TYPES OF ALPINE PEAKS
In a previous chapter reference has been made to the varied types of
scenery which belong to different divisions of the Alpine chain, and the
briefest kind of characterisation of those varieties was attempted. But
the Alps, and indeed almost all the great snow ranges of the world,
possess side by side within a single neighbourhood varieties of peaks
sufficiently divergent to be capable of grouping and classification. For
example, in the Mont Blanc group, there are domes of snow, needle-points
of rock, areted pyramids, serrated ridges, peaks twinned together, peaks
closely grouped in larger number, and other varieties of mountains. In
fact, just as whole districts of mountains possess, each one, an
individual character due to their geographical position, their local
history of uplift and denudation, the materials of which they are
formed, and other such factors, so individual peaks for like reasons
possess individual character, and conform more or less evidently to one
or another well-marked type. That such is the case will be readily
admitted. In common talk, indeed, we are accustomed to attribute
fancifully to this mountain masculine ruggedness, to that feminine
grace, to another qualities of terror. Some mountains attract to
themselves a kind of human affection; others repel; yet others bore, or,
on the contrary, interest without charming. In the present chapter,
therefore, I intend to discuss the characters of mountains, especially
of the great Alpine peaks, from this point of view, considering so far
as space permits the characters and dispositions of all sorts and
conditions of Alps.
It will be perceived at once that the treatment of our subject will
entirely depend on the point of view from which we regard it. Mountains
are not beasts and possess no real characters. It is only we who, with
our anthropomorphic tendency, endow them with imaginary qualities
belonging actually to ourselves and projected forth from us on to the
so-called external world. If mountains are primarily thought of as
things to be climbed, we shall characterise them as they react upon the
climber. If they are regarded as sights to be beheld, we shall
characterise them as they affect our sense of vision. A climber may
fancifully figure one mountain as friendly though severe, another as
hostile, a third as mean, a fourth as recondite, a fifth as deceitful.
Climbers, however, though I hope I may number some of them amongst my
readers, are not primarily those for whom this book is written. It is
aimed more broadly to interest the mountain-lover of whatever age or sex
and whatever agility or endurance. I testify here, not so much of what I
know, but of what I have seen and found delightful in the seeing, in
hopes to revive recollections of pleasure in others and to suggest the
possibility of further joys to the mountain traveller.
Pre-eminent, then, to look at, pre-eminent as a mountain vision, one
must, I assert, rank the great domes of snow, such as Mont Blanc. The
two greatest Alpine mountains assume that form when beheld from
characteristic points of view, sufficiently remote, and, of course, it
is the apparent form only that here concerns us. A peak may actually be
a blade of rock, snow-whitened, and yet may appear to be a dome, as the
Lyskamm appears from north and south. It must be ranked amongst domes
when so beheld. On these giant masses Nature frequently bestows a
measurable pre-eminence, for it is not only in the Alps that they attain
loftiest altitudes among their neighbours. Elburz which reigns over the
Caucasus is a dome, so is Chimborazo, so likewise Nanga Parbat. But even
if they were not actually piled higher than their satellites they would
look bigger.
A notable instance of the great dignity of effect of a snow dome beheld
amongst more rugged and precipitous peaks--peaks, moreover, much loftier
than the dome--was forced upon my notice in the Baltoro region of the
Mustagh mountains of Kashmir. The Baltoro glacier, most wonderfully
situated of all glaciers in the world, is surrounded by the greatest
group of high peaks known to exist. A number of them exceed 25,000 feet
in altitude, and several are over 27,000 feet. Moreover, most of these
great mountains are of bold outline and precipitous structure. There is
no deceit about them. They look their height. Some of them are
needle-pointed and buttressed by the narrowest rock ridges, set with
needle-pointed teeth. It would be imagined that no mountain forms could
be more impressive than theirs, as one after another they come within
range of the traveller's vision and grow familiar to him during the long
days of his creeping advance along their feet. Impressive indeed they
are, splendid beyond words, majestic surpassingly.
