“The Roche Melon stands just in the track of the great storms which, brewed in the heated plains of Lombardy and Piedmont, come surging up through the valley of the Dora Riparia, and burst, hurling and crashing over the depression of Mont Cenis, to find or make a watery grave in the valley of the Arc. Of their combined fierceness and grandeur we were soon to have only too favourable an opportunity of judging, for scarcely more than five minutes after we had comfortably established ourselves under shelter, suddenly, without a moment’s warning, a perfect mitraille of hail smote the roof above us, tore through the mist like grape-shot through battle-smoke, and whitened the ground like snow. We closed the door carefully, for now came flash after flash of brilliant lightning, with sharp, angry, snapping thunder, which, if we had been a quarter of an hour later, would have made our position on the exposed northern side anything but pleasant. We congratulated ourselves on our good fortune, but were glad to pitch our axes amongst the débris of rock above us and await patiently the hoped-for dispersal of the fog. In a few minutes the hail ceased, the mist became somewhat brighter, rifts appeared in all directions, and, issuing forth, we were amply rewarded by such glimpses of the wonderful view as, if not fully satisfactory for topographical purposes, were, in a picturesque and artistic point of view, indescribably grand and interesting. The extent of level country visible is a remarkable feature in the view from the Roche Melon, as also in that from the summit of the Pourri, where Imseng not a little amused me on first catching sight of the plains of France stretching away till lost in the haze, by shouting in a fit of uncontrollable enthusiasm, ‘Ach! Das ist wunderschön!—ganz eben!’[12]
“We had not had more than time enough to seize the general features of the panorama and admire the special effects with their ever-changing and kaleidoscopic combinations, when the mist once more swooped upon us, again to be followed by hail, lightning, and thunder, and a fresh clearance. But this second visitation left behind it a further souvenir in the shape of a phenomenon with which most mountaineers are probably more or less familiar, but which I never met with to the same extent before—I allude to an electrified condition of the summit of the mountain and all objects on its surface by conduction. As the clouds swept by, every rock, every loose stone, the uprights of the rude railing outside the chapel, the ruined signal, our axes, my lorgnette and flask, and even my fingers and elbows, set up
“‘a dismal universal hiss.’
It was as though we were in a vast nest of excited snakes, or a battery of frying-pans, or listening at a short distance to the sustained note of a band of cigali in a chestnut wood—a mixture of comparisons which may serve sufficiently to convey the impression that the general effect was indescribable. I listened and looked and tried experiments for some time, but suddenly it burst out with an energy that suggested a coming explosion, or some equally unpleasant dénouement, and, dropping my axe, to whose performance I had been listening, I fairly bolted for the chapel.
