Baedeker truly says: “The glacier—the most striking feature of the Alpine world—is a stupendous mass of purest azure ice.” No scene in Switzerland is so strikingly and so strangely beautiful as when, in some fertile and wooded valley, the glittering pinnacles of a glacier are suddenly presented to our gaze, in the immediate proximity of wheat fields, fruit trees, smiling meadows and human habitations. These extensive glaciers are long arms of solid ice, resembling a thousand frozen cataracts, occupying entire valleys, and attaining a thickness estimated at 1,500 feet. The surface of these glaciers is by no means smooth and regular. Here one frowning terrace rises above another; there the glacier swells and rises into huge pinnacles and towering pyramids of purest ice. Again the surface is torn into every conceivable shape by great crevasses which sometimes sink to an enormous depth. In crossing these glaciers, guides, spiked shoes, Alpenstocks, strong ropes, and ice axes are indispensable.
A GLACIER IN SWITZERLAND.
The rope is tied around the waist of each one of us, guides and all, leaving eight or ten feet of rope between each two persons, one guide at each end of the rope. Thus we, “with cautious step and slow,” start across a sea of ice, all following the foremost guide and stepping in his tracks. Sometimes every foothold has to be cut with an ax. Now we come to a deep crevasse into which we are let down by a rope. Once safely down the guide cuts our way in the ice until we gain two ladders, one above the other, that have been placed there for that purpose. Notwithstanding one’s double suit of underclothing and heavy wraps, he becomes so chilled and benumbed that he gradually loses his native activity. Hence the greatest caution is necessary to get back without broken limbs. As one sees these pinnacles and pyramids of purest azure ice bathed in the golden splendor of the setting sun, their shining steps look like a crystal stairway reaching from earth to heaven. A glacier reflecting the sun’s evening glories could perhaps not be better described than by saying, it looks like heaven hung out to air.
“There are things whose strong reality
Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues
More beautiful than our fantastic sky.”
We must now quit the glacier field, and go up on the Aeggischhorn. Reader, you must know that the way is long and rough and steep and hard. But what man has done, man can do. The object is worth the labor. What were a month’s climbing, even though it be doubly difficult, when it is to be rewarded with the prospect from yonder imperial height? We cross chasm after chasm, struggle from cliff to cliff, go from height to height, until we stand 14,000 feet above the world! Around us are a thousand snow-capped peaks rising up until they “melt into and mingle with the skies.”
“The sun seems pausing above the mountain’s brow
As if he left reluctantly a scene so lovely now.”
The rays of light like arrows pierce the ice-covered rocks, and set the Alpine world on fire. The bended heavens not far above us blush to behold the sight. Gods, isn’t it glorious! Slow wanes the day from these sequestered valleys. As the tourists watch the sun gather up his spent shafts and put them back into his golden quiver, they involuntarily take off their hats and contemplate the “afterglow” in silence.