The history of a mountain:

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A MOUNTAIN -i

ILLUSTRATED BY L. BENNETT

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THE H1STOM OF A MOUNTAM

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

BY BERTHA NESS AND JOHN LILLIE

ILLUSTRATED BY L. BENNETT

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

1881

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

All rights reserved.

SRL6
UWJ

5144587

CONTENTS.

I. THE RETREAT 9

II. PEAKS AND VALLEYS 16

III. ROCKS AND CRYSTALS 24

IV. THE ORIGIN OF THE MOUNTAIN 33

V. FOSSILS 42

VI. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PEAKS .... 48

VII. LANDSLIPS 56

VIII. CLOUDS 63

IX. FOGS AND STORMS 69

X. SNOW 75

"XL AVALANCHES 86

XII. GLACIERS 94

XIII. MORAINES AND TORRENTS 102

XIV. FORESTS AND PASTURES 109

XV. THE ANIMALS OF THE MOUNTAIN 120

XVI. GRADATIONS OF CLIMATE 127

XVII. THE FREE MOUNTAINEER 137

XVIII. CRETINS 151

XIX. MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP 160

XX. OLYMPUS AND THE GODS 171

XXI. GENII 179

XXII. MAN . 184

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

"THIS WAS THE LAST HABITATION5' 11

"THE GREAT PEAK CAN BE SEEN RISING UP LIKE A PYR-
AMID" . . 21

" HOW WERE THEY ABLE TO RAISE THEMSELVES UP TO THE

SKIES?" 36

"UPON THE ROCKY SHORES OF THE OCEAN" ... 43

"THE INHABITANTS COME TO CONTEMPLATE THE DISASTER" 58

" WE SEE THE GIANT APPEAR ONCE MORE " . . ... 68

"THERE is THE ABYSS" 83

GLACIER AND CREVASSE 97

THE TORRENT 106

"THE GRACEFUL CHAMOIS" . 124

" FIR-TREES, WITH THEIR SOMBRE BRANCHES" . . . 129
"AT THE CONTEMPLATION OF ALL THIS EXPANSE" . .146

"WlTH HIM THE LAD FORMED A YOKE" . . . . 155
"THEY PERCEIVED THE PEAKS SPARKLING THROUGH THE

RIVEN CLOUDS" . 178

ISTORY

A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER I.

THE RETREAT.

* I WAS sad, downcast, weary of my life. Fate Lad
dealt hardly with me ; it had robbed me of all who were
dear to me, had ruined my plans, frustrated all my hopes.
People whom I called my friends had turned against me
when they beheld me assailed by misfortune ; all man-
kind, with its conflicting interests and its unrestrained
passions, appeared repulsive in my eyes. Cost what it

1*

10 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

might, I was determined to run away, either to die, or in
solitude to regain my vigor and peace of mind.

Without knowing exactly whither my steps were lead-
ing me, I turned towards those great mountains whose
jagged crests I beheld breaking the distant line of the
horizon.

On I went, following by - paths, and in the evening
stopping before isolated inns. The sound of a human
voice, the noise of a footstep, made me shudder ; but
when I was walking- alone I listened with melancholy
pleasure to the birds singing, the river murmuring,
and the thousand strains proceeding from the vast
woods.

Walking, as chance led me, either along the high-road
or footpath, at last I reached the first defile of the moun-
tain. The wide plain, scored with indentations, stopped
abruptly at the foot of the rocks and slopes shaded by
chestnut - trees. The lofty blue peaks, seen from afar,
had disappeared behind other crests, which were not so
high, yet nearer to me. By my side the river, which,
lower down, falling over boulders, extended into a vast
sheet of water, flowed rapidly down between the shining
rocks, clad with a blackish-hued moss. Above each bank
a low hill, the first lesser chain of the mountains, reared
up its escarpments and bore upon its summit the ruins
of a large tower, formerly the warder of the valley. T
felt shut in between two wralls ; I had quitted the region
of large towns, of smoke and hubbub; enemies and false
friends were left behind.

It was the first time for very long that I had felt a
sensation of real gladness. My step became brisker, my
glance more confident ; I stood still that I might enjoy

"THIS WAS THE LAST HABITATION."

THE RETREAT. H

the delight of inhaling the pure air coming down from
the mountain.

There are no more stone, dust, or mud covered high-
roads in this country: now I "have left the low -lying
plains ; I am in the mountain, which no hand has yet
subdued ! A foot-track formed by goats and goatherds
turns aside from the broader road, which follows the bot-
tom of the valley, and ascends obliquely along the hill-
side. This is the road which I take, so that I may be
quite sure .of at last being alone. Every step bringing
me higher, I notice how the people walking along the
path beneath gradually grow smaller and smaller. The
hamlets and villages are half hidden from my sight by
their own smoke, a bluish-gray mist which creeps slowly
over the heights, and on its way leaves fragments of it-
self clinging to the outskirts of the forest.

Towards evening, after having made the circuit of sev-
eral rocky declivities, having passed over numerous ra-
vines, and crossed many brawling streamlets by jumping
from stone to stone, I reached the base of a height ris-
ing far above rocks, woods, and pastures. At the top a
smoky cabin, and sheep grazing on the slopes around,
appeared in sight. This yellowish path wound upwards
to the cabin like a piece of unrolled ribbon, and there
seemed to stop. Farther on, I could discern nothing but
great stony ravines, landslips, waterfalls, snow, and gla-
ciers' This was the last habitation of man. It was the
cabin which for long months should serve as my place
of refuge. A dog, then a shepherd, received me as if
they were friends.

Henceforward, being free, I allowed nature slowly to
renew my life. At times I would wander in the midst

12 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

of a chaos of stones, which had been hurled down from
a rocky ridge ; at others I would walk as chance led me
in a forest of pine-trees ; then, again, I would climb to
the upper crests, and seat myself upon some peak over-
looking the whole scene ; often I would plunge into a
deep, black ravine, in which I could imagine that I had
fled into the bowels of the earth.

Gradually, under the influence of time and nature, the
lugubrious phantoms which haunted my memory relaxed
their hold. I no longer walked merely to escape from
my recollections, but also to allow myself to be imbued
with the impressions of all around me, and to enjoy them
as if unconsciously.

If ever, since having set my foot upon the mountain,
I had experienced a sensation of gladness, it was owing
to the fact of my having entered into solitude, and that
rocks, forests, a whole new world, had risen up between
me and the past ; yet one fine day I understood that a
new passion had crept into my soul. I loved the moun-
tain for its own sake. I loved its superb calm face, light-
ed up by the sun while we were still left in gloom ; I
loved its mighty shoulders, laden with ice full of blue
reflections; its sides, whereon pastures alternated with
forests and waste ground ; its huge roots stretched out
afar like those of an enormous tree, separated by valleys,
with their respective rivulets, cascades, lakes, and mead-
ows; I loved everything belonging to the mountain,
down to the yellow or green moss growing upon the
rocks, down to the stone gleaming in the midst of the
turf.

Just in the same manner the shepherd, who, as a rep-
resentative of that humankind from which I was escap-

THE RETREAT. 13

ing, at first almost displeased me, had gradually become
necessary to me ; I felt my confidence in and friendship
for him awaken. I no longer confined myself to thank-
ing him for the food which he brought and the services
which he rendered me. But I studied him ; I tried to
learn all that he could teach me. Very slender were
his appliances for instruction ; but when once the love
of nature had taken possession of me, it was he who
taught me to know the mountain on which the flocks

O

grazed and at whose base he was born. He told me
the names of the plants, showed me the rocks in which
crystals and rare stones were to be found, accompanied
me to the edges of dizzy whirlpools to point out the line
I must pursue where it was difficult to cross. From the
top of the peaks he indicated the valleys, traced out the
course of the torrents; then, having returned to our
smoky cabin, related to me the history of the country
and its local legends.

In exchange, I explained many things to him which
he did not, and had never even desired to, understand.
But his intelligence expanded by degrees; it became ra-
pacious. When I saw his eye brighten and his lips
smile, I took delight in repeating to him the little that I
knew. Intellect dawned upon that face, until lately so
dull and heavy. From being as careless as he had hith-
erto been, he was metamorphosed into a man capable of
reflecting both on himself and the objects surrounding
him.

And, while teaching my companion, I taught myself;
for, in trying to explain nature's phenomena to the shep-
herd, I ended in understanding them better, and became
my own pupil.

14 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

Thus incited by the double interest which the love of
nature and sympathy with rny companion imparted to
me, I endeavored to become acquainted both with the
present life and past history of the mountain upon which
we dwelt like parasites upon an elephant's hide. I stud-
ied the enormous mass, in the rocks of which it is form-
ed ; in the irregularities of the ground which, according
to the different points of view, the hours and the seasons
imparted to it — such great diversity of aspects, so lovely
or so terrible. I studied it in its snow, its ice, and the
weather that assailed it ; in the plants and animals inhab-
iting its surface.

I also strove to understand what influence the moun-
tain had had upon the poetry "and history of nations, the
part it had played in the movements of the different
peoples and in the progress of all mankind.

That which I did learn I owe to the co-operation of
my shepherd, and also, since I ought to tell everything,

THE RETREAT. J5

to that of the creeping insects, of the butterflies and
birds of song.

Had I not spent long hours "lying on the grass, watch-
ing or listening to those tiny beings, my brothers, per-
haps I should not so well have understood how alive is
also that vast earth which bears in its bosom all those in-
finitely small creatures, and carries them away with us
into unfathomable space.

16 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER II.

PEAKS AND VALLEYS.

• SEEN from the plain, the mountain is of a very simple
form ; it is a small, jagged cone, rising, amid other points
of unequal height, upon a blue wall streaked with pink
and white, which bounds one entire side of the horizon.
It was as if I were looking from afar at a monster saw
with unevenly cut teeth ; one of these teeth is the moun-
tain upon which wandered my feet.

Nevertheless, the small cone which I distinguished
from its inferior companions, a simple grain of sand
upon that grain of sand which is the earth, now appeared
to me like a world. From my hut I can easily see, a few
hundred yards above my head, a ridge of rock which
seems to be the summit, yet no sooner do I climb up to
it than another peak rises up beyond the snow. I gain
a second terrace, and the mountain appears again to
change its form. From every point, every ravine, every
declivity, the landscape is displayed under a fresh as-
pect, under another form. Taken by itself, the moun-
tain is a whole group of mountains, just as in the midst
of the sea each billow is built up of innumerable tiny
wavelets. To understand the architecture of the whole
mountain, it must be studied, be surveyed in every di-
rection ; every elevation should be ascended, every gorge

PEAKS AND VALLEYS. 17

penetrated. Like everything else, it is inexhaustible for
all who wish to know it in its entirety.

The height upon which I best loved to sit was not the
crowning elevation where I might place myself like a
king upon a throne, thence to contemplate the kingdoms
extended at his feet. I felt happier upon the next lower
summit, whence my glance could at the same time de-
scend to the lowest slopes, then rise again, foot by foot,
towards the upper walls, and to the peak piercing the
azure heavens. There, without needing to repress the
sensation of pride which I should have experienced in
spite of myself upon the culminating apex of the moun-
tain, I could enjoy the delight of feasting my gaze upon
the beauties presented by the snow, the rocks, the for-
ests, and pastures. I hovered half way up between the
two zones of earth and sky, and I felt free without being
isolated. Nowhere else could a sweeter sensation of
peace fill my heart.

It is a great delight to attain a high point, overlooking
a view of peaks, valleys, and plains. With what pleas-
ure, what ecstasy of the senses, do we contemplate in one
general panorama the enormous edifice of which we oc-
cupy the pinnacle ! Beneath, upon the lower slopes, only
one portion of the mountain is visible, or at most one
side ; but from the summit all the tops can be discerned
down to the small hills and headlands of the base. As
equals we gaze upon the encircling mountains ; like them,
our heads are in pure air and light ; we soar to the free
sky like an eagle whose flight bears him above the dull
planet. At our feet, far below the peak, we behold that
which the multitude beneath term the sky ; they are
clouds which, travelling slowly along the mountain's

18 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

sides, rend themselves upon the projecting angles of the
rocks and outskirts of the woods, leaving shreds of fog
here and there in the ravines, then, sailing away over the
plains, cast their great shadow upon the ground in ever-
varying form. From the top of this splendid observa-
tory no rivers can be seen making their way like the
clouds whence they took their birth, but their motion is
revealed by the noisy uproar of the water heard afar off
from time to time, either issuing from the riven glaciers
or in the small lakes and cascades fti the valley, or mean-
dering gently through the lower landscape. In this
scene of amphitheatres, ravines, gorges, dales, we take
part, as if we had suddenly become immortal, in the
great geological work of the excavating waters as they
empty their basins in every direction around the primi-
tive mass of the mountain. We see them, so to say, in-
cessantly chiselling the enormous object so as to carry
away the debris wherewith to level the plain, to till up
some ocean bay. I can distinguish that bay from the
summit on to which I have climbed ; there below lies
extended that great abyss, the blue ocean, whence the
mountain has gone forth, and whither, sooner or later, it
must return.

As to man, he is invisible, but I imagine him. Like
nests half hidden in the branches, I can discern cottages,
hamlets, villages, dispersed in the valleys and upon the
sides of the verdant hills. There below, beneath the
smoke, under a layer of air vitiated by the breath of in-
numerable persons, something white indicates a large
city. The houses, the palaces, the lofty towers, the cu-
polas, all merge into one dirty, dingy color, which might
be described as a sort of mouldiness, contrasting with the

PEAKS AND VALLEYS. 19

fresher tints of the surrounding country. Then I think
sadly of all the perfidy and wickedness being enacted
in that ant-hill, of all the vices fermenting beneath that
almost invisible pustule ; but, seen from the summit,
the immense panorama of the country is beautiful as a
whole, with its towns, villages, and isolated houses, which
here and there brighten the scene beneath the light in
which they are bathed; the dark spots* blend with all
that surrounds them in one harmonious whole ; the at-
mosphere sheds its aaure mantle over the entire plain.

Great is the difference between the true form of our
picturesque mountain, so rich in its various aspects, and
that which I ascribed to it in my childhood when look-
ing at the maps which my tutor made me study ; I then
pictured to myself a perfectly regular isolated mass, slop-
ing equally all round its circumference, gently rounded
at the top, at the base slightly inflected and insensibly
losing itself in the plains. There are no such mountains
in the world. Even the volcanoes which spring up
singly, far removed from any other groups, and which
grow little by little as they eject cinders and lava side-
ways upon their declivities, do not possess that geomet-
rical regularity. The discharge of these internal sub-
stances is sometimes produced from the central crater,
sometimes from the side crevices ; small subordinate vol-
canoes spring up here and there upon the slopes of the
principal mountain, raising up heaps on its surface.
Even the very wind labors to impart an irregular shape
to it by causing the showers of cinders, vomited forth
during the eruption, to fall according to its will.

But could we compare our mountain, an old witness
of former ages, to a volcano, a mountain born yesterday,

20 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

and which, as yet, has hardly withstood the onslaughts
of weather? Ever since the day on which that corner
of the earth whereon we live assumed its first inequality,
destined to be gradually transformed into a mountain,
nature, which is the motive force, has labored without
relaxation to modify the aspect of that protuberance ;
here it has raised up, elsewhere it has depressed, the
mass ; made it bristle with peaks, studded it with cupo-
las and domes, has inclined, bent, excavated, chiselled,
toiled interminably at the ever-changing surface; and
now, even before our eyes, the task still goes on. To
the spirit which has watched the mountain during the
lapse of ages, it must have appeared as fluctuating, as
uncertain, as the ocean billows lashed by the storm ; it is
a wave, a vapor; when it shall have disappeared, it will
be but as a dream.

Yet amid this changing or ever-varying ornamenta-
tion, produced by the continual action of the forces of
nature, the mountain does not cease to present a sort of
superb rhythm to any one who wanders about it, in order
to learn its construction. Whether the culminating por-
tion is a broad plateau, a rounded mass, a vertical wall,
a ridge, an isolated pyramid, or even a cluster of distinct
needles, the whole mountain presents a general aspect
which harmonizes with that of the summit. From the
centre of the mass to the base of the mountain, other
peaks, or groups of subordinate peaks, succeed one an-
other on every side ; sometimes even at the foot of the
last chain which borders the alluvion of the plain or the
waters of the ocean, a miniature copy of the mountain
may be seen springing up as a small hillock, in the midst
of the fields, or as a rock out of the bosom of the waters.

LTHE GREAT PEAK CAN

PEAKS AND VALLEYS. 21

The outlines of all these heights, succeeding one another
as they incline gradually or abruptly, present a series of
most graceful undulations. This sinuous line uniting
the summits of the principal peak to the plain is the
true slope — it is the road which a giant shod with magic
boots would take.

The mountain which so long sheltered me is beautiful
and serene beyond all others in the calm regularity of
its features. From the highest pastures the great peak
can be seen rising up like a pyramid of irregular tiers.
The contrast of the whiteness of the patches of snow
filling up the hollows impart to it a sombre, almost black,
tint ; but the green of the turf, covering the distant sub-
ordinate heights, appears all the softer in our sight ; and
our eyes, as they again travel down the enormous for-
midable-looking mass, rest with ecstasy upon the soft un-
dulations of the pasture grounds : they are so graceful
in their contour, so velvety in appearance, that we in-
voluntarily think of the delight a giant would feel in
caressing them with his hands. Farther down, abrupt
declivities, rocky cliffs, and lower chains clad with woods,
to a great extent conceal the mountain's sides from me ;
but the whole appears all the higher, the more sublime
from the fact that my glance can only embrace one por-
tion at a time, as it would a statue whose pedestal re-
mains hidden ; it is resplendent in the sky, in the region
of clouds, in the pure light.

The beauty of the hollows, the chasms, the dales, or
the defiles corresponds with that of every kind of peak
and projection. Between the summit of our mountain
and the next nearest point the crest dips considerably,
and leaves a very easy passage between the two opposite

2

22 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

declivities. It is at this depression of the ridge that the
first indentation of the open serpentine valley enters the
two mountains. To this indentation others are added ;
then more again, scoring the surface of the rocks and'
meeting in ravines, which themselves converge towards
a circle, whence, by a series of defiles and tiers of basins,
the snow runs off and the waters descend into the val-
ley.

