Ere long, even these traces of vegetation became more scarce, and the appearance of every thing around us wilder and more steril. Still the brilliant peaks of the Wildgrad Kögle gleamed brightly before us, and beckoned us on.
Our path lay now, steep and rugged, along the edge of a ravine, at the bottom of which we heard the torrent chafing and roaring many a yard below us. There was a precipitous bank of rocks and screes to our right, quite unclimbable, which seemed only to want the will—they certainly had the way—to topple us into the abyss. Just as we were turning an abrupt angle very gingerly, with our eyes fixed on our slippery path, and longing for an elephant's trunk, to try the sound bits from the rotten ones, we suddenly heard a rushing "sough," like the falling of a moist snow avalanche, and a cloud passed across the sun. Glancing hastily upwards, I—yes I, in the body at this present, inditing this faithful description of my chase,—saw, not a hundred paces from me, an enormous vulture! Any thing so fiercely, so terribly grand, as this great bird, saw I never before, and can scarcely hope to see again. He was so near that we could distinctly see the glare of his fierce eye, and the hard bitter grip of his clenched talons. The sweep of his vast wings was enormous—I dare not guess how broad from tip to tip; and their rushing noise, as he beat the air in his first labored strokes, sounded strangely wild and spirit-like in the mountain stillness. A dozen strange strokes, and he took a wild swoop round to our right, and away, like a cloud before the blast, till a neighboring peak hid him from our sight, followed by a wild shout of astonishment from Joseph. I opened not my mouth, or if I did—left it open.
Nothing ever gave me such a feeling of reality as the sight of this vast vulture so near me. Often and often had I seen them, both in Switzerland and the Tyrol, sailing so high that, although well up the mountain flank myself, I almost doubted whether they were realities, or mere muscæ volitantes, produced by staring up in to the clear bright sky, with one's head thrown back. This fellow there was no doubt of—we saw his very beard! We were really then chamois-hunting—we had penetrated into the very den of the mountain tyrant. No fear of gigs and green parasols here; we were above the world!
Soon after our friend had departed, and we had recovered from the astonishment into which his unexpected visit had thrown us, we reached the end of our mauvais pas, and found ourselves at the foot of a wild valley, entirely shut in by ranges of lofty cliffs, with here and there patches of snow lying on the least inclined spots. In front, still far above us, towered the wild rock masses of the Wildgrad Kögle. The Kögle itself ran up into one sharp peak, that seemed from where we were, to terminate in a point. Great part of its base was concealed by a range of precipices, with broad sheets of snow here and there, resting at an extraordinary high angle, as we soon found to our cost, and having their crests notched, and pillared, and serrated in the wildest manner. The floor of the valley was covered with masses of rock and boulder, hurled from the surrounding cliffs, and heaps and sheets of rough gravel, ground and crushed by the avalanches, and fissured by the torrents of melted snow. The silence of the Alp-spirit, as silent as death itself, was in it; only at intervals was heard the whispering 'sough' of some slip of snow, dislodged by the warmth of the mid-day sun.
We advanced stealthily, concealing ourselves behind the boulders, and searched valley and cliff in vain for our prey. Joseph was the proud possessor of a telescope, mysteriously fashioned out of paper and cardboard; a pretty good one, nevertheless, brought from Italy by some travelling pedlar, and an object of great veneration, but one which failed in discovering a single chamois. Our only chance now was that they might be feeding in some of the smaller valleys, between the cliffs at the head of the basin in which we were and the Kögle itself.
"Feeding! what could they be feeding on, when you say yourself that you left all kinds of 'green stuff' behind you long ago."
So I thought, too, doubtless, by this time, most impatient reader; but on the screes at the head of the valley, Joseph showed me, for the first time, the plant on which these extraordinary animals in a great measure live. It has a thick green, trilobate leaf, and a flower so delicate and gauze-like, that one wonders how it can bear for a moment the harsh storms to which it is exposed. Its petals have a most curious crumpled appearance, and are of the softest pink imaginable—almost transparent. As for its class and order, you must go elsewhere for them; I know them not; nor the name either which the Latins would have called it if they had been aware of its existence. Joseph called it "gemsenkraut," or chamois herb, and that was enough for me.
Having finished our botanical investigations, we pushed on to the upper end of the valley, and found that the cliffs, and screes, and snow-patches looked uglier and steeper the nearer we approached them. However, there was no retreat—onward we must go, or be declared "nidding" through the length and breadth of the Tyrol.
Oh! those screes—those screes! lying at an angle of goodness knows how much with the horizon—sharp, slaty, angular pieces of stone, like savage hatchets, slippery as glass, glancing from under our feet, and casting us down sideways on their abominable edges, "sliddering" down by the ton, carrying our unfortunate persons yards below where we wanted to go, crashing and clattering, and then dancing and bounding far down into the valley, like mischievous gnomes, delighted with the bumpings and bruisings they had treated us to! How Joseph did anathematize! For my part, mine was a grief "too deep for swears!"
After crossing, still ascending, two or three beds of screes, we came to the edge of the first snow-field; not very broad, it is true, but lying at a higher angle than I ever thought possible, and frozen as hard as marble on the surface—one sheet of ice, with an agreeable fall of some hundred feet at its lower edge. We were in despair! We had now got excited and confident—our "blood was up;" and here came "the impossible to stop us."