THE GREATEST
WONDERS
OF THE
WORLD

MER DE GLACE, MONT BLANC. Frontispiece.

GREATEST
WONDERS
of the WORLD

AS SEEN AND DESCRIBED
BY FAMOUS WRITERS

EDITED AND TRANSLATED

By ESTHER SINGLETON

AUTHOR OF

“TURRETS, TOWERS AND TEMPLES,” “GREAT PICTURES,”
“PARIS,” AND “A GUIDE TO THE OPERA,” AND TRANSLATOR
OF THE MUSIC DRAMAS OF RICHARD WAGNER

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD
LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor
Nos. 91 to 115 BIBLE HOUSE

Copyright, 1900, By Dodd, Mead & Co.
Copyright, 1906, By Louis Klopsch

Preface

In my former collections of objects of interest to the tourist, I have confined myself to masterpieces of painting and architecture. The success of those books has encouraged me to carry the idea still further and make a compilation of pleasurable and striking impressions produced upon thoughtful travellers by a contemplation of the wonders of nature.

The range is somewhat limited, for I have confined myself to the description of the grand, the curious and the awe-inspiring in nature, leaving the beauties of landscape for future treatment. Those who miss the Lakes of Killarney or the vine-clad hills of the Rhine therefore will remember that in the following pages I have purposely neglected beautiful scenery.

The professional traveller, by which I mean the emissary of a scientific society, appears very seldom here, because it is the effect produced rather than the topographical or detailed description that I have sought. I hope this book will appeal to that large class of readers that takes pleasure in travelling by imagination, as well as to those who have actually seen the objects described and pictured here.

It is interesting to note the difference between the old and the modern travellers. The day of the Marco Polos has passed; the traveller of old seemed to feel himself under an obligation to record marvels and report trifling details, while the modern traveller is more concerned about describing or analyzing the effect produced upon himself. He feels it encumbent upon him to exhibit æsthetic appreciation. For this tendency we have to thank Gautier and his humble follower D’Amicis. Thackeray and Dickens write of their journeyings in a holiday spirit; Kipling is a stimulating combination of the flippant and the devout; Shelley is quite up to date; and Fromentin and Gautier always speak in terms of the palette. Thus we get an additional pleasure from the varied literary treatment of nature’s wonders—apart from their intrinsic interest.

Though there is a great deal of information in the following pages, I have generally avoided what is simply instructive; my aim has been to suit all tastes.

For the kind permission to use The Mammoth Cave, Fuji-San and The Antarctic, and The Yellowstone, my best thanks are due to Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co., and Mr. Rudyard Kipling.

E. S.

New York, September, 1900.

Contents

Illustrations

WONDERS OF THE WORLD

THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI

(ITALY)

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

We were surrounded by five and twenty boatmen, each of whom exerted himself to get our custom: these were the ciceroni of the Blue Grotto. I chose one and Jadin another, for you must have a boat and a boatman to get there, the opening being so low and so narrow that one cannot enter unless in a very small boat.

The sea was calm, nevertheless, even in this beautiful weather it broke with such force against the belt of rocks surrounding the island that our barks bounded as if in a tempest, and we were obliged to lie down and cling to the sides to avoid being thrown into the sea. At last, after three-quarters of an hour of navigation, during which we skirted about one-sixth of the island’s circumference, our boatmen informed us of our arrival. We looked about us, but we could not perceive the slightest suspicion of a grotto until we made out with difficulty a little black, circular point above the foaming waves: this was the orifice of the vault.

The first sight of this entrance was not reässuring: you could not understand how it was possible to clear it without breaking your head against the rocks. As the question seemed important enough for discussion, I put it to my boatman, who replied that we were perfectly right in remaining seated now, but presently we must lie down to avoid the danger. We had not come so far as this to flinch. It was my turn first; my boatman advanced, rowing with precaution and indicating that, accustomed as he was to the work, he could not regard it as exempt from danger. As for me, from the position that I occupied, I could see nothing but the sky; soon I felt myself rising upon a wave, the boat slid down it rapidly, and I saw nothing but a rock that seemed for a second to weigh upon my breast. Then, suddenly, I found myself in a grotto so marvellous that I gave a cry of astonishment, and I jumped up so quickly to look about me that I nearly capsized the boat.

In reality, before me, around me, above me, under me, and behind me were marvels of which no description can give an idea, and before which, the brush itself, the grand preserver of human memories, is powerless. You must imagine an immense cavern entirely of azure, just as if God had amused himself by making a pavilion with fragments of the firmament; water so limpid, so transparent, and so pure that you seemed floating upon dense air; from the ceiling stalactites hanging like inverted pyramids; in the background a golden sand mingled with submarine vegetation; along the walls which were bathed by the water there were trees of coral with irregular and dazzling branches; at the sea-entrance, a tiny point—a star—let in the half-light that illumines this fairy palace; finally, at the opposite end, a kind of stage arranged like the throne of a splendid goddess who has chosen one of the wonders of the world for her baths.

At this moment the entire grotto assumed a deeper hue, darkening as the earth does when a cloud passes across the sun at brightest noontide. It was caused by Jadin, who entered in his turn and whose boat closed the mouth of the cavern. Soon he was thrown near me by the force of the wave that had lifted him up; the grotto recovered its beautiful shade of azure; and his boat stopped tremblingly near mine, for this sea, so agitated and obstreperous outside, breathes here as serenely and gently as a lake.

In all probability the Blue Grotto was unknown to the ancients. No poet speaks of it, and certainly, with their marvellous imagination, the Greeks would not have neglected making of it the palace of some sea-goddess with a musical name and leaving some story to us. Suetonius, who describes for us with so much detail the Thermes and baths of Tiberius, would certainly have devoted a few words to this natural pool which the old emperor would doubtless have chosen as the theatre for some of his monstrous pleasures. No, the ocean must have been much higher at that epoch than it is at present, and this marvellous sea-cave was known only to Amphitrite and her court of Sirens, Naïads, and Tritons.

But sometimes Amphitrite is angered with the indiscreet travellers who follow her into this retreat, just as Diana was when surprised by Actæon. At such times the sea rises suddenly and closes the entrance so effectually that those who have entered cannot leave. In this case, they must wait until the wind, which has veered from east to west, changes to south or north; and it has even happened that visitors, who have come to spend twenty minutes in the Blue Grotto, have had to remain two, three, and, even four, days. Therefore, the boatmen always carry with them a certain portion of a kind of biscuit to nourish the prisoners in the event of such an accident. With regard to water, enough filters through two or three places in the grotto to prevent any fear of thirst. I bestowed a few reproaches upon my boatman for having waited so long to apprise me of so disquieting a fact; but he replied with a charming naïveté:

“Dame! excellence! If we told this to the visitors at first, only half would come, and that would make the boatmen angry.”

I admit that after this accidental information, I was seized with a certain uneasiness, on account of which I found the Blue Grotto infinitely less delightful than it had appeared to me at first. Unfortunately, my boatman had told me these details just at the moment when I was undressing to bathe in this water, which is so beautiful and transparent that to attract the fisherman it would not need the song of Goethe’s poetical Undine. We were unwilling to waste any time in preparations, and, wishing to enjoy ourselves as much as possible, we both dived.

BLUE GROTTO, CAPRI.

It is only when you are five or six feet below the surface of the water that you can appreciate its incredible purity. Notwithstanding the liquid that envelops the diver, no detail escapes him; he sees everything,—the tiniest shell at the base of the smallest stalactite of the arch, just as clearly as if through the air; only each object assumes a deeper hue.

At the end of a quarter of an hour, we clambered back into our boats and dressed ourselves without having apparently attracted one of the invisible nymphs of this watery palace, who would not have hesitated, if the contrary had been the case, to have kept us here twenty-four hours at least. The fact was humiliating; but neither of us pretended to be a Telemachus, and so we took our departure. We again crouched in the bottom of our respective canoes, and we went out of the Blue Grotto with the same precautions and the same good luck with which we had entered it: only it was six minutes before we could open our eyes; the ardent glare of the sun blinded us. We had not gone more than a hundred feet away from the spot we had visited before it seemed to have melted into a dream.

We landed again at the port of Capri. While we were settling our account with our boatmen, Pietro pointed out a man lying down in the sunshine with his face in the sand. This was the fisherman who nine or ten years ago discovered the Blue Grotto while looking for frutti di mare along the rocks. He went immediately to the authorities of the island to make his discovery known, and asked the privilege of being the only one allowed to conduct visitors to the new world he had found, and to have revenue from those visitors. The authorities, who saw in this discovery a means of attracting strangers to their island, agreed to the second proposition, and since that time this new Christopher Columbus has lived upon his income and does not trouble to conduct the visitors himself; this explains why he can sleep as we see him. He is the most envied individual in the island.

As we had seen all that Capri offered us in the way of wonders, we stepped into our launch and regained the Speronare, which, profiting by several puffs of the land breeze, set sail and gently glided off in the direction of Palermo.

Le Speronare: Impressions de Voyage (Paris, 1836).

MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI

(SWITZERLAND)

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni—Mont Blanc was before us—the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around, closing in the complicated windings of the single vale—forests inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty—intermingled beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road, or receded, whilst lawns of such verdure as I have never seen before occupied these openings, and gradually became darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, but it was covered with cloud; its base furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high. I never knew—I never imagined what mountains were before. The immensity of these aërial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of extatic wonder, not unallied to madness. And remember this was all one scene, it all pressed home to our regard and our imagination. Though it embraced a vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our path; the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above—all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of the divinest.

As we entered the valley of Chamouni (which in fact may be considered as a continuation of those which we have followed from Bonneville and Cluses) clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6,000 feet from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal not only Mont Blanc, but the other aiguilles, as they call them here, attached and subordinate to them. We were travelling along the valley, when suddenly we heard a sound as of the burst of smothered thunder rolling above; yet there was something earthly in the sound, that told us it could not be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the mountain opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at intervals the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent, which it displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-coloured waters also spread themselves over the ravine, which was their couch.