Yonder, where the ground inclines very slightly, fields,
clusters of common trees, groups of houses, begin to ap-
pear. On every side dales, some of a lovely, others of a
severe aspect, bend towards the principal valley. Away
beyond a distant turning, the valley disappears from our
vision ; but if we do lose sight of the bottom, at least we
can imagine its general form and contour by the more
or less parallel lines presented by the outlines of the
lower chains. Taken as a whole, the valley, with its in-
numerable ramifications penetrating into the depths of
the mountain, may be compared to trees whose thou-
sands of branches are divided and subdivided into deli-
cate twigs. It is by the form of the valley and all its
network of dales that we can best understand the real
elevation of the mountains separating them.

Do we not, from those summits whence our eyes can
roam most freely over the country, see a great number
of peaks which we compare one with another, and each
of which enables us to understand the rest ? Above the
sinuous edge of the height rising from the yonder side
of the valley a second outline of a range can be distin-
guished already assuming a bluish hue, and again beyond
it a third or even a fourth series of azure mountains.
These chains, which all eventually become attached to

PEAKS AND VALLEYS. 23

the great ridge of the principal summits, are but slightly
parallel to one another, despite their indentations, and at
one time appear to approach, then to recede, according
to the freaks of the clouds and the progress of the sun.
Twice a day the immense panorama of mountains is
steadily unrolled, when the oblique morning and even-
ing rays successively leave in the shadow that portion of
the ground turned towards night, and bathe in light
that which faces day. From the most distant western
peaks to those which can hardly be distinguished in the
east, there is one harmonious scale of every color and
shade which can be produced by the effulgence of the
sun and the transparency of the atmosphere. Among
these mountains are some which a breath could efface,
so ephemeral are they in tone, so delicately traced upon
the sky, their background.

If but a slight vapor arises, an imperceptible mist
forms on the horizon, or only the sun in its decline allows
the shadows to increase, then these beautiful mountains,
this snow, these glaciers, these pyramids, vanish by de-
grees, as in the twinkling of an eye. We beheld them
in their splendor, and now they have disappeared from
the sky ; they are but a dream, a vague memory.

24 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER III.

ROCKS AND CRYSTALS.

THE hard rock of the mountains, as well as that ex-
tending beneath the plains, is covered almost everywhere
with a more or less deep layer of vegetable mould and
with varieties of plants. Here there are forests, else-
where brushwood, heather, whortleberries, furze ; in
other places, again, and to the greatest extent, the short
grass of pastures. Even where the rock appears naked,
or juts out in points, or rises as a wall, the stone is clad
with white, red, or yellow lichens, which often impart a
similar appearance to rocks of the most different origin.
Hardly ever, even in the cold regions of the summits, at
the foot of glaciers, and on the confines of the snow,
does the stone appear without a cover of vegetation to
disguise it. Sandstone, limestone, granite, to an unob-
servant traveller would seem to be of one and the same
formation. Yet the diversity of the rocks is great. The
mineralogist who wanders, hammer in hand, through
the mountains may collect hundreds and thousands of
stones differing in appearance, yet whose construction is
intimately connected. Some are of a uniform grain
throughout ; others are composed of different atoms, con-
trasting in shape, color, and brilliancy. Some are spec-
kled, ridged, or grooved, transparent, translucent, and

ROCKS AND CRYSTALS. 25

opaque. Some are to be seen bristling with crystals,
with regular facets ; others, again, are ornamented with
arborizations, similar to bunches of tamarind or fern
fronds. All kinds of metals are found in stones, wheth-
er in their pure state or mingled one with another; at
one time they discover themselves as crystals or nodules,
at others as simple fugitive erosions, similar to the brill-
iant reflections in a soap-bubble. Then, too, there are
innumerable animal or vegetable fossils enclosed in the
rock, and of which it retains the impression. As many
separate fragments as there are, so many different evi-
dences are to be found of the creatures which have exist-
ed during the incalculable series of past centuries.

Without being either a professional mineralogist or
geologist, the traveller who understands how to look can
perfectly see how wonderful is the diversity of rocks
composing the mass of the mountain. Such is the con-
trast between the different parts of the vast edifice that,
even from a distance, we can recognize to what forma-
tion they belong. From any isolated peak overlooking an
extensive expanse, it is easy to distinguish the crest of
the granite dome, the pyramid of slate, and the wall of
calcareous rock.

It is in the immediate vicinity of the principal sum-
mit of our mountain that the granite best reveals itself.
There a ridge of black rocks separates two fields of snow,
spreading out their sparkling whiteness on either side.
They might be described as a diadem of jet upon a mus-
lin veil. It is by this ridge that it is easiest to gain the
culminating point of the mountain, for there the cre-
vasses, hidden beneath the uniform surface of the snow,
are avoided. There we can plant our feet firmly upon

26 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

the ground, while by means of our arras we easily raise
ourselves up step by step in the steep places. It was by
that route that I almost always made my ascent when,
leaving the flock and my companion the shepherd, I
went to spend some hours on the great peak.

Seen from a distance through the bluish vapors of the
atmosphere, the granite ridge appeared uniform enough.
The mountaineers, practical and almost shrewd in their
comparisons, term it a comb ; indeed, it might be said to
be a row of regularly arranged pointed teeth ; but when
in the midst of the rock, we find ourselves in a sort of
chaos; needles, tottering stones, heaped -up boulders,
strata superposed one above another, overhanging tow-
ers, walls propping themselves up against each other and
leaving narrow passages between them — such is the ridge
forming the angle of the mountain. Even upon these
heights the rock is almost universally covered with a
coat of lichens ; but in many places it has been laid bare
by the friction of ice, the moisture of the snow, the ac-
tion of frosts, rain, wind, and the sun's rays. Other
rocks, rent by thunder, have become magnetic from the
shock of the celestial fire.

In the midst of these ruins, it is easy to observe what,
until quite recently, was the interior of the rock. I per-
ceive crystals in all their brilliancy, white quartz, felspar
of a pale rose color, mica resembling a silver spangle.
In other portions of the mountain the exposed granite
presents a fresh aspect : in one rock it is white as mar-
ble, and sprinkled over with small black spots ; else-
where it is blue and sombre. Almost everywhere it is
very hard, and the slabs which might be cut out of it
would serve for the construction of lasting monuments;

ROCKS AND CRYSTALS. 27

but in othec places it is so friable, the various crystals in
it are so slightly aggregated, that a man can easily crush
them between his fingers. A stream, taking its rise at
the foot of a height composed of this so slightly cohe-
sive material, spreads out in the ravine above a bed of
the finest sand, all .sparkling with mica. We might im-
agine that we beheld gold and silver gleaming through
the rippling water. More than one rustic coming from
the plains has been deceived, and has eagerly rushed
upon the treasure, which the mocking stream carelessly
sweeps away.

The incessant action of the snow and water permits us
to observe another species of rock, which also exists to a
great extent in the mass of the immense edifice. Not
far from the ridges and domes of granite, which are the
most elevated portions of the mountain, and seem, so to
say, to be its core, another subordinate peak appears,
whose aspect is of a remarkable regularity ; it might be
described as a four-sided pyramid, placed upon the enor-
mous pedestal formed' for it by the plateaux and declivi-
ties. It is a summit composed of slate rocks, which time,
with all its atmospheric changes of wind, solar rays, snow,
fog, and rain, incessantly pares away. The split slabs of
slate become fissured, broken, and, in sliding masses, roll
right down the slope. Sometimes a sheep's light step
suffices to set myriads of stones in motion upon the whole
side of a mountain.

Quite different from the slate is the calcareous rock,
which forms some of the foremost crags. This rock,
when broken, is not shivered into countless tiny frag-
ments, but into great blocks. Such a fracture has rent a
whole rock, three hundred yards high, from the base to

28 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

the summit; on either side we see the two vertical walls
reaching up to the sky ; the light can hardly penetrate to
the bottom of the chasm, and the water wherewith it is
filled, and that has come down from the snowy heights,
only reflects the clearness from above in its seething rap-
ids and the dashing spray of its cascades. Nowhere, not
even in mountains ten times as high, does nature appear
grander. From afar the calcareous portion of the moun-
tain reassumes its true proportions, and we see that it is
commanded by much loftier rocky masses, but it always
surprises us by the mighty beauty of its layers and up-
right rocks, resembling Babylonian temples.

Very picturesque, although relatively of slight impor-
tance, are the sandstone and conglomerate rocks, com-
posed of cemented fragments. In every part where the
incline of the ground favors the action of the water, the
latter tempers the cement and digs out a gutter for itself
— a narrow fissure, which in course of time ends by saw-
ing the rock in two. Other watercourses have similarly
dug out other fissures near the lesser ones, deeper in pro-
portion to the greater abundance of the liquid mass borne
away ; the rock thus cut in half at last resembles a laby-
rinth of obelisks, towers, and fortresses. Some of these
fragments of mountains now remind us of deserted towns,
with their damp, sinuous streets, crenellated walls, dun-
geons, overhanging towers, and curious statues. I still
recollect the impression of surprise bordering on fear
which I felt on approaching the opening of a gorge
already invaded by the shades of evening. Afar off I
perceived the black fissure ; but beside the entrance on
the summit of the mountain I also remarked strange
forms, which looked like giants in a row. They were

ROCKS AND CRYSTALS. 29

high columns of clay, each bearing upon its apex a great
round stone, which from a distance seemed to be a head ;
the rain had by degrees dissolved and washed away the
surrounding soil, but the ponderous stones had been
respected, and by their weight continued to impart con-
sistency to the gigantic pillars of clay supporting them.

Every crag, every rock belonging to the mountain,
thus has its own peculiar aspect, according to the mate-
rial composing it and its power of resisting the elements
of decay. Thus arises an infinite variety of forms, which
is still more increased by the contrast presented to the
exterior of the rocks by the snow, grass, forests, and cul-
tivation. The picturesqueness of the lines and ground
is augmented by the continual changes of Ornamenta-
tion undergone by the surface. And yet how very few
in number are the elements composing the mountain,
and which by their mixture impart to it this prodigious
variety of aspects !

The chemists, who in their laboratories analyze the
rock, teach us what is the composition of these different
crystals. They tell us that quartz is silica, that is to say,
oxide of silicon, a metal which, in its purer state, resem-
bles silver, and when mixed with the oxygen of the air
has become a whitish rock. They also tell us that fel-
spar, mica, augite, hornblende, and other crystals which
are found in such great variety in the rocks of the moun-
tain, are composites, in which other minerals, alumini-
um, potassium, are again found with silicon, united with
the atmospheric gases in varying proportions, and fol-
lowing certain laws of chemical affinity. Every mountain
— those near at hand as well as distant ones — the plains
at their base, and all the whole earth are but metal in

2*

30 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

an impure state ; if the fused and mingled elements of
the mass of the globe were suddenly to resume their pu-
rity, the planet would, for the inhabitants of Mars and
Yenus levelling their telescopes at us, possess the appear-
ance of a silver ball revolving in a black sky.

The geologist, who seeks to discover the elements of
stones, often finds that all the massive rocks composed of
crystals or crystalline paste consist, as does granite, of
oxidized metals ; such are porphyry, serpentine, and the
igneous rocks which have issued from the earth during
volcanic explosions; trachyte, basalt, obsidian, pumice-
stone: all these come from silicon, aluminium, potassi-
um, sodium, calcium. As to the rocks disposed in planes
or strata, placed in layers the one above another, why
should they not also be metals, since they, to a great ex-
tent, result from the disaggregation and redistribution of
the massive rocks ? Stones crushed to pieces, then ce-
mented again, sand adhering to the rocks after having
been ground and pulverized, clay that has become com-
pact after having been tempered by water, slates (which
are nothing more than hardened clay), are almost all the
remains of earlier rocks, and, like them, are composed of
metal. Limestone alone, which constitutes so consider-
able a portion of the earth's crust, does not proceed di-
rectly from the destruction of the most ancient rocks ; it
is formed of the debris which has passed through the
organism of marine animals : they have been eaten and
digested, but are none the less metallic ; their foundation
is calcium -combined with sulphur, carbon, and phospho-
rus. Thus, thanks to the mixture, the varied and chang-
ing combinations, the polished, uniform, impenetrable
mass of metal has assumed bold and picturesque forms,

ROCKS AND CRYSTALS. 31

has hollowed itself into basins for lakes and rivers, has
clothed itself again with vegetable mould, and has ended
by entering even into the sap of plants and the blood of
animals.

The pure metal reveals itself here and there in other
places amid the stones of the mountain. In the midst
of landslips and on the edges of springs ferruginous
masses are often to be seen ; crystals of iron, copper, lead,
combined with other elements, are found in the scattered
remains ; sometimes a particle of gold gleams in the sand
of the stream. But in hard rocks neither the precious
mineral nor crystals are distributed at haphazard; they
are disposed in ramified veins, which are especially devel-
oped between beds of different formations. These lodes
of metal, like the magic thread of the labyrinth, have led
miners, and after them geologists, into the depths and
history of the mountain.

Formerly, so legends tell us, it was easy to collect all
these riches of the interior of the mountain ; all that a
man needed was a little luck and the favor of the gods.
If he made a false step, he would catch hold of a shrub
to save himself. The fragile stem gave way, dragging
with it a great stone that concealed a hitherto unknown
cave. The shepherd boldly forced his way into the
opening, not without uttering some magic formula or
touching some amulet ; then, after having walked along
in the dark passage for a long time, he suddenly found
himself beneath a vaulted roof of crystals and diamonds ;
statues of gold and silver, profusely ornamented with
rubies ; topaz and sapphires adhered to every side of the
apartment; he needed but to stoop to gather up the
treasures. Not by simple incantations or without trouble

32 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

can man in our days succeed in obtaining gold or other
metals lying dormant in the rocks. The precious parti-
cles are rare, impure, mingled with earth, and far the
greatest portion do not assume their brilliancy and value
until after they have passed through the refiuing-fur-
nace.

THE ORIGIN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 33

CHAPTER IV.

THE ORIGIN OF THE MOUNTAIN.

THUS, down to its very smallest atom, the enormous
mountain presents a combination of divers elements,
which are mingled in varying proportions ; every crys-
tal, every mineral, every grain of sand or particle of
limestone, has its endless history, just as have the stars
themselves. Like the universe, the smallest fragment
of rock possesses its genesis ; but, while mutually aiding
one another by science, the physician, chemist, astrolo-
gist, and geologist are still anxiously asking themselves
if they do thoroughly understand this stone and the
mystery of its origin.

And is it certain that they have unveiled the origin
of the mountain? When we see all these rocks — sand-
stone, limestone, slate, and granite — can we tell how the
prodigious mass accumulated and rose up towards the
sky ? While contemplating it in its superb beauty, can
we weak dwarfs, who look on, examine ourselves, and
say to the mountain, with the conscious pride of satisfied
intelligence, " The least of your stones can crush us, but
yet we understand you ; we know what was your birth,
what your history ?"

As much as, and even more than, we do children ask
questions on beholding nature and its phenomena ; but,

34 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

in their simple confidence, they almost always content
themselves with the vague and untruthful reply given
by a father or an elder who does not know, or by a pro-
fessor who pretends to be ignorant of nothing. If they
did not receive this reply, they would go on searching
forever, until they had discovered for themselves some
kind of an explanation, for a child cannot remain in
doubt ; entering triumphantly upon life full of the sen-
timent of his existence, it is necessary that he should
be able to speak like an authority upon every subject.
Nothing ought to remain unknown to him.

In the same manner, nations who had just emerged
from their pristine barbarism found for themselves a
definitive explanation for everything that impressed
them. The first explanation, that which best responded
to their intelligence and the habits of their race, was
approved. Transmitted from lip to lip, the legend end-
ed by becoming the divine word, and a tribe of inter-
preters rose up to give it the support of their moral
authority and ceremonies. It is thus that in the myth-
ical heritage of almost every nation we find accounts
which relate to us the birth of the mountains, rivers,
earth, ocean, plants, animals, and even of man himself.

The most simple explanation is that which shows us
the gods and genii hurling mountains down from heav-
en, and allowing them to fall by chance, or else raising
them up and rebuilding them carefully like the columns
destined to bear the vaults of the skies. Thus were
constructed Libanus and Hermon ; thus was Mount At-
las with those stalwart shoulders planted at the ends of
the earth. Elsewhere, when once they were created, the
mountains frequently changed their places, and the gods

THE ORIGIN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 35

utilized them for the discharge of their thunderbolts.
The Titans, who were not gods, threw down all the
mountains of Thessaly in order to use them again for
building up the ramparts round Olympus ; even gigan-
tic Athos was not too weighty for their arms ; they
carried it from the heart of Thracia into the middle of
the sea to the spot where it stands erect at this present
day. A giantess of the North had filled her apron with
little hills, and dropped them at certain distances, that
she might recognize her way. Yishnu, one day seeing
a young girl asleep beneath the sun's too ardent rays,
took up a mountain and held it poised upon hie finger-
tips to shelter the beautiful sleeper. This, the legend
tells us, was the origin of sunshades.

Nor was it even always necessary for gods and giants
to lift up the mountains in order to remove them ; the
latter obeyed a mere sign. Stones hastened to listen to
the strains of Orpheus's lyre, mountains stood erect to
hear Apollo ; it was thus that Helicon, the home of the
Muses, took its birth. The prophet Mohammed arrived
two thousand years too late. Had he been born in an
age of a simpler faith he would not have gone to the
mountain ; it would have gone to him.

Side by side with this explanation of the mountain's
birth by the will of the gods, the mythology of many
nations furnishes another less extravagant. According
to this idea, the rocks and mountains would be animate
organisms put forth naturally upon the earth's huge
body as is the stamen in the corolla of a flower. While,
on the one side, the ground descended to receive the
waters of the ocean, on the other it rose up towards the
sun to welcome its vivifying light. It is thus that the

36 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

plants raise their stems and turn their petals towards
the planet, looking down upon them and imparting to
them their brilliancy. But the ancient legends have
lost their believers, and are merely poetical recollections
for mankind ; they have retired to join other dreams ;
and the spirits of inquirers, emancipated from these il-
lusions, have become more eager in their pursuit after
truth. The men of our days, too, like those of ancient
times, have still to repeat, while contemplating the peaks
gilded by the light, " How were they able to raise them-
selves up to the sky ?"

