With music soft,
Is lost in air.”
Wherever the sun can get at the naked rock of the mountain, from July to September, and find an open fissure, there vegetation climbs, and clinging, establishes itself, and flourishes, and blooms. Charming colonies of little flowers seem to have emigrated from the valleys, and come to hide themselves in the cold deserts, where the brevity of their life appears to enhance the beauty of their color. To better resist the hoar-frost, they grow in thick tufts closely pressed against each other. The rocks are velvet with lichens and mosses, that anchor their roots into a mass of granite, grappling with a substance which, when struck with steel, tears up its tempered grain and dashes out the spark. There are familiar pinks, blue-bells, a species of forget-me-not, a small star-shaped flower of a deep metallic blue shading upon green, that flashes through the grass with a moist, lustrous softness,—it is the smaller gentian, so dear to the poet’s heart and verse. Then great rose-colored beds of rhododendrons; azaleas of vivid carmine; golden arnicas, with their stately bearing, like rays of sunshine turned into flowers; in every direction, orchids, diffusing a strong odor of vanilla; and the narcissi, which are visible a great distance, and their odor wafted by the wind, is no less penetrating than that of an orange grove; the Alpine rose, of which Ruskin says, “when the traveller finds himself physically exhausted by the pomp of landscape, let him sink down on his knees and concentrate his attention on the petals of a rock-rose.” Against the cliffs are rich clumps of the peerless, delicately-cut Edelweiss; called by the botanists “Gnaphalium alpinum.” It is a peculiar plant of delicate construction that grows under the snow; containing very little sap, so that it can be preserved a long time; the blossom is surrounded by white velvety leaves, and even the stem has a down upon it. The possession of one is proof of unusual daring, and to gather it, the hunter, tempted by its beauty and by his love (for it is immensely valued by the Swiss maidens) climbs the most inaccessible cliffs on which it grows, and is sometimes found dead at the foot with the flower in his hand. No art can simulate its beautiful, ermine-like bloom, and experiments have been made to cultivate it in other places, but it changes its character and becomes transformed into a new species; in its Alpine home alone will it flourish, and there must it be sought, and adorn the hat as the badge of triumph for the Alpine climber. The mountain is really a botanical garden; the Swiss flora is the largest on the European continent, in proportion to the area it covers. The varied local influences and conditions resulting from such a broken surface, and differences of altitude concur in producing the graduation and unbounded variety of botanical specimens.
Trees are also present in great abundance and variety, increasing the enchantment of the view with their leafy clothing, which, by partly concealing, adds charm of mystery to the prospect. There are specimens of noble chestnuts and walnuts, grand old oaks, larches, and gigantic pines. The walnut-trees disappear at a height of twenty-five hundred feet; chestnuts and beeches cover the slopes a little higher; to these succeed the firs, which seem to have sown themselves in a luxuriant way, some standing alone in green gracefulness, others growing in pretty little miniature groves; then the knotted oaks, holding by their strong roots to the precipitous sides; and the burly pines that flourish at far greater altitudes than either, seeming to require scarcely any earth, but grasping with their strong, rough roots the frozen rock, out of which, somehow, they contrive to draw moisture. Some of the ancient pines on the Jungfrau are supposed to have stood the blasts of winter for a thousand years; they are affirmed to be as high as one hundred and sixty feet, and to measure twenty-four feet in circumference. It is their peculiar conical form which enables them to bow to, and thus resist the force of, the storm. The pine is the king of the mountains; he strikes his club-foot deep into the cleft of the rocks, or grasps its span with conscious power; there he lifts his haughty front, like the warrior monarch that he is,—no flinching about the pine, let the time be ever so stormy. His throne is the crag and his crown is a good way up in the heavens, and as for the clouds, he tears them asunder sometimes and uses them for robes. Then the stern, deep, awfully deep roar that he makes in a storm. When he has aroused his energies to meet the storm, the battle-cry he sends down the wind is heard above all the roar and artillery of thunder, and when the tempest leaves him, how quietly he settles to his repose,—the scented breeze of a soft evening breathes upon him and the grim warrior king wakes his murmuring lute, and through his dusky boughs float sweet and soothing sounds. Higher still than the pine are the larches, a wood highly valued; and at last comes the creeping pine, struggling against the wind and cold: it is the highest climber among Alpine trees, and is the immediate neighbor of the glacier.
