The Spell of Switzerland

While we were on the Gornergrat I saw and heard an avalanche. A small snow-ball may start one. Roaring louder and louder with thunderous echoes it hurls itself down the steep incline, and, like a colossal, titanic bomb-shell, it bursts into the valley. The noise made by a snow-slide from a steep roof is startling enough, but imagine it multiplied a thousand times, – as if the top of the world were tumbling. It is impossible to estimate the thousands of tons of ice and snow that go dashing and crashing and smashing into the valleys. It is Nature engaged in her slow but certain work of destruction. The bombardment of the avalanches is one of the most impressive phenomena in the mountains.

I do not know whether Tennyson ever climbed to the Gornergrat, but he gives a picture of Monte Rosa which is well worth remembering: —

“I climbed the roofs at break of day;Sun-smitten Alps before me lay,I stood among the silent statuesAnd statued pinnacles, as mute as they.“How faintly flushed, how phantom fairWas Monte Rosa hanging thereA thousand shadowy-penciled valleysAnd snowy dells in the golden air.”

I had a pensive longing to spend the whole summer among this giant Brotherhood of peaks, making excursions to one after another – provided the weather allowed. From each summit, from each col and shoulder, there would be a different aspect of mountain scenery; different cloud-effects; different sunsets; different risks and different escapes. I do not know how many chances there are of putting hundred franc notes into the pockets of guides. But the zest of discovery is gone; all climbing now is only imitation and repetition, and it is of no use to regret the old days or to repine because one must turn one’s back on the possibilities of adventure.

We returned as we came. As the train stopped at Stalden Will told me of a wonderful excursion he had enjoyed the preceding year. He and two German friends of his, one a professor, the other a doctor, had walked up to Saas-Fee and ascended the Allalinhorn.

“We had to go down, before we went up,” said Will. “There is a bridge which crosses the Matter-Visp, and after getting to the other side we followed up through the Saastal by a path which gives you the most enchanting pictures of tumbling water-falls. We spent the night at Saas-Grund and the next morning early reached Saas-Fee, which, I think, affords one of the finest views in Switzerland. The glacier called the Fee is perfectly surrounded with magnificent peaks – I can’t remember half of them; but they are all from ten to thirteen thousand feet high. The Alphubel is over fourteen thousand. We took guides and went up the Allalinhorn. There were six of us roped together and it was over snow all the way. The pass is nearly twelve thousand feet up, and cold. But the view from the rounded summit well repaid us for our pains. Directly across, so that one could almost leap it, is the jagged peak of the Rimpfischhorn, its black dorsal fin sticking out of the dazzling snow as ugly, though not so prominently uprising, as the Matterhorn. Switzerland,” he added, “for a little country has more ups and downs in it than any other in the world.”

At Visp our Moto was waiting for us. Some of the people whom we met did not believe that we had been permitted to ascend the Rhône valley, as it had been at one time closed to motor-cars. But either the report of what the French are doing to attract wealthy travellers by building La route des Alpes wholly in French territory from Paris to Nice or a realization of the direct loss of patronage caused by illiberal motor-laws has changed some of the interpretations of them. In parts of Switzerland it is perfectly justifiable to shut automobiles out. Where the roads are narrow and are used largely by pedestrians or for driving cattle and there is real danger it is probably for the interest of the many for the few to be subjected to restraint. Even the hotel-keepers of the Grisons and of the Bernese Oberland agree that more are benefited by excluding motor-cars than by admitting them, for there are a thousand that go by horses or on foot to every hundred that come in automobiles.

We had to go back to Martigny, and as we were so near we went to see the Gorges du Trient. This is a colossal fissure from one hundred and eighty to three hundred meters deep, and frequently not more than a couple of meters across. The only access is by a wooden gallery nearly half a mile long hung on iron cramps and supports, while far below rushes the torrent with a deafening roar.

From Martigny one follows a zigzagging road over the Col de la Forclaz and then passes Argentière over the Col des Montets to Chamonix. The chief feature is the Tête Noire which Miss Havergal, who climbed it, declares “is a magnificent high level valley or gorge, winding for four or five hours at a good height along mountains with as picturesque a combination of heights and depths, rocks, torrents, cascades, pine trees, ferns, flowers and precipices as exists anywhere.”

