It might be supposed that the presence of the sun heating the air would tend to keep it more transparent, by increasing its capacity to dissolve all visible cloud; and this indeed is the true action of the sun. But it is not the only action. His rays, as he climbed the eastern heaven, shot more and more deeply into the valley of St. Nicholas, the moisture of which rose as invisible vapour, remaining unseen as long as the air possessed sufficient warmth to keep it in the vaporous state. High up, however, the cold crags which had lost their heat by radiation the night before, acted like condensers upon the ascending vapour, and caused it to curdle into visible fog. The current, however, continued ascensional, and the clouds were slowly lifted above the tallest peaks, where they arranged themselves in fantastic forms, shifting and changing shape as they gradually melted away. One peak stood like a field-officer with his cap raised above his head, others sent straggling cloud-balloons upwards; but on watching these outliers they were gradually seen to disappear. At first they shone like snow in the sunlight, but as they became more attenuated they changed colour, passing through a dull red to a dusky purple hue, until finally they left no trace of their existence.
THE ROCKS WARMED. 1858.
SCENE FROM THE GÖRNER GRAT. 1858.
As the day advanced, warming the rocks, the clouds wholly disappeared, and a hyaline air formed the setting of both glaciers and mountains. I climbed to the Görner Grat to obtain a general view of the surrounding scene. Looking towards the origin of the Görner glacier the view was bounded by a wide col, upon which stood two lovely rounded eminences enamelled with snow of perfect purity. They shone like burnished silver in the sunlight, as if their surfaces had been melted and recongealed to frosted mirrors from which the rays were flung. To the right of these were the bounding crags of Monte Rosa, and then the body of the mountain itself, with its crest of crag and coat of snows. To the right of Monte Rosa, and almost rivalling it in height, was the vast mass of the Lyskamm, a rough and craggy mountain, to whose ledges clings the snow which cannot grasp its steeper walls, sometimes leaning over them in impending precipices, which often break, and send wild avalanches into the space below. Between the Lyskamm and Monte Rosa lies a large wide valley into which both mountains pour their snows, forming there the Western glacier of Monte Rosa[A]—a noble ice stream, which from its magnitude and permanence deserves to impose its name upon the trunk glacier. It extends downwards from the col which unites the two mountains; riven and broken at some places, but at others stretching white and pure down to its snow-line, where the true glacier emerges from the névé. From the rounded shoulders of the Twin Castor a glacier descends, at first white and shining, then suddenly broken into faults, fissures, and precipices, which are afterwards repaired, and the glacier joins that of Monte Rosa before the junction of the latter with the trunk stream. Next came a boss of rock, with a secondary glacier clinging to it as if plastered over it, and after it the Schwarze glacier, bounded on one side by the Breithorn, and on the other by the Twin Pollux. This glacier is of considerable magnitude. Over its upper portion rise the Twin eminences, pure and white; then follows a smooth and undulating space, after passing which the névé is torn up into a collection of peaks and chasms; these, however, are mended lower down, and the glacier moves smoothly and calmly to meet its brothers in the main valley. Next comes the Trifti glacier,[B] embraced on all sides by the rocky arms of the Breithorn; its mass is not very great, but it descends in a graceful sweep, and exhibits towards its extremity a succession of beautiful bands. Afterwards we have the glacier of the Petit Mont Cervin and those of St. Théodule, which latter are the last that empty their frozen cargoes into the valley of the Görner. All the glaciers here mentioned are welded together to a common trunk which squeezes itself through the narrow defile at the base of the Riffelhorn. Soon afterwards the moraines become confused, the glacier drops steeply to its termination, and ploughs up the meadows in front of it with its irresistible share.
In a line with the Riffelhorn, and rising over the latter so high as to make it almost vanish by comparison, was the Titan obelisk of the Matterhorn, from the base of which the Furgge glacier struggles downwards. On the other side are the Zmutt glacier, the Schönbühl, and the Hochwang, from the Dent Blanche; the Gabelhorn and Trift glaciers, from the summits which bear those names. Then come the glaciers of the Weisshorn. Describing a curve still farther to the right we alight on the peaks of the Mischabel, dark and craggy precipices from this side, though from the Æggischhorn they appear as cones of snow. Sweeping by the Alphubel, the Allaleinhorn, the Rympfischorn, and Strahlhorn—all of them majestic—we reach the pass of the Weissthor, and the Cima di Jazzi. This completes the glorious circuit within the observer's view.
COMPASS AT FAULT. 1858.
I placed my compass upon a piece of rock to find the bearing of the Görner glacier, and was startled at seeing the sun and it at direct variance. What the sun declared to be north, the needle affirmed to be south. I at first supposed that the maker had placed the S where the N ought to be, and vice versâ. On shifting my position, however, the needle shifted also, and I saw immediately that the effect was due to the rock of the Grat. Sometimes one end of the needle dipped forcibly, at other places it whirled suddenly round, indicating an entire change of polarity. The rock was evidently to be regarded as an assemblage of magnets, or as a single magnet full of "consequent points." A distance of transport not exceeding an inch was, in some cases, sufficient to reverse the position of the needle. I held the needle between the two sides of a long fissure a foot wide. The needle set along the fissure at some places, while at others it set across it. Sometimes a little jutting knob would attract the north end of the needle, while a closely adjacent little knob would forcibly repel it, and attract the south end. One extremity of a ledge three feet long was north magnetic, the other end was south magnetic, while a neutral point existed midway between the two, the ledge having therefore the exact polar arrangement of an ordinary bar-magnet. At the highest point of the rock the action appeared to be most intense, but I also found an energetic polarity in a mass at some distance below the summit.
MAGNETISM OF ROCKS. 1858.
Remembering that Professor Forbes had noticed some peculiar magnetic effect upon the Riffelhorn, I resolved to ascend it. Descending from the Grat we mounted the rocks which form the base of the horn; these are soft and soapy from the quantity of mica which they contain; the higher rocks of the horn are, however, very dense and hard. The ascent is a pleasant bit of mountain practice. We climbed the walls of rock, and wound round the ledges, seeking the assailable points. I tried the magnetic condition of the rocks as we ascended, and found it in general feeble. In other respects the Riffelhorn is a most remarkable mass. The ice of the Görner glacier of former ages, which rose hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet above its present level, encountered the horn in its descent, and was split by the latter, a diversion of the ice along the sides of the peak being the consequence. Portions of the vertical walls of the horn are polished by this action as if they had come from the hands of a lapidary, and the scratchings are as sharp and definite as if drawn by points of steel. I never saw scratchings so perfectly preserved: the finest lines are as clear as the deepest, a consequence of the great density and durability of the rock. The latter evidently contains a good deal of iron, and its surface near the summit is of the rich brown red due to the peroxide of the metal. When we fairly got among the precipices we left our hatchets behind us, trusting subsequently to our hands and feet alone. Squeezing, creeping, clinging, and climbing, in due time we found ourselves upon the summit of the horn.
ASCENT OF THE RIFFELHORN. 1858.