In 1882 I went by Austrian mail-steamer from Corfu to Trieste, 28 April to 1 May. She came from Alexandria, and was late in reaching Corfu; and it was midnight when I went on board. She was lying in the roadstead, and everything was silent then; but, as soon as she got out to sea and rolled, there were unexpected and alarming sounds. I discovered in the morning that she had a large consignment of wild beasts on board. They were confined in crates that looked very much too small and not nearly strong enough; but I was told that, if beasts were cooped up tight, they could not use their strength. An old lady remarked to me that she thought it very dangerous to have so many lions on board, and she took the precaution of locking her cabin door at night. I admit I had a pretty bad nightmare of an unknown animal, with a neck like a giraffe’s, standing on deck with his neck down the companion-ladder, the neck growing longer and longer till it nearly reached my cabin door.
I once spent a night on the summit of Mount Etna, 22-23 September 1883, and I have never seen anything more uncanny than the cone of that volcano, gleaming like metal in the moonlight, and sending up vast clouds of steam. It stands about 10,700 feet above Catania; and I made the ascent in about eleven hours from there, going by carriage to Nicolosi, and then by mule to the hut at the foot of the cone.—This hut was on the site of the new observatory.—The cone was troublesome, as my feet sank in at every step, and brought out puffs of sulphur: looking back, I could see all my footsteps smoking, and likewise those of my two guides. The crater was full of this sulphureous steam, and there was no view down into it, nor into the Valle del Bove, as the wind drove the steam down there. Apart from this, the view was clear. I saw the sun set from the summit of the cone, came down to the hut for shelter in the night, and saw the sun rise from the Torre del Filosofo, not far from the hut and nearly level with it.—The philosopher was Empedocles, but the tower is Roman, and may have been built for Hadrian, when he went up to see the sun rise.
There is not so wide a view from any of the summits in a chain of mountains like the Alps, nor do you seem to be at such a height as on this isolated mountain, although the height may really be much greater. The world seemed like a map spread out below me; and I saw the Shadow. As the sun rose, I began to see another great mountain standing in the middle of Sicily; and then the mountain faded, being only Etna’s shadow on the haze. It is the same thing as the Spectre of the Brocken. I have been up the Brocken also, 14 August 1874, but have not seen the Spectre.
After seeing the view from the Faulhorn at sunrise, 22 August 1849, my father noted in his diary:—“Looking at my three Swiss companions as they stood with myself on the apex of this mountain in the clear smooth snow, I could not help thinking of our being the only created beings who could be enjoying this magnificent spectacle.” He always had this sort of feeling that people ought to make more effort to see the wonders of the world.
This same feeling was expressed by a distinguished foreigner in rather an unexpected way. In 1900 a lady was saying in his presence that she did not mean to go to Paris for the Exhibition. He struck in:—“You can go, and you will not go? At the Last Day the Good God will say to you, ‘You did not go to the Paris Exhibition when-you-might-have-gone. You have not used the Talent that-I-gave-you. Go DOWN. Go DOWN.” It had not struck her in that light before.
In my younger days I took some trouble to see things. And it was worth the trouble, to see Moscow from the Sparrow hills, whence Napoleon saw it first, or Damascus from the heights of Salahîyeh, where Mohammed turned away, lest he should think no more of Paradise. Or, apart from history and association, to see things so beautiful as the Alhambra and the Generalife at Granada, and the deserted city of Mistra on the mountains overlooking Sparta.
When I first went to Athens, in the spring of 1880, the Acropolis still had its mediæval ramparts; and, as one stood on the Acropolis, they shut the modern city out of view, and one was there alone with the temples and the sky. These ramparts were demolished before I went there next, in the spring of 1882; and before I went again, in the spring of 1888, the whole of the Acropolis had been excavated and laid bare down to the solid rock. The results were of the highest interest; but the charm was gone. I felt that I had seen a dragon-fly hovering in the Attic air; and my dragon-fly was now a lifeless specimen, set out with pins upon a card.
I happened once to arrive at Athens in a sea-fog. The steamer had slowly hooted its way into the Piræus in the early morning; and I was driving up to Athens soon after sunrise. With the sun behind it, the Acropolis loomed up through the fog, as I came near; and this is the only time that I have seen it looking as I feel it ought to look. It seemed a vast and overwhelming mass; whereas in broad daylight it looks rather small, and quite puny, when one sees it from a distance. I have noticed that the Pyramids at Gizeh also look puny at a distance: yet the dome of St Peter’s looks its largest at fifteen or twenty miles from Rome. I cannot give a reason; but it is a fact.
Apart from that curious look upon its face, I have never found the Sphinx at Gizeh as impressive as the Sphingeion in Bœotia, the sphinx of Œdipus outside the gates of Thebes. This is merely a hill shaped like a sphinx; and there must have been another such hill at Gizeh, from which the Sphinx was formed. There is another within a walk of here; but it takes the shape only from a certain point of view—the western rock at Haytor, as one sees it on the road from Widdicombe. In a Dartmoor mist it looks stupendous, and surpasses the Sphingeion and the Sphinx.
There is another sight within a walk of here, also recalling Greece; and this is Grimspound. When I have visitors who have been in Greece, I take them over Hameldon, so as to come down on Grimspound from above. I give no hint beforehand, and just wait to hear what they will say. And they always say:—“Mycenæ.” The impression goes off, when one begins to think of details; but at first sight it is vivid.