Chapter III: Part 3

“Standing on the overhanging crags, I could hear the chime of bells, the hum of busy labor, and the lowing of cattle, buried in the mist, and faintly coming up to you from the fields and villages. Now and then a bird darted up out of the mist into the clear sun and air, and sailed in playful circles, and then dived and disappeared again below the surface. By and by the wind began to agitate the cloudy sea, and more and more of the mountains became visible. Sometimes you have a bright sunset athwart this sea of cloud, which then rolls in waves burnished and tipped with fire. When you go down into the mist again, and leave behind you the beautiful sky, a clear, bracing atmosphere, the bright sun and the snow-shining mountains, it is like passing from heaven to earth, from the brightness and serenity of the one, to the darkness and cares of the other. The whole scene is a leaf in nature’s book, which but few turn over; but how rich it is in beauty and glory, and in food for meditation, none can tell but those who have witnessed it. This is a scene in Cloud-land, which hath its mysteries of beauty, that defy the skill of the painter and engraver.

“The poet Wordsworth has given two very vivid descriptions of these mist phenomena, under different aspects from that in which I witnessed them. The first is contained in his descriptive sketches of a pedestrian tour among the Alps.

“‘’Tis morn: with gold the verdant mountain glows,
More high, the snowy peaks with hues of rose.
Far stretched beneath the many-tinted hills
A mighty waste of mist the valley fills,
A solemn sea! whose vales and mountains round
Stand motionless, to awful silence bound.
A gulf of gloomy blue, that opens wide
And bottomless, divides the midway tide.
Like leaning masts of stranded ships appear
The pines, that near the coast their summits rear.
Of cabins, woods and lawns a pleasant shore
Bounds calm and clear the chaos still and hoar.
Loud through that midway gulf ascending, sound,
Unnumbered streams with hollow roar profound.
Mount through the nearer mist the chant of birds,
And talking voices, and the low of herds,
The bark of dogs, the drowsy tinkling bell,
And wild-wood mountain lutes of saddest swell.’

“But this extract is not to be compared for power to the following from the same poem, describing an Alpine sunset after a day of mist and storm upon the mountains.

“‘’Tis storm, and hid in mist from hour to hour,
All day the floods a deepening murmur pour.
The sky is vailed, and every cheerful sight,
Dark is the region as with coming night,
But what a sudden burst of overpowering light
Triumphant on the bosom of the storm
Glances the fire-clad eagle’s wheeling form.
Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
The wood-crowned cliffs, that o’er the lake recline.
Wide o’er the Alps a hundred streams unfold,
At once to pillars turned, that flame with gold.
Behind his sail the peasant tries to shun
The west, that burns like one dilated sun,
Where in a mighty crucible expire
The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire!’

“There was a time during the middle ages, when Chamouny was inhabited by monks. The reigning lord of the country made a present of the whole valley to a convent of Benedictine friars, in the eleventh century. Two English travelers, Messrs. Pococke and Windham, drew attention to its wonderful scenery in 1741, and now it is a grand highway of summer travel, visited annually by three or four thousand people. A visit to Mont Blanc has become a pilgrimage of fashion. Fashion does some good things in her day; and it is a great thing to have the steps of men directed into this grand temple of nature, who would otherwise be dawdling the summer perhaps at immoral watering-places. A man can hardly pass through the vale of Chamouny, before the awful face of Mont Blanc, and not feel that he is an immortal being. The great mountain looks with an eye, and speaks with a voice, that does something to wake the soul out of its slumbers.

“The sublime hymn by Coleridge, in the vale before sunrise, is the concentrated expression of all the inspiring and heaven-directing influences of the scenery. The poem is as remarkably distinguished above the whole range of poetry in our language, for its sublimity, as the mountain itself among all the great ranges of the Alps. I am determined to quote it in full, for that and the tour of Mont Blanc ought to go together; and I will present along with it the German original of the poem in twenty lines, nearly as translated by Coleridge’s admiring and affectionate relative. I am not aware that Coleridge himself ever visited the vale of Chamouny; and if not, then that wonderful hymn to Mont Blanc was the work of imagination solely, building on the basis of the original lines in German. This was a grand and noble foundation, it is true; but the hymn by Coleridge was a perfect transfiguration of the piece, an inspiration of it with a higher soul, and an investiture of it with garments that shine like the sun. It was the greatest work of the poet’s great and powerful imagination, combined with the deep worshiping sense of spiritual things in his soul.

“On visiting the scene, one is apt to feel as if he could not have written it in the vale itself: the details of the picture would have been somewhat different; and, confined by the reality, one may doubt if even Coleridge’s genius could have gained that lofty ideal point of observation and conception, from which he drew the vast and glorious imagery that rose before him. Not because the poem is more glorious than the reality, for that is impossible; but because, in painting _from_ the reality, the force and sublimity of his general conceptions would have been weakened by the attempt at faithfulness in the detail, and nothing like the impression of the aerial grandeur of the scene, its despotic unity in the imagination, notwithstanding its variety, would have been conveyed to the mind.

