I might as well rest my pen, for I might write until my hand would become palsied from use, and you might read my writing until your eyes would grow dim with age, and yet I could convey to you no just conception of the Matterhorn whose brow really seems ambitious of the skies! nor yet of the majestic Jungfrau whose head goes careering ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, thousand feet towards heaven. It is noonday when I first stand at the foot of the Jungfrau, the young wife. The clouds have come down and settled upon and around the mountain until at least half of it is obscured from view. But my eyes are something like daggers piercing the clouds through, for I want to get a glimpse of the mountain as near to heaven as possible. All at once the clouds begin to rise. They lift themselves clear above the mountain’s brow. Ah, me! I have to shut the door close on my fluttering, my rising, soul, lest it pass outward and upward in astonishment. This is the Jungfrau, vailed in her dazzling shroud of eternal snow, and I am sure Ruskin was correct when he said: “The seen walls of lost Eden could not have been more beautiful, or more awful round Heaven the gates of sacred death.” Now, as if the mountain’s brow was too sacred to be bared long at a time, the clouds, like a mighty sheet, begin to unfold and come down. The mountain is soon wrapt again in thick clouds, but she lifts her ambitious head aloft. Above and beyond the clouds her icy crown glistens in the light of the sun.
The people here say this is the best place in Switzerland to see an avalanche. I am determined to see one, if I have to remain here all summer. I see none the first day. As night approaches, I cross a frightfully deep and yawning chasm, and come over on the Wengernalp, 3,000 feet high, which leaves me still 13,000 feet below the top of the Jungfrau. Next morning, about half-past seven o’clock, I hear a strange noise, apparently in Heaven, as though the angels had revolted. The noise is in the direction of the Jungfrau, whose head is still hidden in the clouds. The noise is heard, but the cause is unseen. It seems that a thousand cyclones and thunder-storms have combined into one. It comes “nearer, clearer, deadlier” than before. All eyes are turned in one direction, and now we see a world of white snow bursting forth like a thunderbolt from the bosom of the clouds. It comes leaping down the mountain side from crag to crag, from peak to peak, across crack and glen and crevasse. Gathering momentum with each successive leap, it sweeps down the mountain side with such deafening noise and terrific force that nothing on earth could stay its onward progress. The earth trembles and the mountains reel as it leaps into the yawning chasm below.
“These are the Alps,
The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And throned Eternity in icy halls
Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
The avalanche—the thunderbolt of snow!
All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
Gather around these summits, as to show
How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.”
AMONG THE PEAKS.
After ascending Mount Blanc, I can but say, I have scaled thy heights, I have sniffed thy breeze, I have planted my feet upon thy glittering crown, but who, oh who, can comprehend thy glory! Oh thou monarch of mountains! I see thee in all thy majesty. Thy proportions are so vast and gigantic, thy form so regal and grand, that the eye in vain attempts to estimate them. Distance is annihilated by thy vastness, for thou art towering above us as if thou wouldst bear thy burden of virgin snow back to its native heaven. Yet above thy regal brow I see an eagle. For a moment he pauses with outstretched wings, as if to contemplate thy glory, and then screaming with delight and whirling himself in the air, he continues his onward, upward flight, as if he would clutch his talons in the fiery sun itself.