It happens, however, that, amongst them all a solitary exception, there
stands a single dome of snow, named by me the Golden Throne. I first
beheld it somewhat dramatically, when, after climbing to a high
elevation by night, the sun rose behind it, and it was revealed in all
its width, flanked on either hand by a long line of jagged and aspiring
peaks. They were higher than it--most of them considerably higher, yet
beyond all question the dome was the most dignified of them all. It owed
something of its dignity and distinction, no doubt, to contrast, to the
rarity of its form in that region of splintered aiguilles; but that was
not alone the cause. The suavity and continuous curvature of its
outline, and the grace of it, as well as its greater breadth and
apparent relative volume, made the Golden Throne absolutely, as well as
by contrast, more dignified than its bolder neighbours. Had it differed
from them only in form it would have prevailed, but it differed more
noticeably from them in drapery and colour. Whereas they were of naked
rock, it was enveloped in a mantle of purest snow, and the broad white
mass (especially later when it shone in the advancing daylight) attained
a pre-eminence in brightness and purity for which no ruggedness or
precipitancy in the others could compensate.
It is a far cry to the Golden Throne, but Mont Blanc is near at hand,
and its aspect is familiar to countless people. None will deny that its
reputation is pre-eminent among Alps. I claim that that pre-eminence is
not solely due to its culminating position in point of size, but that
its broad white mass and shining amplitude go a long way towards
accounting for it. It would scarcely occur to any one but a climber to
depose Mont Blanc from the first place--Mont Blanc, the "monarch of
mountains," diademed with snow. As in human architecture the dome is the
most dignified and impressive form, so also it is in nature. In Mont
Blanc it attains perfection by the noble breadth of its base and
adjustment of its buttresses. Whencesoever beheld, from north or south,
from far or near, it always appears poised aloft in a dignity as
impressive as it is reposeful, the white sheen of its spotless snows
pure as the bosom of a summer cloud, but unlike that, gifted with an
aspect of adamantine permanence.
[Illustration: 38. THE MATTERHORN, TWILIGHT.
"The time may come when the Matterhorn shall
have passed away, and nothing save a heap of shapeless
fragments will mark the spot where the great
mountain stood; for, atom by atom, inch by inch,
and yard by yard, it yields to forces which nothing can
withstand. That time is far distant; and ages hence,
generations unborn will gaze upon its awful precipices,
and wonder at its unique form. However
exalted may be their ideas, and however exaggerated
their expectations, none will come to return disappointed!"--WHYMPER.
]
Next to Mont Blanc in abiding reputation, the Matterhorn takes rank
among Alps by universal consent. We may regard it as the best example of
pyramidal mountains. Four-square it stands upon its mighty base,
fronting the four cardinal points of the compass, each face divided from
its neighbour by a clearly-defined ridge or rock arete. As Mont Blanc
the dome, so the Matterhorn in turn displays a form adopted by man for
some of his grandest architectural efforts, the pyramids of Egypt. If
the dome best expresses the idea of soaring aloft, when seen from
without, the pyramid best expresses the idea of eternal repose and
endurance without end. Geologists may tell us that even the Matterhorn
is a passing phenomenon, that the frosts are daily causing it to
disintegrate, and that thousands of tons of rock fall at frequent
intervals down its sides. Climbers may describe its near aspect as
ruinous, and we may know these statements to be true. None the less the
mountain beheld as a whole, from even a moderate distance, seems to
belie them. It appears to be from everlasting and to everlasting. It
incorporates the ideal of permanence. We conceive it as belonging not to
an age but to all time. Were it mathematically four-square, and its
faces true planes of even slope, that would be its chief effect, that
and the sense of mass and grandeur inseparable from an object of such
visibly huge dimensions. But Nature has fashioned it subtly and endowed
its faces and ridges with curves most delicate and refined. To its
appearance of mass and endurance it adds a grace so exquisite, an uplift
so imposing, that these qualities almost take the first place in the
impression produced upon the beholder. Seen from the north-east it
appears to best advantage. Towards Breuil it shows a more massive front.
