Chapter X: Under the Shadow of Mont Blanc

THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI, July 15th.

I did not mean to write anything about Switzerland, because it is such trodden ground. Almost everybody that has been in Europe has been here, and even to those who have not, repeated descriptions have made it familiar. And yet when once among these mountains, the impression comes back fresh and strong as ever, and while the spell is on the traveller, he cannot but wish to impart a little of his enjoyment to friends at home.

We are in the Vale of Chamouni, under the shadow of Mont Blanc. In this valley, shut in by the encircling mountains, one cannot escape from that "awful form" any more than from the presence of God. It is everywhere day and night. We throw open our windows, and it is standing right before us. Even at night the moonlight is glistening on its eternal snows. Thus it forces itself upon us, and must receive respectful homage.

We left Geneva on one of the most beautiful mornings of the year. There has been great lamentation throughout Switzerland this summer, on account of the frequent rains, which have enveloped the mountains in a continual mist. But we have been favored in this respect, both at Geneva and at Chamouni. To set out on a mountain excursion on such a morning, and ride on the top of a diligence, is enough to stir the blood of the most languid tourist. A French diligence is a monstrous affair--a kind of Noah's Ark on wheels--that carries a multitude of living creatures. We had twenty-four persons (three times as many as Noah had in the Ark) mounted on this huge vehicle, to which were harnessed six horses, three abreast. We had the front seat on the top. In such grandeur we rolled out of Geneva, feeling at every step the exhilaration of the mountain air, and the bright summer morning. The postilion was in his glory. How he cracked his whip as we rattled through the little Swiss villages, making the people run to get out of his way, and stare in wonder at the tremendous momentum of his imperial equipage. To us, who sat sublime "above the noise and dust of this dim spot called earth," there was something at once exciting and ludicrous in the commotion we made. But there were other occasions for satisfaction. The day was divine. The country around Geneva rises from the lake, and spreads out in wide, rolling distances, bordered on every side by the great mountains. The air was full of the smell of new-mown hay, while over all hung the bending sky, full of sunshine. Thus with every sense keen with delight, we sat on high and took in the full glory of the scene, as we swept on towards the Alps.

As we advance the mountains close in around us, till we cannot see where we are to find a passage through them. For the last half of the way the construction of the road has been a difficult task of engineering; for miles it has to be built up against the mountain; at other places a passage is cut in the side of the cliff, or a tunnel made through the rock. Yet difficult as it was, the work has been thoroughly done. It was completed by Napoleon III., after Savoy was annexed to France, and is worthy to compare with the road which the first Napoleon built over the Simplon. Over such a highway we rolled on steadily to the end of our journey.

And now we are in the Vale of Chamouni, in the very heart of the Alps, under the shadow of the greatest of them all:

"Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains
They crowned him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow."

Once in the valley, we can hardly turn aside our eyes from that overpowering object. We keep looking up at that mighty dome, which seems to touch the sky. Fortunately for us, there was no cloud about the throne. Like other monarchs, he is somewhat fitful and capricious, often hiding his royal head from the sight of his worshippers. Many persons come to Chamouni, and do not see Mont Blanc at all. Sometimes they wait for days for an audience of his majesty, without success. But he favored us at once with the sight of his imperial countenance. Glorious was it to behold him as he shone in the last rays of the setting sun. And when evening drew on, the moon hung above that lofty summit, as if unwilling to leave. As she declined towards the west, she did not disappear at once; but as the mountains themselves sank away from the height of Mont Blanc, the moon seemed to glide slowly down the descending slope, setting and reappearing, and touching the whole with her silver radiance.

But sunset and moonlight were both less impressive than sunrise. Remembering Coleridge's "Hymn to Mont Blanc," which is supposed to be written "before sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni," we were up in the morning to catch the earliest dawn. It was long in coming. At first a few faint streaks of light shot up the eastern sky; then a rosy tinge flushed the head of Mont Blanc; then other snowy summits caught the golden glow; till a hundred splintered peaks, that formed a part of the mighty range, reflected the light of coming day, and at last the full orb himself rose above the tops of the mountains, and shone down into the valley.

