My nephew happened to be personally acquainted with M. Fidèle Eugster, whose fertile brain devised a scheme for building solid pylons over which should run an aerial line from Chamonix up to the Aiguille du Midi, three thousand eight hundred and forty-two meters—only a little less than nine hundred and sixty-five meters less than the monarch himself. He happened to be there himself and he invited Will and me to ride up as far as the construction-car went. Ruth contented herself with watching us and taking a walk about town. The car, seating twenty persons, starts from Chamonix and swings up two thousand meters over the twenty-seven of these immense pylons already constructed. They are from twenty-five to seventy-five meters apart. The power-station, where there are electric motors of seventy-five horse-power each, is near Pierre Pointue at a height of one thousand six hundred and seventy-nine meters. From there over twenty-four more pylons a cable one thousand four hundred meters long took us to the foot of the Aiguille. There we got into a smaller basket-car and were swung up to a protogen pinnacle directly opposite the Grands Mulets. From there we were taken to the first tension-pylon which breaks the enormous stretch to the Col du Midi, where the terminal station will be constructed. It is a tremendous swoop of between eight and nine hundred meters and the last stathmos will be nearly six hundred more. The car glissades down the curves; then the cable pulls it up the incline. It is like a series of gigantic scallops but there is no shock, no jar; only a clicking as you pass the pylons.
Next to my flight in the hydro-aeroplane this was the greatest experience of my life. What can I say of that swoop through the air? Words utterly fail. Below lay the valley with its thickly clustered hotels and houses and the ramifications of the rushing rivers and streams like veins in a dissected hand. Below us lay the glacier with its séracs diminished to etchings. All around rose the haughty Brotherhood scornfully watching the machinations of puny, mighty-minded man. They know that they can sometimes catch him napping, but only his body can they hurt. His soul is bigger and grander than their icy hearts. They can fling down avalanches and hurl enormous boulders or bullet-like stones at him, tearing themselves to pieces in their blind fury to do so, but here he is above them. They can’t shake off the shackles which his genius and his power fasten to their gigantic frames. Atlas must bear the Earth on his shoulders and there is no Perseus to relieve him of the weight.
Compared to the cost of some of the other Swiss roads this aerial line is comparatively inexpensive. It has been estimated that twenty-four million francs will build it and equip it. Its success will doubtless cause other “inaccessible peaks” to be harnessed in the same way. All the difficulty and most of the danger—I suppose one might be struck by lightning or die of heart-failure on the way up—and a vast amount of time, will be eliminated.
While we were in the valley we had a most glorious sunset. I will not attempt to describe the indescribable; there are no terms to differentiate the tints that glowed on the clouds and the shades of lavender and violet and royal purple. There is nothing more impressive than to see the outburst of cloud masses from a mountain-valley rising dark and stormy and then, as it were, putting on the panoply of their royal state—furnished them by their servant the sun. I recalled Moore’s poem on Mont Blanc at sunset:—
“’Twas at this instant—while there glowed
This last, intensest gleam of light—
Suddenly thro’ the opening road
The valley burst upon my sight!
That glorious valley with its lake
And Alps on Alps in clusters swelling,