We did not, as we intended, visit the Glacier de Boisson to-day, although it descends within a few minutes’ walk of the road, wishing to survey it at least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier which comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed, its surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable figures: conical and pyramidical crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendour, overhang the woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier winds upwards from the valley, until it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt flung over the black region of pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere magnitude of proportion: there is a majesty of outline; there is an awful grace in the very colours which invest these wonderful shapes—a charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the reality of their unutterable greatness.

Yesterday morning we went to the source of the Arveiron. It is about a league from this village; the river rolls forth impetuously from an arch of ice, and spreads itself in many streams over a vast space of the valley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations. The glacier by which its waters are nourished, overhangs this cavern and the plain, and the forests of pine which surround it, with terrible precipices of solid ice. On the other side rises the immense glacier of Montanvert, fifty miles in extent, occupying a chasm among mountains of inconceivable height, and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that they seem to pierce the sky. From this glacier we saw as we sat on a rock, close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, masses of ice detach themselves from on high, and rush with a loud dull noise into the vale. The violence of their fall turned them into powder, which flowed over the rocks in imitation of waterfalls, whose ravines they usurped and filled.

In the evening I went with Ducrée, my guide, the only tolerable person I have seen in this country, to visit the glacier of Boisson. This glacier, like that of Montanvert, comes close to the vale, overhanging the green meadows and the dark woods with the dazzling whiteness of its precipices and pinnacles, which are like spires of radiant crystal covered with a network of frosted silver. These glaciers flow perpetually into the valley, ravaging in their slow but irresistible progress the pastures and the forests which surround them, performing a work of desolation in ages, which a river of lava might accomplish in an hour, but far more irretrievably; for where the ice has once descended, the hardiest plant refuses to grow; if even, as in some extraordinary instances, it should recede after its progress has once commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward, at the rate of a foot each day, with a motion that commences at the spot where, on the boundaries of perpetual congelation, they are produced by the freezing of the waters which arise from the partial melting of the eternal snows. They drag with them from the regions whence they derive their origin, all the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense accumulations of sand and stones. These are driven onwards by the irresistible stream of solid ice; and when they arrive at a declivity of the mountain, sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw one of these rocks which had descended in the spring (winter here is the season of silence and safety) which measured forty feet in every direction.

The verge of a glacier, like that of Boisson, presents the most vivid image of desolation that it is possible to conceive. No one dares to approach it; for the enormous pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall, are perpetually reproduced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at one extremity, are overthrown and shattered to a wide extent at its base. There is something inexpressibly dreadful in the aspect of the few branchless trunks, which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand in the uprooted soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and stones. Within this last year, these glaciers have advanced three hundred feet into the valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, that they have their periods of increase and decay: the people of the country hold an opinion entirely different; but as I judge, more probable. It is agreed by all, that the snow on the summit of Mont Blanc and the neighbouring mountains perpetually augments, and that ice, in the form of glaciers, subsists without melting in the valley of Chamouni during its transient and variable summer. If the snow which produces this glacier must augment, and the heat of the valley is no obstacle to the perpetual existence of such masses of ice as have already descended into it, the consequence is obvious; the glaciers must augment and will subsist, at least until they have overflowed this vale.

I will not pursue Buffon’s sublime but gloomy theory—that this globe which we inhabit will at some future period be changed into a mass of frost by the encroachment of the polar ice, and of that produced on the most elevated points of the earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy of Ahriman, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, among these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, avalanches, torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at once the proof and symbols of his reign;—add to this, the degradation of the human species—who in these regions are half-deformed or idiotic, and most of whom are deprived of anything that can excite interest or admiration. This is a part of the subject more mournful and less sublime; but such as neither the poet nor the philosopher should disdain to regard.

This morning we departed on the promise of a fine day, to visit the glacier of Montanvert. In that part where it fills a slanting valley, it is called the Sea of Ice. This valley is 950 toises, or 7,600 feet above the level of the sea. We had not proceeded far before the rain began to fall, but we persisted until we had accomplished more than half of our journey, when we returned, wet through.

Chamouni, July 25th.

We have returned from visiting the glacier of Montanvert, or as it is called, the Sea of Ice, a scene in truth of dizzying wonder. The path that winds to it along the side of a mountain, now clothed with pines, now intersected with snowy hollows, is wide and steep. The cabin of Montanvert is three leagues from Chamouni, half of which distance is performed on mules, not so sure footed, but that on the first day the one I rode fell in what the guides call a mauvais pas, so that I narrowly escaped being precipitated down the mountain. We passed over a hollow covered with snow, down which vast stones are accustomed to roll. One had fallen the preceding day, a little time after we had returned: our guides desired us to pass quickly, for it is said that sometimes the least sound will accelerate their descent. We arrived at Montanvert, however, safe.

CHAMOUNI, MER DE GLACE.

On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of unrelenting frost, surround this vale: their sides are banked up with ice and snow, broken, heaped high, and exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits are sharp and naked pinnacles, whose overhanging steepness will not even permit snow to rest upon them. Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and there their perpendicular rifts, and shine through the driving vapours with inexpressible brilliance: they pierce the clouds like things not belonging to this earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass of undulating ice, and has an ascent sufficiently gradual even to the remotest abysses of these horrible deserts. It is only half a league (about two miles) in breadth, and seems much less. It exhibits an appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools of a mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon its surface. The waves are elevated about twelve or fifteen feet from the surface of the mass, which is intersected by long gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose sides is more beautifully azure than the sky. In these regions everything changes, and is in motion. This vast mass of ice has one general progress, which ceases neither day nor night; it breaks and bursts forever: some undulations sink while others rise; it is never the same. The echo of rocks, or of the ice and snow which fall from their overhanging precipices, or roll from their aërial summits, scarcely ceases for one moment. One would think that Mont Blanc, like the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood forever circulated through his stony veins.

Prose works (London, 1880).

THE DEAD SEA

(PALESTINE)

PIERRE LOTI

A sound of church bells follows us for a long time in the lonely country as we ride away on horseback in the early morning towards Jericho, towards the Jordan and the Dead Sea. The Holy City speedily disappears from our eyes, hidden behind the Mount of Olives. There are fields of green barley here and there, but principally regions of stones and asphodels. Nowhere are there any trees. Red anemones and violet irises enamel the greyness of the rough country, all rock and desert. By a series of gorges, valleys, and precipices we follow a gradually descending route. Jerusalem is at an altitude of eight hundred metres and this Dead Sea to which we are going is four hundred metres below the level of other seas.

If it were not for this way for vehicles upon which our horses walk so easily, one would be tempted to call it every now and then Idumæa, or Arabia.

This road to Jericho is, moreover, full of people to-day: Bedouins upon camels; Arabian shepherds driving hundreds of black goats; bands of Cook’s tourists on horseback, or in mule-chairs; Russian pilgrims, who are returning on foot from the Jordan, piously carrying gourds filled with water from the sacred river; numerous troops of Greek pilgrims from the island of Cyprus, upon asses; incongruous caravans and strange groups which we overtake or meet.

It is soon midday. The high mountains of the country of Moab which lie beyond the Dead Sea, and which we have seen ever since we reached Hebron like a diaphanous wall in the east seem to be as distant as ever, although for three hours we have been advancing towards them,—apparently fleeing before us like the visions of a mirage. But they have grown misty and gloomy; all that was trailing in the sky like light veils in the morning has gathered and condensed upon their peaks, while a purer and more magnificent blue now extends above our heads.

Half-way from Jericho, we make the great halt in a caravansary, where there are Bedouins, Syrians, and Greeks; then we again mount our horses beneath a burning sun.

Every now and then, in the yawning gulfs far below us the torrent of the Cedron is visible like a thread of foaming silver; its course here is not troubled as beneath the walls of Jerusalem, and it rushes along rapidly towards the Dead Sea, half-hidden in the deepest hollows of the abysses.

The mountain slopes continue to run down towards this strange and unique region, situated below the level of the sea, where sleep the waters which produce death. It seems that one is made conscious of something abnormal in this continuous descent by some unknown sense of oddity and even giddiness suggested by these slopes. Growing more and more grand and rugged, the country now presents almost the appearance of a true desert. But the impression of immeasurable solitude is not experienced here. And then there is always that road traced by human hands and these continual meetings with horsemen and various passengers.

The air is already dryer and warmer than at Jerusalem, and the light becomes more and more magnifying,—as is always the case when one approaches places devoid of vegetation.

The mountains are ever more and more denuded and more cracked by the dryness, opening everywhere with crevasses like great abysses. The heat increases in proportion as we descend to the shore of the Dead Sea which in summer is one of the hottest places in the world. A mournful sun darts its rays around us upon the rocks, masses of stone, and pale limestone where the lizards run about by the thousand; whilst over beyond us, serving as a background for everything, stands ever the chain of Moab, like a Dantesque wall. And to-day storm-clouds darken and deform it, hiding its peaks, or carrying them up too high into the sky and forming other imaginary peaks, thus producing the terror of chaos.

In a certain deep valley, through which our way lies for a moment, shut in without any view between vertical walls, some hundreds of camels are at pasture, hanging like great fantastic goats to the flanks of the mountains,—the highest perched one of all the troop silhouetted against the sky.

Then we issue from this defile and the mountains of Moab reäppear, higher then ever now and more obscured by clouds. Upon this sombre background the near prospective of this desolate country stands out very clearly; the summits are whitish and all around us blocks, absolutely white, are delineated by the broiling sun with an extreme hardness of outline.

Towards three o’clock, from the elevated regions where we still are, we see before us the country that is lower than the sea, and, as if our eyes had preserved the remembrance of ordinary levels, this really seems not an ordinary plain, but something too low and a great depression of the earth, the bottom of a vast gulf into which the road is about to fall.