For the first time on our trip we had trouble with the Moto. First one of the front tires burst with a report that woke the echoes like a gun. Then, when going down a long incline, the brakes caused so much friction that we nearly got on fire; but by waiting for a while the danger was passed and we reached Chamonix safely.

The name of Chamonix, or, as the French spell it, Chamouni, is derived from the Latin campus munitus, champs muni, the fortified field. The earliest mention of the name in the modern form is found in an atlas of 1595; but in 1091, Aymon, Count of Geneva, bestowed the valley on the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Michel de la Cluse; it was then called by its Latin name. Three hundred years later a priory was founded there, which, in the early part of the Sixteenth Century, came into the jurisdiction of the Canons of Sallanches, who so maltreated the peasantry that at last they rose in revolt, destroyed the monastery and wrought their freedom. It was occasionally visited in the Seventeenth Century, but in 1741 two Englishmen, Pococke and Windham, with six others and five servants, went there from Geneva. The feud between the Chamoniards and the monks of Sallanches had, in some way, made people believe that the valley was inhabited by brigands, and the Pococke-Windham party went armed and camped out in the open air with sentinels posted. Their bravery is commemorated in the “Englishmen’s Stone,” bearing their names and the date. The following year Pierre Martel, the son of a Geneva shoemaker, hearing about their wonderful adventures among the glaciers, was moved to see them for himself. He wrote an account of his journey and for the first time gave a name to Mont Blanc. What a pity he did not give a better one! He set the fashion of visiting “the glaciers” and people began to come more and more, to see them and to study them.

The young scientist De Saussure was one of the first to make a study of glacial action. Then, in 1762, the young Duc d’Enville made a study of the glaciers of Savoy, and wrote an interesting account of them, which may be found in the Annuaire du Club Alpin for 1893. Seventy years later Professor Forbes began to make scientific studies of the motion of the glaciers and was the first to discover that they were really rivers of ice moving like other rivers, faster in the centre than at the sides. He calculated that their daily progress was ten inches near the top, twenty-five inches near the bottom, at the centre, and sixteen inches at the sides. He discovered in the ice, fragments of wood which were recognized as belonging to a ladder which De Saussure had left at the upper end of the Mer de Glace in 1788. They had been brought down five thousand meters in forty-five years. In 1837 Louis Jean Rodolphe Agassiz, whom America claims as one of her glories, though he was born on Lake Morat “In the pleasant Pays de Vaud,” read a paper before the Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences meeting at Neuchâtel, in which he propounded the now-accepted theory. As it was opposed he made tests of the motion of the glaciers at Chamonix, at Zermatt and near the Grimsel-Pass. He spent a number of years in this work, assisted by Count de Pourtalès and others. All sorts of tests were made but the proof of time is absolutely convincing.

Thus in 1820 a party had reached the upper end of the Grand Plateau and were just starting up the “ancien passage” when the snow on which they were climbing began to slide. All of them were swept down to the edge of the great crevasse which they had safely crossed a short time before. Three of the guides were swallowed up in it. In 1861 the remains of their bodies began to appear at the lower end of the Glacier des Bossons, more than a kilometer from the place. Bits of clothing, a cooked leg of mutton, a forearm with its hand came into sight. One of the surviving guides was present when they were discovered and exclaimed: – “Who would have thought I should once more shake hands with my good comrade again!” These remains had travelled more than one hundred and fifty meters a year for forty-one years.

De Saussure’s monument stands on the east bank of the Arve; Balmat’s on the other side, near the church.

The valley of Chamonix is supposed to be due to glacial action. Those who have studied it show that it is a part of the great folding up of the Jurassic strata nipt in between crystalline rocks by the tremendous lateral compression to which Switzerland was subjected as the earth cooled and shrank. The Valais, the Urserental and the region of the Vorder Rhein belong to the same cosmic cataclysm.