Its recondite western face, only visible from high snow-fields, displays
precipices more appalling and a general aspect of more savage grandeur.
But with singular good fortune for the unathletic traveller, it
manifests its incomparable grace to perfection towards the easily
accessible north-east, and 50,000 people go there annually to worship at
its Riffel shrines. They may approach with no more devotional feeling
than the average pilgrim manifests at Lourdes, but the fact that they go
is homage to the reality of the emotion which many have actually felt in
that glorious presence. The poetic brain has exhausted itself in efforts
to find comparisons with living creatures whereby to describe it. Best
is Ruskin's choice of a rearing horse. Traces of the neck clothed with
thunder, of the mane-fringed crest with cloud streamers for hair, even
of the sharp contrasting angle of the folded fore-leg, can be traced in
the natural composition; but it is rather the might and spirit of the
thing--its combination of wildness, force, and grace--that give aptness
to this fetch of similitude.
In writing of the Matterhorn one can make an assumption that would be
impossible with any other mountain:--that most readers can recall a
vision of its form to their minds. Let me make that demand upon the
present reader. Observe then how beautifully the double curve of the
left hand or Theodule ridge, first convex, then concave, is terminated
and contrasted with the sudden jags of the shoulder, and then taken up
and continued again convex to the summit. How the right-hand or Stockje
ridge, convex above, drops with a larger sweep and a more astounding
ultimate steepness, to be again interrupted by a lower and more jagged
shoulder, and again continued downward by the magnificent white convex
curve, which, in its turn drooping into concave, leads the eye away to
the broad foundation. No less essential than the outline to the total
effect are the two white _neve_ basins that lie below the faces and
steepen upwards to ice-slopes leading to crags that have all the
appearance of cliffs. The importance to the composition of the third or
middle shoulder--_the_ Shoulder _par excellence_ of climbers--should
also be insisted on, but space does not here admit a lengthier analysis.
The reader will find no difficulty in pursuing the investigation for
himself.
[Illustration: 39. WEISSHORN AND MATTERHORN FROM FIESCHERALP.]
The four-sided pyramid, of which we have chosen the Matterhorn for
type, is a rarer form than the three-sided, perhaps the commonest class
of fully developed peak. Here again there cannot be a moment's
hesitation in the choice of a representative mountain, for of such the
Weisshorn is beyond question the finest and most famous in the Alps.
What mountain-lover has not beheld it, towering gracefully and superbly
aloft before him as he descended the upper reaches of the Rhone valley
on some bright August day? Westward it opposes a face of rock and is a
less gorgeous object to look upon. But its other two faces with their
glacial robe are brilliant under all illuminations. What gives it
distinction among the multitude of mountains similarly formed is the
grace of its slender and long drawn-out ridges. Each of these sharp
aretes, beheld from most points of view, drops very steeply from the
spear-tipped summit; then gradually levels off to a shoulder, and so
leads the eye down to the massive foundation that supports the whole.
Slenderness above, massive strength below--such is the effective
contrast that Nature provides.
Another famous peak, the Jungfrau, appears from Interlaken almost as
graceful as the Weisshorn; but its beauty is really of another order,
and depends far more upon the brilliancy of the curdled surface of the
snow, and its division between ice-falls, rocks, and ice-slopes, than
upon the outline of the peak itself or the form of its ridges. For pure
grace of pyramidal form the Aletschhorn surpasses the Jungfrau, but the
better-known peak has advantages of position and of grouping to which we
shall presently refer.
Pyramidal peaks lend themselves kindly to embellishment by banners of
cloud. Often we behold great sheets of white mist waving away from their
ridges. The sharp definition and marble-like permanence of the mountain
forms an admirable offset to the softness and inconstancy of the cloud,
which is not merely ever varying the form of its outlines, but is
throughout in constant and often swift motion under the dominion of a
furious gale. The sense of violent agitation high aloft thus impressed
upon the eye, well associates itself with an idea of rugged resistance
proper to high peaks and splintered ridges. The slenderer the pyramid
and the sharper its aretes, so much the better does it serve as
flagstaff for a flying cloud.