This sunken region has the features of the desert, with gleaming grey wastes like fields of lava, or beds of salt; in its midst an unexpectedly green patch, which is the oasis of Jericho,—and towards the south, a motionless expanse with the polish of a mirror and the sad hue of slate, which begins and loses itself in the distance with a limitless horizon: the Dead Sea, enwrapped in darkness to-day by all the clouds of the distance, by all that is heavy and opaque yonder weighing upon the border of Moab.

The few little white houses of Jericho are gradually outlined in the green of the oasis in proportion as we descend from our stony summits, inundated with the sun. One would hardly call it a village. It seems that there is not the least vestige of the three large and celebrated cities that formerly successively occupied this site and that in different ages were called Jericho. These utter destructions and annihilations of the cities of Canaan and Idumæa seem to be for the confounding of human reason. Truly a very powerful breath of malediction and death must have passed over it all.

When we are finally down in the plain, an insufferable heat surprises us; one would say that we had traversed an immense distance southward,—and yet, in reality, we have only descended a few hundred metres towards the bowels of the earth: it is to their depressed level that the environs of the Dead Sea owe their exceptional climate.

Jericho is composed to-day of a little Turkish citadel, three or four new houses built for pilgrims and tourists, half a hundred Arab habitations of mud with roofing of thorny branches and a few Bedouin tents. Round about them are gardens in which grow an occasional palm; a wood of green shrubs traversed by clear brooks; some paths overrun by grass, where horsemen in burnous caracole upon their horses with long manes and tails. And that is all. Immediately beyond the wood the uninhabitable desert begins; and the Dead Sea lies there very near, spreading its mysterious winding-sheet above the engulfed kingdoms of Sodom and Gomorrah. This Sea has a very individual aspect, and this evening it is very funereal; it truly gives the impression of death, with its heavy, leaden, and motionless waters between the deserts of its two shores where great confused mountains mingle with the storm-clouds hanging in the sky.

Sunday, April 8th.

From Jericho, where we passed the night, the Dead Sea seems very near; one would think in 3 few minutes it would be easy to reach its tranquil sheet,—which this morning is of a blue barely tinted with slate, under a sky rid of all of yesterday’s clouds. Yet, to reach it, almost two hours on horseback are still required, under a heavy sun, across the little desert which, minus the immensity, resembles the large one in which we have just spent so many days; towards this Sea, which seems to flee in proportion as we approach, we descend by means of a series of exhausted strata and desolate plateaux, all glittering with sand and salt. Here we find a few of the odoriferous plants of Arabia Petræa, and even the semblance of a mirage, the uncertainty as to distances and the continual tremulousness of the horizon. We also find here a band of Bedouins resembling very closely our friends of the desert in their shirts with long pointed sleeves floating like wings, and their little brown veils tied to the forehead with black cords, the two ends of which stand up on the temples like the ears of an animal. Moreover, these shores of the Dead Sea, especially on the southern side, are frequented by pillagers almost as much as Idumæa.

We know that geologists trace the existence of the Dead Sea back to the first ages of the world; they do not contest, however, that at the period of the destruction of the accursed cities it must have suddenly overflowed, after some new eruption, to cover the site of the Moabite pentapolis. And it was at that time that was engulfed all this “Vale of Siddim,” where were assembled, against Chedorlaomer, the kings of Sodom, of Gomorrah, of Admah, of Zeboiim, and of Zoar (Genesis xiv. 2, 3); all that “plain of Siddim” which “was well watered everywhere,” like a garden of delight (Genesis xiii. 10). Since these remote times, this Sea has receded a little, without, however, its form being sensibly changed. And, beneath the shroud of its heavy waters, unfathomable to the diver by their very density, sleep strange ruins, débris, which, without doubt, will never be explored; Sodom and Gomorrah are there, buried in their dark depths.

THE DEAD SEA.

At present, the Dead Sea, terminated at the north by the sands we cross, extends to a length of about eighty kilometres, between two ranges of parallel mountains: to the east, those of Moab, eternally oozing bitumen, which stand this morning in their sombre violet; to the west, those of Judea, of another nature, entirely of whitish limestone, at this moment dazzling with sunlight. On both shores the desolation is equally absolute; the same silence hovers over the same appearances of death. These are indeed the immutable and somewhat terrifying aspects of the desert,—and one can understand the very intense impression produced upon travellers who do not know the Arabia Magna; but, for us, there is here only a too greatly diminished image of the mournful phantasmagoria of that region. Besides, one does not lose altogether the view of the citadel of Jericho; from our horses we may still perceive it behind us, like a vague little white point, but still a protector. In the extreme distance of the desert sands, under the trembling network of mirage, appears also an ancient fortress, which is a monastery for Greek hermits. And, finally, another white blot, just perceptible above us, in a recess of the mountains of Judah, stands that mausoleum which passes for the tomb of Moses—for which a great Mohammedan pilgrimage is soon about to start.

However, upon the sinister strand where we arrive, death reveals itself, truly sovereign and imposing. First, like a line of defence which it is necessary to surmount, comes a belt of drift-wood, branches and trees stripped of all bark, almost petrified in the chemical bath, and whitened like bones,—one would call them an accumulation of great vertebræ. Then there are some rounded pebbles as on the shore of every sea; but not a single shell, not a piece of seaweed, not even a little greenish slime, nothing organic, not even of the lower order; and nowhere else has this ever been seen, a sea whose bed is as sterile as a crucible of alchemy; this is something abnormal and disconcerting. Some dead fish lie here and there, hardened like wood, mummified in the naptha and the salts: fish of the Jordan which the current brought here and which the accursed waters suffocated instantly.

And before us, this sea flees, between its banks of desert mountains, to the troubled horizon with an appearance of never ending. Its whitish, oily waters bear blots of bitumen, spread in large iridescent rings. Moreover, they burn, if you drink them, like a corrosive liquor; if you enter them up to your knees you have difficulty in walking, they are so heavy; you cannot dive in them nor even swim in the ordinary position, but you can float upon the surface like a cork buoy.

Once the Emperor Titus, as an experiment, had several slaves bound together with iron chains and cast in, and they did not drown.

On the eastern shore, in the little sandy desert where we have just been marching for two hours, a line of a beautiful emerald serpentines; a few flocks and a few Arabian shepherds that are half bandits pass in the far distance.

Towards the middle of the day we reënter Jericho, whence we shall not depart until to-morrow morning, and there remain the tranquil hours of the evening for us to go over the still oasis.

When we are seated before the porch of the little inn of Jericho in the warm twilight, we see a wildly galloping horse, bringing a monk in a black robe with long hair floating in the wind. He is one of the hermits of the Mount of the Forty Days, who is trying to be the first to arrive and offer us some little objects in the wood of Jericho and shell rosaries from the Jordan.—At nightfall others come, dressed in the same black robe, and with the same thin hair around their bandit’s countenance, and enter the inn to entice us with little carvings and similar chaplets.

The night is sultry here, and a little heavy, quite different to the cold nights of Jerusalem, and just as the stars begin to shine a concert of frogs begins simultaneously from every side, under the dark entanglement of the balms of Gilead,—so continuous and, moreover, so discreet is it, that it seems but another expression of the tranquil silence. You hear also the barking of the sheep-dogs, below, on the side of the Arabian encampments; then, very far away, the drum and the little Bedouin flute furnish the rhythm for some wild fête;—and, at intervals, but very distinctly, comes the lugubrious falsetto of a hyena or jackal.

Now, here is the unexpected refrain of the coffee-houses of Berlin, which suddenly bursts forth, in ironical dissonance, in the midst of these light and immutable sounds of ancient evenings in Judea: the German tourists who have been here since sunset, encamped under the tents of agencies; a band of “Cook’s tourists” come to see and profane, as far as they can, this little desert.

It is after midnight, when everything is hushed and the silence belongs to the nightingales which fill the oasis with an exquisite and clear music of crystal.

Jerusalem (Paris, 1895).

MOUNT VESUVIUS

(ITALY)

CHARLES DICKENS

A noble mountain pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo; the old town of Itrí, like a device in pastry, built up, almost perpendicularly, on a hill, and approached by long steep flights of steps; beautiful Mola di Gaëta, whose wines, like those of Albano, have degenerated since the days of Horace, or his taste for wine was bad: which is not likely of one who enjoyed it so much, and extolled it so well; another night upon the road at St. Agatha; a rest next day at Capua, which is picturesque, but hardly so seductive to a traveller now as the soldiers of Prætorian Rome were wont to find the ancient city of that name; a flat road among vines festooned and looped from tree to tree; and Mount Vesuvius close at hand at last!—its cone and summit whitened with snow; and its smoke hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere of the day, like a dense cloud. So we go, rattling down-hill, into Naples.

Capri—once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius—Ischia, Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a day: now close at hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest country in the world is spread about us. Whether we turn towards the Miseno shore of the splendid watery amphitheatre, and go by the Grotto of Posilipo to the Grotto del Cane, and away to Baiæ: or take the other way, towards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession of delights. In the last-named direction, where, over doors and archways, there are countless little images of San Gennaro, with his Canute’s hand stretched out to check the fury of the Burning Mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the ashes of the former town, destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, within a hundred years, and past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and macaroni manufactories; to Castel-a-Mare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here, the railroad terminates; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken succession of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest summit of St. Angelo, the highest neighbouring mountain, down to the water’s edge—among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills—and by the bases of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with handsome, dark-haired women at the doors—and pass delicious summer villas—to Sorrento, where the poet Tasso drew his inspiration from the beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb the heights above Castel-a-Mare, and, looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the crisp water glistening in the sun, and clusters of white houses in distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset: with the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain, with its smoke and flame, upon the other, is a sublime conclusion to the glory of the day.

Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and look up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis, over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day, away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance; and lose all count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and melancholy sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making this quiet picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn, the little familiar tokens of human habitation and every-day pursuits; the chafing of the bucket rope in the stone rim of the exhausted well; the track of carriage wheels in the pavement of the street; the marks of drinking vessels on the stone counter of the wine-shop; the amphoræ in private cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago, and undisturbed to this hour—all rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the place ten thousand times more solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury, had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea.

After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded the eruption, workmen were employed in shaping out, in stone, new ornaments for temples and other buildings that had suffered. Here lies their work, outside the city gate, as if they would return to-morrow.

In the cellar of Diomede’s house, where certain skeletons were found huddled together, close to the door, the impression of their bodies on the ashes hardened with the ashes, and became stamped and fixed there, after they had shrunk, inside, to scanty bones. So, in the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating on the stream when it was hot and liquid, stamped its mimic features in it as it hardened into stone, and now it turns upon the stranger the fantastic look it turned upon the audiences in that same theatre two thousand years ago.

Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and in and out of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers of the temples of a religion that has vanished from the earth, and finding so many fresh traces of remote antiquity: as if the course of Time had been stopped after this desolation, and there had been no nights and days, months, years, and centuries since: nothing is more impressive and terrible than the many evidences of the searching nature of the ashes as bespeaking their irresistible power, and the impossibility of escaping them. In the wine-cellars, they forced their way into the earthen vessels: displacing the wine, and choking them, to the brim, with dust. In the tombs, they forced the ashes of the dead from the funeral urns, and rained new ruin even into them. The mouths, and eyes, and skulls of all the skeletons were stuffed with this terrible hail. In Herculaneum, where the flood was of a different and a heavier kind, it rolled in, like a sea. Imagine a deluge of water turned to marble, at its height—and that is what is called “the lava” here.

MOUNT VESUVIUS.

Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink of which we now stand, looking down, when they came on some of the stone benches of the theatre—those steps (for such they seem) at the bottom of the excavation—and found the buried city of Herculaneum. Presently going down, with lighted torches, we are perplexed by great walls of monstrous thickness, rising up between the benches, shutting out the stage, obtruding their shapeless forms in absurd places, confusing the whole plan, and making it a disordered dream. We cannot, at first, believe, or picture to ourselves, that this came rolling in, and drowned the city; and that all that is not here has been cut away, by the axe, like solid stone. But this perceived and understood, the horror and oppression of its presence are indescribable.

Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless chambers of both cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, are as fresh and plain as if they had been executed yesterday. Here are subjects of still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses, and the like; familiar classical stories, or mythological fables, always forcibly and plainly told; conceits of cupids, quarrelling, sporting, working at trades; theatrical rehearsals; poets reading their productions to their friends; inscriptions chalked upon the walls; political squibs, advertisements, rough drawings by school-boys; everything to people and restore the ancient cities in the fancy of their wondering visitor. Furniture, too, you see, of every kind—lamps, tables, couches; vessels for eating, drinking, and cooking; workmen’s tools, surgical instruments, tickets for the theatre, pieces of money, personal ornaments, bunches of keys found clinched in the grasp of skeletons, helmets of guards and warriors; little household bells, yet musical with their old domestic tones.

The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the interests of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. The looking, from either ruined city, into the neighbouring grounds overgrown with beautiful vines and luxuriant trees; and remembering that house upon house, temple on temple, building after building, and street after street, are still lying underneath the roots of all the quiet cultivation, waiting to be turned up to the light of day; is something so wonderful, so full of mystery, so captivating to the imagination, that one would think it would be paramount, and yield to nothing else. To nothing but Vesuvius; but the mountain is the genius of the scene. From every indication of the ruin it has worked, we look, again, with an absorbing interest to where its smoke is rising up into the sky. It is beyond us, as we thread the ruined streets: above us, as we stand upon the ruined walls; we follow it through every vista of broken columns, as we wander through the empty court-yards of the houses; and through the garlandings and interlacings of every wanton vine. Turning away to Pæstum yonder, to see the awful structures built, the least aged of them hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, and standing yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon the wild malaria-blighted plain—we watch Vesuvius as it disappears from the prospect, and watch for it again, on our return, with the same thrill of interest: as the doom and destiny of all this beautiful country, biding its terrible time.

It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring day, when we return from Pæstum, but very cold in the shade: insomuch, that although we may lunch pleasantly, at noon, in the open air, by the gate of Pompeii, the neighbouring rivulet supplies thick ice for our wine. But, the sun is shining brightly; there is not a cloud or speck of vapour in the whole blue sky, looking down upon the Bay of Naples; and the moon will be at the full to-night. No matter that the snow and ice lie thick upon the summit of Vesuvius, or that we have been on foot all day at Pompeii, or that croakers maintain that strangers should not be on the mountain by night, in such an unusual season. Let us take advantage of the fine weather; make the best of our way to Resina, the little village at the foot of the mountain; prepare ourselves, as well as we can on so short a notice, at the guide’s house; ascend at once, and have sunset half-way up, moonlight at the top, and midnight to come down in!

At four o’clock in the afternoon there is a terrible uproar in the little stable-yard of Signore Salvatore, the recognized head-guide, with the gold band around his cap; and thirty under-guides, who are all scuffling and screaming at once, are preparing half-a-dozen saddled ponies, three litters, and some stout staves for the journey. Every one of the thirty quarrels with the other twenty-nine, and frightens the six ponies; and as much of the village as can possibly squeeze itself into the little stable-yard participates in the tumult, and gets trodden on by the cattle.

After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would suffice for the storming of Naples, the procession starts. The head-guide, who is liberally paid for all the attendants, rides a little in advance of the party; the other thirty guides proceed on foot. Eight go forward with the litters that are to be used by and by; and the remaining two-and-twenty beg.

We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights of stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, and the vineyards on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak, bare region, where the lava lies confusedly in enormous rusty masses: as if the earth had been plowed up by burning thunder-bolts. And now we halt to see the sun set. The change that falls upon the dreary region, and on the whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes on—and the unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around, who that has witnessed it can ever forget!

It is dark when, after winding for some time over the broken ground, we arrive at the foot of the cone: which is extremely steep, and seems to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot where we dismount. The only light is reflected from the snow, deep, hard, and white, with which the cone is covered. It is now intensely cold, and the air is piercing. The thirty-one have brought no torches, knowing that the moon will rise before we reach the top. Two of the litters are devoted to the two ladies; the third, to a rather heavy gentleman from Naples, whose hospitality and good nature have attached him to the expedition, and determined him to assist in doing the honours of the mountain. The rather heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men; each of the ladies by half-a-dozen. We who walk make the best use of our staves; and so the whole party begin to labour upward over the snow—as if they were toiling to the summit of an antediluvian Twelfth-cake.

We are a long time toiling up; and the head-guide looks oddly about him when one of the company—not an Italian, though an habitué of the mountain for many years: whom we will call, for our present purpose, Mr. Pickle of Portici—suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult to descend. But the sight of the litters above, tilting up and down, and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers continually slip and tumble, diverts our attention; more especially as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman is, at that moment, presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with his head downward.

The rising of the moon soon afterward, revives the flagging spirits of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual watchword, “Courage, friend! It is to eat macaroni!” they press on, gallantly, for the summit.

From tingeing the top of the snow above us with a band of light, and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while we have been ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the whole white mountain-side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the distance, and every village in the country round. The whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we come upon the platform on the mountain-top—the region of Fire—an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous waterfall, burned up; from every chink and crevice of which hot, sulphurous smoke is pouring out: while, from another conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the end, great sheets of fire are streaming forth: reddening the night with flame, blackening it with smoke, and spotting it with red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into the air like feathers, and fall down like lead. What words can paint the gloom and grandeur of this scene!

The broken ground; the smoke; the sense of suffocation from the sulphur; the fear of falling down through the crevices in the yawning ground; the stopping, every now and then, for somebody who is missing in the dark (for the dense smoke now obscures the moon); the intolerable noise of the thirty; and the hoarse roaring of the mountain; make it a scene of such confusion, at the same time, that we reel again. But, dragging the ladies through it, and across another exhausted crater to the foot of the present Volcano, we approach close to it on the windy side, and then sit down among the hot ashes at its foot, and look up in silence; faintly estimating the action that is going on within, from its being full a hundred feet higher, at this minute, than it was six weeks ago.

There is something in the fire and roar that generates an irresistible desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest long, without starting off, two of us, on our hands and knees, accompanied by the head-guide, to climb to the brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in. Meanwhile, the thirty yell, as with one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding, and call to us to come back; frightening the rest of the party out of their wits.

What with their noise, and what with the trembling of the thin crust of ground, that seems about to open underneath our feet, and plunge us into the burning gulf below (which is the real danger, if there be any); and what with the flashing of the fire in our faces, and the shower of red-hot ashes that is raining down, and the choking smoke and sulphur; we may well feel giddy and irrational, like drunken men. But, we contrive to climb up to the brim, and look down, for a moment, into the Hell of boiling fire below. Then, we all three come rolling down; blackened, and singed, and scorched, and hot, and giddy: and each with his dress alight in half-a-dozen places.

You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of descending is by sliding down the ashes: which, forming a gradually increasing ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a descent. But, when we have crossed the two exhausted craters on our way back, and are come to this precipitous place, there is (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige of ashes to be seen; the whole being a smooth sheet of ice.

In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join hands, and make a chain of men; of whom the foremost beat, as well as they can, a rough track with their sticks, down which we prepare to follow. The way being fearfully steep, and none of the party: even of the thirty: being able to keep their feet for six paces together, the ladies are taken out of their litters, and placed, each between two careful persons; while others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent their falling forward—a necessary precaution, tending to the immediate and hopeless dilapidation of their apparel. The rather heavy gentleman is adjured to leave his litter too, and be escorted in a similar manner; but he resolves to be brought down as he was brought up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble all at once, and that he is safer so than trusting to his own legs.

