Scenes in Switzerland

by American Tract Society

"There was no help for him," said Franz; "he was buried at the foot of the mountain."

Having reached the summit, the scene that burst upon us was sublime in the highest degree; immediately beneath was the Mer de Glace, a broad river of ice running nearly forty miles up into the Alps; to the north the green valley of Chamouni, to the south the gigantic barriers that separate Savoy from Piedmont, and around us inaccessible peaks and mountains of eternal snow, finely contrasting with the deep blue of the heavens; while the roar of cataracts and the thunder of avalanches were the only sounds that broke upon the profound stillness of the terrible solitude.

On the summit of the mountain we found an inn or hospice. We entered and warmed ourselves, neither did we refuse the black bread and glass of sour wine that were presently brought to us. As we sat by the fire a small table was brought near us, and on it lay the album in which we were expected to enter our names. Many notable autographs we found here, and despite the gladness we felt in adding ours to the number, there was still a sad, desolate thought: those most distinguished had all passed away. The mountains remained, their glory undiminished; but the human beings climbing their heights, and exulting in the grandeur of heaven and earth, had vanished like the mist wreath. Years would pass and other feet would cross the slippery fields, other eyes look out upon the work of God's hands, other names be traced, and we, like the throng before us, be gone—no longer to look upon the created, but the Creator.

As soon as we were sufficiently rested, Franz summoned us to the Sea of Ice, and we began to descend the steep and rugged face of the mountain. As we approached the surface of the glacier, these inequalities rose into considerable elevations, intermingled with half-formed pyramids, bending walls and shapeless masses of ice; with blocks of granite and frightful chasms at once savage and fantastic. It puzzled me to know why it should have been called a sea, a rough and stony one at that; but to me it looked like a river, walled in by two enormous mountains, rising to the height of ten thousand feet, and forming a ravine a mile and a half wide, that pursues a straight course for several miles and divides at the upper end into two glens, like deep gashes, that run up to the highest elevation of the Alps, terminating at the lower extremity in an icy precipice of two thousand feet, whose base is in a still deeper valley. It was as if there had been innumerable torrents dashing down the precipice into the valley—arrested by a mighty hurricane as they hurried along, and wrought into the wildest forms by the fury of the tempest, and then suddenly congealed, leaving a sea or river of ice, framed in with lofty peaks and snowy summits, cataracts and avalanches, clouds and storms, a wonderful combination of the grand, the terrible, and the sublime.

Franz understood his business of guide too well to let me loiter as I wished. "These fissures are the chief danger," he said; and, holding out his small hand, he grasped mine with the tenacity of one not accustomed to let anything slip through his fingers. A girdle of imperfectly frozen snow borders this sea; and Franz never planted his feet till he had first ascertained the nature of the surface with his pole. Some of these fissures are of an amazing depth, and, taking out my watch, I tried to fathom one of them by dropping large fragments of granite; and calculating by the time that elapsed before reaching the bottom, we judged it to be over five hundred feet.

Franz had hurried us; now, he stopped, and bade us look above us. We did so, and were amply repaid for all our toil. To try to describe it would be in vain; and still the distinct outline is indelibly impressed upon my mind, and I am confident will never be effaced. We were standing in the midst of the rough waves and yawning abysses of this frozen sea; while almost perpendicularly from its brink the mountains rose, clothed with scanty herbage, and adorned with the tiny crimson blossoms of the rhododendron that bloomed upon their sides.

As the eye looked up the valley, every trace of vegetation died away; and the snowy mountains appeared to meet and mingle with each other.

We left the glacier, and ascending again to the hospice of Montanvert, I sat down by the side of Franz upon a block of granite, and looked again upon a scene the equal of which I never expect to see again. There was a far away look in Franz's eyes. Was he thinking of the little cottage far up the mountain, and of Annette watching by the bedside of his sick father? Perhaps so; in any case I was glad that we had taken him. His could not be an everyday story, there must be some particular motive why he should want so earnestly to come. I would not question him then; but I determined to stop at the little cottage and learn for myself.

With all the untold glory above and beneath me, I felt oppressed with the littleness, as well as the greatness of my nature. How insignificant I appeared amid these gigantic forms; and still I exulted in the consciousness that "My Father made them all, that Father with whom I could commune, and whose Son I was privileged to love."

"And this God is our God," I was constrained to say aloud. Franz turned his speaking eye upon me.