“Yet there are parts of it which at sunrise or sunset either, the poet might have written from the very windows of his bedroom, if he had been there in the dawn and evenings of days of such extraordinary brilliancy and glory, as marked and filled the atmosphere, during our sojourn in that blessed region. A glorious region it is, much nearer heaven than our common world, and carrying a sensitive, rightly constituted mind far up in spirit toward the gates of heaven, toward God, whose glory is the light of heaven, and of whose power and majesty the mountains, ice-fields and glaciers, whether beneath the sun, moon, or stars, are a dim, though grand and glittering, symbol. ‘Fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind, fulfilling His word, mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, praise the Lord. He looketh on the earth and it trembleth; He toucheth the hills, and they smoke.’

“The following is the original German hymn, in what the translator denominates a very bald English translation, to be compared as a curiosity with its glorification in Coleridge. It occupies but five stanzas of four lines, and is entitled, ‘Chamouny at Sunrise. To Klopstock.’ I have here put it into the metrical form of the original.

“Out of the deep shade of the silent fir-grove,
Trembling I survey thee, mountain-head of eternity,
Dazzling (blinding) summit, from whose vast hight
My dimly perceiving spirit floats into the Everlasting.

“Who sank the pillar deep in the lap of earth
Which, for past centuries, fast props thy mass up?
Who uptowered, high in the vault of ether,
Mighty and bold, thy beaming countenance?

“Who poured you from on high, out of eternal Winter’s realm,
O jagged streams, downward with thunder-noise?
And who bade aloud, with the Almighty Voice,
‘Here shall rest the stiffening billows?’

“Who marks out there the path for the Morning Star?
Who wreathes with blossoms the skirt of eternal Frost?
To whom, wild Arveiron, in terrible harmonies,
Rolls up the sound of thy tumult of billows?

“Jehovah! Jehovah! crashes in the bursting ice!
Avalanche-thunders roll it in the cleft downward:
Jehovah! it rustles in the bright tree-tops;
It whispers murmuring in the purling silver-brooks.

“This is very grand. Who but a mighty poet, one seeing with ‘the vision and the faculty divine’—what, but a transfusing, all-conquering imagination—would have dared the attempt to compose another poem on the same subject, or to carry this to a greater hight of sublimity, by melting it down anew, so to speak, and pouring it out into a vaster, more glorious mold? The more one thinks of it, the more he will see, in the poem so produced, a proof most remarkable, of the spontaneous, deep-seated, easily exerted, and almost exhaustless power and originality of Coleridge’s genius. Now let us peruse, ‘with mute thanks and secret ecstacy,’ his own solemn and stupendous lines.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNY.

[Besides the rivers Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and, within a few paces of the glaciers, the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers, with its ‘flowers of loveliest blue.’]

“Hast thou a charm to stay the Morning Star
In his steep course? so long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O Sovran Blanc?
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black;
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from Eternity!

“O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshiped the Invisible alone.

“Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life, and life’s own secret joy,
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing,—there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

“Awake my Soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstacy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

“Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale
Oh, struggling with the darkness all night long,
And all night visited by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink!
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth’s rosy star, and of the dawn
Coherald: wake, oh wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

“And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came,)
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?

“Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain’s brow,
Adown enormous ravines slope amain—
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once, amidst their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!
GOD! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!

“Ye living flowers, that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle’s nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth GOD! and fill the hills with praise!

“Thou, too, hoar Mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet, the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depths of clouds, that vail thy breast;
Thou too again, stupendous mountain! thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me,—Rise, oh ever rise!
Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread embassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God!

“Thanks to thee, thou noble poet, for giving this glorious voice to Alpine nature, for so befitting and not unworthy an interpretation of Nature’s own voice, in words of our own mother-tongue. Thanks to God for his grace vouchsafed to thee, so that now thou praisest Him amidst the infinite host of flaming seraphs, before the mount supreme of glory, where all the empyrean rings with angelic hallelujahs! The creation of such a mind as Coleridge’s, is only outdone by its redemption through the blood of the Lamb. Oh, who can tell the rapture of a soul, that could give a voice for nations to such a mighty burst of praise to God in this world, when its powers, uplifted in eternity, and dilated with absorbing, unmingled, unutterable love, shall pour themselves forth in the anthem of redemption, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!”

THE GLACIERS, OR ICE MASSES.