The perils of wandering in the high Alps remain terribly real, and are only to be met by knowledge, courage, caution, skill, and strength; for rashness, ignorance, carelessness, the mountains still leave no margin, and to these three-fourths of the catastrophes which shock us are to be traced. Mountaineering without guides is not a thing to be encouraged. The mountaineer’s instinct on rock and ice is an art quite as subtle and complex as the art of the seaman or the horseman. The senses all awake, the eye clear, the heart strong, the limbs steady yet flexible, with power of recovery in store and ready for instant action should the footing give way, such is the discipline which these terrible ascents impose. The mountain guides are not ignorant, they are licensed only after severe examination. They are obliged to take courses of study; they are taught topography, and how to read a map and find their way by it; to use the compass and the other instruments that are indispensable in journeys of exploration; they are also taught how to bind up wounds, so as to be able to do what is necessary at once in case of accident; in a word, they are brave, modest, affable, sunburnt, and scarred men, who have planted a flag on every summit, and who have lent to the stern and awful mountains the romance of mountaineering. It is understood that a true Swiss guide is literally “faithful unto death;” that he does not hesitate to risk his own life for the sake of his charge, and that instances are known in which it has not only been risked but actually sacrificed. Many accidents in mountain-climbing have resulted from an insane effort to dispense with the services of accredited guides, or disregarding their directions. In the short space of not quite a month, in 1887, eighteen tourists lost their lives; one accident on the Jungfrau involving the loss of six. The fate of blind guides and those they lead is set forth in unmistakable terms by the Scriptures. Choose for your guides the hardy men who have learned their business thoroughly, who have been chamois hunters from their youth, who have lived on the mountains from their birth, and to whom the snows and rocks and the clouds speak a language which they can understand, and then accident is almost impossible. Roping is the common and safest precaution, especially for ice traversing. A slip-knot is passed over each climber’s head and shoulders and drawn tight under the arms. It cannot be particularly pleasant, for at times the one in front makes a spring, forgetting others are tied behind him, and takes them unawares, nearly pulling them off their feet; then, on the other hand, oblivious of the person behind you, suddenly you are checked in the middle of your jump, perhaps, over a crevasse, or when standing in a little niche on a steep wall of ice a thousand feet high. The graceful alpenstock, so often seen in the hands of Swiss tourists inscribed with its roll of triumph, must be taken cum grano salis. Many of them have never done service beyond mountain hotel parlors, broad piazzas, and great dining-rooms. They can be bought with “records” complete and shining, and therefore are not as closely related to mountain-climbing as one might suspect them to be. It is refreshing to see young lads stalking about with these alpenstocks and ice-axes, like conquerors amid a subject race. What lofty scorn they have for every man who has not ascended the highest peak, and yet they never dared to try it! They call themselves mountaineers, and at evening and in bad weather stalk and lounge about the hotel, moody, terrible, and statuesque; they speak to none but to other young braves, with whom they perpetually mutter dark things about horrid places and cutting the record. No; good mountaineering is the education of a lifetime begun in childhood, and these pretentious youths are no more mountaineers than their boots are. Under proper precautions, and with an experienced guide, it is glorious and healthful exercise, and for purposes of science has been of incalculable value.