Of course all visitors to Chamouni have to climb some of the lower mountains to see the glaciers, and get a general view of the chain of Mont Blanc. My companion was ambitious to do something more than this. She is a very good walker and climber, and had taken many long tramps among our Berkshire Hills, and to her Mont Blanc did not seem much more than Monument Mountain. In truth, the eye is deceived in judging of these tremendous heights, and cannot take in at first the real elevation. But when they are accurately measured, Mont Blanc is found to be about twenty times as high as the cliff which overlooks our Housatonic Valley! But a young enthusiast feels equal to anything, and she seemed really quite disappointed that she could not at least go as far as the Grands Mulets (where, with a telescope, we can just see a little cabin on the rocks), which is the limit of the first day's journey for adventurous tourists, most of whom do not get any further. A party that went up yesterday, intending to reach the top of Mont Blanc, had to turn back. A recent fall of snow had buried the mountain, so that they sank deep at every step; and finding it dangerous to proceed, they prudently abandoned the attempt.

The ascent of Mont Blanc, at all times difficult, is often a dangerous undertaking. Many adventurous travellers have lost their lives in the attempt. An avalanche may bury a whole party in a moment; or if lashed to the guides by a rope, one slipping may drag the whole down into one of the enormous crevasses, where now many bodies lie unburied, yet preserved from decay in the eternal ice. Only five years ago, in September, 1870, a party of eleven--three tourists (of whom two were Americans), with eight guides and porters--were all lost. They had succeeded in reaching the summit of the mountain, when a snow-storm came on, and it was impossible for them to descend. The body of one of them, Dr. Bean, of Baltimore, was recovered, and is buried in the little graveyard here. With such warnings, a sober old uncle might be excused for restraining a young lady's impetuosity. If we could be here a month, and "go into training," by long walks and climbs every day, I do believe we should gradually work our courage up to the sticking-point, and at last climb to the top, and plant a very modest American flag on the hoary head of Mont Blanc.

But for the present we must be content with a less ambitious performance, and make only the customary ascent of the Montanvert, and cross the Mer de Glace. We left at eight o'clock yesterday morning. Our friends in New York would hardly have recognized me in my travelling dress of Scotch gray, with a slouched straw hat on my head, and an alpenstock in my hand. The hat was very useful, if not ornamental. I bought it for one franc, and it answered as well as if it had cost a guinea. To be sure, as it had a broad brim, it had a slight tendency to take wings and fly away, and light in some mountain torrent, from which it was speared out with the alpenstock, and restored to its place of honor; but it did excellent service in protecting my eyes from the blinding reflection of the snow. C---- was mounted on a mule, which she had at first refused, preferring her own agile feet; but I insisted on it, as a very useful beast to fall back upon in case the fatigue was too great. Thus accoutred, our little cavalcade, with our guide leading the way, filed out of Chamouni. If any of my readers laugh at our droll appearance, they are quite welcome--for we laughed at ourselves. Comfort is worth more than dignity in such a case; and if anybody is abashed at the ludicrous figure he cuts, he may console himself by reflecting that he is in good company. I saw in Paris the famous picture by David of Napoleon crossing the Alps, which represents him mounted on a gallant charger, his military cloak flying in the air, while he points his soldiers upward to the heights they are to scale. This is very fine to look at; but the historical fact is said to be that Napoleon rode over the Alps on a mule, and if he encountered rains and storms, he was no doubt as bedraggled as any Alpine tourist. But that did not prevent his gaining the battle of Marengo.

But all thoughts of our appearance vanish when once we begin to climb the mountain side. For two hours we kept winding in a zigzag path through the perpetual pine forest. At every turn in the road, or opening in the trees, we stopped to look at the valley below, where the objects grew smaller, as we receded further from them. Is it not so in life? As some one has said, "Everything will look small enough if we only get high enough." All rude noises died away in the distance, till there rose into the upper air only the sound of the streams that were rushing through the valley below.

At a chalet half way up the mountain a living chamois was kept for show. It was very young, and was suckled by a goat. It was touching to see how the little creature pined for freedom, and leaped against the sides of his pen. Child of the mountain, he seemed entitled to liberty, and I longed to break open his cage and set the little prisoner free, and see him bound away upon the mountain side.

Climbing, still climbing, another hour brings us to the top of the Montanvert, where we look down upon the Mer de Glace. Here all the party quit their mules, which are sent to another point, to meet us as we come down from the mountain--and taking our alpenstocks in hand (which are long staffs, with a spike at the end to stick in the ice, to keep ourselves from slipping), we descend to the Mer de Glace, an enormous glacier formed by the masses of snow and ice which collect during the long winters, filling up the whole space between two mountains. It was in studying the glaciers of Switzerland for a course of years, that Agassiz formed his glacial theory; and in seeing here how the steady pressure of such enormous masses of ice, weighing millions of tons, have carried down huge boulders of granite, which lie strewn all along its track, one can judge how the same causes, operating at a remote period, and on a vast scale, may have changed the whole surface of the globe.