In this order, we begin the descent: sometimes on foot, sometimes shuffling on the ice: always proceeding much more quietly and slowly than on our upward way: and constantly alarmed by the falling among us of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole party, and clings pertinaciously to anybody’s ankles. It is impossible for the litter to be in advance, too, as the track has to be made; and its appearance behind us, overhead—with some one or other of the bearers always down, and the rather heavy gentleman with his legs in the air—is very threatening and frightful. We have gone on thus; a very little way, painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and regarding it as a great success—and have all fallen several times, and have all been stopped, somehow or other, as we were sliding away—when Mr. Pickle, of Portici, in the act of remarking on these uncommon circumstances as quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls, disengages himself with quick presence of mind, from those about him, plunges away head foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the whole surface of the cone!

Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help him, I see him there, in the moonlight—I have had such a dream often—skimming over the white ice like a cannonball. Almost at the same moment, there is a cry from behind; and a man who has carried a light basket of spare cloaks on his head, comes rolling past at the same frightful speed, closely followed by a boy. At this climax of the chapter of accidents, the remaining eight-and-twenty vociferate to that degree, that a pack of wolves would be music to them!

Giddy and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle of Portici when we reach the place where we dismounted, and where the horses are waiting; but, thank God, sound in limb! And never are we likely to be more glad to see a man alive, and on his feet, than to see him now—making light of it too, though sorely bruised and in great pain. The boy is brought into the Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are at supper, with his head tied up; and the man is heard of some hours afterwards. He, too, is bruised and stunned, but has broken no bones; the snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger blocks of rock and stone, and rendered them harmless.

After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing fire, we again take horse, and continue our descent to Salvatore’s house—very slowly, by reason of our bruised friend being hardly able to keep the saddle, or endure the pain of motion. Though it is so late at night, or early in the morning, all the people of the village are waiting about the little stable-yard when we arrive, and looking up the road by which we are expected. Our appearance is hailed with a great clamour of tongues, and a general sensation, for which, in our modesty, we are somewhat at a loss to account, until turning into the yard, we find that one of a party of French gentlemen, who were on the mountain at the same time, is lying on some straw in the stable with a broken limb; looking like Death and suffering great torture; and that we were confidently supposed to have encountered some worse accident.

So “well returned and Heaven be praised!” as the cheerful Vetturino, who has borne us company all the way from Pisa says with all his heart! And away with his ready horses into sleeping Naples!

It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo singers and beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, and universal degradation; airing its Harlequin suit in the sunshine, next day and every day; singing, starving, dancing, gaming on the seashore; and leaving all labour to the burning mountain, which is ever at its work.

Pictures from Italy (London, 1845).

THE FALLS OF THE RHINE

(GERMANY)

VICTOR HUGO

My friend, what shall I say to you? I have just come from seeing that strange thing. I am only a few steps from it. I hear the noise of it. I am writing to you without knowing what falls from my thoughts. Ideas and images accumulate there pell-mell, hastening, jostling and bruising each other, and disappearing in vapour, in foam, in uproar, and in clouds.

Within me there is an immense ebullition. It seems to me that I have the Falls of the Rhine in my brain.

I write at random, just as it comes. You must understand if you can.

You arrive at Laufen. It is a castle of the Thirteenth Century, a very beautiful pile and of a very good style. At the door there are two gilded wyverns with open mouths. They are roaring. You would say that they are making the mysterious noise you hear.

You enter.

You are in the courtyard of a castle. It is no longer a castle, it is a farm. Hens, geese, turkeys, dirt; a cart in a corner; and a vat of lime. A door opens. The cascade appears.

Marvellous spectacle!

Frightful tumult! That is the first effect. Then you look about you. The cataract cuts out the gulfs which it fills with large white sheets. As in a conflagration, there are some little peaceful spots in the midst of this object of terror; groves blended with foam; charming brooks in the mosses; fountains for the Arcadian Shepherds of Poussin, shadowed by little boughs gently agitated.—And then these details vanish, and the impression of the whole returns to you. Eternal tempest! Snow, vital and furious. The water is of a strange transparency. Some black rocks produce sinister aspects under the water. They appear to touch the surface and are ten feet down. Below the two principal leaps of the falls two great sheaves of foam spread themselves upon the river and disperse in green clouds. On the other side of the Rhine, I perceive a tranquil group of little houses, where the housekeepers come and go.

As I am observing, my guide tells me: “Lake Constance froze in the winter of 1829 and 1830. It had not frozen for a hundred and four years. People crossed it in carriages. Poor people were frozen to death in Schaffhausen.”

I descended a little lower towards the abyss. The sky was grey and veiled. The cascade roared like a tiger. Frightful noise, terrible rapidity! Dust of water, smoke and rain at the same time. Through this mist you see the cataract in its full development. Five large rocks cut it into five sheets of water of diverse aspects and different sizes. You believe you see the five worn piers of a bridge of Titans. In the winter the ice forms blue arches upon these black abutments.

THE FALLS OF THE RHINE.

The nearest of these rocks is of a strange form; it seems as if the water issued full of rage from the hideous and impassive head of an Hindu idol with an elephant’s head. Some trees and brambles, which intermingle at its summit, give it bristling and horrible hair.

At the most awe-inspiring point of the Falls, a great rock disappears and reäppears under the foam like the skull of an engulfed giant, beaten for six thousand years by this dreadful shower-bath.

The guide continues his monologue: “The Falls of the Rhine are one league from Schaffhausen. The whole mass of the river falls there at a height of seventy feet.”—

The rugged path which descends from the castle of Laufen to the abyss crosses a garden. At the moment when I passed, deafened by the formidable cataract, a child, accustomed to living with this marvel of the world, was playing among the flowers.

This path has several barriers, where you pay a trifle from time to time. The poor cataract should not work for nothing. See the trouble it gives! It is very necessary that with all the foam that it throws upon the trees, the rocks, the river, and the clouds, that it should throw a few sous into the pocket of some one. That is the least it can do.

I came along this path until I reached a kind of balcony skilfully poised in reality right over the abyss.

There, everything moves you at once. You are dazzled, made dizzy, confused, terrified, and charmed. You lean on a wooden rail that trembles. Some yellow trees,—it is autumn,—and some red quick-trees surround a little pavilion in the style of the Café Turc, from which one observes the horror of the thing. The women cover themselves with an oil-skin (each one costs a franc). You are suddenly enveloped in a terrible, thundering and heavy shower.

Some pretty little yellow snails crawl voluptuously over this dew on the rail of the balcony. The rock that slopes beyond the balcony weeps drop by drop into the cascade. Upon this rock, which is in the centre of the cataract, a troubadour-knight of painted wood stands leaning upon a red shield with a white cross. Some man certainly risked his life to plant this doubtful ornament in the midst of Jehovah’s grand and eternal poetry.

The two giants, who lift up their heads, I should say the two largest rocks, seem to speak. The thunder is their voice. Above an alarming mound of foam you see a peaceful little house with its little orchard. You would say that this terrible hydra is condemned to carry eternally upon his back that sweet and happy cabin.

I went to the extremity of the balcony; I leaned against the rock. The sight became still more terrible. It was a frightful descent of water. The hideous and splendid abyss angrily throws a shower of pearls in the face of those who dare to regard it so near. That is admirable. The four great heaps of the cataract fall, mount, and fall again without ceasing. You would believe that you were beholding the four lightning-wheels of the storm-chariot.

The wooden bridge was laid under water. The boards were slippery. Some dead leaves quivered under my feet. In a cleft of the rock, I noticed a little tuft of dried grass. Dry under the cataract of Schaffhausen! in this deluge, it missed every drop of water! There are some hearts that may be likened to this tuft of grass. In the midst of a vortex of human prosperity, they wither of themselves. Alas! this drop of water which they have missed and which springs not forth from the earth but falls from heaven, is Love!

How long did I remain there, absorbed in that grand spectacle? I could not possibly tell you. During that contemplation the hours passed in my spirit like the waves in the abyss, without leaving a trace or memory.

However, some one came to inform me that the day was declining. I climbed up to the castle and from there I descended to the sandy shore whence you cross the Rhine to gain the right bank. This shore is below the Falls, and you cross the river at a few fathoms from the cataract. To accomplish this, you risk yourself in a little boat, charming, light, exquisite, adjusted like the canoe of a savage, constructed of wood as supple as the skin of a shark, solid, elastic, fibrous, grazing the rocks every instant and hardly escaping—being managed like all the small boats of the Rhine and the Meuse with a hook and an oar in the form of a shovel. Nothing is stranger than to feel in this little boat the deep and thunderous shocks of the water.

As the bark moved away from the bank, I looked above my head at the battlements covered with tiles and the sharp gable ends of the château that dominates the precipice. Some fishermen’s nets were drying up on the stones on the bank of the river. Do they fish in this vortex? Yes, without doubt. As the fish cannot leap over the cataract, many salmon are caught here. Moreover, where is the whirlpool in which man will not fish?

Now I will recapitulate my intense and almost poignant sensations. First impression: you do not know what to say, you are crushed as by all great poems. Then the whole unravels itself. The beauties disengage themselves from the cloud. Altogether it is grand, sombre, terrible, hideous, magnificent, unutterable.

On the other side of the Rhine, the Falls are made to turn mill-wheels.

Upon one bank, the castle; upon the other, the village, which is called Neuhausen.

It is a remarkable thing that each of the great Alpine rivers, on leaving the mountains, has the colour of the sea to which it flows. The Rhône, escaping from the Lake of Geneva, is blue like the Mediterranean; the Rhine, issuing from Lake Constance, is green like the ocean.