Best of all, however, for this purpose are the rock aiguilles, which
never seem quite complete, never fully manifest the astonishing boldness
of their structure, except when they are in turn concealed and revealed
by mists that form and fade and form again--now cutting them off from
all visible connection with the earth and almost seeming to lift them
into the heavens, now half-hiding them and half-revealing, now as it
were smoking away from their summits like steam from a volcano, now
offering a white background to their rugged mass, now overshrouding and
empurpling them with shadows stolen from the wardrobe of Night. They
lack the dignity of the broader peaks, these needle rocks, and few of
them really deserve (save from a climber's standpoint) to be called
peaks at all. Generally they are only buttress pinnacles of greater
mountain masses. Yet a tall and well-planted aiguille always possesses
marked individuality of its own, which more than compensates for lack of
volume and altitude. By its form it attracts the attention of the eye
away from large but less wonder-evoking mountains. Thus it makes itself
the centre of a view and is remembered when its larger neighbours are
forgotten. More than any other kind of peak an aiguille depends for
effect upon the character of its foundation and the place where it is
planted. The Aiguille du Geant is, perhaps, the most remarkable monolith
shaft in the Alps, and has attained no little fame. But its fame is due
to the difficulty of scrambling up it. For sheer impressiveness of
effect from a distance it cannot enter into serious competition with the
Aiguille du Dru. The actual summit-shaft of the Dru is not really
remarkable for slenderness. Its sides are not the plumb vertical cliffs
that the Geant can show. But the foundations of the Dru carry its lines
down, and the supporting masses seem expressly piled together for no
other purpose than to lift the slender-seeming peak as far aloft as
possible. The Dru, moreover, though actually an appanage of the Verte,
is so situated as to be seen alone and admirably set off by glacier or
wooded foregrounds from several easily accessible and convenient
positions. Instead of standing aloof like the Geant, it peers down into
the valley and takes an interest in human affairs. It is there to signal
the sunset with its flaming beacon, and to glow like a brand from the
furnace in the presence of the dawn. The departing traveller turns back
to it for a last look, and the returning votary of the Alps is impatient
to pass the corner beyond which he well knows that it will come into
view. It is one of a class, the aiguilles of Chamonix, but it possesses
a marked individuality of aspect and it transcends all its neighbours
and rivals. They may be harder to climb, but it _looks_ as precipitous
and inaccessible as any, and, after all, the appearance is the essential
element for a lover of the picturesque. There is much more that might be
said about aiguilles, their value for contrast with other forms, their
essentially subordinate, almost parasitic, character, and so forth, but
our space has narrow limits and we must pass on.
[Illustration: 40. AIGUILLE VERTE AND AIGUILLE DU DRU FROM THE
CHAMONIX VALLEY. A well-known group, typical of the Aiguilles of the
Mont Blanc chain.]
We have considered domes and pyramids in special reference to their
outline. But they and all sorts of other mountains have faces as well as
bounding ridges, and these faces sometimes take the form of tremendous
walls. We may therefore devote a moment's attention to mountain walls,
or rather to what we may briefly describe as wall-faced mountains. These
great walls are not necessarily, nor indeed often, truly precipitous,
but the important point about them is that they look precipitous. They
are not walls, but the eye is deceived into believing that they are. The
Alps are rich in noble examples of this type. To name only the most
famous: there are the Italian fronts of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, the
Saas front of the Mischabelhoerner, and the north face of the Jungfrau.
