About half past three, a sledge drawn by four oxen was got ready to drag us up to the holt of trees, the goal to which we were tending: stretching ourselves on the straw spread over our vehicle, we set off along a rugged path, conducted aslant the steep slope of the mountain, vast prospects opening as we ascended; to our right the crags of the little Saleve—the variegated plains of Gex and Chablais, separated by the lake; below, Moneti, almost concealed in wood; behind, the mole, lifting up its pyramidical summit amidst the wild amphitheatre of glaciers, which lay this evening in dismal shadow, the sun being overcast, the Jura half lost in rainy mists, and a heavy storm darkening the Fort de l’Ecluse. Except a sickly gleam cast on the snows of the Buet, not a ray of sunshine enlivened our landscape.
This sorrowful colouring agreed but too well with the dejection of my spirits. I suffered melancholy recollections to take full possession of me, and glancing my eyes over the vast map below, sought out those spots where I had lived so happy with my lovely Margaret. On them did I eagerly gaze—absorbed in the consciousness of a fatal, irreparable loss, I little noticed the transports expressed by my companion at the grand effects of light and shade, which obeyed the movements of the clouds; nor was I more attentive to the route of our oxen, which, perfectly familiarized with precipices, preferred their edge to the bank on the other side, and by this choice gave us an opportunity of looking down more than a thousand feet perpendicularly on the wild shrubberies and shattered rocks deep below, at the base of the mountain. In general I shrink back from such bird’s-eye prospects with my head in a whirl, and yet, by a most unaccountable fascination, feel a feverish impulse to throw myself into the very gulph I abhor; but to-day I lay in passive indifference, listlessly extended on our moving bed.
Its progress being extremely deliberate, we had leisure to observe, as we crept along, a profusion of Alpine flowers; but none of those gorgeous insects mentioned by Saussure as abounding on Saleve were fluttering about them. This was no favourable day for butterfly excursions; the flowers laden with heavy drops, the forerunners of still heavier rain, hung down their heads. We passed several chalets, formed of mud and stone, instead of the neat timber, with which those on the Swiss mountains are constructed. Meagre peasants, whose sallow countenances looked quite of a piece with the sandy hue of their habitations, kept staring at us from crevices and hollow places: the fresh roses of a garden are not more different from the rank weeds of an unhealthy swamp, than these wretched objects from the ruddy inhabitants of Switzerland.
My heart sank as we were driven alongside of one of these squalid groups, huddled together under a blasted beech in expectation of a storm. The wind drove the smoke and sparks of a fire just kindled at the root of the tree, full in the face of an infant, whose mother had abandoned it to implore our charity with outstretched withered hands. The poor helpless being filled the air with waitings, and being tightly swaddled lip in yellow rags, according to Savoyarde custom, exhibited an appearance in form and colour not unlike that of an overgrown pumpkin thrown on the ground out of the way. How should I have enjoyed setting its limbs at liberty, and transporting it to the swelling bosom of a Bernese peasant! such as I have seen in untaxed garments, red, blue and green, with hair falling in braids mixed with flowers and silver trinkets, hurrying along to some wake or wedding, with that firm step and smiling hilarity which the consciousness of freedom inspires.
A few minutes dragging beyond the tree just mentioned, we reached the bold verdant slopes of delicate short herbage which crown the crags of the mountain. We now moved smoothly along the turf, brushing it with our hands to extract its aromatic fragrance, and having no longer rough stones to encounter, our conveyance became so agreeable that we regretted our arrival before a chalet, under a clump of weather-beaten beach. These are the identical trees, so far and widely discovered, on the summit of Saleve, and the point to which we had been tending.
Seating ourselves on the very edge of a rocky cornice, we surveyed the busy crowded territory of Geneva, the vast reach of the lake, its coast, thickset with castles, towns, and villages, and the long line of the Jura protecting these richly cultivated possessions. Turning round, we traced the course of the Arve up to its awful sanctuary, the Alps of Savoy, above which rose the Mont-Blanc in deadly paleness, backed by a gloomy sky; nothing could form a stronger contrast to the populous and fertile plains in front of the mountain than this chaos of snowy peaks and melancholy deserts, the loftiest in the old world, held up in the air, and beaten, in spite of summer, with wintry storms.
I know not how long we should have remained examining the prospect had the weather been favourable, and had we enjoyed one of those serene evenings to be expected in the month of July. Many such have I passed in my careless childish days, stretched out on the brow of this very mountain, contemplating the heavenly azure of the lake, the innumerable windows of the villas below blazing in the setting sun, and the glaciers suffused by its last ray with a blushing pink. How often, giving way to youthful enthusiasm, have I peopled these singularly varied peaks with gnomes and fairies, the distributors of gold and crystal to those who adventurously scaled their lofty abode.
This evening my fancy was led to no such gay aërial excursions; sad realities chained it to the earth, and to the scene before my eyes, which, in lowering, sombre hue, corresponded with my interior gloom. A rude blast driving us off the margin of the precipices, we returned to the shelter of the beech. There we found some disappointed butterfly catchers, probably of the watch-making tribe, and a silly boy gaping after them with a lank net and empty boxes. This being Monday, I thought the Saleve had been delivered from such intruders; but it seems that the rage for natural history has so victoriously pervaded all ranks of people in the republic, that almost every day in the week sends forth some of its journeymen to ransack the neighbouring cliffs, and transfix unhappy butterflies.
Silversmiths and toymen, possessed by the spirit of De Luc and De Saussure’s lucubrations, throw away the light implements of their trade, and sally forth with hammer and pickaxe to pound pebbles and knock at the door of every mountain for information. Instead of furbishing up teaspoons and sorting watch-chains, they talk of nothing but quartz and feldspath. One flourishes away on the durability of granite, whilst another treats calcareous rocks with contempt; but as human pleasures are seldom perfect and permanent, acrimonious disputes too frequently interrupt the calm of the philosophic excursion. Squabbles arise about the genus of a coralite, or concerning that element which has borne the greatest part in the convulsion of nature. The advocate of water too often sneaks home to his wife with a tattered collar, whilst the partisan of fire and volcanoes lies vanquished in a puddle, or winding up the clue of his argument in a solitary ditch. I cannot help thinking so diffused a taste for fossils and petrifactions of no very particular benefit to the artisans of Geneva, and that watches would go as well, though their makers were less enlightened.