I will not say which of the eight persevered and made the ascent. It is a fault, a common fault, in travelers, this boasting of their own achievements, and because one has a command of type and presses I do not see why he should use those facilities to record his own performances. If any one else of the party publishes an account of the excursion I shall see my name in this connection, but never will I write it.
But I—or rather, that is, the one who did persevere to the summit, was rewarded with a sight that amply repaid me—or him—for my, or his labor. There at his feet, bathed in the light of the sinking sun, was the valley of the Rhone, brilliant with its covering of green, relieved by the silvery river meandering through its center. To the right, crossing and cutting off the valley, are the Bernese Alps, their snow-covered peaks glistening in the sunlight. It was a magnificent view, giving us a good idea of the glories of nature that were to be entered upon on the morrow.
When the Gorge du Trient was organized, nature must have been laboring under an attack of cholera morbus.
At some remote period in the history of the earth there was a solid mountain, but some glacier, or earthquake, or other irresistible force, cleft it in twain, and the ever present water, nature’s slow but exceedingly certain worker, poured into the chasm to finish what the first rude force commenced.
There is a great plenty of water stored away in these mountains, and it has been pouring through this rent in the bosom of the earth, wearing away a few feet here and a few feet there, augmenting in volume as the space for it increased, until it has become a wild, resistless torrent, which doesn’t dance, but rushes through the rocks, till after its brief attack of delirium tremens it loses itself in the Rhone and finally in Lake Geneva, and becomes as quiet and well-behaved as you could wish.
The scenic artist who painted “The Devil’s Glen” in the Black Crook, had doubtless visited this gorge. If devils ever came together in convention, and wanted a place, the horrible wildness of which should be absolutely satanic, they could find it here.
The rocks on either hand are nearly five hundred feet high, and the ravine twists and turns in every direction, the sides approaching each other so nearly at every turn at their summit that the gorge seems to be but an immense vaulted cavern with an entirely irresponsible torrent of water gyrating through it.
It drops itself down sheer precipices, in places thirty feet, and everywhere rushes, it never dances, but rushes with an ugly, wicked, vindictive rush, a cruel rush, a resistless force, as if it wanted to catch something in its merciless grasp, and toss it against rocks, grasp it when it came back, and hurl it down a dizzy fall of cruel, jagged rocks, and shoot it way up the side of the gorge, on other rocks, and finally release it when pounded to a jelly, in the river below.
This water is well-behaved enough when it reaches the river, but up here in the gorge it is the wildest, most cruel, most devilish and wicked water I ever saw.
Niagara impresses one with its calm, resistless strength, Minnehaha is beautiful enough to induce one, almost, to go over it, but this torrent in the gorge has strength only. It is a fiendish, impish body of water.