If you stand in a suitable position, facing rather than enfilading any
of these great walls, their slope seems practically vertical. Climbers
know that they can all be climbed; their instructed eyes can even trace
the routes without difficulty. In so far as that knowledge interferes
with the imposing impression which ordinary persons derive from the mere
look of the thing, it is a misfortune. Yet even the climber can
sometimes forget his _metier_, and lose himself in pure contemplation of
Nature's splendour. It is nowhere easier so to do than in face of these
gigantic walls. Pre-eminent amongst them is, of course, the Macugnaga
face of Monte Rosa. Not merely does it excel in unbroken width and
continuity of plunge, but its striping by buttress and couloir, its
impending masses of serac, its huge piles of avalanche ruins below, and
the frequency of the falls that take place, whose fresh traces are
obvious even when they are not beheld in actual descent, all serve to
increase the observer's sense of the actual steepness of the face. First
beheld from near at hand, the vast size of the thing overwhelms the
beholder, and yet this first impression is small compared with the
ultimate sense of size which slowly grows within him as he gazes and
learns the meaning of the details. His attention will soon be called to
the fact that the whole face is ruled with lines. They seem fine, almost
like the meshes of a spider's web, but a brief consideration proves that
they are the tracks of falling masses--some of avalanches, others of
falling stones. They are not fine lines at all, but deep grooves,
perhaps ten feet wide and as deep as the height of a man. Realise that
fact, as the climber does (in so doing he in his turn has the
advantage), and you at once magnify, and may even overmagnify, the scale
of the view.
[Illustration: 41. BODEN AND GORNER GLACIERS. Monte Rosa from the
Schwarzsee. The last gleam of the daylight. The foot of the Riffelhorn
on the left.]
It is a commonplace to proclaim the exhaustless prodigality of
Nature's inventions, which every field of grass sufficiently proves, and
yet it always seems to me that these great faces specially exemplify it.
How easy, one might imagine, to invent detail for a precipice of ice and
rock--but take a blank sheet of paper and try; you will find the task
almost hopeless. Then turn to any view of Monte Rosa from Macugnaga and
observe how it has been done, and how much, indeed how entirely, the
effect of the view depends upon the structure and variety of the wall.
The classical point whence the face is seen at its best is the Pizzo
Bianco. There is a photograph from it in the eleventh volume of the
_Alpine Journal_. Note how essential every detail is to the effect of
the whole, and how impossible it would be to invent such a consistent
multitude of details. The sky-line is of minor importance; it does not
hold the eye. What first attracts it is the great sweeping buttresses
that emerge through the snow and carry the attention down by their
parallelism. As we look more closely at them we find that they in turn
break up into minor groups of parallels, and these again into similar
elements; yet with all this general repetition no two details are the
same. The aspect of the general structure may be compared to that of a
leaf with a number of ribs all obedient to a single law of form. The
snow that fills the spaces between the buttresses and overflows them
where it can, is no dead covering, but alive like a river. We obtain at
first glance, now that we know how to look for it, a sense of its weight
and movement. How strange it seems that that movement should not have
been observed centuries ago! The flowing of the snow is expressed by all
sorts of signs. Here it breaks into cliffs and tumbles; there it pours
down in a continuous stream interrupted only by crevasses, which
indicate its relative speed at adjacent points; there again, on some
small ledge or gentler slope, it lags and piles up. But as a rule it is
evidently in haste to get down, and the signs of this haste are a
measure of the steepness of the slope. High aloft the plunge seems
vertical, and one wonders how any snow can adhere to such uncompromising
crags. When the mists are drawn across it, or a bed of clouds lies at
its foot, filling the Macugnaga valley as with a white lake, the wall
seems yet more cliff-like. It is only when low sunlight strikes it
aslant and makes manifest its modelling that a suggestion is given of
the actual angle of the slope leading up from the glacier floor below to
the giddy crest.
