MY DEAR:—
Well, I waked up this morning, and the first thought was, "Here I am in the valley of Chamouni, right under the shadow of Mont Blanc, that I have studied about in childhood and found on the atlas." I sprang up, and ran to the window, to see if it was really there where I left it last night. Yes, true enough, there it was! right over our heads, as it were, blocking up our very existence; filling our minds with its presence; that colossal pyramid of dazzling snow! Its lower parts concealed by the roofs, only the three rounded domes of the summit cut their forms with icy distinctness on the intense blue of the sky!
On the evening before I had taken my last look at about nine o'clock, and had mentally resolved to go out before daybreak and repeat Coleridge's celebrated hymn; but I advise any one who has any such liturgic designs to execute them over night, for after a day of climbing one acquires an aptitude for sleep that interferes with early rising. When I left last evening its countenance was "filled with rosy light," and they tell us, that hours before it is daylight in the valley this mountain top breaks into brightness, like that pillar of fire which enlightened the darkness of the Israelites.
I rejoice every hour that I am among these scenes in my familiarity with the language of the Bible. In it alone can I find vocabulary and images to express what this world of wonders excites. Mechanically I repeat to myself, "The everlasting mountains were scattered; the perpetual hills did bow; his ways are everlasting." But as straws, chips, and seaweed play in a thousand fantastic figures on the face of the ocean, sometimes even concealing the solemn depths beneath, so the prose of daily existence mixes itself up with the solemn poetry of life, here as elsewhere.
You must have a breakfast, and then you cannot rush out and up Mont Blanc ad libitum; you must go up in the regular appointed way, with mule and guides. This matter of guides is perfectly systematized here; for, the mountains being the great overpowering fact of life, it follows that all that enterprise and talent which in other places develop themselves in various forms, here take the single channel of climbing mountains. In America, if a man is a genius he strikes out a new way of cleaning cotton; but in Chamouni, if he is a genius he finds a new way of going up Mont Blanc.
As a sailor knows every timber, rope, and spar of his ship, and seems to identify his existence with her, so these guides their mountains. The mountains are their calendar, their book, their newspaper, their cabinet, herbarium, barometer, their education, and their livelihood.
In fine, behold us about eight o'clock, C., S., W., little G., and self, in all the bustle of fitting out in the front of our hotel. Two guides, Balmat and Alexandre, lead two mules, long-eared, slow-footed, considerate brutes, who have borne a thousand ladies over a thousand pokerish places, and are ready to bear a thousand more. Equipped with low-backed saddles, they stand, their noses down, their eyes contemplatively closed, their whole appearance impressing one with an air of practical talent and reliableness. Your mule is evidently safe and stupid as any conservative of any country; you may be sure that no erratic fires, no new influx of ideas will ever lead him to desert the good old paths, and tumble you down precipices. The harness they wear is so exceedingly ancient, and has such a dilapidated appearance, as if held together only by the merest accident, that I could not but express a little alarm on mounting.
"Those girths—won't they break?"
"O, no, no, mademoiselle!" said the guides. In fact, they seem so delighted with their arrangements, that I swallow my doubts in silence. A third mule being added for the joint use of the gentlemen, and all being equipped with iron-pointed poles, off we start in high spirits.
A glorious day; air clear as crystal, sky with as fixed a blue as if it could not think a cloud; guides congratulate us, "Qu'il fait très beau!" We pass the lanes of the village, our heads almost on a level with the flat stone-laden roofs; our mules, with their long rolling pace, like the waves of the sea, give to their riders a facetious wag of the body that is quite striking. Now the village is passed, and see, a road banded with green ribands of turf. S.'s mule and guide pass on, and head the party. G. rides another mule. C. and W. leap along trying their alpenstocks; stopping once in a while to admire the glaciers, as their brilliant forms appear through the pines.