Even- in our time, when learned men profess to base
their theories upon observation and experience only,
many fancies sufficiently resembling the legends of the
ancients as to the origin of the- mountains still exist.
One big modern book endeavors to demonstrate to us
that the sun's light which bathes our planet had become
solidified, and had condensed itself into table-lands and
mountains all over the earth. Another declares that
the attraction of the sun and moon, not content twice a
day to lift up the waves of the sea, has also caused the
earth to swell, and has carried up the solid waves to the
regions of snow. Finally, another tells us how the com-
ets which have wandered astray in the heavens have
come to collide with our globe, have pierced holes in its
crust as stones shatter a piece of ice, and have caused
the mountains to burst forth in long ranges and groups.

Happily the earth, always toiling at fresh creations,
does not cease to labor before our eyes, and shows us
how by degrees it alters the rugosities of its surface. It
destroys, but it also reconstructs, itself daily ; constantly
it levels some mountains to raise up others, hollows out

; HOW WERE THEY ABLE TO RAISE THEMSELVES UP TO THE SKIES ?"

THE ORIGIN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 37

valleys just to fill them up again. While wandering
over the surface of the globe, and carefully observing
its natural phenomena, we can see how hills and moun-
tains are formed — slowly, it is true, and not by any sud-
den upheaval, as the lovers of the marvellous would
have it to be. We see them take their birth either di-
rectly from the bosom of the earth, or indirectly, so to
say, by the erosion of plateaux, just as a block of mar-
ble gradually assumes the form of a statue. When an
insular or continental mass, some hundreds or thousands
of yards high, receives rain in abundance, its slopes grad-
ually become indented with ravines, dales, valleys ; the
uniform surface of the plateau is cut into peaks, ridges,
pyramids ; scooped out into amphitheatres, basins, preci-
pices ; systems of mountains appear by degrees where-
ever the level ground has rolled down to any enormous
extent. It is the same in those portions of the earth
where a plateau assailed by rain on one side only is cut
up into mountains merely on that slope; thus is in
Spain that terrace of La Mancha where it descends tow-
ards Andalusia by the escarpments of the Sierra Morena.
In addition to these external causes which change
plateaux into mountains, slow transformations in the in-
terior of the earth are also being accomplished, bringing
about vast excavations. Those hard-working men who,
hammer in hand, go about for many years among the
mountains in order to study their form and structure,
observe, in the lower beds of marine formation which
constitute the non-crystalline portion of the mountains,
gigantic rents or fissures extending thousands of yards
in length. Masses, millions of yards thick, have been
completely raised up again by these shocks, or turned as

38 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

completely upside down, so that what was formerly the
surface has now become the bottom. The beds giving
way in consequence of successive shocks have bared the
skeleton of crystalline rocks which they enveloped as if
with a mantle; they have exposed the core of the moun-
tain, as a curtain suddenly drawn aside discovers a hid-
den statue.

But such falling -away has been of less importance
than has plication in the history of the earth and the
mountains forming its external inequalities. Subjected
to slow secular pressure, the rock, the clay, the layers
of sandstone, the veins of metal, can all be folded up
like a piece of cloth, and the folds thus formed become
mountains and valleys. The earth's surface, similarly to
that of the ocean, is stirred up into waves ; but these un-
dulations are of a very different magnitude : the Andes,
the Himalayas, for instance, thus rear themselves up
again above the level of the plains. The rocks of the
earth find themselves constantly subjected to these lat-
eral impulsions, which fold and refold them in different
directions, keeping the beds incessantly in a state of
fluctuation. It is thus that the skin of fruit becomes
wrinkled.

The peaks which rise straight up from the ground
and gradually climb from the level of the sea towards
the frigid altitudes of the atmosphere are mountains of
lava and volcanic cinders. In many parts of the terres-
trial surface they can easily be studied rising, growing
before the naked eye. Differing vastly from ordinary
mountains, volcanoes,. properly so called, are perforated
by a central crater through which the smoke and pul-
verized fragments of burnt rock escape ; but when they

THE ORIGIN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 39

become extinguished the crater closes, and the slopes of
the volcanic cone, whose outline loses its pristine regular-
ity beneath the influence of rains and vegetation, end
by resembling those of other mountains. Elsewhere
there are rocky masses which, rising out of the bosom
of the earth either in a liquid or pulpy state, simply
issue from a long fissure in the ground, and are not
thrown up by a crater as are the scoriae of Vesuvius
and Etna. The lava, accumulating in peaks and branch-
ing out into promontories, merely differs by its youth
from those old hoary-headed mountains with which oth-
er portions of the earth's surface bristle. The lava, once
boiling, gradually cools ; it flows into fresh beds outside,
and clothes itself anew with vegetable mould; it re-
ceives the rain in its interstices, sending it forth again
as streamlets and rivers ; finally, it is covered once more
at its base with new geological formations, and becomes
surrounded, like the other mountains, with layers of
gravel, sand, or clay. In course of time, all that the
geologist's eye can discover is that they have sprung out
of the bosom of that great furnace, the earth, as if a
mass of fused metal.

Among these ancient mountains, forming a portion of
those groups and systems termed the "vertebral col-
umns " of the continents, are many composed of rocks
very similar to actual lava, and of an analogous chemical
formation. The greatest portion of the granite rocks
seem to be formed in the same manner as these lavas
— porphyries, traps, and melaphyres — which have issued
from the earth through wide fissures, and have spread
out over the ground like a viscous substance, which
would soon congeal on coming into contact with the air.

40 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

They, as well as lava, are crystalline, and their crystals
contain the same simple substances in their elements,
silicium and aluminium. Is it not reasonable to sup-
pose that granite has also been a paste-like mass, and the
crevices of the ground have afforded a passage to its
boiling streams ? All the same, this is but an hypothesis
now under discussion, and not a demonstrated truth. It
is believed that as the lava, which springs out of the
earth, sometimes lifts up strips of ground with its for-
ests or fields, so have eruptions of granite or similar rocks
been the most frequent cause of the upheaval of strata
of various formations constituting the most considerable
portion of the mountains. Strata of lime, sandstone, and
clay, which the waters of the sea or of a lake had once
deposited in parallel layers upon the bottom of their
bed, and which had become the external pellicle of
the earth, would have been thus bent down and set up
again by the mass rising out of the depths in search of
a means of egress. Here the swelling wave of granite
would have broken the upper strata into isles and islands,
all of which, disconnected, split up, crumpled into vari-
ous folds, are now dispersed among the depressions and
upon the points of the upheaving rock ; elsewhere the
granite would have opened but one crevice for its pas-
sage through the ground, by folding back on either side
the outer layers, following the inclination of the most
varied angles ; again, in other places the granite, without
even reaching daylight, would none the less have thrown
out hummocks on the upper strata. These, under the
pressure which had caused them to become folded, would
have ceased to be plains, in order to be transformed into
hills and mountains. Thus even the heights formed of

THE ORIGIN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 41

strata, quietly deposited at the bottom of the waters,
could have erected themselves into peaks, in the same
manner as the protuberances of lava ; a well dug through
the superposed beds would reach the nucleus of porphyry
or granite.

While admitting that most of the mountains have
made their appearance in the same manner as those of
lava, the cause, inducing all these substances to burst
from the earth in a state of fusion, still remains a subject
for reflection. Ordinarily people suppose that it has
been explained, so to say, by the contraction of the outer
crust of the globe, which slowly cooled while radiating
heat into space. Formerly our planet was a drop of
burning metal. While rolling through the cold firma-
ment it has gradually become congealed. But is it the
shell alone that has become solidified, as people love to
say, or has the whole drop been rendered hard, down to
its very core? As yet this is not known, for there is
nothing to prove that the lava of our volcanoes issues
from an immense reservoir, supplying all the interior of
the globe. We only know that sometimes the lava
forces itself through the crevices of the ground, and
flows to the surface, just as the granite, porphyry, and
other similar rocks are said to have flowed out of fissures
in the terrestrial bark, as the sap escapes through a
wound in a plant. The tide of shattered stones is said
to have risen from the interior, under the pressure of
the planetary crust, gradually to be once more contracted
by its own process of cooling.

42 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER V.

FOSSILS.

WHATSOEVER may be the primary origin of the moun-
tain, its history has at least been known to us ever since
a period greatly anterior to the annals of our human
race. One hundred and fifty generations of man have
barely succeeded one another since the first acts of our
ancestors were accomplished, evidences of whom have
remained ; before that period the existence of our race
has only been revealed to us by doubtful monuments.
The inanimate history of the mountain, on the contrary,
has been written in visible characters for millions of
centuries.

The great work, that which even struck our forefathers
ever since the infancy of civilization, and which they re-
lated in various ways in their legends, is that the rocks,
distributed in regular layers, the one above another, like
the stones of a building, have been deposited by the
waters. Let any person walk along the edge of a river,
look at the temporary gutter formed in the depressions
of the soil, and he will see the current seize upon gravel,
grains of sand, dust, and all the scattered detritus, to dis-
tribute them in order upon the bottom and shores of its
bed ; the heaviest fragments will be disposed in layers at
those spots where the water loses some of the rapidity of

"UPON THE ROCKY SHORES OF THK OCKAN."

FOSSILS. 43

its first impetus, the lighter molecules will proceed far-
ther, spreading themselves in beds upon the smooth sur-
face, and finally the tenuous clay, whose weight hardly
•exceeds that of the water, will settle down in layers
wherever the torrent -like motion of the water stops.
Upon the shores, and in the basins of lakes and seas, the
layers of debris deposited successively are still much
more regular, for those waters do not possess the impet-
uous motion of running streams, and everything received
by their surface is sifted through the depth of their
stationary waters, without anything occurring to disturb
the equable action of the waves and currents.

It is thus that in this vast nature the division of labor
is arranged. Upon the rocky shores of the ocean, beaten
by the waves of the offing, we see nothing but gravel
and heaped -up boulders. Elsewhere, stretching away
beyond our sight, are beaches of fine sand, upon which
the tidal waves roll up in volutes of foam. Those who
take soundings to study the floor of the sea tell us that
upon vast extents, as large as provinces, the remains
which their instruments bring up are always composed
of a uniform mud, more or less mixed with clay or sand,
according to the different latitudes. They have also
proved that in other portions of the ocean the rock
formed at the bottom of the marine bed is of pure chalk.
Shells, spicules of sponge, animalculse of all descriptions,
inferior organisms, silicious or calcareous, fall incessantly,
like rain, from the surface waters, and become mingled
with the innumerable creatures which multiply, live,
and die on the bottom in sufficiently great numbers to
constitute strata as deep as those of our mountains ; but,
then, are not these formed of detritus of the same kind ?

44 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

In an unknown future, when the actual abysses of the
ocean shall be extended as plains, or rise up again as
peaks in the sun's light, our descendants will behold
geological portions of ground similar to those which we
see to-day, and which, perhaps, may have disappeared,
cut up into fragments by the flowing waters.

During the course of ages, the strata of marine and
lacustrine formation, of which the greatest part of our
mountain is composed, have succeeded in occupying, at a
great elevation above the sea, their sloping, contorted,
and curiously folded position. Whether they have been
upheaved by pressure from below, or whether the ocean
has receded in consequence of the earth becoming con-
gealed and contracted, or else from some totally differ-
ent cause, and that in this manner it had left layers of
sand and limestone upon the ancient shoals, which have
since become continents, there these layers are now, and
we can study at our leisure the remains which many of
them have brought up from the submarine world.

These remains are fossils, the debris of plants and ani-
mals preserved in the rock. It is true that the molecules
composing the framework, animal or vegetable, of these
bodies have disappeared with the tissue of the flesh and
the drops of blood or sap ; but the whole has been re-
placed by particles of stone which have kept the form
and even the color of the creature destroyed. Within
the thickness of these stones, shells of mollnsks, disks,
spheres, spines, cylinders, silicious and calcareous bits of
stick, of foraminifera and diatoms, are to be met with
in astounding numbers; but we also find forms which
exactly correspond with the soft flesh of the creatures
of these organizations ; we see the skeletons of fish with

FOSSILS. 45

their fins and scales; recognize the wing-sheaths of insects,
twigs and leaves, even footprints can be distinguished ;
upon the hard rock, too, which was formerly the shift-
ing sand of the beach, we find the impression of drops
of rain, and the intersecting ripple-marks traced by the
wavelets on the shore.

Fossils very rare in certain rocks of marine formation,
very numerous, on the contrary, in other strata, and con-
stituting almost the entire mass of marble and chalk,
help us to recognize the relative age of the strata which
have been deposited in the course of time All the fos-
siliferous beds, indeed, have not been turned upside
down, or curiously mixed up by excavations and land-
slips ; most of them have even preserved their regular
superposition, so that the fossils can be studied and col-
lected in the order in which they appeared. Where the
strata, still in their normal condition, maintain the posi-
tion they formerly occupied after having been deposited
by the maritime or lacustrine waters, the shells dis-
covered in the upper bed are certainly more modern than
those of the layers situated lower down. Hundreds,
thousands of years, represented by innumerable inter-
mediate atoms of lime or sandstone, have separated the
two epochs of existence.

If the same species of plants and animals had always
lived upon the earth, ever since the day on which these
animate organisms made their first appearance upon the
congealed crust of the planet, we should not have been
able to judge of the relative age of the two terrestrial
strata, separated one from the other. But different
creatures have not ceased to succeed one another for
many ages, and consequently, also, in the superposed

46 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

strata. Certain forms which may be seen in great abun-
dance in the heart of the most ancient stratified rocks
gradually become rarer in those of less remote origin,
and then end by disappearing altogether. The new spe-
cies which succeed the first have also, like every indi-
vidual creature, their period of regeneration, propaga-
tion, decay, and death ; every species of animal or vege-
table fossil might be compared to a gigantic tree whose
roots plunge into the lower domains of ancient forma-
tion, and whose trunk becomes ramified, finally losing
itself in the higher strata of more recent origin.

Those geologists who, in different countries of the
world, spend their time in examining and studying the
rocks, molecule by molecule, in order to discover in them
vestiges of once living creatures, have been able, thanks
to the order of succession of every species of fossil, to
recognize in the imprisoned remains the relative age of
the different strata of the earth deposited by the waters.
Ever since sufficiently numerous observations have been
compared with one another, it is even frequently easy,
on seeing a single fossil, to pronounce to what epoch of
terrestrial ages belongs the rock in which it was found.
Any specimen whatever of limestone, schist, or sand-
stone, showing a clear impression of shell or plant, will
often suffice. The naturalist, without any fear of being
mistaken, declares that the stone in which the impression
is marked belongs to such and such a series of rocks, and
ought to be classified in such and such an epoch in the
planet's history.

These testimony -bearing fossils, which in- an animate
form moved, millions of years ago, in the mud of oceanic
abysses, are now met with again at every height in the

FOSSILS. 47

mountain strata. They are to be seen on most of the
Pyrenean peaks ; they constitute whole Alps ; they are
recognized upon the Caucasus and Cordilleras. Equal-
ly would man see them on the summits of the Hima-
laya if he could attain those altitudes. Nor is this all ;
these fossiliferous beds, which to-day pass beyond the
middle zone of the clouds, formerly reached much more
considerable elevations. In many places, upon one side
of a mountain, it is shown that the strata of rocks are
more or less frequently interrupted. Here and there,
perhaps, the geologist may again find some portions of
these beds, but they do not continue to any extent until
much farther away upon the opposite side of the moun-
tain. What has become of the intermediate fragments ?
They existed formerly, for, even when breaking through
them, the granite mass rising out of the interior could
only split them, but none the less have the cracked strata
remained upon the slippery summit.

48 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PEAKS.

AND yet these enormous masses, mountains piled upon
mountains, have passed away like clouds swept along the
sky by the wind ; the strata four or five thousand yards
thick, which the geological section of rocks shows us had
formerly existed, have disappeared to enter into the cir-
cuit of a new creation. It is true that the mountain still
appears formidable to us, and we contemplate with ad-
miration, mingled with alarm, the superb peaks pene-
trating far away beyond the clouds, into the icy atmos-
phere of space. So lofty are these snow-clad pyramids
that they conceal one half of the sky from us; from below,
their precipices, which in vain our glance tries to grasp,
make us dizzy. Yet all this is but a ruin — mere debris.

Formerly the strata of slates, limestone, sandstone,
which rested against the base of the mountain, and here
and there raised themselves up into secondary summits,
would meet again above the top of the granite in uni-
form layers ; they added their enormous thickness to the
already great height of the topmost peak. The altitude
of the mountain was doubled; the apex then attained
that region in which the atmosphere is so rarefied that
even an eagle's wings no longer possess the power to
support him. It is not now our glance, it is our irnagina-

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PEAKS. 49

tion that is filled with dread at the thought of what this
mountain then was, and of what the snow, the frosts,
the rains, and the storms have swept away from it in the
course of ages. What infinite history, what vicissitudes
without number, in the succession of plants, animals, and
man since the mountains have thus changed their form
and lost the half of their height !

This prodigious work of paring away could not be ac-
complished without, in many places, leaving unexcep-
tionable traces behind. The ddbris which, with the snow,
has slipped from the top of the peaks, driven down be-
fore it by the ice, having been triturated, pared, carried
away as boulders, gravel, and sand by the waters, has
not always returned to the sea, whence, at an anterior
period, it came forth; enormous accumulations are still
to be seen in the space that separates the bold de-
clivities of the mountains from the low lands bordering
on the ocean. In this intermediate zone, in which the
smaller hills run out in long undulations like the waves
of the sea, the soil is entirely composed of rolled-down
stones and heaped-up gravel. All are the remains of the
mountain, reduced by the water into minute fragments,
transported in small quantities, and poured out in vast
alluvions at the mouths of large valleys. The torrents,
descended from the heights, excavate at their leisure these
plateaux of debris, causing the talus to slip down the in-
dentations which they have dug out. On the slopes of
the deep ditch, with its winding stream, the divers rocks
which provided the materials for the great edifice, the
mountain, are to be seen in the most glaring confusion :
here are blocks of granite and fragments of porphyry ;
there are schists, with sharp ridges, half buried in the

3*

50 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

sand ; in other places are pieces of quartz, sandstone,
boulders of limestone, lumps of mineral ore, dull crys-
tals. Also are to be found fossils of different periods,
and, in those openings in which the waters have so long
been eddying round, many skeletons of floating animals
have been arrested. It is there that by thousands were
discovered bones of the hippalion, urus, elk, rhinoceros,
mastodon, mammoth, and other great mammalia, which
formerly wandered about our fields, and have now disap-
peared, yielding to man the dominion of the world. The
same torrents which brought all these remains carry them
away again piece by piece, reducing them to powder ;
skeletons and fossils, clay and sand, blocks of schist, of
sandstone, and porphyry, all give way by degrees — all
wend their way to the sea; the immense work of denu-
dation, which has been accomplished in the great moun-
tain, commences again on a small scale with the accumu-
lations of rubbish ; hollowed out into ravines by the wa-
ter, they gradually fall away in height — they break up
into distinct hills. Nevertheless, even diminished as it
is by the work of centuries, all crumbling and ruined,
the plateau of detritus, extended at the base of the moun-
tain, would suffice to add some thousands of yards to the
principal peak, if it were to resume its first position in
the strata of rock. "It is by licking the mountains,"
says an ancient prayer of the Hindoos, " that the celes-
tial cow " (that is to say, the rain from heaven) " formed
the fields."

