I may as well stop here, and explain to you, once for all, what a
glacier is. You see before you, as in this case, say thirty or forty
mountain peaks, and between these peaks what seem to you frozen
rivers. The snow from time to time melting, and dripping down the
sides of the mountain, and congealing in the elevated hollows between
the peaks, forms a half-fluid mass - a river of ice - which is called a
glacier.
As it lies upon the slanting surface, and is not entirely solid
throughout, the whole mass is continually pushing, with a gradual but
imperceptible motion, down into the valleys below.
At a distance these glaciers, as I have said before, look like frozen
rivers; when one approaches nearer, or where they press downward into
the valley, like this Glacier de Boisson, they look like immense
crystals and pillars of ice piled together in every conceivable form.
The effect of this pile of ice, lying directly in the lap of green
grass and flowers, is quite singular. The village of Chamouni itself
has nothing in particular to recommend it. The buildings and every
thing about it have a rough, coarse appearance. Before we had entered
the valley this evening the sun had gone down; the sky behind the
mountains was clear, and it seemed for a few moments as if darkness
was rapidly coming on. On our right hand were black, jagged, furrowed
walls of mountain, and on our left Mont Blanc, with his fields of
glaciers and worlds of snow; they seemed to hem us in, and almost
press us down. But in a few moments commenced a scene of
transfiguration, more glorious than any thing I had witnessed yet. The
cold, white, dismal fields of ice gradually changed into hues of the
most beautiful rose color. A bank of white clouds, which rested above
the mountains, kindled and glowed, as if some spirit of light had
entered into them. You did not lose your idea of the dazzling,
spiritual whiteness of the snow, yet you seemed to see it through a
rosy veil. The sharp edges of the glaciers, and the hollows between
the peaks, reflected wavering tints of lilac and purple. The effect
was solemn and spiritual above every thing I have ever seen. These
words, which had been often in my mind through the day, and which
occurred to me more often than any others while I was travelling
through the Alps, came into my mind with a pomp and magnificence of
meaning unknown before - "For by Him were all things created in heaven
and on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or
dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things are by him and for
him; and he is before all things, and by him all things subsist."
In this dazzling revelation I saw not that cold, distant, unfeeling
fate, or that crushing regularity of power and wisdom, which was all
the ancient Greek or modern Deist can behold in God; but I beheld, as
it were, crowned and glorified, one who had loved with our loves, and
suffered with our sufferings. Those shining snows were as his garments
on the Mount of Transfiguration, and that serene and ineffable
atmosphere of tenderness and beauty, which seemed to change these
dreary deserts into worlds of heavenly light, was to me an image of
the light shed by his eternal love on the sins and sorrows of time,
and the dread abyss of eternity.
LETTER XXXIII.
MY DEAR: -
Well, I waked up this morning, and the first thought was, "Here I am
in the valley of Chamouni, right under the shadow of Mont Blanc, that
I have studied about in childhood and found on the atlas." I sprang
up, and ran to the window, to see if it was really there where I left
it last night. Yes, true enough, there it was! right over our heads,
as it were, blocking up our very existence; filling our minds with its
presence; that colossal pyramid of dazzling snow! Its lower parts
concealed by the roofs, only the three rounded domes of the summit cut
their forms with icy distinctness on the intense blue of the sky!
On the evening before I had taken my last look at about nine o'clock,
and had mentally resolved to go out before daybreak and repeat
Coleridge's celebrated hymn; but I advise any one who has any such
liturgic designs to execute them over night, for after a day of
climbing one acquires an aptitude for sleep that interferes with early
rising. When I left last evening its countenance was "filled with rosy
light," and they tell us, that hours before it is daylight in the
valley this mountain top breaks into brightness, like that pillar of
fire which enlightened the darkness of the Israelites.
I rejoice every hour that I am among these scenes in my familiarity
with the language of the Bible. In it alone can I find vocabulary and
images to express what this world of wonders excites. Mechanically I
repeat to myself, "The everlasting mountains were scattered; the
perpetual hills did bow; his ways are everlasting." But as straws,
chips, and seaweed play in a thousand fantastic figures on the face of
the ocean, sometimes even concealing the solemn depths beneath, so the
prose of daily existence mixes itself up with the solemn poetry of
life, here as elsewhere.
You must have a breakfast, and then you cannot rush out and up Mont
Blanc _ad libitum_; you must go up in the regular appointed way,
with mule and guides. This matter of guides is perfectly systematized
here; for, the mountains being the great overpowering fact of life, it
follows that all that enterprise and talent which in other places
develop themselves in various forms, here take the single channel of
climbing mountains. In America, if a man is a genius he strikes out a
new way of cleaning cotton; but in Chamouni, if he is a genius he
finds a new way of going up Mont Blanc.
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