From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

by Henry M. Field

But all thoughts of our appearance vanish when once we begin to climb the mountain side. For two hours we kept winding in a zigzag path through the perpetual pine forest. At every turn in the road, or opening in the trees, we stopped to look at the valley below, where the objects grew smaller, as we receded further from them. Is it not so in life? As some one has said, "Everything will look small enough if we only get high enough." All rude noises died away in the distance, till there rose into the upper air only the sound of the streams that were rushing through the valley below.

At a chalet half way up the mountain a living chamois was kept for show. It was very young, and was suckled by a goat. It was touching to see how the little creature pined for freedom, and leaped against the sides of his pen. Child of the mountain, he seemed entitled to liberty, and I longed to break open his cage and set the little prisoner free, and see him bound away upon the mountain side.

Climbing, still climbing, another hour brings us to the top of the Montanvert, where we look down upon the Mer de Glace. Here all the party quit their mules, which are sent to another point, to meet us as we come down from the mountain—and taking our alpenstocks in hand (which are long staffs, with a spike at the end to stick in the ice, to keep ourselves from slipping), we descend to the Mer de Glace, an enormous glacier formed by the masses of snow and ice which collect during the long winters, filling up the whole space between two mountains. It was in studying the glaciers of Switzerland for a course of years, that Agassiz formed his glacial theory; and in seeing here how the steady pressure of such enormous masses of ice, weighing millions of tons, have carried down huge boulders of granite, which lie strewn all along its track, one can judge how the same causes, operating at a remote period, and on a vast scale, may have changed the whole surface of the globe.

But we must not stop to philosophize, for we are now just at the edge of the glacier, and need our wits about us, and eyes too, to keep a sharp lookout for dangerous places, and steady feet, and hands keeping a tight hold of our trusty alpenstocks. The Mer de Glace is just what its name implies—a Sea of Ice—and looks as if, when some wild torrent came tumbling through the awful pass, it had been suddenly stopped by the hand of the Almighty, and frozen as it stood. And so it stands, its waves dashed up on high, and its chasms yawning below. It is said to reach up into the mountains for miles. We can see how it goes up to the top of the gorge and disappears on the other side; but those who wish to explore its whole extent, may walk over it or beside it all day. Though dangerous in some places, yet where tourists cross, they can pick their way with a little care. The more timid ones cling closely to the guide, holding him fast by the hand. One lady of our party, who had four bearers to carry her in a Sedan chair, found her head swim as she crossed. But C——, who had been gathering flowers all the way up the mountain, made them into a bouquet, which she fastened to one end of her alpenstock, and striking the other firmly in the ice, moved on with as free a step as if she were walking along some breezy path among our Berkshire Hills.

But the most difficult part of the course is not in crossing the Mer de Glace, but in coming down on the other side. It is not always facilis descensus; it is sometimes difficilis descensus. There is one part of the course called the Mauvais Pas, which winds along the edge of the cliff, and would hardly be passable but for an iron rod fastened in the side of the rock, to which one clings for support, and looking away from the precipice on the other side, makes the passage in safety.

And now we come to the Chapeau, a little chalet perched on a shelf of rock, from which one can look down thousands of feet into the Vale of Chamouni. As we pass along by the side of the glacier, we see nearer the end some frightful crevasses, which the boldest guide would not dare to cross. The ice is constantly wearing away; indeed so great is the discharge of water from the melting of the ice and the snow, that a rapid river is all the time rushing out of it. The Arveiron takes its rise in the Mer de Glace, while the Arve rises in another glacier higher up the valley. As Coleridge says, in his Hymn to Mont Blanc,

The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly;

the sound of the streams, mingling with the waterfalls on the sides of the mountains, filling the air with a perpetual sound like the roaring of the sea.

Coleridge speaks also of Mont Blanc as rising from a "silent sea of pines." Nothing can be more accurate than this picture of the universal forest, which overflows all the valleys, and reaches up the mountains, to the edge of eternal snows. At such heights the pines are the only trees that live, and there they stand through all the storms of winter. Looking around on this landscape, made up of forest and snow, alternately dark and bright, it seems as if Mont Blanc were the Great White Throne of the Almighty, and as if these mighty forests that stand quivering on the mountain side, were the myriads of mankind gathered into this Valley of Judgment, and here standing rank on rank, waiting to hear their doom.