The great-great-grandchildren of that prehistoric glacier still inhabit the mountain-valleys. The greatest of them is the Mer de Glace, on which every visitor must set his foot. Farther up the valley is l’Argentière, which stretches from side to side between the rugged mighty ridges that lift themselves into fantastic jagged needles and pinnacles of cruel rock. It is at least a hundred meters deep, and one can look down into vivid blue crevasses and hear the rushing of the ever-wearing waters far below. The five glaciers make the five streams which the poets sing about. At one time the Glacier des Bois dammed the Arve, but in time the persistent river cut through it, forming the Passage des Tines, which has a height of one hundred and seventy meters. The great erratic blocks of granite scattered through the valley are mute witnesses of the ancient days. The eye that can read will see all along the faces of the cliffs the hieroglyphics of the ice.

This is what William Cullen Bryant says about the Arve. By the way, I noticed that while Coleridge pronounced it in two syllables, Shelley gives it one. So does Bryant: —

“Not from the sands or cloven rocks,Thou rapid Arve! thy waters flow;Nor earth within its bosom locksThy dark, unfathomable wells below.Thy springs are in the cloud, thy streamBegins to move and murmur firstWhere ice-peaks feel the noonday beam,Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.“Born where the thunder and the blast,And morning’s earliest light are born,Thou rushest swoln and loud and fastBy these low homes as if in scorn:Yet humbler springs yield purer waves;And brighter, glassier streams than thine,Sent up from earth’s unlighted caves,With heaven’s own beam and image shine.“Yet stay! for here are flowers and trees;Warm rays on cottage roofs are here,And laugh of girls and hum of bees, —Here linger till thy waves are clear.Thou heedest not, thou hastest on;From steep to steep thy torrent falls,Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone,It rests beneath Geneva’s walls.”

“That expression, ‘rests beneath Geneva’s walls,’ seems to me singularly inappropriate,” said I. “I did not know it rested anywhere.”

“By the way,” said Will, “it is a curious thing: almost all visitors to the Rhône valley remember the river as a greyish muddy-looking stream; yet it is true, for seven months of the year it runs with a clear current, of a greenish colour very much like Niagara’s. I suppose it does its work of disintegration mainly in the summer, when it has the help of the sun.”

Chamonix, which so short a time ago was almost a lost valley, is now the very centre of the mercenary traffic in Nature’s most marvellous mysteries. One may reach dizzy heights now by the railway, and there are restaurants a mile above the sea.

My nephew happened to be personally acquainted with M. Fidèle Eugster, whose fertile brain devised a scheme for building solid pylons over which should run an aerial line from Chamonix up to the Aiguille du Midi, three thousand eight hundred and forty-two meters – only a little less than nine hundred and sixty-five meters less than the monarch himself. He happened to be there himself and he invited Will and me to ride up as far as the construction-car went. Ruth contented herself with watching us and taking a walk about town. The car, seating twenty persons, starts from Chamonix and swings up two thousand meters over the twenty-seven of these immense pylons already constructed. They are from twenty-five to seventy-five meters apart. The power-station, where there are electric motors of seventy-five horse-power each, is near Pierre Pointue at a height of one thousand six hundred and seventy-nine meters. From there over twenty-four more pylons a cable one thousand four hundred meters long took us to the foot of the Aiguille. There we got into a smaller basket-car and were swung up to a protogen pinnacle directly opposite the Grands Mulets. From there we were taken to the first tension-pylon which breaks the enormous stretch to the Col du Midi, where the terminal station will be constructed. It is a tremendous swoop of between eight and nine hundred meters and the last stathmos will be nearly six hundred more. The car glissades down the curves; then the cable pulls it up the incline. It is like a series of gigantic scallops but there is no shock, no jar; only a clicking as you pass the pylons.

Next to my flight in the hydro-aeroplane this was the greatest experience of my life. What can I say of that swoop through the air? Words utterly fail. Below lay the valley with its thickly clustered hotels and houses and the ramifications of the rushing rivers and streams like veins in a dissected hand. Below us lay the glacier with its séracs diminished to etchings. All around rose the haughty Brotherhood scornfully watching the machinations of puny, mighty-minded man. They know that they can sometimes catch him napping, but only his body can they hurt. His soul is bigger and grander than their icy hearts. They can fling down avalanches and hurl enormous boulders or bullet-like stones at him, tearing themselves to pieces in their blind fury to do so, but here he is above them. They can’t shake off the shackles which his genius and his power fasten to their gigantic frames. Atlas must bear the Earth on his shoulders and there is no Perseus to relieve him of the weight.