Under our very eyes the work of denudation of the
rocks goes on with surprising activity. We see moun-
tains, composed of very incoherent materials, melt, dis-
solve, so to say ; gorges are hollowed out in the sides of

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PEAKS. 51

the mountain, breaches opened in the centre of the crest ;
furrowed by avalanches and floods, the great mass, so
lately compact and solitary, by degrees becomes divided
into two distinct peaks, apparently retreating from one
another as the excavation of the separating gulf extends
farther and farther down.

Especially in the spring, when the ground has been
saturated with the melting snow, landslips, subsidence,
and erosion assume such proportions that the whole
mountain seems to desire to sink down and to take its
way into the plain. One damp, warm day, I had vent-
ured into one of the mountain gorges to look at the
snow once more before the .waters of spring should have
swept it away. It still obstructed the bottom of the ra-
vine, but in many places it was unrecognizable, to such
an extent was it covered with black debris and mixed up
with mud. The slate - colored rocks commanding the
gorge seemed to be changed into a sort of pulp, and to
have sunk down in great lumps ; the black mire oozing
in streamlets out of the walls of the defile was pouring
with a dull rumbling sound into the semi-liquid snow.
On every side I beheld nothing but cataracts of sullied
snow and debris ; instinctively I asked myself, in a sort
of alarm, if the rocks, melting like the snow, would not
unite at the head of the valley in one viscous mass and
make their escape right down the country? The tor-
rent, which I perceived here and there through holes, to
the bottom of which the upper beds of snow had fallen,
appeared to be transformed into a river of ink, so heav-
ily were its waters laden with detritus ; it was one enor-
mous mass of mud in motion. Instead of the clear, joy-
ous sound I had been accustomed to hear, the torrent sent

52 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

forth one continual roar, arising from the rubbish re-
volving on the bottom of the bed. It is in spring espe-
cially, at the period of the earth's annual renovation,
that we see this prodigious work of destruction carried
out.

In addition to this, an immense amount of invisible
labor goes on inside the stone. All the changes caused
by the weather are but external modifications; the in-
ternal transformations accomplished in the molecules of
rock have at least equally important results. While the
mountain displaces its stones on the exterior and inces-
santly changes its aspect, in the interior it assumes a new
structure, and even the composition of the strata becomes
modified. Taken in its ensemble, the mountain is an im-
mense natural laboratory in which all the physical and
chemical forces are at work, making use of time, that
sovereign agent which man has not at his disposal, in or-
der to accomplish their task.

In the first place, the enormous weight of the moun-
tain, equivalent to hundreds of thousands of tons, presses
so powerfully upon the lower rocks as to impart to many
of them a very different appearance from that which
they possessed on emerging from the sea. Little by lit-
tle, beneath this formidable pressure, the slates and other
schistous formations assume a leaf -like structure. While
thousands and thousands of centuries are passing awa}T,
the compressed molecules grow into thinner leaflets,
which eventually can be easily separated, when, after
some geological revolution, the rock once more finds it-
self brought to the surface. The action of the earth's
heat, up to a certain distance at least, increases with the
depth, and also contributes to changing the structure of

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PEAKS. 53

the rocks. It is thus that the limestones have been trans-
formed into marble.

But not only do the molecules of the rock approach
or retire from one another, group themselves diversely
according to the physical conditions in which they find
themselves during the course of ages, but the composi-
tion of the stones changes equally ; it is one continual
crossing backward and forward — an incessant travelling
to and fro of the bodies which displace, become mixed
up with, and follow one another. The water which pen-
etrates through all the fissures into the thickness of the
mountain, and that which rises up again in vapors from
the profound abysses, serves as the principal vehicle for
those elements, at one time attracting, then repelling one
another, which are drawn down into the great vortex of
geological life. One crystal is driven out by another
from the fissures of the mountain ; iron, copper, silver,
or gold replace the clay and hot lime ; the dull rock be-
comes irisated with the multitude of substances pene-
trating it. By the displacement of carbon, sulphur, and
phosphorus, the lime becomes marl, dolomite, plaster,
gypsum, crystalline ; in consequence of these new com-
binations, the rock expands or contracts, and revolutions
are slowly accomplished in the bosom of the mountain.
Soon the stone, compressed into too narrow a space, up-
heaves, scatters the superincumbent strata, causes enor-
mous pieces to fall away, and, by slow efforts, whose re-
sults are the same as those of a prodigious explosion,
gives a new arrangement to the rocks of the mountain.
At one time the stone contracts, splits, hollows itself out
into grottos and galleries ; a great downfall takes place,
thus modifying the exterior aspect and form of the

54 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

mountain. At every internal modification in the com-
position of the rock, a corresponding change takes place
outside. In itself the mountain recapitulates every geo-
logical revolution. It has grown during thousands of
centuries, diminished during other thousands, and in its
strata all the phenomena of increase and decrease, of
formation and destruction, which are accomplished on a
larger scale in the great earth succeed one another with-
out end. The history of the mountain is that of the
planet itself ; it is one unceasing destroying, one endless
building-up again.

Every rock recapitulates a geological period. In this
mountain, so graceful in its outline, the earth springs up
so grandly that any one would believe it to be the work
of one day, such unity does its whole form betray, so
thoroughly do the details coincide with the general har-
mony. And yet a myriad of centuries has been spent
in modelling this mountain. Here some ancient granite
tells of past ages in which the vegetable fibre had not yet
covered the terrestrial scoriae. The gneiss itself, only
formed at a time when plants and animals were yet un-
born, tells us that when the ocean deposited it upon the
shores mountains had already been demolished by the
waves. The slab of slate, preserving the bones or mere-
ly a slight impression of some animal, relates the history
of innumerable generations which have followed one an-
other upon the surface of the earth in the never-ending
battle of life ; the traces of coal speak to us of immense
forests, each one of which, in dying, has made but one
thin carboniferous layer ; the white chalk, an accumula-
tion of animalcula, which the microscope reveals to us,
enables us to take part in the work of multitudes of or-

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PEAKS. 55

ganisms swarming at the bottom of the sea; the remains
of every species show us the water of the rains, the snow,
the glaciers, the torrents sweeping down the mountains
in former times just as they do at the present day, and
from age to age changing the scene of their activity.

At the thought of all these revolutions, these inces-
sant transformations, this continued series of phenome-
na produced in the mountain, of the part it plays in the
general life of the earth and in the history of mankind,
we comprehend the first poets, who, at the foot of the
Pamir or Bolor, related those myths whence all others
are derived. They tell us that the mountain is a cre-
ator. It is the mountain that pours into the plains the
fertilizing waters, and sends them the nourishing mud.
The mountain it is that, with the sun's aid, brings to life
the plants, animals, and man ; it is the mountain which
decks the desert with flowers and sows it with happy
cities. According to an ancient Hellenic legend, it was
Eros who caused the mountains to rise up and modelled
the earth — that god of everlasting youth, the first-born
of Chaos ; that nature which renews itself unceasingly,
the god of eternal love.

56 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER VII.

LANDSLIPS.

NOT only is the mountain being incessantly trans-
formed into plains by the erosions which the rainsj the
frosts, the slippery snow, the avalanches, cause it to un-
dergo, but even many fragments break away with a vio-
lent and sudden fall. Similar catastrophes are frequent
in those portions of the mountain in which the erect or
overhanging strata are widely separated from one an-
other by materials of a different nature, which the wa-
ter can wash away or dissolve. When these intermedi-
ate substances disappear, the strata, deprived of support,
must sooner or later subside into the valley. These
fallen debris form a knoll, a hill, or even a secondary
mountain by the side of the greater escarpments.

One stately peak, which I loved to climb on account
of its isolation and the proud beauty of its crests, had
always appeared to me, like the great summit itself, to
be an independent rock, clinging, by its deep layers, to
the subjacent earth ; yet it was but a huge piece detached
from a neighboring mountain. I recognized this, one
day, from the position of the strata and from the appear-
ance of the marks still visible on the broken parts of the
two corresponding walls. The mass which had fallen
down, and now bore hamlets and fields, woods and past-

LANDSLIPS. 57

ures, had only needed, after the rupture, to pivot its base
and turn over upon itself. One of its faces had been
buried in the soil, while on the other side it had been
partially uprooted. In its fall it had closed up the out-
let of an entire valley, and the torrent, formerly flowing
peacefully in the bottom, had been obliged to transform
itself into a lake, in order to fill up the valley in which
it was imprisoned, and whence it descends once more,
at this very time, by a succession of rapids and cascades.
No doubt these changes took place before the country
was inhabited, for the tradition of the event has not been
preserved. It is geology that teaches the peasant the
history of his own mountain.

As to the landslips of minor importance, the fall of
rocks, which, without sensibly changing the aspect of
the country, none the less lay waste the pastures and
demolish the villages with their inhabitants, the moun-
taineers do not need us to describe them; unhappily,
they have too often witnessed these terrible occurrences.
Ordinarily, they receive a warning some short time be-
fore. That part which has been pushed out of the inte-
rior of the mountain in labor causes the stone incessantly
to vibrate from the top to the very foundations of the
walls. Little half-loosened fragments first become de-
tached, and bound down the whole length of the slopes.
Heavier masses, carried awray in their turn, follow the
lesser stones by taking, like them, great leaps into space.
Then come whole lumps of rock; everything that must
give way breaks the bonds which attached it to the inte-
rior skeleton of the mountain, and with one blow the
fearful hail-storm of boulders crashes down upon the
troubled plain. The hubbub is indescribable ; it is like

58 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

a battle among a hundred tempests. Even in broad day-
light the dpbris of the rocks, mingled with the dust, the
vegetable mould, the fragments of plants, totally ob-
scured the sky ; sometimes evil-boding flashes of light-
ning, proceeding from the rocks, hurled against one an-
other, burst through this gloom. After the storm, when
the mountain has ceased to dash its severed rocks into
the plain, when the atmosphere has cleared again, the
inhabitants -of the country which is spared come to con-
template the disaster. Cottages and gardens, enclosures
and pastures, have disappeared beneath the hideous chaos
of stones ; there, too, are friends, relatives, sleeping their
last sleep. The mountaineers have told me that in their
valley one village, twice destroyed by avalanches of
stones, has been rebuilt a third time upon the same site.
The inhabitants would gladly have fled and chosen some
larger valley for their dwelling, but no neighboring par-
ish would receive or give up any ground to them. They
were obliged to remain beneath the menacing overhang-
ing rocks. Every evening a few tolls of the bell remind
them of the terrors of the past, and warn them of the
fate that may perhaps overtake them during the night.

Numbers of fallen rocks, which are to be seen in the
middle of the fields, have a terrible legend attached to
them, but some few others are also shown to us which
have missed their prey. One of those enormous over-
hanging blocks, and whose base was rooted in the ground
on every side, rises up by the side of the road. While
admiring its superb proportions, its mighty mass, the
fineness of its grain, I could not restrain a kind of dread.
A small footpath, diverging from the road, led straight
to the foot of a formidable stone. Close to it some re-

"THE INHABITANTS COME TO CONTEMPLATE THE DISASTER."

LANDSLIPS. 59

mains of earthenware and coal were heaped up at its
base, a garden paling stopped abruptly at the rock, and
borders of vegetables, half overgrown by weeds, sur-
rounded one whole side of the enormous mass.

Who had selected this strange spot for his garden and
so soon abandoned it? I understood by degrees. The
footpath, the accumulation of coal, the garden, had but
lately belonged to a little house, now crushed beneabh
the rock. During the night of the downfall a man, as I
learned later, was sleeping alone in that house. Start-
ing up out of his sleep, he heard the noise of the stone
falling from crag to crag down the mountain's side, and,
seized with terror, he threw himself out of the window,
to seek shelter behind the steep bank of the torrent.
Hardly had he rushed, out of his dwelling before the
enormous projectile fell upon the cottage, burying it
some yards deep in the ground beneath. After his fort-
unate escape* the brave man rebuilt his cabin ; he set it
up confidently at the foot of another rock which had
fallen from the formidable wall.

In many mountain valleys the defiles where torrents
or foot-tracks with difficulty force their way are formed
by the downfall of stones called clapiers, lapiaz, or chaos.
There is nothing more curious than the confusion of these
masses mixed up in an endless labyrinth. Up above, on
the side of the mountain, the color and shape of the
rocks still enable us to distinguish the spot where the
downfall began ; but with amazement we ask ourselves
how a place of such apparently small dimensions could
discharge a similar deluge of stones into the valley. In
the midst of these strange formidable blocks, the travel-
ler might believe himself to be in a world in which noth-

(30 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

ing reminded him of the known planet, of the smooth
or gently undulated surface. Rocks resembling fantas-
tic monuments rise up here and there ; they resemble
towers, obelisks, crenellated archways, shafts of columns,
tombs turned upside-down or standing erect. One sin-
gle boulder, forming a bridge, conceals the torrent ; we
see the waters rush in and disappear beneath the enor-
mous arcade, and we even cease to hear its voice. Amid
these monstrous edifices gigantic forms appear, like those
of the fossilized animals whose disconnected bones are
sometimes found in the earth's strata. Mammoths, mas-
todons, giant turtles, winged crocodiles — all these chimer-
ical beings swarm in the terrible chaos. Thousands of
these stones are piled up in the defile, and yet one single
specimen is of sufficient dimensions to serve as a quarry,
and to supply building materials for whole villages.

These da/piers, which I behold with such astonish-
ment, and amid which I only venture hesitatingly, are
certainly trifles compared with some mountain landslips,
whose debris covers a great extent of country. There are
mountainous masses whose peaks are composed of com-
pact heavy rocks resting upon friable beds, easily washed
away by water. In these masses the downfall of stones
is a normal phenomenon, as would be avalanches and
rain. The people are always looking up at the summits,
to see if the slip is being prepared. In a region not very
remote, and called the Country of Ruins, are two moun-
tains which, according to the tales of the inhabitants,
had formerly been engaged in conflict together. The
two stone giants, becoming animate, are said to have
armed themselves with their own rocks, to ruin and de-
molish one another. They did not succeed, for they are

LANDSLIPS. 61

both still left standing ; but one can imagine the prodig-
ious heaps of rocks which, since that battle, have strewn
the plains for a great distance.

Sometimes, despite his weakness, man has essayed to
imitate the mountains, doing so in order to crush other
men like himself. It was especially in the defiles, in
places where the gorge is narrow and commanded by
steep escarpments, that the mountaineers assembled to
roll blocks of stone upon their enemies' heads. Thus the
Basques, hidden behind brushwood upon the slopes of
the mountain of Altabiscar, awaited the French army be-
longing to the Paladin Roland, who was to penetrate into
the narrow pass of Roncesvalles. When the columns of
foreign soldiers, like a long serpent gliding into a crevice
in a wall, had filled the defile, a cry was heard and a hail-
storm of rocks was poured down upon the crowd moving
below. The stream in the valley was swollen with the
blood flowing from the crushed bodies, like wine from
a press ; it swept away the human corpses and bruised
limbs as it swept away stones in times of tempest. All
the Frankish warriors perished, mixed up together in a
bleeding mass. The spot where the Paladin Roland died
with his companions is still shown at the foot of Altabis-
car ; but the stones beneath which his army was crushed
have long since disappeared under a carpet of heather
and furze.

The results of our small human labors are trifles com-
pared with the natural downfall caused by the action of
the weather, or in consequence of internal upheavals of
the mountains. Even after long centuries, the great ava-
lanches of stones present such a scene of confusion as to
leave an impression of horror and fright on our minds.

62 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

But when nature has ended by repairing the disaster, the
most beautiful spots in the mountains are precisely those •
where the escarpments have shaken themselves so vio-
lently as to scatter the rocks to their very base. During
the course of ages the waters have done their work ; they
have brought clay, tenuous sand, to rebuild their beds and
to form a layer of vegetable mould on their shores. The
torrents have by degrees cleared their course by arrang-
ing or displacing the stones which were in their way ;
this monster species of pavement, formed by the smallest
rocks, covered itself anew with turf and became changed
into a pasture full of mounds and bristling with crags ;
the great rocks have clothed themselves with moss, while
here and there they are grouped in picturesque minia-
ture mountains ; clumps of trees grow beside each rocky
projection, and spread the most charming groups over a
country which was already so 'lovely. Like man's coun-
tenance, the face of nature changes its physiognomy ; a
frown is succeeded by a smile.

CLOUDS. 63

CHAPTER VIII.

CLOUDS.

UPON the vast globe, the mountain, lofty as it appears,
is but a single rugosity, smaller in proportion than would
be a wart upon an elephant's body; it is a speck, a grain
of sand. And yet that projection, so diminutive when
compared with the great earth, bathes its sides and crests
in aerial regions very different from those of the plains
which serve as the people's dwelling-place. The pedes-
trian who, in the space of a few hours, ascends from the
foot of the rocks to their summit in reality makes a much
greater voyage, one much more fertile in contrasts, than
if lie spent years in going round the world, across seas
and the lower regions of continents.