Another kind of mountain front, akin to these yet belonging to a class
of its own, is the true rock-face. Such may have their ledges and
gullies picked out with snow, or even (as in the case of the Meije) a
small glacier caught on a shelf, but snow must not predominate, must not
even cover a considerable fraction of their surface. Mountains with
rock-faces of this kind are, of course, commonest among the secondary
groups. Thus there are many in Canton Glarus and thereabouts, yet more
among the Dolomites and in all the limestone districts. The west face of
the Weisshorn may perhaps be counted a rock-wall, but, if that is
excluded, the Grivola is, I think, the biggest example. The Bluemlisalp
and Breithorn, Altels and the Balmhorn, are other examples. If, however,
I were to be compelled to select one such peak as type, I should choose
Pelmo or Schlern in the Dolomites, and be content, even though some
vaster example were quoted against me. For, after all, it is not the
actual scale that matters, but the appearance of scale. I have heard it
said that the north-east face of the Zinal Rothhorn is the biggest true
cliff in the Alps. It may be, but it does not so appear from any
ordinary point of view--the Rothhorn, in fact, seeming insignificant
from almost everywhere.
These rock fronts must not be looked at from too far away. Unless they
subtend a high vertical angle to the vision they produce little effect.
But stand beneath them, and what pomp and power they display! You must
be near enough to see the details of their structure, and to trace the
joints of their masonry, for it is in the recognition of their
upbuilding, stone by stone, that their impressiveness consists. That is
why a snow-slope drawn down across the edges of their strata is so
little to be desired. If by good-luck the successive strata vary
somewhat in colour, the cliff will be magnified thereby. To the
perception of multiplicity recurrent detail is essential, and that
perception involves relative proximity and is helped by familiarity. The
oftener you stand beneath such a wall the bigger it appears to grow.
It is not a thing that can be painted, still less photographed; for no
painter could set down details enough, and the camera will not select
the right ones. It is the horizontal details that we want. If the reader
will observe how a high tower or other lofty building impresses its
scale upon him, he will find it to be by the joints of its masonry,
unless indeed he be standing far off and the tower is seen to rise high
above the houses of a town whose size is instinctively perceived. Here
again the accomplished climber who has actually scrambled up the sheer
face of such a cliff and so measured it against his own slow progress
and his accumulated fatigue, has an advantage over any mere spectator.
This advantage is increased by the fact that he will recognise and know
the size of many details of ledge and pitch which he has actually
handled and surmounted. Such personal knowledge is the best of all
measuring scales. A traveller who cannot attain it must be content with
the lesser insight that can be attained by slow examination. In no case
is the full effect to be perceived at once. Nature sometimes, as it
were, flings herself upon our imaginations and suddenly overpowers us by
her excessive grandeur. At other times she seems to say, "It is
nothing"; so as to let superficial persons pass by; but just then
perhaps we are in the presence of some superlatively great exhibition of
her majesty which it requires experience, time, and attention to
discover.
It should remove any tendency to conceit in those who have travelled
far and seen much to remember that, however often they may have beheld
and delighted in glorious sights, the best-visioned of them and the most
sensitive has missed far more than he has seen. What opportunities he
must have had, and how relatively few of them has he utilised! At best
he has been but like a traveller in a motor-car, whisking across
historic lands, and passing here by an abbey, there through some old
town, there again over some historic battle-field, and not suspecting
their existence, or not knowing enough to thrill with the rich emotions
they would excite in a better-informed mind. It is not the eyes that are
lacking, but the knowledge and the time to acquire it. You may scurry
along below the cliff of Pelmo without a flutter of the heart. But
wander half a day beneath it, examine its details, watch the sunlight
playing on its ledges, and the shadows in the gullies that cut them, a
sense of its grandeur will invade your consciousness, and the memory of
that will remain with you till you turn childish with old age and others
know that you have lived too long.
[Illustration: 42. THE BREITHORN FROM SCHWARZ SEE.]