Compared to the cost of some of the other Swiss roads this aerial line is comparatively inexpensive. It has been estimated that twenty-four million francs will build it and equip it. Its success will doubtless cause other “inaccessible peaks” to be harnessed in the same way. All the difficulty and most of the danger – I suppose one might be struck by lightning or die of heart-failure on the way up – and a vast amount of time, will be eliminated.

While we were in the valley we had a most glorious sunset. I will not attempt to describe the indescribable; there are no terms to differentiate the tints that glowed on the clouds and the shades of lavender and violet and royal purple. There is nothing more impressive than to see the outburst of cloud masses from a mountain-valley rising dark and stormy and then, as it were, putting on the panoply of their royal state – furnished them by their servant the sun. I recalled Moore’s poem on Mont Blanc at sunset: —

“’Twas at this instant – while there glowedThis last, intensest gleam of light —Suddenly thro’ the opening roadThe valley burst upon my sight!That glorious valley with its lakeAnd Alps on Alps in clusters swelling,Mighty and pure and fit to makeThe ramparts of a godhead’s dwelling.“I stood entranced – as rabbins say.This whole assembled, gazing worldWill stand upon that awful dayWhen the ark’s light aloft unfurledAmong the opening clouds shall shineDivinity’s own radiant sign!“Mighty Mont Blanc, thou wert to meThat minute, with thy brow in heaven,As sure a sign of deityAs e’er to mortal gaze was given.Nor ever, were I destined yetTo live my life twice o’er again,Can I the deep-felt awe forget,The dream, the trance that rapt me then.”

We went through the paces demanded of visitors to the valley. We made excursions to the Glacier des Bossons especially to see the little lake which so exquisitely mirrors Mont Blanc – so detestible the artificial ruins which insult its beauty! – we even paid our franc to penetrate the artificial grotto in the ice – and we went as far as the Cascade du Dard. We went also to Flegère for the sake of its extraordinary panoramic view; but I thought best of all was the Brévent which faces so closely the whole range.

We reluctantly left the wonderful valley and returned to Lausanne by the way of Cluses, where we had our watches set, thence across to Bonneville, down to Geneva and along the lake. We were warmly welcomed by the three children who, however, had been well looked after by the trustworthy French bonne.

CHAPTER XXI

HANNIBAL IN SWITZERLAND

A FEW days later Will and I got to talking about the ancient passages of the Alps. Hannibal’s was the first. We got out a copy of Polybius and read the simple narrative of that almost incredible expedition. Polybius, who was present at the destruction of Carthage, had probably a fairly accurate knowledge of his subject; but to this day it has not been absolutely decided where the great Carthaginian crossed the Alps. One man believes he went by the Little Mont Cenis; a Frenchman argued that he descended into Italy by the Col de la Seigne; but the most convincing argument, that put forward by William John Law, fixes the route as from Roquemaure, where he crossed the Rhône, up to Vienne by Bourgoin, the Mont du Chat, Constans, Bourg Saint-Maurice, thence over the Little Saint-Bernard to Aoste into Italy.

We read some of the passages describing the difficulties of the route, attempted so late in the season. This is what Polybius says: —

“Hannibal, having arrived upon the Rhône, straightway set about affecting the passage where the river ran in a single stream, being encamped at a distance of nearly four days’ journey from the sea…

“By this time a crowd of the barbarians was collected on the opposite shore for the purpose of preventing the passage of the Carthaginians. Looking well at these, and considering from existent circumstances that it would neither be possible to force a passage in the face of so numerous an enemy nor to keep his position without expecting the enemy upon him from all sides, Hannibal, as the third night was coming on, sent off a division of the army under command of Hanno, son of the King Bomilcar, joining to them natives of the country as guides.

“After marching up the river for a distance of two hundred stadia and coming to a place where it is divided into two branches around an island, they halted there; and, having got timber from a neighboring forest, they soon fitted out a number of rafts, sufficient for their purpose, partly by framing the timbers together, partly by tying them. On these they were safely ferried over…

“As the fifth night came on, the division which had already crossed the river pushed forward about the morning watch, against the barbarians, who were opposite to the Carthaginian army. Hannibal now, having his soldiers all ready, was intent on the work of crossing, having filled the barges with the light-shielded cavalry; and the canoes with the lightest of the infantry…

“The barbarians, seeing the purpose of their enemies, rushed out from their entrenchments in a disorderly and confused manner, persuaded that they could readily prevent the landing of the Carthaginians. But Hannibal, as soon as he perceived that his own troops were already coming down on the farther side, for they gave signal of their approach by smoke, as had been agreed upon, at once ordered all to embark, and for the managers of the ferry-boats to make all possible headway against the current.

“This being speedily done, and the men in the boats working with keen rivalry and shouting and striving against the force of the current, … the barbarians in front raised their war-song and their challenges. The scene was one of terror and of incitement to the conflict.

“At this moment the Carthaginians, who had first crossed to that side of the river, suddenly and unexpectedly appeared among the tents of the barbarians, which had been left vacant. Some set fire to the encampment; while the majority rushed upon those that were guarding the passage of the river. In view of an event so utterly unexpected the barbarians ran, some to protect their tents, others to resist the assailants, and fought with them. Hannibal, now that everything had succeeded in accordance with his plan, straightway drew up those that had first got across, encouraged them, and engaged in battle with the barbarians. The Gauls, from their lack of order and the strangeness of all that had taken place, soon turned and betook themselves to headlong flight.

“The Carthaginian general having conquered both the passage and his enemies, immediately attended to the transport of those that still remained on the other shore…

“The transport of the elephants was effected in the following manner: – Having constructed a number of rafts, they strongly joined together two of these, so as to fit closely one with the other, and planted both firmly in the shore at the place of embarcation, the two together being about fifty feet wide. Then, joining other rafts together in the same way, they attached these to the former at the outer end, carrying the fabric of the bridge forward in the line of passage; and, that the whole structure might not be carried down the river, the side that was against the stream they secured by cables from the land, fastened to some trees which grew on the brink. When they had thrown out this bridge to the length of two plethra [sixty meters] altogether, they added at the end two rafts constructed more perfectly than the others and the largest of all. These were bound with great strength to each other; but to the rest in such a way that the fastenings could be easily severed. To these they fixed a number of towing-lines with which the barges were to prevent their being carried down the river, and hold them by force against the stream, to take over the elephants upon them and land them upon the other side.

“After this, they dug up and brought a quantity of earth to all the rafts, and spread it till it was level with, and looked just like, the road that led over the dry land to the crossing-place. The elephants were used always to obey the Indians as far as the edge of the water, but never as yet had ventured to go into the water. They brought them, therefore, along this bank of earth, putting two females first; and the beasts obeyed them. As soon as they had got them on to the farthest rafts, they cut away the fastenings by which these were fitted to the rest, and, pulling on the two lines with the barges, they soon carried away the beasts and the rafts which bore them from the earthy pier. At this the animals, quite confounded, turned about and rushed in every direction; but, surrounded on every side by the stream, they shrank from it, and were compelled to stay where they were; and, in this way, the two rafts being brought back repeatedly, most of the elephants were brought over upon them. But some, through fright, leaped into the river half-way across; and it happened that all the Indians belonging to these were lost, but the elephants were saved, for, with the power and size of their probosces, raising them out of the water and breathing through them and spouting up all that got into them, they held out, making their way for the most part erect below the water…”

Polybius goes on to tell how Hannibal, having got his forces across, marched up into the mountains by the valley of the Rhône and then began the ascent of the Alps. The Allobroges seized the heights. Polybius says: —

“The Carthaginian general, aware that the barbarians had preoccupied the posts of vantage, encamped his army in front of the heights and waited there; then he sent forward some of the Gauls who were acting as guides, in order that they might spy into the designs of the enemy and their whole plan.