It is the air which weighs in heavy masses upon the
ocean and countries lying at a trifling elevation above
the level of the sea, and in the heights becomes rarefied,
growing lighter and lighter. Upon the earth hundreds,
and even thousands, of mountains raise their crests in an
atmosphere whose molecules are twice as scattered as
those in the air of the lower regions. Phenomena of
light, heat, climate, vegetation, all are changed up yon-
der; the air, much rarer, easily allows the rays of heat to
pass, whether descending from the sun or rising from the
earth. When the orb shines in a clear sky, the tempera-

64 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

ture rapidly rises upon the higher slopes ; but the mo-
ment that it hides itself, the elevated portions of the
mountain immediately become colder ; radiation soon
causes them to lose the heat they had received. Cold,
too, almost always reigns in the altitudes : in our moun-
tains it averages one degree colder in every vertical space
of two hundred yards.

As for us, poor townspeople, who are condemned to a
tainted atmosphere, who receive into our organs an air
laden with poisons which has already been breathed by
multitudes of other lungs, what astonishes us and glad-
dens us most when we wander about these high peaks is
the marvellous purity of the air. We breathe with de-
light, we drink in the breeze blowing around us, we allow
ourselves to become intoxicated with it. For us it is the
ambrosia talked of by ancient mythologies. Far, far
away at our feet in the plain lies extended a foggy,
dingy spot whereon our eyes can discern nothing. It is
the great city. And we think with disgust of the years
during which we have been obliged to live beneath that
sheet of smoke, dust, and impure breath.

What a contrast between that view of the plains and
the aspect of the mountain when the summit is free from
mist and we can contemplate it from afar, beyond the
heavy atmosphere weighing upon the lower regions ! The
sight is beautiful, especially when the rain has caused
the floating particles of dust to fall to the ground and
the air has, so to say, grown young again. The outline
of the rocks and snow stands out clearly from the blue
of the sky ; despite the enormous distance, the mountain,
blue itself as the aerial depths, is portrayed sharply
against the sky, with all its reliefs of ridges and peaks ;

CLOUDS. 65

we can distinguish the dales, ravines, precipices ; some-
times even in a black speck moving slowly over the snow
we can, with the aid of a telescope, recognize a friend
climbing tip the peak. Of an evening after the sun has
gone to rest, the pyramid displays itself at once in all the
purity and splendor of its beauty. The rest of the world
lies in shadow, gray twilight veils the horizon of the
plains; the entrance to the valleys has already become
blackened by night. But yonder, up above, all is light
and joyousness. The snow, which still faces the sun, re-
flects its rosy rays ; it glistens, and their brightness ap-
pears all the more vivid that the shadow, which is slowly
rising, successively takes possession of the slopes and cov-
ers them as if with some black material. Finally, the
peak alone is high enough to perceive the sun beyond the
bend of the earth: it is illuminated as if it were a spark ;
it might be taken for one of those huge diamonds which,
according to the Hindoo legends, flashed at the summit
of the divine mountains. But suddenly the flame has
disappeared, it has vanished into space. Yet we do not
cease to look ; the sun's reflection is succeeded by the
empurpled mists on the horizon. The mountain becomes
illuminated once more, but with a softer brilliancy. The
hard rock no longer appears to exist beneath its apparel
of rays ; only a mirage remains, an aerial light ; we might
imagine the splendid mountain to have been detached
from the earth and to be floating in the pure skies.

Thus the rarity of the air in the upper regions con-
tributes to the beauty of the peaks by preventing the
impurities of the lower atmosphere reaching the sum-
mits ; but it also compels the invisible vapors rising from
the sea and plains to become condensed and to attach

($6 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

themselves to the clouds, to the sides of the mountain.
Ordinarily the vaporized water, suspended in the lower
zones of the air, is not found in sufficiently large quanti-
ties immediately to change into cloudlets and fall down
again as rain ; the atmosphere in which it floats preserves
it in a state of invisible gas. But the layer of air ascend-
ing to the sky, carrying away its vapors, will gradually
become colder, and its water, condensed into distinct mole-
cules, will soon reveal itself. It is first an almost imper-
ceptible cloudlet, a white flake in the blue sky ; but other
flakes are added to this one : now it is a veil through
whose rents our glances can pierce into the depths of
space ; at last it becomes a dense mass, stretching itself
out as curtains, or piling itself up into pyramids. These
are the clouds which rise upon the horizon in the form
of real mountains. Their crests and domes, their snow,
their resplendent ice, their shadowy ravines, their preci-
pices— the whole picture is displayed with perfect preci-
sion. Only the vapor mountains are floating and fugi-
tive ; one current of air has formed, another current can
rend and dissolve, them. Their duration is hardly one
of hours, while that of mountains of stones lasts for mill-
ions of years ; but is the difference in reality so great ?
Relatively to the world's existence, clouds and mountains
are equally the phenomena of a day. Minutes and cen-
turies become confounded, when they are ingulfed in the
abyss of time.

Clouds are particularly fond of gathering round the
rocks which rise up in the open sky. They are attract-
ed to the stone by an electricity the very opposite of
their own ; the storms pursued into space by the wind,
dash up against the sides of mountains, great barriers

CLOUDS. 67

placed athwart their course. Others, again, invisible in
the tepid air, do not reveal themselves until they come
in contact with the cold stones or snow ; it is the moun-
tain that condenses the vapors and drives them out of
the air, so to say. How many times, while contemplat-
ing the peak or some prominent cliff, have I seen the
down of growing clouds accumulate around the frozen
point! Smoke arises similar to that which ascends from
a crater; soon every peak is enveloped in it, and the
mountain ends by being encircled with a turban of
clouds which it has woven for itself in the transparent
atmosphere. Invisible hands, it seems, work at the for-
mation of storms and the downfall of rain. When the
denizens of plains see the mountain disappear in a mass
of clouds, they understand, from the manner in which
the giant decks his head, what sort of festival he is pre-
paring for them. When two blasts of air chance to
meet at this point, the one scorching, the other cold, the
cloud thus formed suddenly raises itself up and whirls
round in the sky: the mountain is a volcano, and the
vapor escapes from it incessantly, as if in fury, to go and
coil itself up again far away in the sky in an immense
curve.

Detached clouds scatter themselves freely in the sky ;
they meet again, comb or ravel themselves out in the
wind, extend or fly away, and ascend until they reach
the upper atmosphere, far away above the highest peaks
of the world. The diversity of their forms is much
greater than that of those clouds which encircle the
summits of the mountain. Nevertheless, these, too, pre-
sent an equally singular mobility of appearance. At
one time they are isolated clouds, displaced by great

68 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

patches of cold air ; then they may be seen winding like
a serpent, as they creep through the ravines or pursue
their course along the ridges, hanging like fringes on
the sharp rocks. At another time they are great shad-
ows concealing the whole of a mountain slope at once ;
through their dense mass, which increases or diminishes,
moves away or is torn up, we can from time to time dis-
tinguish the well-known peak, all the more superb in
appearance, in proportion as it seems to live and move
among the revolving vapors. At other times the aerial
layers, superposed and of different temperature, are as
perfectly horizontal and distinct as geological strata ;
the clouds which we see spring up there are of an anal-
ogous form; they are disposed in regular and parallel
belts, here hiding forests, there pastures, snow and rocks,
or semi -veiling them as if with a transparent scarf.
Sometimes again the peaks, the higher slopes, the whole
of the lofty mountain is lost in the heavy mass of
clouds, as if it were a gray or black sky that is lowered
to the earth ; the mountain retreats or approaches us,
according to the play of the vapors as they diminish or
become intensified. Suddenly all disappears from base
to summit ; the mountain is entirely lost in the fog ;
then the storm comes down from the peaks, it lashes the
sea of heavy vapors, and we see the giant appear once
more, "gloomy, sorrowful, amid the eternal flight of the
clouds."

"WE SEE THE GIANT APPEAR ONCE MORE."

FOGS AND STORMS, 69

CHAPTER IX.

FOGS AND STORMS.

WE find ourselves in a new world, both fantastic and
formidable, when we wander about the mountain in the
midst of a mist. Even when following a well-worn
foot-track upon easy slopes, we feel a certain dread on
beholding the surrounding forms, whose uncertain out-
lines seem to oscillate in the fog, which one moment
grows dense and the next becomes a little lighter.

It is necessary to know nature very well not to feel
at all uneasy when we find ourselves taken captive by a
fog ; the least object assumes immense, infinite propor-
tions. Something vague and black appears to be advan-
cing upon us as if to seize us. Is it a branch or even a
tree ? It is but a tuft of grass. A circle of ropes bars
your way ; it is a simple spider's web ! One day when
the fog was not quite so dense and the sun's rays, trans-
mitted through the mists, shed an indistinct light, I
stopped, tilled with amazement and admiration, on be-
holding a gigantic tree twisting its arms about like an
athlete at the summit of a peak. Never had I had the
good-fortune to see a stronger tree or one better situ-
ated for doing heroic battle with the tempest. I con-
templated it for a long time; but by degrees I saw it
apparently approaching me, and at the same time be-

4*

7Q THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

coming smaller. When the triumphant sun had dis-
persed the mist, the superb trunk proved to be nothing
but a poor little tree, growing in the fissure of a neigh-
boring rock.

The traveller who is lost, has gone astray in the fog,
amid precipices and torrents, finds himself in a truly
terrible position : danger or death meets him on every
side. He must walk, and walk quickly, in order as fast
as possible to reach the level ground of the valley or
the gentle slopes of the pastures, and find some safety-
bringing footpath ; but, in the uncertain light, nothing
serves as a guide, and everything appears to be an ob-
stacle. On one side the ground recedes; he imagines
himself to be on the edge of a precipice. On the other
a rock rises up, its walls appear to be inaccessible. In
order to avoid the abyss, he tries to scale the abrupt
sides of the rock ; he places his foot upon some uneven
portion of the stone and jumps from point to point ;
soon he seems to be suspended in mid -air between
heaven and earth. At last he reaches the ridge, but be-
hind the first crag, see, another rises up with undecided
and shifting outlines. The trees, the shrubs, growing
upon the escarpments, dart their branches out into the
mist in a menacing fashion ; .sometimes even nothing
can be seen but a black mass winding its serpent-like
way in the gray shadow : it is a branch whose trunk re-
mains invisible. The wanderer's face is dripping with
fine rain ; the tufts of grass, the heather, are so many
reservoirs of frozen water, in which he gets quite .as wet
as if he were crossing through a lake. His limbs be-
come stiff, his steps uncertain ; he runs the risk of slip-
ping upon the grass or damp rock, and of rolling ,d

FOGS AND STORMS. 71

the precipice. Terrible noises ascend from below and
seetn to foretell a fatal end ; he hears the fall of stones
roiling down, of rain-laden branches creaking on their
stems, the dull thunder of the cascade and the solemn
breaking of the waves upon the shores of the lake.
With horror he sees the fog become charged with the
darkness of twilight, and he thinks of the terrible alter-
native of death by the uprooting of rocks or by being
frozen in the cold.

In many climates, the impression of astonishment,
even of horror, which the mountains leave upon our
minds is owing to the fact of their being perpetually
surrounded with mist. Such a mountain in Scotland
or Norway appears formidable, whereas in reality it is
much less high than many other peaks in the world.
We have often seen them veiled in vapors, then partial-
ly revealed and hidden once more, travelling, so to say,
into the centre of the sky, appearing to retreat that they
may suddenly approach us again ; growing lower when
the sun clearly lights up their outlines, then, again, in-
creasing when they become fringed with mists. All
these changing aspects, these slow or rapid transforma-
tions, of the mountain make it vaguely resemble a pro-
digious giant waving his head above the clouds. Very
different from the immovable summits, with their regular
outlines, which are bathed in the pure light of Egypt's
sky are those mountains sung by the poet Ossian : they
look at you ; they sometimes smile, sometimes frown, but
they live in your life, they feel with you ; at least so we
believe, and the poet who sings them invests them with
a human soul.

Beautiful on account of the vapors encircling it, when

72 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

seen from below through a 'pure atmosphere, the moun-
tain is not the less so for him who contemplates it from
above, especially of a morning when the peak itself is
plunged into the sky, and its base is surrounded by a sea
of clouds. It is, indeed, a veritable ocean which extends
on every side as far as we can see. The white billows
of mist roll away upon the surface of these waters, not
with the regularity of liquid waves, but in a majestic
disorder in which our gaze loses itself. Here we see
them puffed out, swollen into towers of smoke, then dis-
perse in snow-like flakes, disappearing into space. Yon-
der, on the contrary, they are hollowed out into valleys
filled with shadows. In other parts it is one continued
evolution, a movement of waves pursuing and carrying
one another away in curiously contorted rings. Some-
times the sheet of vapors is tolerably smooth ; the level
of the waves of mist remains at an almost uniform ele-
vation all round the circumference of the rocks which
jut out in points; in many places the summits of iso-
lated little hills rise up above the fog like islands or
reefs. At other times the dusky ocean divides itself
into distinct seas, here and there allowing the bottoms
of the valleys to be seen, like a lower world possessing
none of the soft serenity of the peaks. The sun ob-
liquely lights up all the volutes of mist soaring above
the great sea, the roseate, purple, golden tints, mingled
with the pure white, impart infinite variety to the aspect
of the floating expanse. The shadow of the mountains
is projected far away upon the vapors, and changes in-
cessantly with the course of the sun. In astonishment
the spectator beholds his own shadow reproduced upon
the sheet of vapor, and sometimes with a giant's propor-

FOGS AND STORMS. 73

tions. He might believe that he saw a spectral mon-
ster, which he causes to move at his will, as he hends,
walks, stirs his arms.

Certain mountains rising from the bosom of the Blue
Sea of the trade-winds are almost always encircled half-
way up by a robe of mist, which almost invariably con-
ceals the picture of the great azure plain from the trav-
eller who has reached the peak ; but around the summit,
on whose pastures I am wandering, the sheets of vapor
rise and descend, change and melt away, as if by chance ;
they are phenomena which possess no permanent pecu-
liarities. After hours or days of obscurity, the sun ends
in piercing the mass of fog, rends it asunder, scatters it
in fragments, vaporizes them in the air, and soon the
earth beneath, which found itself deprived of the soft
radiance, becomes illuminated afresh by the quickening
light. But it also happens that the fogs become denser,
gather in thick and whirling clouds. These attract, then
repel one another; electricity accumulates in the in-
creasing vapors ; a storm bursts, and the lower world is
lost beneath the tumult of the tempest.

Once let loose, the storm does not always rise to the
top of the heights which command it ; it frequently re-
mains in the lower zones of the atmosphere wherein it
arises, and the spectator, seated tranquilly upon the dry
turf of the upper, illuminated pastures, can see the hos-
tile clouds come into collision, and drown everything in
fury. It is both a magnificent and terrible scene. Lurid
light escapes from these seething masses ; copper-colored
reflections, violet tints, impart to the heaped-up vapors
the appearance of an immense furnace of fusing metal ;
the earth might have opened, allowing an ocean of lava

74 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

to stream out of its bosom. The lightning flashing from
cloud to cloud, in the depths of chaos, vibrates like ser-
pents of fire. The rending of the air, reverberated by
the mountain's echoes, is prolonged in endless rumblings;
every rock seems simultaneously to send forth its thun-
der. At the same time, we hear a dull sound, ascending
from the lower country through the whirling clouds.
It is the downpour of rain or hail ; it is the noise of
trees crashing, of rocks splitting, of avalanches of stones
rolling down, of torrents swelling and roaring, as they
destroy their banks ; but all these various noises become
confused as they ascend towards the serene calm moun-
tain. There they are but a plaint, a sigh, rising from
the plain wherein man dwells.

One day, when sitting upon a tranquil peak, in the
quiet of the skies, I saw a storm contort itself in fury at
the foot of the mountain ; I could not resist that sum-
mons which seemed to reach me from the world of hu-
mankind. I descended to bury myself in the black mass
of revolving vapors ; I plunged, so to say, into the midst
of the thunder, beneath a sheet of lightning in the tur-
bulence of the rain and hail. Descending by a footpath
transformed into a rivulet, I leaped from stone to stone.
Excited by the fury of the elements, by the bursting of
the thunder-claps, by the rushing of the waters, the roar
of shaken trees, I ran along in frenzied delight. When
I reached the cabin in which I found a fire, bread, dry
clothes, all the sweets of the mountaineer's kindly hos-
pitality, I almost regretted the stirring ecstasy which I
had so lately enjoyed outside. I felt that up above, in
the wind and rain, I had taken part in the tempest, and
that for a few hours my conscious individuality had been
mixed up with the blind elements.

SNOW. 75

CHAPTER X.
SNOW.

"WHITE, dazzling, snowy," such is almost always the
original meaning of all the names given to the high
mountains by the people who have succeeded one another
at their base. When raising their eyes to the summits,
they perceive, above the clouds, the sparkling whiteness
of snow and ice ; and their admiration is all the greater
that the lower countries, with the uniform brown tint
of their soil, present so striking a contrast to the white
peaks. It is especially in summer, when the scorching
dust rises from the roads, and the tired travellers stop
beneath the shade, that they love to carry their gaze up
to the frozen masses, resplendent as slabs of silver in the
solar rays. At night a soft reflection, like that of a dis-
tant world, reveals the snow lying high upon the moun-
tain.

The middle slopes, the lower points, are frequently
covered with beds of snow. Even towards the end of
summer, when the torrents have carried away into the
plains the melted water of the avalanches, \vhen the
trees have shaken oil the burden of whiteness which had
bowed down their branches, and even the lowly mosses,
while warming the surrounding parts, have freed them-
selves from the flakes enveloping them, a sudden chilling

76 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

of the atmosphere transforms the mountain's vapors into
crystals. On the preceding evening all the lower chains
of the mountains and the alpine pastures had been per-
fectly free from hoar-frost ; the brown or yellow color of
the bare rocks, the green of the forests and grass, the
purple of the heather, were all distinctly visible.

