From this place the way grows more rugged, and encumbered with larger blocks of stone, but the mules climbed gallantly; and at last, arrived at the summit, we stopped at the pavilion opposite the older refuge built by an Englishman, and called from him the Hôpital de Blair. The view would have repaid us for more fatigue. The Mer de Glace was directly beneath, and opposite, the pinnacled mountains which guard its shore. There seemed to me no resting-place for the foot of an eagle, yet Mounier said he had often slept out on them when hunting the chamois. The highest of the numberless pointed rocks which shoot upwards like white spires against the blue sky, is the Aiguille Verte, for it is about seven thousand feet above the summit of the Montanvert. The Mer de Glace itself is ill represented in all the engravings I have seen, for its waves do not resemble those of the sea suddenly frozen, while driven in the same direction by a tempest—they rather look as if they had been tossed by whirlwinds, and are of irregular forms and unequal height, their flat surfaces and pointed crests of the dull white of soiled snow; for it rejects to its surface all impurities, and only on looking down into its crevices are you aware of their pale, beautiful green—the purest and clearest in the world. You can form no idea of the size of these waves except by descending among them, the magnitude of all which surrounds them deceiving as to theirs, yet many exceed forty feet in height; and of the Mer de Glace, which is about eight leagues in length, two are from this spot visible.
We scrambled down by a rugged path which leads to it from the pavilion, but it is no place to tread without a guide, and it is dangerous to advance too far on the edges of these crevices, which are often unsupported below; and some accidents generally occur to the cattle or their drivers when in the month of July the former are sent from Chamouny up the Montanvert and across the Mer de Glace for the sake of the scanty pastures on the opposite mountain. It is a melancholy existence for the lonely herdsman who remains to guard them during the three months of their stay; for his solitude (Mounier said) is seldom disturbed except by the person sent by the cattle owner, who carries him at the end of the month the bread and cheese which is to suffice for his subsistence throughout the next; and all the time not spent in wanderings after stray heifers he whiles away knitting stockings. We returned to the pavilion by a better path, beside the stone inscribed with the names of Pocock and Windham, the two English travellers who, in 1741, revived the memory of the forgotten valley of Chamouny, where a priory had been founded in the eleventh century. We rested on this broad stone, which was their dinner-table or bed, or both, and the crags round which were covered with rhododendrum, which grows wild everywhere, brightening them with its deep red blossom. The pavilion affords refreshment and, if you will, beds, and a collection of chamois horn walking-sticks, seals of crystal and brooches of stones found on the mountain, which distract the visitor’s attention from the glorious view on which the windows open. We were to be at the hotel at five, and our mules followed, the litters as before; but I soon found it less agreeable to feel the animal slide down steps three feet high than climb over them, and having borne several times, from shame, the disagreeable sensation and the waver it invariably makes at the sharp turns and the brink of the precipice, I discovered that my sight failed, and the guide advised walking, to myself and the lady with me; so that walk we did, slowly certainly—for the distance is two leagues and a half, to be performed by a succession of hoppings on loose stones. We passed again the fountain with its group of smiling girls and the woman blowing her collection of trumpets, trading, as somebody said, with the echo; and when all was quiet again, we heard the fall of an avalanche, but so dull and distant it resembled only a faint and prolonged moan. Mounier pointed out the Grands Mulets on Mont Blanc, the place where those who ascend pass the night, four or five black rocks in the snow, looking like monuments for the frozen. He had been up twice himself, he said, but meant to return no more, as the peril was too great for a man whose father on his deathbed had bequeathed five sisters to his care. I was glad when we had arrived at the plain, and could mount our mules once more, having painfully limped the last two miles. We arrived at the inn, where the table d’hôte was already filled, and did honour to ill cheer. I was sorry to part from my poor civil guide and promised to summon him on our next visit, when he will probably no longer be there, for he was a delicate looking man with a hectic colour in his cheek, and the inhabitants of Chamouny, from the sudden changes of temperature, are subject to inflammatory maladies. They bear a high character as being honest, faithful, and charitable, and their courage is incontestable, as it is with them a thing of course to risk their lives if those of their employers be in peril. The orphans and old men who have no means of subsistence are supported by all the inhabitants of the parish, each in turn, and among those who have property, should there be one precluded by age or infirmity from cultivating his field, his neighbours till it for him. They are rarely tall or handsome, but muscular and strong, and from their climate and exposure to its vicissitudes, seldom attain old age. In their season of forced idleness, the winter, which lasts about eight months, some play high, others drink immoderately. Their harvests chiefly consist of flax, barley, oats, beans, and potatoes; the latter grow in abundance, and they make a kind of bread from their flour. I paid a visit to the mineral baths which, notwithstanding their unpleasant odour, I recommend to all whose limbs are wearied with mountain excursions, and then crossed the little bridge near the hotel, and sat till dark, looking our farewell at Mont Blanc and his rainbow, and annoyed by the only nuisance of the valley, girls and boys exhibiting and persecuting marmottes and young eagles. We were up at five and on our way before the sun was above the mountain, so that we saw its visage of all hours. I should not choose sunrise, for as the mist rises, the brilliancy it receives from the rays which cross it hides the mountains behind; but, as we proceeded further, nothing could be more beautiful than to see the ray lying on the summit of the Glacier des Bossons like a thread of silver, and the valley of Servoz was far lovelier with the tops of its pines just touched with light, and their long shadows in the valley, than seen under a mid-day sun. From St. Martin, where we breakfasted, our fat coachman resumed possession of our persons, and safely deposited them in the Secheron, where we found Fanny well, and the hotel very comfortable after mountain inns and mountain passes.
13th August.