The three great glaciers, or ice-mountains, which descend from the flanks of Mont Blanc, add their ice to that of the Miage, and present a majestic spectacle, amid the astonishing succession of icy summits, of deep valleys, and of wide chasms, which have become channels for the innumerable torrents and cataracts with which these mountains abound. The view which the glacier of Talafre affords from its center, looking toward the north, is as extraordinary as beautiful. It rises gradually to the base of a semicircular girdle, formed of peaks of granite of a great hight, and terminating in sharp summits, extremely varied in their forms; while the intervals between these peaks are filled up by ice, which falls into this mass, and this mass of ice is crowned by masses of snow, rising in festoons between the black and vertical tables of granite, the steepness of which does not allow them to remain. A ridge of shattered wrecks divides this glacier lengthwise, and forms its most elevated part, being eight thousand, five hundred and thirty-eight feet, or upward of a mile and a half above the level of the sea. This prospect has nothing in common with what is seen in other parts of the world. The immense masses of ice, surrounded and surmounted by pyramidal rocks, still more enormous in magnitude; the contrast between the whiteness of the snow and the obscure colors of the stones, moistened by the water which trickles down their sides; the purity of the air; the dazzling light of the sun, which gives to these objects extraordinary brilliancy; the majestic and awful silence which reigns in these vast solitudes, a silence which is only interrupted at intervals by the noise of some great mass of granite, or of ice, tumbling from the top of the mountain; and the nakedness of these elevated rocks themselves, on which neither animals, shrubs, nor verdure are to be seen, combined with the recollection of the fertile country and rich vegetation which the adjacent valleys at so small a distance present; all tend to produce a mixed impression of admiration and terror, which tempts the spectator to believe, that he has been suddenly transported into a world forgotten by the great Author of nature. One of these glaciers, that of Triolet, is covered with the wrecks of another ice-mountain, which fell some years ago, and buried many huts, flocks, and shepherds beneath its ruins.

THE MER DE GLACE.

These glaciers have their foundation in the wonderful =Mer de Glace=, or =Sea of Ice=; shooting up from it their sharp peaks into the frozen air. “To get the best view of it as a whole,” says a modern Alpine tourist, “you cross the meadows in the vale of Chamouny, step over the furious Arve, and climb the mountain precipices to the hight of two thousand feet, by a rough, craggy path, sometimes winding amidst a wood of firs, and sometimes wandering over green grasses. At Montanvert you find yourself on the extremity of a plateau, so situated, that on one side you may look down into the dread frozen sea, and on the other, by a few steps, into the lovely green vale of Chamouny! What astonishing variety and contrast in the spectacle! Far beneath, a smiling and verdant valley, watered by the Arve, with hamlets, fields and gardens, the abode of life, sweet children and flowers; far above, savage and inaccessible crags of ice and granite, and a cataract of stiffened billows, stretching away beyond sight—the throne of death and winter.

“From the bosom of the tumbling sea of ice, huge granite needles shoot into the sky, objects of singular sublimity, one of them rising to the great hight of thirteen thousand feet, seven thousand above the point where you are standing. This is more than double the hight of Mount Washington in our country, and this amazing pinnacle of rock looks like the spire of an interminable colossal cathedral, with other pinnacles around it. No snow can cling to the summits of these jagged spires; the lightning does not splinter them; the tempests rave round them; and at their base, those eternal drifting ranges of snow are formed, that sweep down into the frozen sea, and feed the perpetual, immeasurable masses of the glacier. Meanwhile, the laughing verdure, sprinkled with flowers, plays upon the edges of the enormous masses of ice, so near, that you may almost touch the ice with one hand, and with the other pluck the violet. So, oftentimes, the ice and the verdure are mingled in our earthly pilgrimage; so, sometimes, in one and the same family, you may see the exquisite refinements and the coarse repugnancies of human nature. So, in the same house of God, on the same bench, may sit an angel and a murderer; a villain, like a glacier, and a man with a heart like a sweet running brook in the sunshine.

“The impetuous arrested cataract seems as if it were plowing the rocky gorge with its turbulent surges. Indeed, the ridges of rocky fragments along the edges of the glacier, called _moraines_, do look precisely as if a colossal iron plow had torn them from the mountain, and laid them along in one continuous furrow on the frozen verge. It is a scene of stupendous sublimity. These mighty granite peaks, hewn and pinnacled into Gothic towers, and these rugged mountain-walls and buttresses—what a cathedral! with this cloudless sky, by starlight, for its fretted roof; the chanting wail of the tempest, and the rushing of the avalanche for its organ. How grand the thundering sound of the vast masses of ice tumbling from the roof of the Arve-cavern at the foot of the glacier! Does it not seem, as it sullenly and heavily echoes, and rolls up from so immense a distance below, even more sublime than the thunder of the avalanche above us? We could tell better if we could have a genuine upper avalanche to compare with it. But what a stupendous scene! ‘I begin now,’ said my companion, ‘to understand the origin of the Gothic architecture.’ This was a very natural feeling; but, after all, it could not have been such a scene, that gave birth to the great idea of that ‘frozen poetry’ of the middle ages. Far more likely it was the sounding aisles of the dim woods, with their checkered green light, and festooned, pointing arches.