In the morning, on awaking, the white robe of snow
had covered everything, down to the farthest points.
Yet this garment of snow, this white mantle of which
the poets talk, is pierced, rent in a thousand places. The
peaks of the mountain emerge from this wrap, and the
sombre shadows of the rocks, contrasting with the white-
ness, throw into relief the design of the escarpments
with all the greater distinctness. The flakes have accu-
mulated in thick drifts in the deep ravines ; on the sud-
den slopes they have lightly broidered the fissures, like
a delicate lace veil; on the abrupt declivities they only
show themselves here and there in brilliant spots. Every
dip in the mountain is marked out from afar in its true
form by the brilliant mould of snow which fills it; every
jutting rock reveals its protuberance and irregularities
of surface by the snowy couches of various depths, alter-
nating with the nakedness of the rock. Where the lat-
ter is formed of regular strata, the snow draws the lines
of division in the neatest possible manner. It rests upon
the cornices and detaches itself from the sides of the
landslips. Across every accident of the ground, whether
protruding or receding, we see the lines of strata contin-.
ued with surprising regularity over an extent of several
miles ; they look like terraces superposed by the hand of
some giant architect.

All the same, this transient summer snow, enveloping

sxow. 77

the mountain like a veil, and which, far from concealing
its form, on the contrary reveals it in its smallest details,
is, so to say, the coquetry of nature. It soon disappears
from the lower hills and nearest mountains; each day
the sun's rays force the limits to rise a little higher tow-
ards the summits ; in fine weather even our glances can
from hour to hour follow the progress of the dissolution.
Each ravine, half-way up, intersecting the sides of the
mountains, presents one slope upon which the midday
sun freely shines, already divested of the snow, and an-
other of dazzling whiteness, which is turned towards the
horizon of the north. Then, in time, that declivity also
frees its turf and pastures ; nothing more remains of the
summer fall of snow, but a small number of pools grad-
ually contracting, and of traces of the miniature ava-
lanches which filled the crevices of the gorges. These
puddles mix in among the earth and boulders, and the
streamlet passing by carries away drop by drop the
muddy debris.

This snow, lasting a few da}Ts, is charming to behold.
We love to follow with our glance the changing orna-
mentation; indeed, it hardly shows itself save to disap-
pear immediately. In order to contemplate snow under
its true aspect, and to understand it in its work as one of
nature's agents, we should see it in winter during the se-
vere cold season. Then all is covered with enormous
layers of water crystallized into spikes and flakes ; the
mountain, its lower ridge, and the hills at its base no
longer display themselves in their true form.

The dense mass concealing them obliterates their de-
sign, and imparts new outlines to them. In the place
of points jutting out, indentations, jagged lines cut in

78 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

their outlines, the mountain's slopes now sweep down in
charming undulations, in boldly designed but yet sinu-
ous form. Just as water, in accordance with the laws of
gravity, finds its level, enabling it to 'spread out on a hor-
izontal surface, so does the snow, obeying its own laws,
deposit itself in layers on the rounded knolls. The wind,
driving it up as it circles round, first obliges it to fill
up the hollows, then soften all the angles, and spread its
cover over every crag ; to the stern, rugged, wild moun-
tain, a second has succeeded, with clear, softened outlines
and majestic brow. But, in spite of the suave softness
of its lines, the giant is none the less formidable in ap-
pearance. Escarpments, perpendicular rocks upon which
the snow cannot lie, rise up above immense slopes of
dazzling whiteness, and by contrast their walls appear
quite black. We feel overcome with alarm at the sight
of these prodigious walls standing out above the snow
like cliffs of coal on the shores of a polar* sea.

By this transformation the plains, even more than the
protuberances of the mountains, have altered their as-
pect. The snow, falling on every side, has filled up the
cavities, levelled the hollows, caused all slighter accidents
of the ground to disappear. Torrents, cascades, have
been covered up ; everything is frozen, everything rests
beneath the vast winding-sheet. Even the lakes are bur-
ied ; the ice on their surface bears enormous beds of
snow, and frequently it becomes impossible to know
where the basins are situated ; a fissure may permit us
to see the surface of the lake lying tranquil, black, void
of any reflections, at the bottom of a gulf : it looks like
a well, a fathomless abyss.

Below the great summits and upper amphitheatres,

SNOW. 79

where the snow is piled up in mounds high as houses,
the pine forests stand out here and there, but only one
half of them is visible. Upon each of their extended
branches the trees bear as heavy a load as they can sup-
port without breaking ; the confusion of boughs together
forms arches upon which the accumulation of snowy
crystals is grouped in unequal cupolas ; some rebellious
trunks alone escape from the icy prison, and shoot their
dark-green, almost black, arrows into the free air, each
one bearing at its extremity a heavy lump of snow.
When the wind whistles through these stems, fragments
of the frozen snow fall down with a metallic sound ; a
general movement of vibration stirs the hidden forest
and the glistening roof covering it : sometimes a rupture
takes place, an avalanche rolls down inside, a gaping
chasm is left, until a fresh storm has masked it beneath
a bridge of snow. What would be the fate of the trav-
eller who had lost his way in the winter in such a forest —
one through which he could walk where he liked in the
summer, along the short grass, beneath the shade of the
mighty trees ? At each step he is liable to tumble into
an abyss, to be suffocated beneath the fallen snow.

The village houses in the valley below seem to be
more difficult to discern than the forests and clumps of
trees. The roofs, entirely covered with a bed of snow,
beneath them the bending woodwork, become mixed up
with the surrounding fields of whiteness ; only a delicate
bluish smoke reminds us that beneath this white shroud
men live and work. Some walls, a distant steeple, break
the monotony of the valley; besides, in that part the
snow has been more storm-driven than where it is far
from human habitations: the wind, whirling round the

80' THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

dwellings, has raised it up into hillocks and barricades
on the one side ; the other it has swept almost perfectly
clean. A certain disorder in nature indicates the prox-
imity of man ; but there, as elsewhere, endless peace pre-
vails ; rarely does a sound come to disturb the silence of
death reigning over mountain and valley.

Yet sometimes it is necessary that man and the other
inhabitants of the mountains should leave their dens and
disturb nature's great repose. Only the marmot, hidden
in its hole under the deep snow, can sleep away the long
months of winter, and, apparently in a dead state, await
spring's coming to restore freedom to the brooks, the
grass, and flowers. The chamois, less fortunate, driven
from the lofty heights by the snow, is obliged to wander
in the neighborhood of forests, seeking refuge among the
crowded trees, consuming their bark and leaves. Man,
on his part, must leave his home to exchange some arti-
cles of produce, buy provisions, fulfil family or friend-
ly engagements. Then it is necessary to sweep away
mounds of snow accumulated before his door, and labo-
riously make himself a pathway. Once, from a chalet
built upon a high promontory, I saw some of these almost
imperceptible beings, these black human ants, walking
slowly along a sort of track between two walls of snow.
Never had man appeared so insignificant. In the midst
of the vast extent of whiteness, these pedestrians ap-
peared absurdly chimerical. I asked myself how a race
composed of such pygmies had been able to accomplish
all the great historical deeds, and, step by step, to carry
out that which to-day we term civilization, the promise
of a future state of well-being and liberty.

Yet even in the midst of these formidable winter

SNOW. 81

snows man has been able to cause his intelligence and
audacity to triumph by means of those commercial roads
which permit him freely to despatch his merchandise
and to travel in almost all weathers. The chamois has
ceased to roam about the summits, and numbers of birds,
flying above the peaks in summer, have prudently de-
scended into the milder regions of the plains. But man
continues to traverse those roads, ascending from gorge
to gorge, from chain to chain, until they reach a gap in
the crest and again descend the other slope. During
the fine season, when the glad torrents bound in cascades
by the roadside, even the carriages drawn by horses*
with their tinkling bells, can without difficulty scale
the incline made at such expense up the escarpments.
When the road is covered with snow, it is necessary to
change the means of conveyance : carts and carriages
are replaced by sleighs that glide lightly over the heaped-
up flakes. The ascent of the mountains is no less rapid
than in the hottest days of summer ; as to the descent, it
is accomplished at a dizzy pace.

It is in travelling thus in a sleigh over the necks of
the mountains that we can become thoroughly acquaint-
ed with deep snow. The light wooden conveyance glides
noiselessly along; we no longer feel the jolting of the
iron upon the resisting ground, and we might imagine
ourselves to be travelling into space, as if borne away by
some spirit. At one moment we round the bend of a
ravine, the next the point of some crag ; we pass from
the bottom of a chasm to the edge of a precipice, and in
all these various forms, which pass successively before
our gaze, the mountain preserves its uniform whiteness.
If the sun lights up the snowy surface, we see it glisten-

82 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

ing with countless diamonds; should the sky be gray
and low, the elements seem to merge into one another ;
fragments of clouds, of snowy hillocks, can no longer be
distinguished from each other: we might imagine our-
selves to be floating in infinite space ; we cease to belong
to the earth.

And how much more we enter into the land of dreams
when, after having attained the culminating point of the
pass, we once again descend the opposite slope, carried
round turning after turning with alarming rapidity ! At
the caravan's departure, when the last sleigh starts the
first has already disappeared behind a projection in the
gnlf. We see it, then it disappears again ; we perceive
it once more, to be lost anew. We plunge into a dizzy
abyss wherein heaps of snow as big as small hills are
rolling down. An avalanche ourselves, we slide down
other avalanches, and we see amphitheatres, ravines,
crags, defiling at our side as if they were drawn along
by a tempest ; even the summits themselves, soaring to
the horizon, seem to be swept along in a fantastic whirl-
wind, in a species of infernal gallop. And when, at the
end of the unbridled race, we arrive at the foot of the
mountain in the plains, already cleared from the snow or
slightly powdered over with it, when we breathe another
atmosphere and behold a new nature in another climate,
we ask ourselves if we have not really been the play-
thing of some hallucination, if we have indeed crossed
that deep snow above the region of clouds and tempests ?

But on those days during which a storm lasts, the
transit is perilous enough for a traveller to remember it,
to retain a very distinct recollection of all his adventures.
The hurricane incessantly drives up whirlwinds of snow

" THERE IS THE ABYSS.

SNOW. 83

which hide the road and modify its form, reducing the
slopes and filling up the road, rough enough already.
The horses, so sure-footed on solid ground, have some-
times to cross through heaps of soft, deep drifts ; while
the one sinks into them up to his chest, another stumbles
over a piled-up mound. The tempest whistling round
their ears, the flakes blowing into their eyes and nostrils,
the brutal oaths of the drivers, irritate and threaten to
madden them. The sleigh jolts up the narrow way, now
bending towards the mountain wall, now towards the
precipice, for there is the abyss ; we graze its edges, fol-
low it afar to an immense distance, as if in falling we
must go down into another world. The coachman has
put down his whip ; he holds nothing but a knife in his
hand now, ready to cut the traces if the horses, bewildered
with fear or slipping down a snowy slope, should sud-
denly roll over the precipice.

Terrible is the unhappy pedestrian's position when,
slowly crossing the snow, he is all at once overtaken by
a storm. The people in the plains composedly contem-
plate the weather. The mountain-peak, lashed by the
wind, seems to smoke like a crater ; the countless frozen
molecules tossed up by the tempest gather in the clouds
whirling above the summits. The contours of the ridges,
blurred by this mist of circling snow, appear less regu-
lar— they look as if they were floating in space ; even
the mountain seems to oscillate on its enormous base.
And what becomes of the poor traveller amid this dizzy
whirl of the tempest as it whistles around the high
peaks ? The spicules of ice, hurled against him like ar-
rows, beat his face and threaten to blind him ; they even
penetrate his clothes ; he can hardly defend himself

5

84 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

against them, wrapped as he is in his thick cloak. When,
making a false step or following a wrong track, he leaves
the footpath for one moment, he is almost inevitably
lost. He walks along by chance, falling from one drift
into another. Sometimes he sinks half-way up into a
hole of soft snow ; he remains in it some time, as if
awaiting his death in the grave that opens out beneath
him ; then, in despair, he raises himself up again and re-
commences his rough way through the clouds of crystals
driven into his face by the wind. The squalls alternate-
ly approach and retreat from the horizon. At one mo-
ment he sees nothing around him but the white smoke
of the circling flakes ; at another, on his right or left, he
can distinguish a tranquil peak shaking off the clouds
and looking at him, " without hatred and without love,"
indifferent to his despair ; in it, at least, he sees a sort of
landmark, allowing him to resume his way with some
return of hope. But in vain ; blinded, maddened, stiff-
ened with the cold, he ends by losing all power of voli-
tion ; he turns round and round, and struggles aimlessly
on. At last he falls into some chasm, gazes in stupor at
the whirling storm as it sweeps over him, and by degrees
allows sleep, the precursor of death, to overcome him.
In a few months, when the snow shall have been melted
by the heat and swept away by avalanches, some sheep-
dog will find the body, and by his terrified barking sum-
mon his master.

Formerly any human remains found in the mountain
had to rest forever in the place where the shepherd dis-
covered them. Rocks were piled up above the corpse,
and every passer-by was bound to add his stone to the
increasing cairn. Even nowadays any mountaineer pass-

SNOW. 85

ing one of these ancient tombs never fails to pick up his
stone wherewith to enlarge the pile. The dead person
has long since been forgotten — perhaps his identity was
never even known; but from century to century the
passer-by never ceases to render homage to him, hoping
to appease his manes.

86 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER XI.

AVALANCHES.

AT last the long winter and its redoubtable storms
have been succeeded by sweet spring-time, with its rains,
its mild winds, its vivifying warmth. Everything grows
young again ; the mountain as well as the plain assumes
a new aspect. It shakes off its mantle of snow ; its for-
ests, turf, cascades, and lakes appear once more beneath
the sun's rays.

In the valley, man was the first to rid himself of the
accumulated snow which inconvenienced him. He has
swept the threshold of his door, mended his roads, freed
his roofs and garden, and then waits for the sun to do
the rest. The soulanes, or slopes, well exposed to the
southern rays, begin to cast off the white winding-sheet
that shrouds them ; here and there the rock, earth, or turf
reappears through the snowy bed. These black patch-
es increase by degrees ; they resemble groups of islands
incessantly growing bigger, and ending by joining one
another : the white spots diminish in number and size ;
they melt, and seem gradually to reascend the mountain
slope. The forest trees, awaking from their torpor, be-
gin to put on their spring garb ; assisted by the little
birds, fluttering from branch to branch, they shake off
the burden they bear of hoar-frost and snow, and freely
bathe their new shoots in the milder atmosphere.

A VALANCHES, 87

The torrents, too, regain their animation. Beneath
the protecting bed of snow, the temperature of the
ground has never fallen so low as at the outer surface
swept by the cold winds ; and, during long months of
winter, small reservoirs of water, like the little drops in
a diamond vessel, retain their natural state here and there
beneath the ice. In the spring-time these urns, towards
which flow all the tiny rills of melted snow, no longer
suffice to retain the liquid mass; the frozen coverings
burst, the basins overflow, and the water seeks to hollow
a path out for itself beneath the snow. In every ravine,
every depression of the ground, this hidden work goes
on ; and the torrent in the valley, fed by all these rivulets
descending from above, resumes its course, which had
been interrupted by the cold of the winter. At first it
passes through a tunnel, beneath heaped-up snow ; then,
owing to the incessant progress of the thaw, it enlarges
its bed and raises its vaults. The moment arrives in
which the mass above cannot any longer preserve its en-
tirety ; it gives way as would the roof of a temple whose
pillars were shaken. Thus leaks are opened out in the
accumulated snow, filling up the bottom of the valleys ;
when we lean over the edge of these chasms, we can see
in their depths a black object upon which a little foam is
broidering ephemeral lacework. It is the water of the
torrent; the dull murmur of the stones dashing against
each other rises from the gloomy aperture.

This first giving-way of snow is succeeded by others
more and more numerous ; and soon the torrent, once
again free to a great extent, has nothing left but to throw
down the dams formed by the thickest and most compact
snow. Some of these ramparts resist the action of the

88 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

waters for weeks and months. Even on the edges of the
cascades masses of snow, converted into ice and inces-
santly sprinkled with the water breaking forth, obsti-
nately retain their form ; it is as if they refused to dis-
solve. We frequently see before the busy cataract of
the torrents a sort of screen formed by a solidified water-
fall ; it is the frozen snow which arrested the flow of the
water during the winter. "While remaking their beds in
every valley passing along the base of the mountains, in
every ravine furrowing their sides, the waters of the
brooks and torrents carry away from the snow on the
slopes the basement serving as its support. The action
of this pressure tends to produce avalanches, and from
time to time the mountain, like an animate creature,
throws the snowy garment from off its shoulders. In
all seasons, even in the severest portion of the winter,
masses of snow, carried away by their own weight, roll
from the summits and slopes ; but these avalanches being
merely composed of the superficial portion of the snow,
they are but a trifling incident in the mountain's life.
Sometimes, however, it is the entire*mass of the winter
covering that slips from the heights to cast itself into the
valleys ; the water, or melted snow, hardly able to pene-
trate through the still frozen surface beds, has rendered
the ground slippery, thus preparing the way for the ava-
lanche. The moment arrives when a whole field of snow
is no longer attached to the slope ; it gives way, and, by
the great shock it imparts to that adjoining, causes it also
to yield. The whole mass is simultaneously precipitated
down the side of the mountain, pushing before it all the
debris met with on its course — trunks of trees, stones,
blocks of rock. Dragging away with it great layers

A.VALANCBES. . 89

of the adjacent surface, and overthrowing more distant
forests, the formidable downfall at one blow sweeps away
a whole side of a mountain several hundred yards in ex-
tent, and the valley becomes partially filled with it. The
torrents, dashing up against the obstacle, are obliged, tem-
porarily, to convert themselves into lakes.

Of the bulk of these avalanches, both mountaineers and
travellers invariably speak with dread. And some val-
leys, more exposed than others, have received sinister
names in the local patois, such as " The Yalley of Hor-
ror," or " The Gorge of the Earthquake."

I know one, the most terrible of all, into which the
muleteers never venture without keeping their eyes fixed
upon the heights. Especially on those fine spring days,
when the mild, soft atmosphere is filled with dissolved
vapors, are the travellers' looks anxious and their words
few. They know that the avalanche is simply waiting
for a shock, for a disturbance of the air or ground, in or-
der to set itself in motion. At these times they walk
like thieves, with "rapid, cautious steps ; sometimes even
they wrap straw r^und their mules' bells, so that the
tinkling of the metal may not irritate the evil spirit men-
acing them up above. At last, when they have passed
the outlet of those redoubtable ravines, where the moun-
tain rivulets simultaneously let loose their avalanches on
several sides, they can breathe in peace, and think, with-
out personal anxiety, of their less happy predecessors, of
whom they were telling such terrible tales the evening
before. Frequently, while the travellers are tranquilly
continuing their descent towards the plain, a sound of
thunder, a prolonged roar reverberating from rock to
rock, compels them suddenly to turn round ; it is the

90 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

fall of snow that has just taken place, and has filled the
gorge through which they passed a few moments ago.