But we must not stop to philosophize, for we are now just at the edge of the glacier, and need our wits about us, and eyes too, to keep a sharp lookout for dangerous places, and steady feet, and hands keeping a tight hold of our trusty alpenstocks. The Mer de Glace is just what its name implies--a Sea of Ice--and looks as if, when some wild torrent came tumbling through the awful pass, it had been suddenly stopped by the hand of the Almighty, and frozen as it stood. And so it stands, its waves dashed up on high, and its chasms yawning below. It is said to reach up into the mountains for miles. We can see how it goes up to the top of the gorge and disappears on the other side; but those who wish to explore its whole extent, may walk over it or beside it all day. Though dangerous in some places, yet where tourists cross, they can pick their way with a little care. The more timid ones cling closely to the guide, holding him fast by the hand. One lady of our party, who had four bearers to carry her in a Sedan chair, found her head swim as she crossed. But C----, who had been gathering flowers all the way up the mountain, made them into a bouquet, which she fastened to one end of her alpenstock, and striking the other firmly in the ice, moved on with as free a step as if she were walking along some breezy path among our Berkshire Hills.

But the most difficult part of the course is not in crossing the Mer de Glace, but in coming down on the other side. It is not always _facilis descensus_; it is sometimes _difficilis descensus_. There is one part of the course called the _Mauvais Pas_, which winds along the edge of the cliff, and would hardly be passable but for an iron rod fastened in the side of the rock, to which one clings for support, and looking away from the precipice on the other side, makes the passage in safety.

And now we come to the Chapeau, a little chalet perched on a shelf of rock, from which one can look down thousands of feet into the Vale of Chamouni. As we pass along by the side of the glacier, we see nearer the end some frightful crevasses, which the boldest guide would not dare to cross. The ice is constantly wearing away; indeed so great is the discharge of water from the melting of the ice and the snow, that a rapid river is all the time rushing out of it. The Arveiron takes its rise in the Mer de Glace, while the Arve rises in another glacier higher up the valley. As Coleridge says, in his Hymn to Mont Blanc,

The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly;

the sound of the streams, mingling with the waterfalls on the sides of the mountains, filling the air with a perpetual sound like the roaring of the sea.

Coleridge speaks also of Mont Blanc as rising from a "silent sea of pines." Nothing can be more accurate than this picture of the universal forest, which overflows all the valleys, and reaches up the mountains, to the edge of eternal snows. At such heights the pines are the only trees that live, and there they stand through all the storms of winter. Looking around on this landscape, made up of forest and snow, alternately dark and bright, it seems as if Mont Blanc were the Great White Throne of the Almighty, and as if these mighty forests that stand quivering on the mountain side, were the myriads of mankind gathered into this Valley of Judgment, and here standing rank on rank, waiting to hear their doom.

But yet the impression is not one wholly of terror, or even of unmixed awe. There is beauty as well as wildness in the scene. Nothing can exceed the quiet and seclusion of these mountain paths, and there is something very sweet to the ear in

"The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,"

which fill "the forest primeval" with their gentle sound. And when at evening one hears the tinkling cow-bells, as the herds return from the mountain pastures, there is a pastoral simplicity in the scene which is very touching, and we could understand how the Swiss air of the _Ranz des Vaches_ (or the returning of the cows) should awaken such a feeling of homesickness in the soldier far from his native mountains, that bands have been prohibited from playing it in Swiss regiments enlisted in foreign armies.

When we came down from the Mer de Glace, it was not yet three o'clock, and before us on the opposite side of the valley rose another mountain, which we might ascend before night if we had strength left. We felt a little remorse at giving the guide another half-day's work; but he, foreseeing extra pay, said cheerfully that _he_ could stand it; the mule said nothing, but pricked up his long ears as if he was thinking very hard, and if the miracle of Balaam could have been repeated, I think the poor dumb beast would have had a pretty decided opinion. But it being left to us, we declared for a fresh ascent, and once more set our faces skyward, and went climbing upward for two hours more.

We were well paid for the fatigue. The Flegere, facing Mont Blanc, commands a full view of the whole range, and as the clouds drifted off, we saw distinctly every peak.

