The road, about a mile before you reach this bay, is a regular glassy level, without any of those intervening hills of ice which I have mentioned; hills, which with the ideas, though false ones, of danger and difficulty, give those of beauty and magnificence too.
As you gradually approach the bay, you are struck with an awe, which increases every moment, as you come nearer, from the grandeur of a scene, which is one of the noblest works of nature: the beauty, the proportion, the solemnity, the wild magnificence of which, surpassing every possible effect of art, impress one strongly with the idea of its Divine Almighty Architect.
The rock on the east side, which is first in view as you approach, is a smooth and almost perpendicular precipice, of the same height as the fall; the top, which a little over-hangs, is beautifully covered with pines, firs, and ever-greens of various kinds, whose verdant lustre is rendered at this season more shining and lovely by the surrounding snow, as well as by that which is sprinkled irregularly on their branches, and glitters half melted in the sun-beams: a thousand smaller shrubs are scattered on the side of the ascent, and, having their roots in almost imperceptible clefts of the rock, seem to those below to grow in air.
The west side is equally lofty, but more sloping, which, from that circumstance, affords soil all the way, upon shelving inequalities of the rock, at little distances, for the growth of trees and shrubs, by which it is almost entirely hid.
The most pleasing view of this miracle of nature is certainly in summer, and in the early part of it, when every tree is in foliage and full verdure, every shrub in flower; and when the river, swelled with a waste of waters from the mountains from which it derives its source, pours down in a tumultuous torrent, that equally charms and astonishes the beholder.
The winter scene has, notwithstanding, its beauties, though of a different kind, more resembling the stillness and inactivity of the season.
The river being on its sides bound up in frost, and its channel rendered narrower than in the summer, affords a less body of water to supply the cascade; and the fall, though very steep, yet not being exactly perpendicular, masses of ice are formed, on different shelving projections of the rock, in a great variety of forms and proportions.
The torrent, which before rushed with such impetuosity down the deep descent in one vast sheet of water, now descends in some parts with a slow and majestic pace; in others seems almost suspended in mid air; and in others, bursting through the obstacles which interrupt its course, pours down with redoubled fury into the foaming bason below, from whence a spray arises, which, freezing in its ascent, becomes on each side a wide and irregular frozen breast-work; and in front, the spray being there much greater, a lofty and magnificent pyramid of solid ice.
I have not told you half the grandeur, half the beauty, half the lovely wildness of this scene: if you would know what it is, you must take no information but that of your own eyes, which I pronounce strangers to the loveliest work of creation till they have seen the river and fall of Montmorenci.
In short, my dear, I am Montmorenci-mad.