Thou, too, hoar Mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, To rise before me,-Rise, O ever rise! 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. O, 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 I amb that was slain ! CHAPTER XI. Mont Blanc from the Col de Balme. BEFORE setting out on our pilgrimage around Mont Blanc by the passage of the Tête Noir, I must give you the notes of my experience in the parallel pass of the Col de Balme. Travellers sometimes take one of these passes, and sometimes the other, on their way into Italy by the Simplon or across the Grand St. Bernard; but a lover of Switzerland will wish to see both. The first I visited during a very magnificent fortnight in October. From the sublime wonders of the Mer de Glace, we proceeded down the valley of Chamouny, and arrived at Argentiere, a miserable hamlet at the foot of the glacier of the same name, in the evening of October 8th. We slept at a very dirty inn, in a very dirty room, rolled up in dingy blankets, after a very meagre supper upon hard black bread for the main ingredient. By reason of the memory of this supper, in the natural conclusion that a breakfast in the same spot would be of the same general character, we left the Auberge in the morning as soon as we got out of our blankets, at half past five, while it was yet dark, in order to reach the resting place on the summit of the mountain at an early hour. The Col de Balme is about seven thousand feet high, and lying as it does across the vale of Chamouny at the end towards Martigny and the valley of the Rhone, through which runs the grand route of the Simplon from Switzerland to Italy, you have from it one of the most perfect of all views both of Mont Blanc and the vale of Chamouny, with all the other mountain ridges on every side. You have, as it were, an observatory erected for you, 7,000 feet high, to look at a mountain of 16,000. There is a solitary Chalet, or traveller's Refuge, on the summit of the Col, which is kept as an inn during the travelling season, the only habitation beyond the hamlet of Argentiere. When men upon the mountains reject a poor breakfast in the hope of getting a good one, they should take all things into consideration, for they may easily go farther and fare worse. That day was the last of the keeper's staying in the Chalet during that autumn. The season was over, and he was moving down into the more habitable world, so that one day later, in our anxiety for a good breakfast, we should nearly have perished, having found the house empty. We reached it after a sharp frosty walk of nearly three hours. Every man ought to endeavor to shield others from the evils he has experienced himself. A truly benevolent man will always do this, and a traveller, who will not warn others of perils which he has himself encountered, is like one going through a thick wood, and letting the branches fly back in the face of those that follow him. I do therefore cut off this branch, and say, Let no traveller ever attempt upon an empty stomach such a walk as we took that morning; indeed, men in general are not so simple as to do any such thing. Till we arrived within a quarter of an hour of the summit, the atmosphere was clear, and Mont Blanc rose to the view with a sublimity, which it seemed at every step could scarcely be rivalled, and which yet at every step was increasing. The path is a winding ascent, practicable only for mules or on foot. A North-East wind, in this last quarter of an hour, was driving the immensity of mist from the other side of the mountain over the summit, enveloping all creation in a thick frosty fog, so that when we got to the solitary house, we were surrounded by an ocean of cold gray cloud, that left neither mountain nor the sun itself distinguishable. And such, thought we, is the end of all our morning's starvation, perils, and labors; not to see an inch before us; all this mighty prospect, for which alone one might worthily cross the Atlantic, hidden from us, and quite shut out! We could have wept perhaps, if we had not been too cold and too hungry. Our host burned up the remainder of his year's supply of wood, to get us a fire, and then most hospitably provided us with a breakfast of roast potatoes, whereby all immediate danger of famishing was deferred to a considerable distance. But our bitter disappointment in the fog was hard to be borne, and we sat brooding and mourning over the gloomy prospect for the day, and wondering what we had best do with ourselves, when suddenly, on turning towards the window, Mont Blanc was flashing in the sunshine. Such an instantaneous and extraordinary revelation of splendor, we never dreamed of. The clouds had vanished, we could not tell where, and the whole illimitable vast of glory in this, the heart of Switzerland's Alpine grandeurs, was disclosed; the snowy Monarch of Mountains, the huge glaciers, the jagged granite peaks, needles, and rough enormous crags and ridges congregated and shooting up in every direction, with the long beautiful Vale of Chamouny visible from end to end, far beneath us, as still and shining as a picture! Just over the longitudinal ridge of mountains on one side was the moon in an infinite depth of ether; it seemed as if we could touch it; and on the other the sun was exulting as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. The clouds still sweeping past us, now concealing, now partially veiling, and now revealing the view, added to its power by such sudden alternations. Far down the vale floated in mid air beneath us a few fleeces of cloud, below and beyond which lay the valley, with its villages, meadows, and winding paths, and the river running through it like a silver thread. Shortly the mists congregated away beyond this scene, rolling masses upon masses, penetrated and turned into fleecy silver by the sunlight, the whole body of them gradually retreating over the southwestern end and barrier of the valley. In our position we now saw the different gorges in the chain of Mont Blanc lengthwise, Charmontiere, Du Bois, and the Glacier du Bosson protruding its whole enorme from the valley. The grand Mulet, with the vast snow-depths and crevasses of Mont Blanc were revealed to us. That sublime summit was now for the first time seen in its solitary superiority, at first appearing round and smooth, white and glittering with perpetual snow, but as the sun in his higher path cast shadows from summit to summit, and revealed ledges and chasms, we could see the smoothness broken. Mont Blanc is on the right of the valley, looking up from the Col de Balme; the left range being much lower, though the summit of the Buet is near 10,000 feet in height. Now on the Col de Balme we are midway in these sublime views, on an elevation of 7,000 feet, without an intervening barrier of any kind to interrupt our sight. On the Col itself we are between two loftier heights, both of which I ascended, one of them being a ridge so sharp and steep, that though I got up without much danger, yet on turning to look about me, and come down, it was absolutely frightful. A step either side would have sent me sheer down a thousand feet; and the crags by which I had mounted appeared so loosely perched, as if I could shake and tumble them from their places by my hand. The view in every direction seemed infinitely extended, chain behind chain, ridge after ridge, in almost endless succession. But the hour of most intense splendor in this day of glory, was the rising of the clouds in Chamouny, as we could discern them like stripes of amber floating in an azure sea. They rested upon, and floated over, the successive glacier gorges of the mountain range on either hand, like so many islands of the blest, anchored in mid heaven below us; or like so many radiant files of the white-robed heavenly host floating transversely across the valley. This extended through its whole length, and it was a most singular phenomenon; for through these ridges. of cloud we could look as through a telescope, down into the vale, and along to its farther end; but the intensity of the light flashing from the snows of the mountains, and reflected in these fleecy radiances, almost as so many secondary suns, hung in the clear atmosphere, was well nigh blinding. The scene seemed to me a fit symbol of celestial glories; and I thought, if a vision of such intense splendor could be arrayed by the divine power out of mere earth, air, and water, and made to assume such beauty indescribable at a breath of the wind, a movement of the sun, a slight change in the elements, what mind could even dimly and distantly form to itself a conception of the splendors of the world of heavenly glory. And if it sometimes blinds us to look even at earthly glories steadily, what training and purifying of the soul must it require to look at God and his glory! I love the spirit of the Poet Cow |