Happily the disposition and form of the slopes permit
the mountaineers to recognize such dangerous localities.
Thus they do not build their cabins below a declivity
whereon avalanches are formed, and, in tracing out their
footpaths, take care to select sheltered routes. But ev-
erything changes in nature, and one of these little houses
or footpaths, which so lately had nothing to fear, ends by
finding itself exposed to danger ; the angle of a projec-
tion may have disappeared, the direction of the channel
of the avalanche may have been slightly diverted, the
protecting outskirts of a forest have given way beneath
the pressure of the snow, and consequently all the moun-
taineers' precautions have proved futile.

In consequence of the thousands of columns of closely
packed trunks, woods are one of the best barriers against
the progress of these avalanches, and numbers of villages
possess no other means of defence against the snow. And
with what respect, what almost religious veneration, do
the people regard their sacred wood ! The stranger walk-
ing about their mountains admires the forest for the sake
of the beauty of its trees, the contrast of its verdure with
the white snow; but they, they owe to it life and re-
pose ; it is, thanks to it, that they can go tranquilly to
sleep of an evening without fear of being swallowed up
during the night. Full of gratitude towards the protect-
ing forest, they have deified it. Woe be to him who
touches one of its shielding trunks with his axe ! " He
who kills the sacred tree kills the mountaineer," says one
of their proverbs.

And yet such murderers have been met with, and in

AVALANCHES. 91

great numbers. Just as in our days, even so-called " civ-
ilized" soldiers compel the inhabitants of an oasis to sub-
mit, by hewing down their palm-trees, which are the life
of the tribe, so has it often occurred that, in order to re-
duce the mountaineers, invaders, in the pay of some lord,
or even shepherds from another valley, have cut down
the trees which served the villages as a safeguard against
destruction. Such were, such are still, the practices of
war. Not less ferocious is greedy speculation when, by
right of purchase or the chances of inheritance or con-
quest, a moneyed man has become the proprietor of a sa-
cred forest ; woe be to those whose fate depends upon
his benevolence or caprice ! Soon the wood-cutters are
at work in the forest, the trunks are hewn down, thrown
into the valley, sold as planks, and paid for in good ster-
ling dollars. Thus a wide road is laid open for the ava-
lanches. Deprived of their outwork, it may be that the
inhabitants of the threatened village persist in remaining
for the sake of their natal hearth : but sooner or later
the peril becomes imminent; they are obliged to migrate
in all haste, to carry away their precious possessions, and
to leave the house a prey to the tottering snow.

Terrible chronicles of avalanches are related to night-
watchers in all mountain villages, and the children listen
while nestling up against their mothers' knees. What
the fire-damp is to a miner is an avalanche to a moun-
taineer. It menaces his chalet, his barns, his cattle; it
may swallow up himself. How many relatives, friends,
has he known who now sleep beneath the snow ! Of an
evening when he passes by the place where the enor-
mous mass ingulfed them, it seems to him that the
mountain whence the avalanche was let loose looks

92 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

wickedly at him, and .he redoubles his pace in order to
hasten from the sinister spot. Sometimes, also, the debris
of the downfall reminds him of a comrade's unhoped-
for escape. Yonder, on one spring night, a sloping bed
of snow, higher than the tallest fir-trees and the village
tower, fell down. A group of cottages and barns lay
beneath the formidable mass. No doubt, thought the
mountaineers who had hastened up from the neighboring
hamlets — no doubt the woodwork had been demolished
and the inhabitants would be lying crushed beneath the
ruins! Yet they set bravely to work to remove the
enormous heap. They labor on for four days and four
nights, and when at last their spades reach the roof of
the first chalet they hear voices singing in answer to one
another. These are the voices of the friends whom they
imagined to be lost. Their houses had withstood the
violence of the shock, and the air which they contained
had happily been sufficient. During the people's im-
prisonment they had spent their time in establishing
communication from house to house, and in digging a
tunnel of egress, singing at the same time so as to en-
courage themselves over their work.

When once the protecting forests have disappeared, it
is very difficult to replace them. Trees grow slowly on
all parts of the mountains; in the channels of the ava-
lanches they do not grow at all. It is true that by means
of engineering works the snow can be kept safely on the
high slopes, and thus the disaster of its fall into the val-
leys be prevented ; the declivity might be hewn into
horizontal terraces upon which the beds of snow would
be obliged to rest, as upon the steps of a gigantic stair-
case ; the trunks of trees might be replaced by rows of

AVALANCHES. 93

iron stakes and palisades, which would prevent the slip-
ping-down of the upper masses. These attempts have
already been made successfully, but only in valleys in-
habited by a rich and numerous population. Poor vil-
lagers, unless they are aided by the world at large, would
never think of thus carving afresh the exterior of the
mountain, and the avalanches continue to fall upon the
meadows by their accustomed channels. The villagers
are obliged to confine themselves to protecting their little
houses by enormous spurs of stone, breaking the force of
the slipping snow, and dividing it into two currents when
it does not descend in masses sufficiently powerful to de-
molish everything at one shock.

Of all the destroyers of the mountains, an avalanche is
the most energetic. It carries away with it earth and
rocky fragments as would an overflowing torrent; still
more by the gradual melting of the snow, forming its
lower strata, it so moistens the ground that the latter be-
comes changed into soft mud, fissured with deep crevices,
and sinking down beneath its own weight. The earth
has become fluid to a great depth ; it flows along the
whole length of the slopes, drawing with it footpaths,
blocks of scattered rocks, even houses and forests. Whole
sides of mountains, rendered sodden by the snow, have
thus slipped down in one mass with their fields, their
pastures, their woods, and their inhabitants. Thus by
their heaping up, and the melting water penetrating so
slowly into the ground, flakes of snow suffice little by
little to demolish the mountains. In spring every ravine
clearly betrays this work of destruction ; cascades, land-
slips, avalanches, snow, rocks, and water descend in con-
fusion from the summits and make their way towards
the plain.

94 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER XII.

GLACIERS.

EVEN in the midst of summer, when all the snow is
melted by the breath of the warm winds, enormous accu-
mulations of ice, imprisoned in the upper valleys, still
produce a local winter, appearing all the more curious
from the contrast. When the sun shines with all its
brilliancy, both the direct heat and that sent forth by the
glaciers are felt oppressively by the traveller; it even
seems to be hotter than in the valleys, owing to the dry-
ness of the air, incessantly deprived of its humidity by
the glacier's greedy surface. Birds can be heard singing
close by beneath the foliage ; flowers stud the grass, fruit
ripens under the whortleberry leaves. And yet, side by
side with this joyous world, there lies the gloomy glacier,
with its gaping crevices, its collection of stones, its terri-
ble silence, its apparent immobility. It is death by the
side of life.

Nevertheless, the great frozen mass possesses its mo-
tion also: slowly, but with an invincible force, it works
as do the wind, snow, rain, running water, to renew the
planet's surface. Wherever glaciers have passed over,
during one of the ages of the earth's existence, the aspect
of the country has been transformed by their action.
As do avalanches, they carry the rubbish of the crum-

GLACIERS. 95

bling mountains into the plains, not by violence, but by
the patient labor of every moment.

The work of the glacier, so difficult to discover in its
secret progress, although so vast in its results, commences
from the summit of the mountain, on the surface of the
snowy strata. Up above in the amphitheatres where the
clouds of white spicules, lashed by the storm, have been
collected in whirlwinds, the uniform expanse of the snow-
banks does not change its aspect. From year to year,
from century to century, it is always the same whiteness,
pale beneath the shadow of the clouds, dazzling beneath
the rays of the sun. It appears as if the snow were eter-
nal there, and it is thus designated by the inhabitants of
the plains, who from below see it shining beside the
heavens. They believe that it remains forever upon the
lofty peaks, and that if the wind, during storms, does lift
it up, it is always allowed to fall back into the same
place.

It is nothing of the sort. One portion of the snow
evaporates and returns to the clouds, whence it descend-
ed. Another portion, exposed to the rays of the sun, or
to the influence of a hot southern wind, is sprinkled over
with tiny melted drops, trickling down the surface or
penetrating the strata until, seized upon again by the
cold, they become congealed into imperceptible gems.
Thus, by means of the millions of molecules which melt,
then freeze to melt again, and again grow solid, the mass
of snow becomes insensibly transformed ; at the same
time, owing to the weight which carries away the melted
drops for several inches, it becomes displaced, and little
by little the snow, so lately fallen upon the summit of
the mountain, is found to have descended the slopes.

96 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.-

Other snow has taken its place, and will flow again in
turn by a series of fusions, without, however, having to
suffer the least apparent change. It is true that they
have the infinitude of ages before them ; slowly they
move on towards the sea, where they must one day be
swallowed up. By the time that two generations of men
have succeeded one another in the lower plains, one of
these flakes of snow, fallen from a lofty peak, will not
yet have issued from the mass of the snow.

But, slow as it may be, this flake, converted into a
crystal, does not the less hold on in its course. The mass
of snow, which has become homogeneous, and has already
been transformed into ice, gets entangled in the moun-
tain gorge, whither its weight draws it. Always immov-
able in appearance, the accumulation of ice has now be-
come a real river flowing in a rocky bed. Upon the
slopes to the right and left, the winter's snow is com-
pletely melted, and flowering plants have replaced it; a
whole world of insects lives and buzzes amid the grass
of the pastures ; the air is soft, and man leads his flocks
on to the grassy escarpments whence his glance can de-
scend from afar upon the frozen stream. The latter, by
unceasing efforts, continues its journey to the plain ; it
would stretch itself out as far as the level fields at the
foot of the mountains — it would reach the sea itself — if
the mild temperature of the lowrer valleys, the warmth
of the winds, the rays of the sun, did not succeed in
melting the foremost ice.

On its course, the solid river behaves as would a real
one of running water. It has its meanderings, its eddies,
its depths and shallows, its " torpids," its rapids, and its
cascades. Like the water, which expands or contracts

GLACIER AND CREVASSE.

GLACIERS. 97

according to the form of its bed, the ice adapts itself to
the dimensions of the ravine containing it. It knows
exactly how to mould itself upon the rock, as well in
the vast basin whose walls widen out on either side as
in the defile, where the passage almost closes up. Im-
pelled by the masses, incessantly fed by the upper snow,
the glacier continues to slide upon the bottom, the in-
cline of which is almost insensible, or else forms a suc-
cession of precipices.

But the ice, not possessing the suppleness, the fluidity,
of water, accomplishes, with a somewhat barbaric awk-
wardness, all the movements forced upon it by the nat-
ure of the ground. It cannot, at its cataracts, fall in one
level sheet as does the water current; but, according to
the inequalities of the bottom and the cohesion of the
ice crystals, it fractures, splits, gets cut up into blocks in-
clining various ways, falling over one another, becoming
cemented together again in curious obelisks, towers, fan-
tastic groups. Even in that part where the bottom of
the immense groove inclines with tolerable regularity,
the surface of the glacier does not in the least resemble
the even surface of the water of a river. The friction
of the ice against its edges does not ripple it with tiny
wave's similar to those of the shore, but fractures and re-
fractures it with crevices, intersecting one another in a
labyrinth of fissures.

In winter, and even when spring has already renewed
the ornamentation of the lower countries, a great num-
ber of crevasses are concealed beneath thick masses of
snow, extending in continued layers along the surface of
the glacier; then, if the granulous snow has not been
softened by the sun's heat, it is easy to walk above the

98 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN,

mouth of these hidden abysses. The traveller can ignore
them, as he ignores the open caves in the thickness of
the mountains. But the annual return of the summer
season by degrees melts the superficial snow. The gla-
cier, moving on incessantly, and whose fractured mass
vibrates in one continual tremor, shakes off the snowy
mantle covering it; here and there the vaults fall in,
and in great fragments bury themselves in the depths of
the crevasses; frequently nothing remains but the nar-
row bridges upon which no person would venture with-
out having tested the solidity of the snow with his foot.

It is then that it becomes dangerous to traverse many
a glacier on account of the width of its fissures, branch-
ing out to infinity. From the edges of the chasm we
sometimes see in the interior of the superposed layers of
bluish ice, which recently were snow and are separated
by blackish bands, the remains of debris fallen upon the
snow; at other times the ice, clear, homogeneous in its
whole mass, appears to be but one single crystal.

What is the depth of the well ? We do not know. A
jutting crag of ice, combined with the darkness, prevents
our glance descending to the lowest rocks ; yet we some-
times hear a mysterious noise ascending from the abyss :
it is the water rippling, a stone becoming loosened, a bit
of ice splitting off and falling down.

Explorers have descended these chasms to measure
their density and to study the temperature and composi-
tion of the deep ice. Sometimes they have been able to
do it without any great risk, by penetrating laterally into
the clefts, by the jutting rocks which serve as banks to
the rivers of ice. Frequently, too, they have been obliged
to be let down by means of ropes, as is the miner who

GLACIERS. 99

penetrates to the bosom of the earth. But for one sci-
entific discoverer who, taking all necessary precautions,
thus explores the holes of the glaciers, how many unhap-
py shepherds have been ingulfed and met their death in
those chasms ! Yet we know of mountaineers who, hav-
ing fallen to the bottom of these crevasses, wounded,
bleeding, lost in the darkness, have preserved their cour-
age and the resolution to see daylight once more. There
was one who followed the course of a sub-glacial stream,
and thus made a veritable journey below the enormous
vault of pieces of falling ice. After a similar excursion,
there is nothing left for the man to do but to descend
into the chasm of a crater to explore the subterranean
reservoir of lava.

We are certainly bound to award great praise to the
courageous savant who descends into the depths of the
glacier to study its channels or grooves, its air-bubbles, its
crystals ; but how many things may we not contemplate
on the surface, how many charming details are we not
permitted to perceive, how many laws are not revealed
to our eyes, if we know how to look !

Really, in this apparent chaos everything is regulat-
ed by laws. Why should a fissure always be produced
in the frozen mass opposite one point of the steep
bank ? Why at a certain depth below should the crevasse,
which has gradually become enlarged, again bring its
edges nearer ea"ch other and the glacier be recemented ?
Why should the surface regularly bulge out in one part
to become fissured elsewhere ? On seeing all these phe-
nomena, which roughly reproduce the ripples, wave-
lets, and eddies on the smooth sheets of the water of
a river, we better understand the unity which, under

100 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

such an infinity of aspects, presides over everything in
nature.

When, by long exploration, we have become familiar
with the glacier, and we know how to account to our-
selves for all the little changes which take place upon its
surface, it is a delight, a joy, to roam about it on a fine
summer's day. The heat of the sun has endowed it with
voice and motion. Tiny veins of water, almost imper-
ceptible at first, are formed here and there ; these unite
in sparkling streamlets which wind at the bottom of
miniature river-beds, hollowed out by themselves, and
then suddenly disappear in a fissure in the ice, giving
forth a low plaint in a silvery voice. They swell or fall
according to the variations of the temperature. Should
a cloud pass before the sun and cool the atmosphere,
they barely continue to flow; when the heat becomes
greater, the superficial rivulets assume the pace of tor-
rents ; they sweep away with them sand and pebbles to
be deposited in alluvions, or to form high banks and isl-
ands ; then towards evening they calm down, and soon
the cold of the night congeals them afresh.

Beneath the rays of heat temporarily animating the
field of the glacier by melting the superficial layer, the
little world of pebbles, fallen from the neighboring walls,
also becomes agitated. A gravel slope, situated on the
edge of a murmuring stream of water, subsides by par-
tial downfalls and plunges into the fissur&s. Elsewhere,
black, broken stones are scattered over the glacier ; they
absorb and concentrate the heat, making holes in the ice
beneath them, piercing it with little cylindrical aper-
tures. Farther off, on the contrary, vast accumulations
of debris and big stones prevent the heat of the sun pen-

GLACIERS. loi

etrating below; on every side the ice melts and evapo-
rates. In the end these stones form pillars which appear
to grow, to spring out of the ground like columns of
marble ; but each one, too weak, at last breaks beneath
the weight, and all the fragments that it bore fall down
with a crash, to recommence a similar evolution on the
morrow. How much more charming are all these little
dramas of inanimate nature when animals or plants take
part in them ! Attracted by the mildness of the air, the
butterfly flutters on the scene, while the plant which fell
down from the heights of the neighboring rocks in a
landslip utilizes its short reprieve of life to take root
again, and to display to the sun its last corolla. Navi-
gators on the polar coast have seen a whole carpet of
vegetation cover a high cliff composed of earth at the
top and ice at the base.

102 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER XIII.

MORAINES AND TORRENTS.

ALL these small phenomena daily taking place appear
to be a very trifling matter in the earth's history. What,
indeed, is the work of a glacier during a summer's day ?
Its mass, moving onward with an unceasing effort, has
hardly progressed one inch ; two or three rocks have be-
come detached from the walls in order to fall upon the
moving field of ice; the stream, carrying away the melted
water, has spread out wider in its bed ; the pebbles be-
come more numerous, and dash against each other with
greater noise. Otherwise everything has preserved its
customary appearance. Nowhere does nature seem to
be slower in its work of perpetual renovation.

And yet these daily, momentary, trifling transforma-
tions end by bringing about immense changes in the
earth's aspect, veritable geological revolutions. These
pebbles, these fragments of rock, falling from the upper
escarpments on to the bed of ice, become piled up, little
by little, at the base of the walls as enormous ramparts
of stones; they move slowly on with the frozen mass
that bears them ; but other ddbris, which has rolled
down the same channels of the mountain, replaces them
in the localities they have just vacated. Thus long con-
voys of confusedly piled-up rocks accompany the glacier

» MORAINES AND TORRENTS. 103

on its course ; streams of stones are added to the stream
of ice descending from every ruined height, from every
cirque furrowed by avalanches.

