Part 5 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: 35. LOWER GLACIER AND GRINDELWALD CHURCH. June 3, 1903, the valley thickly covered with flowers; for four days heavy clouds hung low over peaks and ridges. Only a glimpse such as this to be seen at intervals in the slow swaying fringe of the cloud-curtain.]

Even at this period greens are predominant, for the flowers are not to be discovered from a distance. And what greens they are--these shrill verdancies of early summer--the despair of artists, the joy of Nature's friends! Later on they will tone down to a more paintable key, but at first they transcend the powers of paint, having in them something almost of the s.h.i.+ne of flame. Their coming is sudden. They descend upon the broad bosom of fertile valleys and the wide skirts of gentle slopes, as the daylight descends when the sun grows high. Yesterday all was brown; to-day the greens have come, exultant, exuberant, with the star-flowers spangled amongst them. Then indeed it is good to be alive.

The voice has gone out to the valley--”Arise, s.h.i.+ne, for thy light has come”--and the valley responds to the call.

With July the full summer is there, and the summer crowd at hand. The longest days are pa.s.sing. The freshness is wearing off from the valleys.

Now heat, dust, and flies drive men aloft. It is the reception period of the high peaks, when they differentiate themselves plainly from the region below, and alone retain the perfect purity of the winter world.

In winter the great mountains stretch themselves visibly down to the valleys. Then Mont Blanc begins at Chamonix, the Matterhorn at Zermatt.

But in summer the high peaks seem to be planted aloft on the green world. The Matterhorn is reduced to a pyramid standing on the Schwarzsee Alp. Thus in summer, though the actual peaks themselves look larger, they are more removed out of the way. You must mount afar before you come to their apparent foot. You thus acquire the sense of their belonging to a world of their own. In winter snow glories are at your door. In summer you must labour to behold them, and when beheld they are emphasised by contrast with the fertile world you have left. That is why (apart from all questions of comfort and safety) summer climbing is more impressive than winter. It presents more stages, more variety. In winter-time all is winter; but in summer it is summer in the valleys, spring on the alps, and winter above the snow-line; only autumn is not there.

Autumn, in fact, is the rarest of the seasons. Its effects are the most evanescent. That is one of its special charms--that, and the tender sadness that pertains to the pa.s.sing away of things which have flourished and had their day in glory. October in the Alps is a season perhaps more generally delightful in these days than any other period of the year. Then the great summer crowd has gone, and there is room in the caravanserais and on the footpaths. The country-folks have leisure for a word with the wayfarer, and the painful sense of over-pressure is gone.

In October the Alps are almost as they used to be in the sixties--a s.p.a.cious region where a man may find himself alone, or almost alone, in the face of Nature. He cannot now, indeed, heal the scars that the crowd have furrowed upon the face of the earth, nor remove the ugly buildings and defacing embankments that have been raised to dam and form reservoirs or ca.n.a.ls for the human flood, but with that exception he can possess the landscape in peace.

October, again, is sometimes a month of much fine weather and of skies marvellously clear. If the days are short, they are yet long enough for early risers. Evening and morning are brought within the limits of a normal man's possible activity, so that he may enjoy both the splendour of sunrise and sunset without transgressing the daily hours of healthy wakefulness. The October sun does not climb so far aloft as does the royal monarch of the midsummer sky. If the effulgence of day is thus rendered less overpowering, in return the shadows spread wider and retain a richer colouring in their depths. More modelling is visible upon the hillsides and the snow-fields in the bright hours; there are bluer noontide shadows and perhaps even a bluer sky also.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 36. GRINDELWALD LOOKING TOWARDS THE WENGEN ALP. Winter snow on the slopes.]

All this is true and characteristic of Alpine autumn, but the most characteristic feature, there as elsewhere, is the fading of vegetation and the flaming colours that accompany it. Not only does the foliage of the trees disclose the change, but the very hillsides blend in harmony with the forests. Berries s.h.i.+ne bright on small shrubs and even lurk amongst russet or crimson foliage upon the ground. Plants of all lowly sorts put on a new bright livery, and thus change the character of the foreground. The bright greens vanish; in their place large slopes grow orange and brown. But it is beneath, at lower levels, that the changes are greatest and the autumnal effects most striking. Seek for them in the Rhone valley or round the sh.o.r.es of Thun. There you will find the woods absolutely golden or crimson according to their kind--a colouring at once so rich and so brilliant as to seem almost incredible even to him who, having seen it once, and believing that he remembers it, beholds it again and finds it so far surpa.s.sing the wealth of his memory and expectation. To behold the snowy peaks rising into the clear autumnal sky, far away beyond a foreground such as this, is a sight well worth an effort. Would not some of our holiday-makers of the better sort find it pleasant sometimes to change the date of their outing, so as not always to herd with their fellows nor every year to behold Nature under a similar illumination?

Just as spring definitely opens with the great avalanches, so winter opens as definitely with the great snow-falls. One day all is clear and bright. The snow-line has retreated to its very highest level. The hard ice of the glacier is revealed far up from the snout. The maximum number of creva.s.ses are open, and the wide-yawning bergschrunds form moats at the foot of all the final snow slopes that lean against the great faces of the peaks. Next morning all is grey and wet and cold. Clouds cover everything; winds rage; large snow-flakes in countless millions fill the air and drive across the ground. The drifts pile up and up, and all the ground is covered, white to the very depths of the valleys. For two or three days or longer the storm rages, and when at last the sun bursts forth again and the clouds withdraw their curtains, lo! the visible world is deeply buried in the white winter garment that will not be withdrawn till spring once more arrives. As a rule the first great snow-fall of winter comes thus definitely upon the Alpine world. Others that follow may be as great or greater in volume, but they only emphasise existing conditions; they do not, as this one does, change the face of Nature.

Thus the annual drama of the mountain world is played in its four acts, year after year, with infinite variety in detail and great uniformity in the large features. We talk of the seasons as definite divisions, but we must remember that their progress and succession is an affair not merely of day following day but of moment following moment. It is the steady progress, the gradual, imperceptible advance, that the close observer of natural beauty loves to watch. To-day is not absolutely like yesterday, and will not absolutely resemble to-morrow even though all three prove faultlessly fine. The superficial observer may note no change, but that is because he is superficial. There is always change, and in change the life of things consists.

To know mountains truly, means to recognise the changes which pa.s.s over them and happen amongst them. A mountain-lover may be compelled to live in some city of the plains, but, if he could, and in so far as mountains are his chief delight, he would live amongst them, not merely in one season but in all. No man, however, is or can be entirely single-minded. We cannot confine our affections to a single category of natural beauty, nor even to Nature alone. We are folk of many interests.

Even the most enthusiastic lover of mountains is something more, and fails from the ideal. Mountains must take their share with other interests in the life of any one who cares for them at all. In so far, however, as they are an interest for any of us, it behoves us to make that interest wide and comprehensive, not restricting it to mountains as mere things to climb, nor to mountains of a particular character or at a particular time of year, but allowing it to embrace mountain scenery as a whole and at all seasons. Those of us who can do this, will find that the wider and more varied our experience of and sensitiveness to all varieties of mountain scenery becomes, the more intense will it likewise grow to be at any special moment, and the more keenly will any particular effect of beauty affect our hearts. In mountains, as elsewhere, all seasons of the year are marked by beauties that belong specially to them. Each season prepares for that which is to follow, and every day that pa.s.ses is a transitional step from the one to the other.

Let me commend my fellows of the mountain brotherhood to bear this fact in mind when they are wandering amongst the hills. If they attend not merely to the spectacle of the moment, but to the changes that are daily wrought out before their eyes, they will find their pleasures enlarged and their capacity for enjoyment increased. They will obtain a greater consequent understanding not merely of the aspects and moods of the mountains, but of what I may call their settled character as manifested by the larger mutations of aspect which they undergo in pa.s.sing through the vicissitudes of the seasons of the year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 37. RIMPFISCHORN AND STRAHLHORN FROM THE RIFFELBERG]

CHAPTER VII

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 cla.s.sification. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.e.x 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 a.s.sert, rank the great domes of snow, such as Mont Blanc. The two greatest Alpine mountains a.s.sume 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 ma.s.ses Nature frequently bestows a measurable pre-eminence, for it is not only in the Alps that they attain loftiest alt.i.tudes 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 alt.i.tude, 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 b.u.t.tressed 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 surpa.s.singly.

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 ma.s.s (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 ma.s.s and s.h.i.+ning 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 n.o.ble breadth of its base and adjustment of its b.u.t.tresses. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 38. THE MATTERHORN, TWILIGHT.

”The time may come when the Matterhorn shall have pa.s.sed 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.