“The colossal furrows of rocks and gravel along the edges of the ice at the shores of the sea, are produced by the action of the frost and the avalanches, with the march of the glacier against the sides of the mountains. Nothing can be more singular than these ridges of mountain =debris=, apparently plowed up and worked off by the moving of the whole bed of ice down the valley. Near the shore, the sea is turbid with these rocks and gravel; but as you go out into the channel, the ice becomes clearer and more glittering, the crevices and fissures deeper and more dangerous, and all the phenomena more astonishing. Deep, blue, pellucid founts of ice-cold water lie in the opening gulfs; and sometimes, putting your ear to the yawning fissures, you may hear the rippling of the rills below, that from the bosom of the glacier are hurrying down to constitute the Arve, bursting furiously forth from the great ice-cavern in the valley.

“This Mer de Glace is an easy and excellent residence for the scientific study of the glaciers, a subject of very great interest, formerly filled with mysteries, which the bold and persevering investigations and theories of some modern naturalists have quite cleared up. The strange movements of the glaciers, their apparent willful rejection of extraneous bodies and substances to the surface and the margin, their increase and decrease, long remained invested with something of the supernatural: they seemed to have a soul and a life of their own. They look motionless and silent, yet they are always moving and sounding on, and they have great voices that give prophetic warning of the weather to the shepherds of the Alps. Scientific men have set up huts upon the sea, and landmarks on the mountains opposite, to test the progress of the icy masses, and in this way it was found that a cabin constructed by Professor Hugi on the glacier of the Aar, had traveled, between the years 1827 and 1840, a distance of forty-six hundred feet. It is supposed that the Mer de Glace moves down between four and five hundred feet annually.

“It is impossible to form a grander image of the rigidity and barrenness, the coldness and death of winter, than when you stand among the billows of one of these frozen seas; and yet it is here that Nature locks up in her careful bosom the treasures of the Alpine valleys, the sources of rich summer verdure and vegetable life. They are hoarded up in winter, to be poured forth beneath the sun, and with the sun in summer. Some of the largest rivers in Europe take their rise from the glaciers, and give to the Swiss valleys their most abundant supply of water, in the season when ordinary streams are dried up. This is a most interesting provision in the economy of nature, for if the glaciers did not exist, those verdant valleys into which the summer sun pours with such fervor, would be parched with drought. So the mountains are parents of perpetual streams, and the glaciers are reservoirs of plenty.

“The derivation of the German name for glacier, =gletscher=, is suggested as coming not from their icy material, but their perpetual motion, from =glitschen=, to glide; more probably, however, from the idea of gliding upon their surface. These glaciers come down from the air, down out of heaven, a perpetual frozen motion, ever changing and gliding, from the first fall of snow in the atmosphere, through the state of consolidated grinding blocks of ice, and then into musical streams that water the valleys. First it is a powdery, feathery snow, then granulated like hail, and denominated _firn_, forming vast beds and sheets around the highest mountain summits, then frozen into masses, by which time it has traveled down to within seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, where commences the great ice-ocean that fills the uninhabitable Alpine valleys, unceasingly freezing, melting and moving down. It has been estimated by Saussure and others, that these seas of ice, at their greatest thickness, are six or eight hundred feet deep. They are traversed by deep fissures, and as they approach the great precipices, over which they plunge like a cataract into the vales, they are split in all directions, and heaved up into waves, reefs, peaks, pinnacles and minarets. Underneath they are traversed by as many galleries and caverns, through which run the rills and torrents constantly gathering from the melting masses above. These innumerable streams, gathering in one as they approach the termination of the glacier, rush out from beneath it, under a great vault of ice, and thus are born into the breathing world, full-grown roaring rivers, from night, frost and chaos.

“A peasant has been known to have fallen into an ice-gulf in one of these seas, near one of the flowing sub-glacial torrents, and following the course of the stream to the foot of the glacier, he came out alive! The German naturalist, Hugi, set out to explore the recesses of one of the glaciers through the bed of a former torrent, and wandered on in its ice-caverns the distance of a mile. ‘The ice was everywhere eaten away into dome-shaped hollows, varying from two to twelve feet in hight, so that the whole mass of the glacier rested at intervals on pillars, or feet of ice, irregular in size and shape, which had been left standing. As soon as any of these props gave way, a portion of the glacier would of course fall in and move on. A dim twilight, scantily transmitted through the mass of ice above, prevailed in these caverns of ice, not sufficient to allow one to read, except close to the fissures, which directly admitted the daylight. The intense blue of the mass of the ice contrasted remarkably with the pure white of the icy stalactites, or pendents descending from the roof. The water streamed down upon him from all sides, so that, after wandering about for two hours, at times bending and creeping, to get along under the low vault, he returned to the open air, quite drenched and half-frozen.’

“This sea of ice, which embosoms in its farthest recesses a little living flower-garden, whither the humble-bees from Chamouny resort for honey, is also bordered by steep lonely beds of the fragrant rhododendron, or rose of the Alps. This hardy and beautiful flower grows from a bush larger than our sweet-fern, with foliage like the leaves of the ivory-plum. It continues blooming late in the season, and sometimes covers vast declivities on the mountains at a great hight, where one would hardly suppose it possible for a handful of earth to cling to the rocky surface. There, amid the snows and ice of a thousand winters, it pours forth its perfume on the air, though there be none to inhale the fragrance, or praise the sweetness, save only ‘the little busy bees,’ that seem dizzy with delight, as they throw themselves into the bosom of these beds of roses.