In the later Middle Ages invalids came to Baden, in the Canton of Aargau, for the sake of the mineral waters; and the springs of Pfäffers were known in 1242, and the waters considered very efficacious, particularly in the case of persons “who had been tortured.” These places are still visited, but the air-cure of the mountain has almost superseded them. Jean Jacques Rousseau expressed surprise that “bathing in the salubrious and beneficial mountain air had not yet become one of the great resources of medical science or of moral education.” There would be no occasion to-day for at least one part of his surprise. The Swiss mountains have developed well-defined and well-known health phases. They have become mediciners, and the snow-clad peaks and the upper snow-clad valleys are being looked to by physicians for the relief of certain ailments not easily remedied by other means. Davos Platz and St. Moritz, in the Engadine, are among the most familiar regions famed for the climatic treatment of disease,—possessing remarkable health-giving properties in lung trouble. It is the exquisite purity of the air, exercise, and especial modes of life which the mountains impose that serve as the chief medicine, and give these heights their beneficial virtues. The rarefaction has its own and special effect. The breathing becomes quicker, deeper, and fuller. One breathes fifteen to twenty-five per cent. less air to produce a given weight of carbonic acid. The action of the air on the blood in the lungs seems to be facilitated with decreasing density; one, however, must ascend over two thousand feet before the lighter air-pressure begins to make itself appreciable, but for every one thousand feet additional the difference in the rarefaction becomes of a very marked character. Here the law of “use and disuse of organs” is illustrated in typical fashion,—parts of the lungs but little used in ordinary life are brought freely into use,—one is forced to breathe deeply, thus the vital capacity is enlarged, and, by favoring exercise of little-used parts banishes the tendency to disease from one of the seats of life. This so-called diaphanous rarefied air is not air, it is a celestial ether; and so with the sun, though it is hot, what you feel is not heat, it is a permeating, invigorating, life-creating warmth. This warmth, then, which the sun imparts to this ether pervades your lungs, your heart, and reaches to your very bones. This virginally pure air makes you conscious of a lighter and of a quicker life, an unknown facility in breathing, and a lightness of body. Its electric freshness is a brilliant vitality,—it is rest, inspiration, resolve. Then you are surrounded with pine forests, and the bright sun is constantly raising into the air from their trunks, branches, and leaves myriad molecules of their resinous exudations. On ascending a mountain the mean annual temperature decreases on an average of one degree Fahrenheit for every three hundred and forty-nine feet. The value of fresh air and exercise is a sentiment possibly as old as humanity itself. It is the same spirit which animated Hippocrates and Galen when those classic worthies discoursed upon the art of nature-cure. We really travel in circles in the case of disease-cure, as in most other things. None the less may we be thankful that, in our circular search after knowledge, we have come upon the beaten track of ancient days, and have enlarged the wisdom which of old showed forth the benefits of a cloudless sky and a pure ether.
There are walks and excursions in the mountains for all, for the invalid as for the cragsman; roads that are marvels of audacity, crossing tremendous gorges, clinging in dizzy places along the precipices at the foot of which is heard the boiling torrent, then sweeping around sudden corners and angles; roads will wind among the hills which rise steep and lofty from the scanty level place that lies between them, whilst the hills seem continually to thrust their great bulk before the wayfarer, as if grimly resolute to forbid his passage, or close abruptly behind him when he still dares to proceed. There are broad avenues overarched with spreading elms and maples, with vistas reminding one of the nave and aisles of a large cathedral. The mountain-paths are so pretty and charming; they wander about so capriciously and fancifully; they run so merrily over the moss in the woods, and beside the murmuring brooks; they climb so cheerfully up the slopes and hill-sides; they lead you through so much of freshness, and perfume, and varied scenery, that the pleasures of sight soon make you oblivious of bodily fatigue. The cemeteries placed among these wooded rocks and pastoral hills recall the wish of Ossian, “Oh, lay me, ye that see the light, near some rock of my hills; let the thick hazels be around, let the rustling oak be near; green be the place of my rest, and let the distant torrent be heard.”