Unfortunately the sky was overcast. I cannot, therefore, say that I saw the Falls of Laufen in all their splendour. Nothing is richer nor more marvellous than that shower of pearls of which I have already told you. This should be, however, even more wonderful when the sun changes these pearls to diamonds and when the rainbow plunges its emerald neck into the foam like a divine bird that comes to drink in the abyss.

From the other side of the Rhine, whence I am now writing, the cataract appears in its entirety, divided into five very distinct parts, each of which has its physiognomy quite apart from the others, and forming a kind of crescendo. The first is an overflowing from a mill; the second, almost symmetrically composed by the work of the wave and time, is a fountain of Versailles; the third, a cascade; the fourth, an avalanche; and the fifth, chaos.

A last word and I will close this letter. Several paces from the Falls, you explore a calcareous rock, which is very beautiful. In the midst of one of the quarries that are there a galley-slave, in stripes of grey and black, with pick-axe in his hand and a double chain on his feet, looked at the cataract. Chance seems to delight itself sometimes in placing in antitheses, sometimes sad and sometimes terrible, the work of nature and the work of society.

Le Rhin (Paris, 1846).

IN ARCTIC SEAS

LORD DUFFERIN

Ever since leaving England, as each four-and-twenty hours we climbed up nearer to the pole, the belt of dusk dividing day from day had been growing narrower and narrower, until having nearly reached the Arctic circle, this,—the last night we were to traverse,—had dwindled to a thread of shadow. Only another half-dozen leagues more, and we would stand on the threshold of a four months’ day! For the few preceding hours, clouds had completely covered the heavens, except where a clear interval of sky, that lay along the northern horizon, promised a glowing stage for the sun’s last obsequies. But like the heroes of old he had veiled his face to die, and it was not until he dropped down to the sea that the whole hemisphere overflowed with glory and the gilded pageant concerted for his funeral gathered in slow procession round his grave; reminding one of those tardy honours paid to some great prince of song, who—left during life to languish in a garret—is buried by nobles in Westminster Abbey. A few minutes more the last fiery segment had disappeared beneath the purple horizon, and all was over.

“The king is dead—the king is dead—the king is dead! Long live the king!” And up from the sea that had just entombed his sire, rose the young monarch of a new day; while the courtier clouds, in their ruby robes, turned faces still aglow with the favours of their dead lord, to borrow brighter blazonry from the smile of a new master.

A fairer or a stranger spectacle than the last Arctic sunset cannot be well conceived. Evening and morning—like kinsmen whose hearts some baseless feud has kept asunder—clasping hands across the shadow of the vanished night.

You must forgive me if sometimes I become a little magniloquent; for really, amid the grandeur of that fresh primæval world, it was almost impossible to prevent one’s imagination from absorbing a dash of the local colouring. We seemed to have suddenly waked up among the colossal scenery of Keats’s Hyperion. The pulses of young Titans beat within our veins. Time itself,—no longer frittered down into paltry divisions,—had assumed a more majestic aspect. We had the appetite of giants,—was it unnatural we should also adopt “the large utterance of the early gods”?

About 3 A. M. it cleared up a little. By breakfast-time the sun reäppeared, and we could see five or six miles ahead of the vessel. It was shortly after this, that as I was standing in the main rigging peering out over the smooth blue surface of the sea, a white twinkling point of light suddenly caught my eye about a couple of miles off on the port bow, which a telescope soon resolved into a solitary isle of ice, dancing and dipping in the sunlight. As you may suppose, the news brought everybody upon deck; and when almost immediately afterwards a string of other pieces—glittering like a diamond necklace—hove in sight, the excitement was extreme.

Here, at all events, was honest blue salt water frozen solid, and when—as we proceeded—the scattered fragments thickened, and passed like silver argosies on either hand, until at last we found ourselves enveloped in an innumerable fleet of bergs,—it seemed as if we could never be weary of admiring a sight so strange and beautiful. It was rather in form and colour than in size that these ice islets were remarkable; anything approaching to a real iceberg we neither saw, nor are we likely to see. In fact, the lofty ice mountains that wander like vagrant islands along the coast of America, seldom or never come to the eastward or northward of Cape Farewell. They consist of land ice, and are all generated among the bays and straits within Baffin’s Bay, and first enter the Atlantic a good deal to the southward of Iceland; whereas the Polar ice, among which we have been knocking about, is field ice, and—except when packed one ledge above another, by great pressure—is comparatively flat. I do not think I saw any pieces that were piled up higher than thirty or thirty-five feet above the sea-level, although at a little distance through the mist they may have loomed much loftier.

In quaintness of form, and in brilliancy of colours, these wonderful masses surpassed everything I had imagined; and we found endless amusement in watching their fantastic procession.

At one time it was a knight on horseback, clad in sapphire mail, a white plume above his casque. Or a cathedral window with shafts of chrysophras, new powdered by a snowstorm. Or a smooth sheer cliff of lapis lazuli; or a Banyan tree, with roots descending from its branches, and a foliage as delicate as the efflorescence of molten metal; or a fairy dragon, that breasted the water in scales of emerald; or anything else that your fancy chose to conjure up. After a little time, the mist again descended on the scene, and dulled each glittering form to a shapeless mass of white; while in spite of all our endeavours to keep upon our northerly course, we were constantly compelled to turn and wind about in every direction—sometimes standing on for several hours at a stretch to the southward and eastward.

But why should I weary you with the detail of our various manœuvres during the ensuing days? they were too tedious and disheartening at the time for me to look back at them with any pleasure. Suffice it to say, that by dint of sailing north whenever the ice would permit us, and sailing west when we could not sail north,—we found ourselves on the 2d of August, in the latitude of the southern extremity of Spitzbergen, though divided from the land by about fifty miles of ice. All this while the weather had been pretty good, foggy and cold enough, but with a fine stiff breeze that rattled us along at a good rate whenever we did get a chance of making any Northing. But lately it had come on to blow very hard, the cold became quite piercing, and what was worse—in every direction round the whole circuit of the horizon, except along its southern segment,—a blaze of iceblink illuminated the sky. A more discouraging spectacle could not have met our eyes. The iceblink is a luminous appearance, reflected on the heavens from the fields of ice that still lie sunk beneath the horizon; it was therefore on this occasion an unmistakable indication of the encumbered state of the sea in front of us.

I had turned in for a few hours of rest, and release from the monotonous sense of disappointment, and was already lost in a dream of deep bewildering bays of ice, and gulfs whose shifting shores offered to the eye every possible combination of uncomfortable scenery, without possible issue,—when “a voice in my dreaming ear” shouted “Land!” and I awoke to its reality. I need not tell you in what double quick time I tumbled up the companion,—or with what greediness I feasted my eyes on that longed-for view,—the only sight—as I then thought—we were ever destined to enjoy of the mountains of Spitzbergen!

The whole heaven was overcast with a dark mantle of tempestuous clouds, that stretched down in umbrella-like points towards the horizon, leaving a clear space between their edge and the sea, illuminated by the sinister brilliancy of the iceblink. In an easterly direction, this belt of unclouded atmosphere was etherealized to an indescribable transparency, and up into it there gradually grew—above the dingy line of starboard ice—a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so pale, that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline, one could have deemed them as unsubstantial as the spires of fairyland. The beautiful vision proved only too transient; in one short half hour mist and cloud had blotted it all out, while a fresh barrier of ice compelled us to turn our backs on the very land we were striving to reach.

It was one o’clock in the morning of the 6th of August, 1856, that after having been eleven days at sea, we came to an anchor in the silent haven of English Bay, Spitzbergen.

And now, how shall I give you an idea of the wonderful panorama in the midst of which we found ourselves? I think, perhaps, its most striking feature was the stillness—and deadness—and impossibility of this new world; ice, and rock, and water surrounded us; not a sound of any kind interrupted the silence; the sea did not break upon the shore; no bird or any living thing was visible; the midnight sun—by this time muffled in a transparent mist—shed an awful, mysterious lustre on glacier and mountain; no atom of vegetation gave token of the earth’s vitality; an universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the solitude. I suppose in scarcely any other part of the world is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited.

On the stillest summer day in England, there is always perceptible an undertone of life thrilling through the atmosphere; and though no breeze should stir a single leaf, yet—in default of motion—there is always a sense of growth; but here not so much as a blade of grass was to be seen, on the sides of the bald, excoriated hills. Primeval rocks—and eternal ice—constitute the landscape.

Letters from High Latitudes (London, 1859).

IN ANTARCTIC SEAS

W. G. BURN MURDOCH

Days such as this are few in a lifetime, so full of interest has it been, and so fatiguing. Since early morning, rather since yesterday, for there was no night and no morning, we have been constantly marvelling at most astonishing and beautiful spectacles. We have been bathed in red blood, and for hours and hours we have rowed in the boats and plunged over miles of soft snow dragging seal-skins, and I have been drawing hard in the times between the boat excursions; but the air is exhilarating, and we feel equal to almost any amount of work. Sun and snow-showers alternate—fine hard snow it is, that makes our faces burn as if before a fire. It is very cold sketching, and incidents and effects follow each other so rapidly that there is time to make little more than mental notes.

Christmas Eve.

Those who have felt the peace of a summer night in Norway or Iceland, where the day sleeps with wide-open eyes, can fancy the quiet beauty of such a night among the white floes of the Antarctic.

To-day has passed, glistering in silky white, decked with sparkling jewels of blue and green, and we thought surely we had seen the last of Nature’s white harmonies; then evening came, pensive and soothing and grey, and all the white world changed into soft violet, pale yellow, and rose.

ICE FLOE, ANTARCTIC.

A dreamy stillness fills the air. To the south the sun has dipped behind a bank of pale grey cloud, and the sky above is touched with primrose light. Far to the north the dark, smooth sea is bounded by two low bergs, that stretch across the horizon. The nearest is cold violet white, and the sunlight strikes the furthest, making it shine like a wall of gold. The sky above them is of a leaden peacock blue, with rosy cloudlets hanging against it—such colouring as I have never before seen or heard described. To the westward, across the gulf, we can just distinguish the blue-black crags jutting from the snowy lomonds. Little clouds touched with gold and rose lie nestling in the black corries, and gather round the snowy peaks. To the south, in the centre of the floe, some bergs lie, cold and grey in the shadow of the bank of cloud. They look like Greek temples imprisoned forever in a field of snow. A faint cold air comes stealing to us over the floe; it ripples the yellow sky reflection at the ice-edge for a moment, and falls away. In the distance a seal is barking—a low muffled sound that travels far over the calm water, and occasionally a slight splash breaks the silence, as a piece of snow separates from the field and joins its companion pieces that are floating quietly past our stern to the north,—a mysterious, silent procession of soft, white spirits, each perfectly reflected in the lavender sea.

Nature sleeps—breathlessly—silent; perhaps she dreams of the spirit-world, that seems to draw so close to her on such a night.

By midnight the tired crew were all below and sound asleep in their stuffy bunks. But the doctor and I found it impossible to leave the quiet decks and the mysterious daylight, so we prowled about and brewed coffee in the deserted galley. Then we watched the sun pass behind the grey bergs in the south for a few seconds, and appear again, refreshed, with a cool silvery light. A few flakes of snow floated in the clear, cold air, and two snowy petrels, white as the snow itself, flitted along the ice-edge.

A cold, dreamy, white Christmas morning,—beautiful beyond expression.

From Edinburgh to the Antarctic—An Artist’s Notes and Sketches during the Dundee Antarctic Expedition of 1892-3 (London, 1894).

THE DESERT OF SAHARA

(AFRICA)

EUGENE FROMENTIN

The Saharans adore their country,[1] and, for my part, I should come very near justifying a sentiment so impassioned, especially when it is mingled with the attachment to one’s native soil.... It is a land without grace or softness, but it is severe, which is not an evil though its first effect is to make one serious—an effect that many people confound with weariness. A great land of hills expiring in a still greater flat land bathed in eternal light; empty and desolate enough, to give the idea of that surprising thing called the desert; with a sky almost always the same, silence, and on all sides a tranquil horizon. In the centre a kind of lost city, surrounded by solitude; then a little verdure, sandy islets, and, lastly, a few reefs of whitish calcareous stone or black schists on the margin of an expanse that resembles the sea;—in all this, but little variety, few accidents, few novelties, unless it be the sun that rises over the desert and sinks behind the hills, ever calm, rayless but devouring; or perhaps the banks of sand that have changed their place and form under the last wind from the South. Brief dawns, longer noons that are heavier than elsewhere, and scarcely any twilight; sometimes a sudden expansion of light and warmth with burning winds that momentarily give the landscape a menacing physiognomy and that may then produce crushing sensations; but more usually a radiant immobility, the somewhat mournful fixity of fine weather, in short, a kind of impassibility that seems to have fallen from the sky upon lifeless things and from them to have passed into human faces.

The first impression received from this ardent and inanimate picture, composed of sun, expanse, and solitude, is acute and cannot be compared with any other. However, little by little, the eye grows accustomed to the grandeur of the lines, the emptiness of the space, and the nakedness of the earth, and if one is still astonished at anything, it is at still remaining sensible to such slightly changing effects and at being so deeply stirred by what are in reality the most simple sights.

Here the sky is clear, arid, and unchanging; it comes in contact with fawn-coloured or white ground, and maintains a frank blue in its utmost extent; and when it puts on gold opposite the setting sun its base is violet and almost leaden-hued. I have not seen any beautiful mirages. Except during the sirocco, the horizon is always distinctly visible and detached from the sky; there is only a final streak of ash-blue which is vigorously defined in the morning, but in the middle of the day is somewhat confounded with the sky and seems to tremble in the fluidity of the atmosphere. Directly to the South, a great way off towards M’zab, an irregular line formed by groves of tamarinds is visible. A faint mirage, that is produced every day in this part of the desert, makes these groves appear nearer and larger; but the illusion is not very striking and one needs to be told in order to notice it.

Shortly after sunrise the whole country is rosy, a vivid rose, with depths of peach colour; the town is spotted with points of shadow, and some little white argils, scattered along the edge of the palms, gleam gaily enough in this mournful landscape which for a short moment of freshness seems to smile at the rising sun. In the air are vague sounds and a suggestion of singing that makes us understand that every country in the world has its joyous awakening.

Then, almost at the same moment every day, from the south we hear the approach of innumerable twitterings of birds. They are the gangas coming from the desert to drink at the springs.... It is then half-past six. One hour later and the same cries suddenly arise in the north; the same flocks pass over my head one by one, in the same numbers and order, and regain their desert plains. One might say that the morning is ended; and the sole smiling hour of the day has passed between the going and returning of the gangas. The landscape that was rose has already become dun; the town has far fewer little shadows; it greys as the sun gets higher; in proportion as it shines brighter the desert seems to darken; the hills alone remain rosy. If there was any wind it dies away; warm exhalations begin to spread in the air as if they were from the sands. Two hours later all movement ceases at once, and noontide commences.

The sun mounts and is finally directly over my head. I have only the narrow shelter of my parasol and there I gather myself together; my feet rest in the sand or on glittering stones; my pad curls up beside me under the sun; my box of colours crackles like burning wood. Not a sound is heard now. There are four hours of incredible calm and stupor. The town sleeps below me then dumb and looking like a mass of violet with its empty terraces upon which the sun illumines a multitude of screens full of little rose apricots, exposed there to dry;—here and there a black hole marks a window, or an interior door, and fine lines of dark violet show that there are only one or two strips of shadow in the whole town. A fillet of stronger light that edges the contour of the terraces helps us to distinguish these mud edifices from one another, piled as they are rather than built upon their three hills.

On all sides of the town extends the oasis, also dumb and slumbrous under the heavy heat of the day. It looks quite small and presses close against the two flanks of the town with an air of wanting to defend it at need rather than to entice it. I can see the whole of it: it resembles two squares of leaves enveloped by a long wall like a park, roughly drawn upon the sterile plain. Although divided by compartments into a multitude of little orchards, also all enclosed within walls, seen from this height it looks like a green tablecloth; no tree is distinguishable, two stages of forest only can be remarked: the first, round-headed clumps; the second, clusters of palms. At intervals some meagre patches of barley, only the stubble of which now remains, form shorn spaces of brilliant yellow amid the foliage; elsewhere in rare glades a dry, powdery, and ash-coloured ground shows. Finally, on the south side, a few mounds of sand, heaped by the wind, have passed over the surrounding wall; it is the desert trying to invade the gardens. The trees do not move; in the forest thickets we divine certain sombre gaps in which birds may be supposed to be hidden, sleeping until their second awakening in the evening.

This is also the hour when the desert is transformed into an obscure plain. The sun, suspended over its centre, inscribes upon it a circle of light the equal rays of which fall full upon it in all ways and everywhere at the same time. There is no longer any clearness or shadow; the perspective indicated by the fleeting colours almost ceases to measure distances; everything is covered with a brown tone, continuous without streaks or mixture; there are fifteen or twenty leagues of country as uniform and flat as a flooring. It seems that the most minute salient object should be visible upon it, and yet the eye discerns nothing there; one could not even say now where there is sand, earth, or stony places, and the immobility of this solid sea then becomes more striking than ever. On seeing it start at our feet and then stretch away and sink towards the South, the East, and the West without any traced route or inflexion, we ask ourselves what may be this silent land clothed in a doubtful tone that seems the colour of the void; whence no one comes, whither no one goes, and which ends in so straight and clear a strip against the sky;—we do not know; we feel that it does not end there and that it is, so to speak, only the entrance to the high sea.

Then add to all these reveries the fame of the names we have seen upon the map, of places that we know to be there, in such or such direction, at five, ten, twenty, fifty days’ march, some known, others only indicated and yet others more and more obscure.... Then the negro country, the edge of which we only know; two or three names of towns with a capital for a kingdom; lakes, forests, a great sea on the left, perhaps great rivers, extraordinary inclemencies under the equator, strange products, monstrous animals, hairy sheep, elephants, and what then? Nothing more distinct; unknown distances, an uncertainty, an enigma. Before me I have the beginning of this enigma and the spectacle is strange beneath this clear noonday sun. Here is where I should like to see the Egyptian Sphinx.

THE DESERT OF SAHARA.

It is vain to gaze around, far or near; no moving thing can be distinguished. Sometimes by chance, a little convoy of laden camels appears, like a row of blackish points, slowly mounting the sandy slopes; we only perceive them when they reach the foot of the hills. They are travellers; who are they? whence come they? Without our perceiving them, they have crossed the whole horizon beneath our eyes. Or perhaps it is a spout of sand which suddenly detaches itself from the surface like a fine smoke, rises into a spiral, traverses a certain space bending under the wind and then evaporates after a few seconds.

The day passes slowly; it ends as it began with half rednesses, an amber sky, depths assuming colour, long oblique flames which will empurple the mountains, the sands and the eastern rocks in their turn; shadows take possession of that side of the land that has been fatigued by the heat during the first half of the day; everything seems to be somewhat comforted. The sparrows and turtle-doves begin to sing among the palms; there is a movement as of resurrection in the town; people show themselves on the terraces and come to shake the sieves; the voices of animals are heard in the squares, horses neighing as they are taken to water and camels bellowing; the desert looks like a plate of gold; the sun sinks over the violet mountains and the night makes ready to fall.

Un Été dans le Sahara (Paris, 1857).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The word Sahara does not necessarily convey the idea of a desert immensity. Inhabited at certain points, it is called Fiafi; habitable at certain others, it takes the name of Kifar, a word whose signification is the same as that of the common word Khela, abandoned; habitable and inhabited at yet other points, it is called Falat.

These three words represent each of the characteristics of the Sahara.

Fiafi is the oasis where life retires, about the fountains and wells, under the palms and fruit trees, sheltered from the sun and choub (simoon).

Kifar is the sandy and void plain, which, however, when fertilized for a moment by the winter rains, is covered with grass (a’ cheb) in the spring; and the nomadic tribes that ordinarily camp around the oases go thither to pasture their flocks.

Falat, finally, is the sterile and bare immensity, the sea of sand, whose eternal billows, to-day agitated by the choub, to-morrow will lie in motionless heaps;—the sea that is slowly ploughed by those fleets called caravans.—General Daumas, Le Sahara Algérien.

FINGAL’S CAVE

(SCOTLAND)

SIR WALTER SCOTT

July 19, 1810.

Yesterday we visited Staffa and Iona: the former is one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had heard of it; or rather, the appearance of the cavern, composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral,[2] and the running deep into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and paved as it were with ruddy marble, baffles all description. You can walk along the broken pillars, with some difficulty, and in some places with a little danger, as far as the farthest extremity. Boats also can come in below when the sea is placid,—which is seldom the case. I had become a sort of favourite with the Hebridean boatmen, I suppose from my anxiety about their old customs, and they were much pleased to see me get over the obstacles which stopped some of the party. So they took the whim of solemnly christening a great stone at the mouth of the cavern, Clachan-an Bairdh, or the Poet’s Stone. It was consecrated with a pibroch, which the echoes rendered tremendous, and a glass of whisky, not poured forth in the ancient mode of libation, but turned over the throats of the assistants. The head boatman, whose father had been himself a bard, made me a speech on the occasion; but as it was in Gaelic, I could only receive it as a silly beauty does a fine-spun compliment—bow, and say nothing.

When this fun was over (in which, strange as it may seem, the men were quite serious), we went to Iona, where there are some ancient and curious monuments. From this remote island the light of Christianity shone forth on Scotland and Ireland. The ruins are of a rude architecture, but curious to the antiquary. Our return was less comfortable; we had to row twenty miles against an Atlantic tide and some wind, besides the pleasure of seeing occasional squalls gathering to windward. The ladies were sick, especially poor Hannah Mackenzie, and none of the gentlemen escaped except Staffa and myself. The men, however, cheered by the pipes, and by their own interesting boat-songs, which were uncommonly wild and beautiful, one man leading and the others answering in chorus, kept pulling away without apparently the least sense of fatigue, and we reached Ulva at ten at night, tolerably wet, and well disposed for bed.

The haze and dullness of the atmosphere seem to render it dubious if we can proceed, as we intended, to Staffa to-day—for mist among these islands is rather unpleasant. Erskine reads prayers on deck to all hands, and introduces a very apt allusion to our being now in sight of the first Christian Church from which Revelation was diffused over Scotland and all its islands. There is a very good form of prayer for the Lighthouse Service composed by the Rev. Mr. Brunton. A pleasure vessel lies under our lee from Belfast, with an Irish party related to Macneil of Colonsay. The haze is fast degenerating into downright rain, and that right heavy—verifying the words of Collins—

“And thither where beneath the showery west

The mighty Kings of three fair realms are laid.”[3]

After dinner, the weather being somewhat cleared, sailed for Staffa, and took boat. The surf running heavy up between the island and the adjacent rock, called Booshala, we landed at a creek near the Cormorant’s cave. The mist now returned so thick as to hide all view of Iona, which was our landmark; and although Duff, Stevenson, and I, had been formerly on the isle, we could not agree upon the proper road to the cave. I engaged myself, with Duff and Erskine, in a clamber of great toil and danger, and which at length brought me to the Cannon-ball, as they call a round granite stone moved by the sea up and down in a groove of rock, which it has worn for itself, with a noise resembling thunder. Here I gave up my research, and returned to my companions, who had not been more fortunate. As night was now falling, we resolved to go aboard and postpone the adventure of the enchanted cavern until next day. The yacht came to an anchor with the purpose of remaining off the island all night, but the hardness of the ground, and the weather becoming squally, obliged us to return to our safer mooring at Y-Columb-Kill.

FINGAL’S CAVE.

29th August, 1814.

Night squally and rainy—morning ditto—we weigh, however, and return towards Staffa, and, very happily, the day clears as we approach the isle. As we ascertained the situation of the cave, I shall only make this memorandum, that when the weather will serve, the best landing is to the lee of Booshala, a little conical islet or rock, composed of basaltic columns placed in an oblique or sloping position. In this way, you land at once on the flat causeway, formed by the heads of truncated pillars, which leads to the cave. But if the state of tide renders it impossible to land under Booshala, then take one of the adjacent creeks; in which case, keeping to the left hand along the top of the ledge of rocks which girdles in the isle, you find a dangerous and precipitous descent to the causeway aforesaid, from the table. Here we were under the necessity of towing our Commodore, Hamilton, whose gallant heart never fails him, whatever the tenderness of his toes may do. He was successfully lowered by a rope down the precipice, and proceeding along the flat terrace or causeway already mentioned, we reached the celebrated cave. I am not sure whether I was not more affected by this second, than by the first view of it. The stupendous columnar side walls—the depth and strength of the ocean with which the cavern is filled—the variety of tints formed by stalactites dropping and petrifying between the pillars, and resembling a sort of chasing of yellow or cream-coloured marble filling the interstices of the roof—the corresponding variety below, where the ocean rolls over a red, and in some places a violet-coloured rock, the basis of the basaltic pillars—the dreadful noise of those august billows so well corresponding with the grandeur of the scene—are all circumstances elsewhere unparalleled. We have now seen in our voyage the three grandest caverns in Scotland,—Smowe, Macallister’s Cave, and Staffa; so that, like the Troglodytes of yore, we may be supposed to know something of the matter. It is, however, impossible to compare scenes of natures so different, nor, were I compelled to assign a preference to any of the three, could I do it but with reference to their distinct characters, which might affect different individuals in different degrees. The characteristic of the Smowe cave may in this case be called the terrific, for the difficulties which oppose the stranger are of a nature so uncommonly wild, as, for the first time at least, to convey an impression of terror—with which the scenes to which he is introduced fully correspond. On the other hand the dazzling whiteness of the incrustations in Macallister’s Cave, the elegance of the entablature, the beauty of its limpid pool, and the graceful dignity of its arch, render its leading features those of severe and chastened beauty. Staffa, the third of these subterranean wonders, may challenge sublimity as its principal characteristic. Without the savage gloom of the Smowe cave, and investigated with more apparent ease, though, perhaps, with equal real danger, the stately regularity of its columns forms a contrast to the grotesque imagery of Macallister’s Cave, combining at once the sentiments of grandeur and beauty. The former is, however, predominant, as it must necessarily be in any scene of the kind.

We had scarce left Staffa when the wind and rain returned.

Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh, 1878).

FOOTNOTES:

[2]

“——that wondrous dome,

Where, as to shame the temples deck’d

By skill of earthly architect,

Nature herself, it seem’d, would raise,

A minster to her Maker’s praise!

Not for a meaner use ascend

Her columns, or her arches bend;

Nor of a theme less solemn tells

That mighty surge that ebbs and swells,

And still, beneath each awful pause

From the high vault an answer draws,

In varied tone prolonged and high

That mocks the organ’s melody.

Nor doth its entrance front in vain

To old Iona’s holy fane,

That Nature’s voice might seem to say,

‘Well hast thou done, frail Child of clay!

Thy humble powers that stately shrine

Task’d high and hard—but witness mine!’”

Lord of the Isles. Canto IV. St. 10.

[3] Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands.

FINGAL’S CAVE

(SCOTLAND)

JOHN KEATS

I am puzzled how to give you an Idea of Staffa. It can only be represented by a first-rate drawing. One may compare the surface of the Island to a roof—this roof is supported by grand pillars of basalt standing together as thick as honeycombs. The finest thing is Fingal’s Cave—it is entirely a hollowing out of Basalt Pillars. Suppose now the Giants who rebelled against Jove had taken a whole Mass of black Columns and bound them together like bunches of matches—and then with immense axes had made a cavern in the body of these columns—— Of course the roof and floor must be composed of broken ends of the Columns—such is Fingal’s Cave, except that the Sea has done the work of excavations, and is continually dashing there—so that we walk along the sides of the cave on the pillars which are left as if for convenient stairs. The roof is arched somewhat gothic-wise, and the length of some of the entire side-pillars is fifty feet. About the island you might seat an army of Men each on a pillar. The length of the cave is 120 feet, and from its extremity the view into the sea, through the large Arch at the entrance—the colour of the columns is a sort of black with a lurking gloom of purple therein. For solemnity and grandeur it far surpasses the finest Cathedral. At the extremity of the Cave there is a small perforation into another cave, at which the waters meeting and buffeting each other there is sometimes produced a report as of a cannon heard as far as Iona, which must be twelve Miles. As we approached in the boat, there was such a fine swell of the sea that the pillars appeared rising immediately out of the crystal. But it is impossible to describe it—

Not Aladdin magian

Ever such a work began.

Not the Wizard of the Dee

Ever such a dream could see,

Not St. John in Patmos Isle

In the passion of his toil

When he saw the churches seven

Golden-aisled built up in heaven

Gaz’d at such a rugged wonder.

As I stood its roofing under

Lo! I saw one sleeping there

On the marble cold and bare.

While the surges wash’d his feet

And his garments white did beat

Drench’d about the sombre rocks,

On his neck his well-grown locks

Lifted dry above the Main

Were upon the curl again—

“What is this? and what art thou?”

Whisper’d I, and touch’d his brow;

“What art thou? and what is this?”

Whisper’d I, and strove to kiss

The Spirit’s hand, to wake his eyes;

Up he started in a trice:

“I am Lycidas,” said he

“Fam’d in funeral Minstrelsy—

This was architected thus

By the great Oceanus.

Here his mighty waters play

Hollow Organs all the day,

Here, by turns, his dolphins all,