“Higher still on the opposite side of this great ice-sea, there are mountain-slopes of grass at the base of stupendous rocky pinnacles, whither the shepherds of the Alps drive their herds from Chamouny, for three months’ pasturage. They have no way of getting them there but across the dangerous glacier; and it is said that the passage is a sort of annual celebration, when men, women and children go up to Montanvert, to witness and assist the difficult transportation. When the herds have crossed, one peasant stays with them for the whole three months of their summer excursion, living upon bread and cheese, with one cow among the herd to supply him with milk. When he is not sleeping, he knits stockings, and ruminates as contentedly as the browsing cattle, his only care being to increase his store.”

VIEW FROM THE BUET.

Before we take our leave of Mont Blanc and of the Alps, the peculiarly brilliant view from the summit of the Buet ought to be noticed. Never, says M. Bourrit, did prospect appear so vast. Toward the west, the Rhone is seen, winding for the space of thirty-six leagues through the rich plains of the Valais; the parts of the river which the mountains cover with their shade seeming like threads of silver, and those which the sun illumines like threads of gold. Beyond the river and its rich plains, the view extends to the highest mountains of Switzerland, St. Gothard, and the Grisons, all covered with ice; while on the east, the hights sink suddenly, from some of the loftiest elevations on the globe, to level plains washed by the sea. Geneva seems like a spot at one end of the lake, and the lake itself like a sinuous band, dividing the fields which it waters. Beyond it are discovered the vast plains of Franche Comte and Burgundy, the mountains of which diminish by almost imperceptible gradations. Here the eye has neither power nor extent of sight to embrace the whole of the objects presented to its view. Amid the fearful aspect of the precipices which descend on every side, what a contrast between the country decorated with all that is smiling and gay, and the sublime spectacle of the Alps, their gloomy and aspiring summits, and, above all, the prodigious hight of Mont Blanc, that enormous colossus of snow and ice, which parts the clouds, and pierces to the very heavens! Below this mountain, which bids defiance to time, and whose eternal ice disregards the dissolving power of the sun, a band of pyramidical rocks appear, the intervals between them being so many valleys of ice, the immensity of which appalls the imagination. Their deep chasms may be distinguished, and the noise of the frequent avalanches (falls of immense masses of snow) presents to the mind the gloomy ideas of horror, devastation and ruin. Farther on, other summits of ice prolong this majestic picture. Among these are the high mountains of the St. Bernard, and those which border on the Boromean islands.

Perhaps there is not in the old world a theater more instructive, or more adapted for reflection, than the summit of this mountain. Where, beside, can be seen such variety and contrast of forms; such results of the efforts of time; such effects of all the climates, and of all the seasons? At one glance may be embraced frosts equally intense with those of Lapland, and the rich and delightful frontiers of Italy; eternal ice, and waving harvests; all the chilling horrors of winter, and the luxuriant vegetation of summer; eighty leagues of fertile plains, covered with towns, with vineyards, with fields and herds, and adjoining to these, a depth of twenty thousand feet of everlasting ice.

MONTSERRAT.

“Here, ’midst the changeful scenery, ever new,
Fancy a thousand wond’rous forms descries,
More wildly great than ever pencil drew;
Rocks, torrents, gulfs, and shapes of giant size,
And glittering cliffs on cliffs, and fiery ramparts rise.”—BEATTIE.

This Spanish mountain, which has been so long celebrated on account of the singularity of its shape, but chiefly for its convent and its numerous hermitages, is nine leagues north-west of Barcelona, in the province of Catalonia. It is in hight only three thousand, three hundred feet above the level of the sea, but it commands an enchanting prospect of the fine plain of Barcelona, extending to the sea, as well as of the islands of Majorca and Minorca, distant one hundred and fifty miles.

Toward Barcelona this mountain presents a bold and rugged front; but on the west, toward Vacarisas, it is almost perpendicular, notwithstanding which, a carriage-road winds round to the convent, which is placed in a sheltered recess among the rocks, at about half the hight of the mountain. The Llobregat roars at the bottom; and the rock presents perpendicular walls from the edge of the water: but above the convent, the mountain divides into two crowns or cones, which form the most prominent features; while smaller pinnacles, blanched and bare, and split into pillars, pipes, and other singular shapes, give a most picturesque effect. Here are seen fourteen or fifteen hermitages, which are scattered over different points of the mountain, some of them on the very pinnacles of the cones, to which they seem to grow, while others are placed in cavities hewn out of the loftiest pyramids. The highest accessible part of the mountain is above the hermitage of St. Maddelena, the descent from which is between two cones, by a flight of steps, called Jacob’s ladder, leading into a valley which runs along the summit of the mountain. The cones are here in the most grotesque shapes, the southern one being named the Organ, from its resemblance to a number of pipes.