Thus elated and jubilant we set out to return. Until now, we had kept along with the mule, alternating a ride and walk, as boys are accustomed to "ride and tie"; but now our eagerness could not be restrained, and we gave the reins to the guide to lead the patient creature down into the valley, while we, with unfettered limbs, strode joyous down the mountain side. It was seven o'clock when we reached our hotel. We had been steadily in motion--except a short rest for lunch at the Chapeau on the mountain--for eleven hours.

Here ends the journey of the day, but not the moral of it. I hope it is not merely a professional habit that leads me to wind up everything with an application; but I cannot look upon a grand scene of nature without gliding insensibly into religious reflections. Nature leads me directly to Nature's God. The late Prof. Albert Hopkins, of Williams College, of blessed memory, a man of science and yet of most devout spirit, who was as fond of the hills as a born mountaineer, and who loved nothing so much as to lead his Alpine Club over the mountains around Williamstown--was accustomed, when he had conducted them to some high, commanding prospect, to ask whether the sight of such great scenes _made them feel great or small_? I can answer for myself that the impression is a mixed one; that it both lifts me up and casts me down. Certainly the sight of such sublimity elevates the soul with a sense of the power and majesty of the Creator. While climbing to-day, I have often repeated to myself that old, majestic hymn:

I sing the mighty power of God,
That made the mountains rise;

and another:

'Tis by thy strength the mountains stand,
God of eternal power,
The sea grows calm at thy command,
And tempests cease to roar.

But in another view the sight of these great objects of nature is depressing. It makes one feel his own littleness and insignificance. I look up at Mont Blanc with a telescope, and can just see a party climbing near the Grands Mulets. How like creeping insects they look; and how like insects they _are_ in the duration of their existence, compared with the everlasting forms of nature. The flying clouds that cast their shadows on the head of Mont Blanc are not more fleeting. They pass like a bird and are gone, while the mountains stand fast forever, and with their eternity seem to mock the fugitive existence of man upon the earth.

I confess the impression is very depressing. These terrible mountains crush me with their awful weight. They make me feel that I am but an atom in the universe; a moth whose ceasing to exist would be no more than the blowing out of a candle. And I am not surprised that men who live among the mountains, are sometimes so overwhelmed with the greatness of nature, that they are ready to acquiesce in their own annihilation, or absorption in the universal being.

Talking with Father Hyacinthe the other evening (as we sat on the terrace of the Hotel Beau Rivage at Geneva, overlooking the lake), he spoke of the alarming spread of unbelief in Europe, and quoted a distinguished professor of Zurich, of whom he spoke with great respect, as a man of learning and of excellent character, who had frankly confessed to him that he did not believe in the immortality of the soul; and when Father Hyacinthe replied in amazement, "If I believed thus I would go and throw myself into the Lake of Zurich," the professor answered with the utmost seriousness, "That is not a just religious feeling; if you believe in God as an infinite Creator you ought to be _willing_ to cease to exist, feeling that God is the only Being who is worthy to live eternally."

Marvellous as this may seem, yet something of this feeling comes to thoughtful and serious minds from the long and steadfast contemplation of nature. One is so little in the presence of the works of God, that he feels that he is absolutely _nothing_; and it seems of small moment whether he should exist hereafter or not; and he could _almost_ be willing that his life should expire, like a lamp that has burned itself out; that he should indeed cease to exist, with all things that live; that God might be God alone. If shut up in these mountains, as in a prison from which I could not escape, I could easily sink into this gloom and despondency.

Pascal has tried to break the force of this overwhelming impression of the awfulness of nature in one of his most striking thoughts, when, speaking of the greatness and the littleness of man, he says: "It is not necessary for the whole universe to arm itself to destroy him: a drop of water, a breath of air, is sufficient to kill him. And yet even in death man is greater than the universe, for _he knows that he is dying_, while the universe knows not anything." This is finely expressed, but it does not lighten the depth of our despair. For that we must turn to one greater than Pascal, who has said, "Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father; be of good cheer therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." Nature is great, but God is greater.

In riding through the Alps--especially through deep passes, where walls of rock on either hand almost touch the sky--it seems as if the whole world were a realm of Death, and this the universal tomb. But even here I see erected on almost every hilltop a cross (for the Savoyards are a very religious people), and this sign of our salvation, standing on every high place, amid the lightning and storm, and amid the winter snows, seems to be a protest against that law of death which reigns on every side. Great indeed is the realm of Death, but greater still is the realm of Life; and though God only hath immortality, and is indeed "the only Being worthy to live forever," yet joined to Him, we shall have a part in His own eternity, and shall live when even the everlasting mountains, and the great globe itself, shall have passed away.