Our friends being gone, and ourselves finding the Secheron too silent and sad after their departure, we left it yesterday morning to sleep at Morges, and were fortunate in a cool cloudy day. Hoping to escape some of the laughter and hooting, which have greeted me everywhere save in Savoy, I adopted the large round straw hat such as they wear themselves, but without its producing any beneficial effect on their manners. The road passes through the village of Versoix, which was French property in Louis the Fourteenth’s time, and destined by the angry king to outdo Geneva as a trading town. The pier and streets were marked out, but the buildings have proceeded so slowly, that Voltaire’s sarcastic lines are still true:—
À Versoix nous avons des rues;
Mais nous n’avons point de maisons.
We were now in the Canton de Vaud, and next appeared Coppet and Madame de Staël’s château, to which, as I told you, we rode before, but without seeing more than its outside, as the family was there. I understand that strangers are at no time allowed to visit the monument, where she lies near her father and mother, and it is wholly concealed from view by the fine trees which shade it. We rode through the suburb of Nyon, admiring the zigzag road which leads to St. Cergues, across the Jura, now towering nearer and darker. The lake grows more interesting (its broadest part is from Rolle to Thonon, three-quarters of a league), and the country round more wooded. We fed the horses at Rolle, and rested some time at the Tête Noire, a clean, quiet-looking inn, where one might pass a night comfortably. Mont Blanc was invisible, but the rocks of La Meillerie appeared, and the approach to Morges is picturesque beneath dark and old trees,—the pretty arbour and old castle of Wufflens on the right. The improving system has not wholly spared the latter; but its tall donjon and the turrets which flank it are well preserved, considering the circumstance of its being built in the tenth century by Bertha of spinning memory, mother of Hugh, king of Italy, and Guy, duke of Tuscany. Notwithstanding the saddle, with its place to hold the distaff, exhibited as hers at Payerne, and the assurance that she spun while she rode chargers more docile than belong to the idler daughters of our day, I am inclined to doubt the tradition, as her court of Tuscany was most brilliant beneath her sway, and she is renowned as one of the most ambitious women who ever sat on an Italian throne; and from her beauty and talent, she drew her husband into various wars,—obtained and preserved influence over the most powerful of the country,—and more than once disarmed the anger of those princes she had offended. We stopped to sleep at the Couronne, a comfortable inn, and left the next morning, intending to remain at Lausanne the following day. It is only a post and a half distant, and the ride was very beautiful, but the flies tormenting and the heat excessive. A steep hill leads to the town, built on a lower slope of the Jura. As we ascended, leaving on the right the road to Ouchy, where I believe there is a good inn (the Ancre, more agreeably situated on the lake shore), the view of the town and cathedral opened grandly on us; and from the promenade of Montbenon at its summit, that of the blue lake below, and the bold crags shutting it in, was superb. I should not, however, like to sojourn at Lausanne, many of whose steep crowded streets have no prospect of the beauty which surrounds them, running parallel to the lake, and some communicating with each other by stairs as at Lyons, so that a walk to the shore and back may resemble an hour in a treadmill. The outside of the cathedral is of a bad Gothic architecture; its interior the finest in Switzerland, and contains the monument of Amedée the Eighth of Savoy, alias Pope Felix, and that of Otho of Granson. The noble Bernard de Menthon is buried here also. Passed the new “Hôtel Gibbon,” built on the site of the historian’s house, and up the steep street to the Faucon. I dismounted, and the fat innkeeper came rolling along the corridor, at the slowest possible pace, to meet me in the hall. Whether he was or not turning in his mind the best method of proving himself a true falcon, by his treatment of his prey, I cannot tell; but he meditated his answer for a minute ere it was made, during which minute D—— was sitting one kicking horse and watching another, the flies and sun increasing his ill-will every second,—so that when I had left the heavy host and his two waiters standing in readiness to conduct us, and returned to request him to dismount, I found him decided on going on. How long the great man and his two satellites stood on the first step of the stair I cannot say, as I mounted Fanny, and we took the turn to Vevay. Almost the whole way lies between low stone walls, winding high above the lake, and looking down the precipices on its magnificent scenery. There is little or no shade, as vineyards in terraces clothe the steep side of the mountain, and when these cease, a wall of rock reflects the sun, giving the heat an intensity oppressive to all, saving the myriads of active lizards who shot over the sand. Surmounting one tall crag is a square castle, of the form and size of those so often met with in Ireland, perched on a height it would have puzzled our feet to attain. Over the rocks, on the lake’s opposite side, hung a light mist, rather enhancing than robbing them of their grandeur. A rapid descent leads to Vevay, which lay smiling in the evening glow with its sleeping lake and green woods and sunny mountains, and the gray church tower, flanked by four turrets, among its trees on the hill above the town. Beyond Vevay we saw Chillon indistinctly through the haze, which cast its magic and mystery over the dim gorge of the Rhone, and the gigantic peaks which terminate it, whose white brows shone through brightly, though at intervals, like pure actions refuting calumny.
Having mistaken first our way and then the inn, we at last dismounted at the Trois Couronnes, second in comfort to only the Secheron. Its proprietor is building an hotel, which will replace this, larger and more commodious, and commanding the view, whose beauty is not to be surpassed. At the extremity of the market-place is a boulevard and a grove,—the roots of whose trees the lake washes: we sat there till after nightfall. The thin mist still lay on the surface, smooth as a mirror, reflecting the dark branches and old irregular houses, with the curving shore to the left; where Chillon stood forth a white mass on the water, with all its associations,—the reformer’s sufferings, and the poet’s song. Above the rocks of Meillerie, opposite us, the moon was rising,—yet too young to diffuse more than the faintest glow. The picturesque boats of the lake lay motionless, or rowed past slowly and silently without a breath in their sails; it was like a lake in a dream.
END OF VOL. I.
London:—Printed by William Clowes & Sons, Stamford Street.