At the extremity of this valley, which is a perfect shrubbery, and on an eminence, stands the hermitage of St. Jerome, the highest and most remote of all; and near it is the loftiest station of the whole mountain, on which is a little chapel dedicated to the Virgin. From this elevated pinnacle the prospect is vast and splendid.

Although the elements have wreaked all their fury on these shattered peaks, yet Nature has not been sparing in her gifts; the spaces between the rocks being filled up with close woods, while numerous evergreens, and other plants, serve to adorn the various chasms, rendering them valuable depositories of the vegetable kingdom. Few, indeed, are the evergreens of Europe which may not be found here; and when the mountain was visited by Mr. Swinburne, the apothecary of the convent had a list of four hundred and thirty-seven species of plants, and forty of trees, which shoot up spontaneously, and grace this hoary and venerable pile. There being two springs only on the mountain, there is a scarcity of water, which is chiefly collected in cisterns; an inconvenience, however, which is in a great measure counterbalanced by the absence of wolves, bears, and other wild beasts.

Captain Carlton, an Englishman, who visited Montserrat some years ago, ascended to the loftiest hermitage, that of St. Jerome, by the means of spiral steps hewn out in the rock on account of the steep acclivity. This, he observes, could not, in his time, be well accomplished by a stranger, without following the footsteps of an old ass, who carried from the convent a daily supply of food to the hermits. This animal having his two panniers stored with the provisions divided into portions, climbed without a guide, and having stopped at each of the cells, where the hermit took the portion allotted to him, returned back to the convent. He found that one of these hermits, to beguile the wearisomeness of his solitude, had contrived so effectually to tame the birds which frequented the groves surrounding his hermitage, that he could draw them together with a whistle, when they perched on his head, breast, and shoulders, taking the food from his mouth.

The convent is situated on the eastern side of the mountain, which seems to have been split by vast torrents of water, or by some violent convulsion of nature: in this way a platform has been formed in the cleft, sufficiently ample for the purpose of its construction. It is one of the forty-five religious houses of the Spanish congregation of the order of St. Benedict. The monks are bound to supply food and lodging for three days to all pilgrims who come up to pay their homage to the Virgin; besides which, they entertain the hermits on Sundays. The latter, who make a vow never to quit the mountain, take their stations by seniority, the junior hermit being placed at the greatest distance from the convent, and descending progressively as the vacancies happen. They are not altogether idle, taking pains to rival each other in making basket-work and other fanciful productions, which they display with great affability to their visitors. They assemble every morning to hear mass and perform divine service, in the parish church of St. Cecilia, which lies considerably above the convent; and twice a week they confess and communicate. They wear their beards long, and are clad in brown.

The church of St. Cecilia is a gloomy edifice, the gilding of which is much sullied by the smoke of eighty-five silver lamps, of various forms and sizes, suspended round the cornice of the sanctuary. For the supply of these with oil, funds have been bequeathed by devotees. The choir is decorated with wood carvings, curiously wrought, representing the most prominent passages in the life of Christ.

THE PEAK OF TENERIFFE.

[See cut below.]

The island of Teneriffe has received its present name from the inhabitants of the adjacent island Palma, in whose language =tener= signifies snow, and _iffe_, a hill. In extent, wealth, and fertility it exceeds all the other Canary islands. It continues to rise on all sides from the sea, until it terminates in the celebrated peak represented in the cut, which is, however, situated rather in the southern part than in the center of the island. The ascent on the north side is more gradual than at the other parts, there being a space along the shore about three leagues in breadth, bounded on the sides by high mountains, or rather cliffs; but more inland it rises like a hanging garden all the way, without any considerable interruption of hills or valleys. The form of this island is triangular, extending itself into three capes, the nearest of which is about eighty leagues from the coast of Africa. In the middle it is divided by a ridge of mountains, which have been compared to the roof of a church, the peak forming the spire or steeple in the center.

The elevation of the peak of Teneriffe, according to the most accurate measurement, made by Cordier, is twelve thousand, one hundred and sixty-six feet, or nearly two miles and one-third above the level of the sea. In the ascent, the first eminence is called Monte Verde, or the green mountain, from the high fern with which it is covered, and presents a level plain of considerable extent. Beyond this is the mountain of pines, which are said to have formerly grown there in great abundance; but its steep sides are now craggy and barren, and its whole appearance very different from that of the eminence described above. After passing this summit, the traveler reaches a plain, on which the natives have bestowed the name of Mouton de Trigo, and upon which the peak in reality stands. It is a mountainous platform, rising more than seven thousand feet, or nearly a mile and a half, above the level of the sea; and here the currents of lava, hitherto concealed by the vegetation, begin to appear in all their aridity and confusion, a few lowly shrubs and creeping plants alone diversifying the surface of a desert, the most arid and rugged that can be imagined.

