces of such
Kuhleborn pranks.
We were now descending rapidly through the valley of Chamouni, by a
winding road, the scenery becoming every moment more and more
impressive. The path was so steep and so stony that our guide was well
enough contented to have us walk. I was glad to walk on alone; for the
scenery was so wonderful that human sympathy and communion seemed to
be out of the question. The effect of such scenery to our generally
sleeping and drowsy souls, bound with the double chain of earthliness
and sin, is like the electric touch of the angel on Peter, bound and
sleeping. They make us realize that we were not only made to commune
with God, but also what a God he is with whom we may commune. We talk
of poetry, we talk of painting, we go to the ends of the earth to see
the artists and great men of this world; but what a poet, what an
artist is God! Truly said Michael Angelo, "The true painting is only a
copy of the divine perfections--a shadow of his pencil."
I was sitting on a mossy trunk of an old pine, looking up admiringly
on the wonderful heights around me--crystal peaks sparkling over dark
pine trees--shadowy, airy distances of mountain heights, rising
crystalline amid many-colored masses of cloud; while, looking out over
my head from green hollows, I saw the small cottages, so tiny, in
their airy distance, that they seemed scarcely bigger than a
squirrel's nut, which he might have dropped in his passage. A pretty
Savoyard girl, I should think about fifteen years old, came up to me.
"Madame admires the mountains," she said.