Whatever the dignity of these great walls, when suitably beheld, the
peaks they belong to, if their summit crests are long and flat, are not
comparable for individual beauty of form with the snow domes or the
ridged pyramids. They have, however, an importance and perform a
function of their own in any large mountain panorama of which they form
a part. Before me as I write there chances to lie Donkin's photograph of
the view from the New Weissthor, looking down the Gorner glacier. The
pyramid of the Matterhorn is on the right; the wall of the Breithorn is
in the midst; the curdled snow-face of the Lyskamm is near at hand on
the left. It is not by any means a perfect natural composition, yet it
does fix the attention, and a moment's thought shows that it does so by
the marked contrast between the forms of the Breithorn and the Cervin.
Blot either of them out and the character of the view is changed.
I well remember standing, one very clear day, on the summit of a
relatively high peak in the icy heart of Spitsbergen and surveying a
vast panorama. The peaks in it being all actually small (though not
appearing so) and the area of the panorama very large, the multitude of
peaks in sight was numerically much greater than in any Alpine panorama,
not excluding even that from Mont Blanc. In one direction the mountains
happened to be all of one character. Each was similar in form to its
neighbour. Some distance further round was another group formed of peaks
as various as are the Alps. It was at once obvious how much the variety
added to the picturesqueness. The same lesson can be learnt from the top
of Monte Viso. Look southward and you will behold, ridge behind similar
ridge, a remarkable uniformity. Face northward and round to the east,
the effect is one of infinite variety. Such variety, contrast of walled
peak with pyramid, of pyramid with dome, here thronged together, there
sundered by some wide stretch of lower elevation, entertains and
stimulates the observer's mind.
Sometimes the repetition of a form with only slight change has the
value of emphasis, or, as in the case of minor ridges dividing couloirs
or side glaciers, it binds the composition together and forms a kind of
warp and woof for Nature's detailed embroidery. The value of repetition
is instinctively felt by most in the case of a pair of peaks, standing
side by side and visibly linked together by some high connecting ridge,
or apparently linked by what seems to be a ridge but is really produced
by foreshortening. They are frequently named "the Twins." A notable
instance of such a pair is the Dom and Taeschhorn. Stand anywhere
commanding a view down the Zermatt valley, where you can see this pair
of peaks defining it on the right, and the Weisshorn's delicate and
single pyramid opposed to them on the left, and you will at once
recognise how much the great pair and the single peak gain by contrast
with one another. Or climb (I should now say take the train) to the
Gorner Grat and look abroad to the south. How much less effective would
be the panorama if the two long walls of the Breithorn and Lyskamm had a
third similar wall between them instead of the coupled domes named
Castor and Pollux.
[Illustration: 43. THE LYSKAMM. From the Riffelberg. Gorner glacier
below.]
It would be easy to continue this fanciful classification of Alps and
discussion of types for another fifty pages, but it would serve no
useful purpose. Long before this the reader has probably been objecting
that it is an unscientific and incomplete classification, and that most
peaks could be made to enter all the categories if regarded from
suitable standpoints. Such, in fact, may be the case. My object in thus
writing has merely been to suggest cross-routes and byways for the
memories, fancies, and future observations of my readers. The mountains
for us who love them are the playthings of our fancy. We may do with
them what we please. They excite in us the sense of beauty, and we try
to tell of the emotions we have felt in their presence. Those emotions
quickened by them, how we know not, in fact arise in us. We are free to
make of them what we please, to give them any kind of play. They are
then bound by no scientific laws. A mountain may be a chunk of granite
heaved up by I know not what play of forces and carved out by a
perfectly orderly denudation; but to me, if I please, it is a Maiden, an
Ogre, a Golden Throne. I can endow it with a character, and reckon up
friends and foes to it amongst its neighbours. Or I can call it a fairy
palace, and people it with sprites and dancing creatures of gossamer
clothed in the dawn. No one can say me nay. Now and again, perhaps, I
may whisper my dream to a sympathetic friend--but not often. For the
most part we keep such heart-frolics of a happy hour in the inaccessible
places of their origin.
Brother climber! we have secrets of our own, you and I--secrets that we
never told to one another, even when we stood side by side together on
the mountain-top. But there was a thrill within each of us, was there
not? and each knew that with the other it was well.