A small sandy platform of pumice-stones, bordered by two enormous currents of vitreous lava, and blocks of the same nature, ranged in a semicircle, forms what is called the station of the English, on account of the peak having been so often visited by British travelers. This platform is ninety-seven hundred and eighty-six feet, or upward of a mile and three-quarters above the level of the sea; and beyond it the acclivity is very steep, great masses of scoriæ, extremely rough and sharp, covering the currents of lava. Toward the summit, nothing but pumice-stone is to be seen. In fact the peak can only be ascended on the east and south-east sides. As it is impossible to get round the crater, the traveler’s progress is arrested at the spot at which he reaches it. Here the two orders of volcanic substances are to be seen, the modern lavas being thrown up amid the ruins of ejections much more ancient, the immense masses of which constitute the platform on which the peak is placed. The shattered sides present a series of thick beds, almost all plunging toward the sea, composed alternately of ashes, volcanic sand, pumice-stones, lavas, either compact or porous, and scoriæ.

An incalculable number of currents, comparatively recent, which have descended from the peak, or have issued from its flanks, form irregular furrows, which run along the more ancient masses, and lose themselves in the sea to the west and north. Among these currents more than eighty craters are scattered, and augment with their ruins the confusion which prevails throughout.

The crater can alone be reached by descending down three chasms. Its sides are absolutely precipitous within, and are most elevated toward the north. Its form is elliptical; its circumference about twelve hundred feet; and its depth according to Cordier, one hundred and ten feet. Humboldt, however, estimates it at not more than from forty to sixty feet. The sides are, agreeably to the former of these observers, formed of an earth of snowy whiteness, resulting from the decomposition of the blackest and hardest vitreous porphyritic lava. All the rest is solid, and the lowest part occupied by blocks, which have fallen down from the sides. These solid parts are covered with shining crystals of sulphur, of a rhomboidal and octahedral figure, some of which are nearly an inch high, and are, perhaps, the finest specimens of native volcanic sulphur yet known. Vapors issue in abundance from among these blocks, and from an infinity of fissures which preserve a very intense heat. These vapors consist solely of sulphur and water, perfectly insipid. Beside the incrustations of sulphur, opal, in thin plates, is formed with great celerity. Humboldt regards the peak of Teneriffe as an enormous basaltic mountain, resting upon a dense secondary calcareous stone.

Various travelers have asserted, that the cold is intensely keen on the summit of the peak; that respiration is difficult; and that, particularly, spirituous liquors lose all their strength; which latter circumstance they ascribe to the spirit being more or less exposed to the sulphureous fumes exhaled from the crater. Cordier, and several other accurate observers, declare, however, that neither the smell nor the strength of liquids appeared, at this elevation, to be in the least degree impaired; and that volatile alkali, ether, and spirit of wine, possessed their usual pungency. They add, that the cold is very supportable; and that neither the aqueous sulphureous vapors, nor the rarity of the air, render breathing difficult.

We extract the following interesting particulars from Humboldt’s account of his visit to Teneriffe.

“Toward three in the morning, by the sombrous light of a few fir torches, we began our expedition for the summit of the Piton. We scaled the volcano on the north-east, where the declivities are extremely steep; and came, after two hours’ toil, to a small plain, which on account of its isolated situation, bears the name of Alta Vista. It is the station also of the Neveros, those natives whose occupation it is to collect ice and snow, which they sell in the neighboring towns. Their mules, better practiced in climbing mountains than those hired by travelers, reach Alta Vista, and the Neveros are obliged to transport the snow to this place on their backs. Above this point the Malpays begins; a term by which is designated here, as well as in Mexico, Peru, and every other country subject to volcanoes, a ground destitute of vegetable mold, and covered with fragments of lavas.

“We observed, during the twilight, a phenomenon which is not unusual on high mountains, but which the position of the volcano we were scaling rendered very striking. A layer of white and fleecy clouds concealed from us the sight of the ocean, and the lower region of the island. This layer did not appear above sixteen hundred yards high; the clouds were so uniformly spread, and kept so perfect a level, that they wore the appearance of a vast plain covered with snow. The colossal pyramid of the peak, the volcanic summits of Lanzerota, of Fortaventura, and the isle of Palma, were like rocks amidst this vast sea of vapors, and their black tints were in fine contrast with the whiteness of the clouds.”

By an astronomical observation, made at the above elevation at sunrise, it was ascertained that the true horizon, that is, a part of the sea, was distant one hundred and thirty miles. Our traveler proceeds thus:

“We had yet to scale the steepest part of the mountain, the Piton, which forms the summit. The slope of this small cone, covered with volcanic ashes, and fragments of pumice-stone, is so steep, that it would have been almost impossible to reach the top, had we not ascended by an old current of lava, the wrecks of which have resisted the ravages of time. These wrecks form a wall of scorious rocks, which stretches itself into the midst of the loose ashes. We ascended the Piton by grasping these half-decomposed scoriæ, the sharp edges of which remained often in our hands. We employed nearly half an hour to scale a hill, the perpendicular hight of which does not exceed five hundred feet.

“When we gained the summit of the Piton, we were surprised to find scarcely room enough to seat ourselves conveniently. The west wind blew with such violence that we could scarcely stand. It was eight in the morning, and we were frozen with cold, though the thermometer kept a little above the freezing point.