Switzerland is rich in aquatic landscapes; no country except Norway and Sweden has such a number of inland lakes. The Lakes of Geneva, Luzern, Zurich, Thun, Neuchâtel, Bienne, and Zug are all historic, and have been the subject of numerous pen-pictures. The Lake of Geneva is the largest of Western Europe, being fifty-seven miles long, and its greatest width nine miles; it has its storms, its waves, and its surge; now placid as a mirror, now furious as the Atlantic; at times a deep-blue sea curling before the gentle waves, then a turbid ocean dark with the mud and sand from its lowest depths; the peasants on its banks still laugh at the idea of there being sufficient cordage in the world to reach to the bottom of the Genfer-See. It is eleven hundred and fifty-four feet above the sea, and having the same depth, its bottom coincides with the sea-level; the water is of such exceeding purity that when analyzed only 0.157 in 1000 contain foreign elements. The lake lies nearly in the form of a crescent stretching from the southwest towards the northeast. Mountains rise on every side, groups of the Alps of Savoy, Valais, and Jura. The northern or the Swiss shore is chiefly what is known as a côte, or a declivity that admits of cultivation, with spots of verdant pasture scattered at its feet and sometimes on its breast, with a cheery range of garden, chalet, wood, and spire; villas, hamlets, and villages seem to touch each other down by the banks, and to form but one town, whilst higher up, they peep out from among the vineyards or nestle under the shade of walnut-trees. At the foot of the lake is the white city of Geneva, of which Bancroft wrote, “Had their cause been lost, Alexander Hamilton would have retired with his bride to Geneva, where nature and society were in their greatest perfection.” The city is divided into two parts by the Rhone as it glides out of the basin of the lake on its course towards the Mediterranean. The Arve pours its turbid stream into the Rhone soon after that river issues from the lake. The contrast between the two rivers is very striking, the one being as pure and limpid as the other is foul and muddy. The Rhone seems to scorn the alliance and keeps as long as possible unmingled with his dirty spouse; two miles below the place of their junction a difference and opposition between this ill-assorted couple is still observable; these, however, gradually abate by long habit, till at last, yielding to necessity, and to the unrelenting law which joined them together, they mix in perfect union and flow in a common stream to the end of their course.[96] At the head of the lake begins the valley of the Rhone, where George Eliot said, “that the very sunshine seemed dreary mid the desolation of ruin and of waste in this long, marshy, squalid valley; and yet, on either side of the weary valley are noble ranges of granite mountains, and hill resorts of charm and health.” At the upper part of the lake are Montreux, Territet, and Vevay, sheltered from the north wind by the western spurs of the Alps, and celebrated for their beauty, and beloved of travellers; places of cure and convalescence for invalids, where the temperature even in winter is of extreme mildness, having a mean during the year of 48° Fahrenheit at seven o’clock in the morning, 57° at one o’clock in the afternoon, and 50° at nine o’clock in the evening; with a barometer register of 28¾ inches at the level of the lake. Standing at almost any point on the Lake of Geneva, to the one side towers Dent-du-Midi, calm, proud, and dazzling, like a queen of brightness; on the other side is seen the Jura through her misty shroud extending in mellow lines, and a cloudless sky vying in depths of color with the azure waters. So graceful the outlines, so varied the details, so imposing the framework in which this lake is set, well might Voltaire exclaim, “Mon lac est le premier,” (my lake is the first). For richness combined with grandeur, for softness around and impressiveness above, for a correspondence of contours on which the eye reposes with unwearied admiration, from the smiling aspect of fertility and cultivation at its lower extremity to the sublimity of a savage nature at its upper, no lake is superior to that of Geneva. Numberless almost are the distinguished men and women who have lived, labored, and died upon the shores of this fair lake; every spot has a tale to tell of genius, or records some history. In the calm retirement of Lausanne, Gibbon contemplated the decay of empires; Rousseau and Byron found inspiration on these shores; there is
“Clarens, sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep love!
Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought;