CHAPTER XVII. MOUNTAINS AND MISHAPS. The chalet will be gained within an hour. -Hark! the note, The natural music of the mountain reed; Who is here Who seems not of our trade? The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds -I am giddy! LORD BYRON. LETTER XV. CAROLINE ST. CLAIR TO MRS. BALCARRIS. Grindelwald, 8th September. EARLY this morning, Colonel Cleveland and I breakfasted, and set off for Grindelwald, over the Wengern Alp, for the purpose of enjoying the sublime views that pass affords of the Jungfrau, which from hence alone can be seen in full perfection. Lady Hunlocke, who had already crossed the mountain twice, and Mrs. Cleveland, who was in no state to cross it all, were to proceed there to meet us by the valley, a drive of a few hours only. We were mounted upon two great rough gaunt cart-horses,-for no mules are to be had in the Bernese Oberland, and what is far worse, no side saddles. A German pillion, with a handle to hold by, to which you must, if possible, contrive to stick fast-as the awkward animal, accustomed only to harness, scrambles up and down the broken precipitous paths-forms a most uncomfortable, and indeed unsafe substitute, for our pleasant and secure English sidesaddles. The first sight we saw, on leaving Lauterbrunn, was two women mowing in a meadow; and a little further on, we beheld a woman actually drawing a little cart herself. It is a very common sight to see cows employed in this way; for in this land of industry, even the milch 2A VOL. I. cows are not exempted from labour, and they say that a little easy work does not injure them as milkers. It was sweet, as we climbed the steep mountain's grassy side, to listen to the tinkling bells of the cattle, that browsed at large over the Alp, mingled with the pipe of the idle herdsman; and at intervals, the wild echoes of the shepherd's horn, sounding from afar over the mountains. An ascent of some hours brought us to the grassy heights of Manlichta, where we dismounted, and sat down on the green turf, with the goats and cows, and our horses browsing around us enjoying the most sublime scene that imagination can conceive. At our feet, we looked down into the long deep narrow rapine of Trumletenthal, far sunk beneath us; its depth filled with immense fragments of rock, and mountains of fallen ice, which alone divided us from the sublime Jungfrau, whose perpendicular precipices of bare rock, rising from the depth of the ravine, like a wall, to an enormous height, supported the tremendous mountains of snow, and towering glaciers, which were piled above it, high up into the very vault of heaven. Though the mountain on which we sat, was between six and seven thousand feet in height,(double the height of Snowdoun)-it seemed but the footstool to the Jungfrau, whose towering height, with the sublime forms of the Gros Eiger, the Monk Eiger, the Breithorn, and all the highest pyramids of the great Alps, appeared close opposite, revealed from their base to their summit, and divided from us only by the deep narrow ravine, on the brink of which we sat. Snowy mountains and ranges of Alps, are generally seen at a distance, and consequently lose much of their grandeur; resembling, in their effect upon the mind, the faint and unreal effect of a painting, or of a line of clouds in the horizon; but here, from their base to their summit, they were close to our eyes. We almost fancied we could stretch out our hand and touch them. We were impressed with the vivid sense of their reality and their mightiness. We had not sat ten minutes, in mute admiration of the prospect, when an enormous field of frozen snow, loosened by the heat of the summer sun, slid down to the edge of the precipice immediately opposite, and tumbled over its sides, like a long cataract of silver, into the abyss beneath, with the reverberating roar of thunder. At the interval of every few minutes, these tremendous avalanches, each sufficient to have overwhelmed whole cities, and thousands of human beings, continued to fall;-sometimes three or four masses of ice, one above another, detached themselves simultaneously, from the mountain's shelving sides, and overtaking and rolling over each other, like the waves of the ocean, thundered down into the ravine in long succession, with a sound, the awful sublimity of which no words can describe. We sat nearly two hours upon this spot, gazing upon this sublime spectacle, which had a stronger, but similar kind of fascination, as that spell which chains your eyes to contemplate the roaring billows of the sea, as they roll in succession, and break on the resounding shore. You may conceive how powerful the spell must have been, when even Colonel Cleveland sat quiet so long. With difficulty, at last, we tore ourselves away. |