“The wall, which surrounds the crater like a parapet, is so high, that it would be impossible to reach the Caldera, if on the eastern side there was not a breach, which seems to have been the effect of a flowing of very old lava. We descended through this breach toward the bottom of the tunnel, the figure of which is elliptical. The greatest breadth of the mouth appeared to us to be three hundred feet, the smallest two hundred feet.

“We descended to the bottom of the crater on a train of broken lava, from the eastern breach of the inclosure. The heat was perceptible only in a few crevices, which gave vent to aqueous vapors, with a peculiar buzzing noise. Some of these funnels or Crevices are on the outside of the inclosure, on the external brink of the parapet that surrounds the crater. We plunged the thermometer into them, and saw it rise rapidly to sixty-eight and seventy-five degrees.

“We prolonged in vain our stay on the summit of the peak, to wait the moment when we might enjoy the view of the whole of the archipelago of the Fortunate islands. We discovered Palma, Gomera, and the Great Canary, at our feet. The mountains of Lanzerota, free from vapors at sunrise, were soon enveloped in thick clouds. On a supposition only of an ordinary refraction, the eye takes in, in calm weather, from the summit of the volcano, a surface of the globe of fifty-seven hundred square leagues, equal to a fourth of the surface of Spain.

“Notwithstanding the heat we felt in our feet on the edge of the crater, the cone of ashes remains covered with snow during several months in the winter. It is probable, that under the cap of snow considerable hollows are found, like those we find under the glaciers of Switzerland, the temperature of which is constantly less elevated than that of the soil on which they repose. The cold and violent wind which blew from the time of sunrise, engaged us to seek shelter at the foot of the Piton. Our hands and faces were frozen, while our boots were burnt by the soil on which we walked. We descended in the space of a few minutes the sugar-loaf, which we had scaled with so much toil; and this rapidity was in part involuntary, for we often rolled down on the ashes. It was with regret that we quitted this solitary place, this domain where Nature towers in all her majesty.”

To the above we subjoin the following extract from the account published in the first volume of the Transactions of the Geological Society, by the Hon. Mr. Bennet.

At the distance of thirty-four leagues from the island, Mr. Bennet had a very distinct view of the peak, rising like a cone from the bed of the ocean. The rocks and strata of Teneriffe, he observes, are wholly volcanic, the long chain of mountains, which may be termed the central chain, traversing the island from the foot of the second region of the peak, and sloping down on the eastern, western and northern sides, to the sea. Toward the south, or more properly the south-south-west, the mountains are nearly perpendicular, and though broken into ridges, and occasionally separated by deep ravines, that are cut transversely as well as longitudinally, there are none of those plains, nor that gradual declination of strata, which the south-eastern and north-western sides of the island exhibit.

Mr. Bennet ascended the peak in the month of September, 1810. We give the abridged details of this expedition in his own words.

“The road to the city of Orotava, is a gradual and easy slope for three or four miles, through a highly cultivated country. Leaving the town, after a steep ascent of about an hour, through a deep ravine, we quitted the cultivated part, and entered into forests of chestnuts, the trees of which are of a large size. The form of this forest is oblong; the soil is deep, and formed of decomposed lava, small ash and pumice. I examined several channels in the strata, or ravines worn by the rains, and there was no appearance of any other rock. Leaving this forest, the track passes over a series of green hills, which we traversed in about two hours, and at last halted to water our mules at a spot where there is a small spring of bad and brackish water issuing from a lava rock. The ravine is of considerable depth. The range of green hills extends a mile or two further, the soil shallowing by degrees, until at length the trees and shrubs gradually dwindling in size, the Spanish broom alone covers the ground. Leaving behind us this range of green hills, the track, still ascending, leads for several hours across a steep and difficult mass of lava-rock, broken here and there into strange and fantastic forms, worn into deep ravines, and scantly covered in places by a thin layer of yellow pumice. As we proceeded on our road, the hills on our left gradually rose in hight, till the summits were lost in those of the central chain; while, on our right, we were rapidly gaining an elevation above the lower range of the peak. We met with several small conical hills, or mouths of extinct volcanoes, the decomposed lava on the edges of the craters having a strong red ochreous tint. At length, an immense undulated plain spreads itself like a fan, on all sides, nearly as far as the eye can reach. This plain is bounded on the west-south-west and south-south-west, by the regions of the peak; and on the east and north-east, by a range of steep perpendicular precipices and mountains, many leagues in circumference, called by the Spaniards =Las Faldas=. On this plain, or desert, for we had long left all show of vegetation, except a few stunted plants of Spanish broom, a sensible change was felt in the atmosphere; the wind was keen and sharp, and the climate like that of England in the months of autumn. All here was sad, silent and solitary. We saw at a distance the fertile plains on the coast, lying as it were under our feet, and affording a cheerful contrast to the scenes of desolation with which we were surrounded. We were already seven or eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and had reached the bottom of the second region of the peak.