When it has reached the outlet of the upper gorges,
situated in the regions of a milder temperature, the glac-
ier cannot retain its crystalline condition ; it thaws and
becomes water, allowing its burden of stones to drop.
All this debris rolls down in gross confusion, forming a
dam in the valley. At the extremity of many a glacier
there are positive mountains of crumbling stones on the
loosely built-up slopes. After a long course of years
abounding in snow, the mass of the glacier swells and
lengthens, until it is obliged to pick up these mountains
of stones once more and to push them a little farther
down into the valley. Later on, when under the influ-
ence of a softer temperature of winters, when the snow
is less profuse, all the lower part of the glacier will melt,
leaving bare the basin of rocks which served as its bed ;
the " moraine" of boulders, delivered from the pressure
which pushed it forward, will remain isolated at a certain
distance from the glacier ; behind it will be visible the
bare polished stone, rubbed smooth by the enormous
weight so lately moving over it, and here and there
covered by a reddish-hued mud, produced by the crush-
ing of the pebbles and gravel carried away. Another
moraine of heaped-up debris will be formed little by lit-
tle in front of the talus of the glacier.

Thus, then, at enormous distances ahead of the valley,
for miles and tens of miles, indisputable traces of the
former action of the ice are to be seen. Whole plains,
once filled with water, have been gradually overwhelmed
with mud and pebbles pushed on before it by the glac-

104 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

ier ; the protuberances of the mountains and hills, met
with in its course by the solid stream, have been worn
and polished ; finally, scattered rocks and moraines have
been deposited even as far away as the slopes of moun-
tains belonging to other groups. The origin of these
stones is easily recognized by their chemical composition,
the arrangement of their crystals or their fossils; fre-
quently even their distinctive characters are so precise
as to enable us to point out upon the mountain itself the
elevated cirque whence the missing block has been de-
tached. For how many years or centuries has the voy-
age lasted? Very many, no doubt, if we judge by the
big rocks which the actual glaciers carry away, and whose
progress has been measured. Among these travelling
blocks are some which scientific men have rendered
famous by their observations, and which we love to see
again as if they were friends.

These stones cast into the plains, these accumulations
of mud transported to a great distance, all these traces
left by the ancient glaciers' sojourn, permit us to imagine
what have been the great alternations of the climate, and
the immense modifications in the exterior and aspect of
the earth during the successive ages of the planet. In
that past, revealed to us by these remains, we see our
mountain and its neighbors rising up above their actual
summits. The supreme peaks passed beyond the highest
clouds, and all the vapors travelling through space de-
posited themselves as snow or frozen crystals upon the
slopes of the enormous mass ; the pastures, the verdant
valleys, the now wooded sloping sides, were covered by a
uniform layer of ice. Then neither cascades, lakes, rivu-
lets, nor meadows had made their appearance in the val-

MORAINES AND TORRENTS. 105

ley. The immense frozen stream, not less thick than are
now the strata of the mountains, tilled up all the depres-
sions ; then, on issuing from the gorges, stretched itself
far away into the plains, below hills and dales. Such, in
our forefathers' times, was the image presented to them
by the ice-laden mountain ; for our sons' grandsons, in the
remote uncertainty of centuries, the scene will again be
changed. Perhaps the glacier, then completely thawed,
will be replaced by a feeble rivulet ; the mountain, will
have ceased to exist ; a slight rise in the ground will
mark its former site ; and the actual plain, turned topsy-
turvy by the alterations in its level, will have given birth
to heights gradually growing up into the skies !

And while we muse upon the history of the mountain
and its glacier, what they were, and what they will one
day become, yonder is the little torrent murmuring as it
issues from the ice, and going forth into the world to
work at the task of continually renewing the earth. The
water, rendered white or milky by the innumerable mole-
cules of triturated rock which it bears suspended, is nei-
ther more nor less than the glacier itself suddenly trans-
formed into a liquid state ; and yet what a contrast be-
tween the solid mass with its crevices, its caves, its piles
of stones, its muddy slopes, and the water gayly bursting
forth into daylight, and babbling as it winds amid the
flowers ! That sudden apparition of the stream, which
during all its upper course has moved along in darkness,
swelling as it goes by the addition of millions of little
drops falling from the clefts in the vault, is one of the
most curious spectacles in the mountain. The cavern
whence the current escapes changes its form every day
according to the falling and melting of the ice ; yet ordi-

106 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

narily it is easy to penetrate to a certain distance inside
the grotto, and to admire its pendants, its translucent
walls, the bluish light, the changing reflections. The
strangeness of the sight, the vague apprehension that
overcomes our spirit, leads us to imagine that we are
transported into a sacred place. " Three times and a
thousand times blessed " those Hindoo pilgrims believe
themselves to be, who, after having reascended the Gan-
ges as far as its source, are also permitted to penetrate
beneath the gloomy vault whence the holy river shoots
forth.

The glacial torrents bring into the plains, with great
regularity, dependent upon that of the season, the fertil-
izing water and the alluvial mud arising from that enor-
mous laboratory of trituration incessantly at work be-
neath the glacier. During the cold season of our tem-
perate zones, when the rains fall most frequently upon
the fields, and, instead of evaporating, find their way tow-
ards the rivers, the glacier becomes more compactly
frozen, adheres everywhere to the vault serving as its
bed, and merely allows the feeblest little rill to escape.
Sometimes even it dries up altogether; not a drop of
water descends from the mountain. But in proportion
as the warmth returns and the glad vegetation demands
a greater quantity of water for its flowers, in proportion
as evaporation becomes more active and the level of the
rivers tends to fall, the torrents of the glaciers swell, they
are temporarily changed into rivers and furnish the nec-
essary moisture to the thirsty fields. Thus is established
a balance most advantageous for the prosperity of the
countries irrigated by watercourses which are partially
fed by glaciers. When, swollen by rain, the tributary

THE TOIIREST.

MORAINES AND TORRENTS. 107

streams overflow, the mountain torrents bring but a small
liquid stream ; they, on the other hand, overflow when
the other rivers are almost dry. Thanks to this law of
adjustment, a certain equality is maintained in the river
wherein all the divers watercourses unite.

In the general economy of the earth, the glacier, ap-
parently motionless, always so slow and calm in its action,
is a great element of organization. Rarely does it intro-
duce any disturbance into nature. Such a thing may
happen, as, for instance, when a lateral glacier, pushing
a large mound of debris, or advancing alone across a
stream which issued from the primary glacier, gathers
together the waters flowing from it, and thus forms a
constantly increasing lake. For a long time the dam
resists the pressure of the liquid mass, but, after a con-
siderable melting of the snow, a recoil of the glacier,
forming a dam, or of the deblais, slowly produced by the
water, it is quite possible that the barrier of ice and ac-
cumulated boulders may suddenly give way. Then the
lake breaks loose as a terrible avalanche : the water, mixed
with stones, with blocks of ice, and all the debris torn
from its shores, rushes furiously down into the lower
valley; it carries away bridges, destroys mills, razes the
houses on its banks, washes away the trees on the lower
slopes, and lays bare the very meadows as would a huge
ploughshare, rolling them all on before it, and mixing^
them up in the chaos of its deluge. For those valleys
through which the inundation sweeps the disaster is
enormous, and its story is handed down from genera-
tion to generation.

But these are very rare events, and even, in civilized
countries, becoming impossible in future; for the men-

108 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

aced population takes care to anticipate the danger by
digging subterranean outlets for the lacustrine reservoirs
formed behind a shifting dam of ice or stones. Thus
kept within bounds, the glacier continues to be the ben-
efactor of the regions situated in the course of its waters.
It is the glacier that irrigates them during those seasons
when they would have more cause to dread the effects of
drought — the glacier that renews them by its contribu-
tions of vegetable mould, still quite fresh, and full of its
nutritive chemical elements. The glacier is in reality a
lake, a sea of fresh water, containing hundreds of thou-
sands of cubic yards ; but this lake, suspended on the
side of the mountain, makes its escape slowly, and as
if by rule. It shuts up water enough to inundate all the
lower countries, but it is discreet in dealing out its treas-
ures. Thus this frozen mass, with its death-like aspect,
rather adds to the life and fertility of the earth.

FORESTS AND PASTURES. 109

CHAPTER XIV.

FORESTS AND PASTURES.

BY its snow and melting ice, which serve to swell the
torrents and rivers during the summer, the mountain
sustains vegetation at enormous distances from its base,
but it keeps back plenty of moisture to nourish its own
growth of forests, grass, and moss, so very superior in
the number of its species to that of a similar extent of
plains. From below our eyes cannot distinguish the de-
tails of the picture offered by the verdure of the moun-
tain, but it embraces the magnificent ensemble, and en-
joys the thousand contrasts which the elevation, the ac-
cidents of the ground, the incline of the slopes, the abun-
dance of water, the vicinity of the snow, and all the other
physical conditions produce in vegetation.

In spring, when all nature is regenerated, it is delight-
ful to see the green of the grass and foliage prevail over
the whiteness of the snow. The blades of grass, which
can breathe again, and once more see light, lose their red
tint and charred appearance ; they first assume a whitish
yellow, then a beautiful green. Multitudes of flowers
stud the meadows ; here nothing but ranunculus, else-
where anemones or primroses, spring up in clusters; far-
ther away the verdure disappears beneath the snowy
white of the graceful narcissus of the poets or the lilac

HO THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

of the crocus, which is nothing but flower from root to
the tip of the corolla ; by the water's side the parnassia
opens its delicate calyx; here and there tiny blue and
white, pink or yellow flowerets are crowded together in
such great numbers that they impart their hues to the
whole of the grassy slope, so that as fast as the snow re-
tires towards the heights before the blooming, verdant
carpet, we can recognize from the opposite declivities
which species of plant predominates in the meadow.
Soon the trees, also, take part in the f^te. Below, on
the first slopes, there are fruit-trees, which in a few
weeks'1 tiuie, after having freed themselves from the
winter's snow, are covered with that of another kind, the
snow of their blossoms. Higher up the chestnuts, the
beeches, the various shrubs, are clad with their tender
green leaves; from day to day the mountain seems to
be freshly clothed with a wondrous tissue, in which silk
and velvet blend. Little by little this youthful verdure
of forests and heaths advances to the summit ; it ascends
by the valleys and ravines, as if to scale and conquer the
supreme heights amid the ice. Up there everything as-
sumes an unexpected aspect of gladness. Even the dark
rocks, looking black by contrast with the snow, adorn
the irregularities of their surface with tiny tufts of green.
They, too, take part in the spring-time gayety.

Although less sumptuous in the exuberance of their
verdure and the prodigious multitude of their flowers,
the elevated pastures are more lovely than the meadows
below ; their sward is softer, more familiar in its gayety.
We can walk without any exertion on the short turf, and
it is easier to become acquainted with the flowers spring-
ing up in myriads among the tufts of verdure. There.

FORESTS AND PASTURES. HI

too, the brilliancy of the corollas is incomparable ; there
the sun darts its most scorching rajs with more power-
ful and more rapid chemical action ; in the sap it elab-
orates coloring substances of the most perfect beauty.
Armed with their microscopes, the botanist and physi-
cian duly satisfy themselves as to the phenomenon ; but,
without these instruments, the simple pedestrian can eas-
ily perceive with his naked eye that the blue of no flower
in the plain equals the deep cerulean hue of the little
gentian. Eager to live and to enjoy, the plants make
themselves as beautiful as possible. They don the most
vivid hues, for the season of gladness will be short.
When the summer has swiftly fled, death will overtake
them. .

Our sight is dazzled with the radiancy presented by
wide patches of turf studded with the vivid pink stars
of the catch-fly, the blue clusters of the myosotis, the big
golden-hearted flowers of the alpine asters. Upon the
driest slopes, among arid rocks, grows the black orchis,
with its perfume of vanilla, and the " lion's-foot," whose
flower never fades, and for lovers remains a symbol of
eternal love.

Among these plants, with their brilliant bloom, there
are some which are not in the least afraid either of the
snow or the frozen water. They are not at all chilly ;
close beside the crystals of the snow-bank the flow of the
sap circulates freely through the tissues of the delicate
soldanella, as it bends its tender, pure-hued corolla over
the snow. When the sun shines, we may say of it, with
more reason than of the palm-tree in the oasis, that its
foot is in ice and its head in fire. Even at the outlet of
the snow, the torrent, whose milky water seems to be

112 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

composed of barely melted ice, folds in its arms a bloom-
ing islet, a charming bouquet, with ever-shivering stems.
Farther on the bed of snow, shielded from the sun's rays
by the shadow of the rock, is dotted all over with flow-
ers; the soft temperature which they shed has thawed
the surrounding ice; they seem to spring from a crystal
chalice whose base the shadow has dyed blue. Other
more sensitive flowers dare not undergo immediate con-
tact with the snow, but take care to surround themselves
with a soft robe of moss; they are like rubies reposing
upon a green -velvet cushion in the centre of a white
downy bed.

Forests alternate with the grassy surface on the moun-
tain's sides, but not at haphazard. The presence of big
trees always indicates sufficiently deep vegetable mould
and abundance of water for irrigation upon the slopes
which produce them ; thus, thanks to the distribution of
forests and pastures, we can read from afar some of the
mountain's secrets, provided, at least, that man has not
rudely interfered by hewing down the trees and modify-
ing the aspect of the heights. There are whole regions
where man, greedy to enrich himself, has cut down every
tree ; not even a stump remains, for the winter's snow,
no longer arrested by the living barrier, can henceforth
slide freely down during the season of the avalanches ;
it denudes the ground, planes it away to the rock, drag-
ging with it all the remains of the roots.

The ancient feeling of veneration has almost disap-
peared. Formerly the woodcutter never approached a
forest without dread; the wind which he heard sighing
was for him as the voice of the gods ; supernatural be-
ings were concealed beneath the oak, and the sap of the

FORESTS AND PASTURES. 113

tree was equally divine blood. When obliged to lay the
axe to the trunks, he did it in trembling: "If thou art a
god, if thou art a goddess," would say the Apennine
mountaineer — " if thou art a god, pardon me ;" and he
would repeat the prayers ordained ; but was he reassured
after these genuflections ?

While swinging his axe, he saw the branches wave to
and fro above his head ; the wrinkles of the bark ap-
peared to assume an angry expression, to be animated
by a terrible glance; at the first blow the moist wood
might have been the rosy flesh of a nymph. " No doubt
the priest has sanctioned, but what will the divinity say ?
Will not the axe suddenly rebound, and plunge into the
body of him who wields it ?"

Some trees are still worshipped ; the mountaineer does
not know why, and does not like to be interrogated on
that point; but still, in many places, we see oaks re-
spected by the inhabitants, who have surrounded them
with palings, to protect them against animals and wan-
dering travellers. In ancient Brittany, when a man was
in danger of death, and no priest was to be found in the
vicinity, he might make his confession at the foot of a
tree ; the branches heard, and their rustling bore the dy-
ing man's last prayer to heaven.

All the same, if here and there some venerable trunk
is respected, in memory of olden times, the forest itself
no longer inspires holy terror; in our days the wood-
cutters do not stand upon such ceremony as their ances-
tors, especially when not making an onslaught on woods
serving as a barrier against avalanches. It is sufficient
for them if only they can cultivate the trees in a profita-
ble manner ; that is to say, gain more by the sale of the

114 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

timber than they have to expend on cutting down and
transporting it. Numbers of forests still stand in their
primeval virgin state, owing to the difficulty the culti-
vator finds in reaching them and sending away the cut-
down trees. But when the means of access are easy,
when the mountains offer good slides down which, with
one single push, hundreds of yards of dismantled trunks
can be sent ; when, at the foot of the slope, the torrent
in the valley is strong enough to carry the trees in rafts
as far as the plains, or to be able to turn powerful me-
chanical saws, then the forests run great risk of being
attacked by wood-cutters. If they cultivate intelligently,
if they carefully regulate their cutting in such a manner
as always to leave harvests of wood standing for the fol-
lowing years, and to develop in the forest ground the
greatest possible power of production, man has but to
congratulate himself upon the new riches he obtains.
But when he hews down and destroys the whole forest
at one blow, as if seized with a fit of frenzy, is not one
tempted to curse ?

The beauty of the forests still left to us upon the
mountain slopes makes us regret all the more those of
which violent speculators have robbed us. Upon the
first slopes, near the plains, clumps of chestnuts have
been spared, thanks to their leaves, which the peasants
collect for their cattle's litter, and to their fruit, which
the people themselves eat of a winter's evening. Few
forests, even in the tropical regions, where we see trees
of the most diverse natures alternate, present greater
picturesqueness and variety than do chestnut-woods. The
turf-clad slopes extended at the foot of the trees are suffi-
ciently clear from brushwood to permit many views be-

FORESTS AND PASTURES. 115

neath the spreading branches to be freely opened out be-
fore our gaze. In many places the verdant vault allows
the light of heaven to pass through; the gray of the
shadows and the soft yellow of the rays nicker with the
motion of the foliage ; the mosses and lichens covering
the rough bark with their mantle add to the sweetness of
these fugitive lights and shadows. The trees themselves
either rise up solitarily or in groups of two or three, dif-
fering in form and aspect. Almost all, by the grooves
in their bark and the spreading of their boughs, seem to
have been subjected to a sort of twisting from left to
right ; but while some possess tolerably smooth boles and
regularly bifurcated branches, others display curious pro-
tuberances, knots, excrescences, strangely adorned with
tufts of leaves. There are old trees, with enormous trunks,
which have lost all their big branches beneath the vio-
lence of storms, and have replaced them by little twigs
pointed like spears ; others have retained their boughs,
but have decayed internally; time has gnawed away
their stems by hollowing out deep cavities; sometimes
nothing is left but a simple shell of wood, covered with
bark, to bear the whole weight of the upper growth.
Here and there, too, upon the ground we notice the re-
mains of a bole of mighty dimensions ; the tree itself has
disappeared, but all around this vegetable ruin chestnut-
trees grow singly, which were formerly united in the gi-
gantic colonnade, and are now isolated, shrunken, limit-
ed to their meagre individuality. Thus the forest offers
the greatest variety ; side by side with well-grown trees,
superb in aspect and majestic in carriage, are groups
whose singular forms evoke before our imagination the
monsters of fables or dreams.

116 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

Far less varied in their manners are the beeches, which
delight in forming a forest as much as do the chestnuts.
Almost all are upright as columns, and long open spaces
between their shafts allow our gaze to extend far away.
The beeches are smooth with radiant bark and lichens ;
only at the bottom are they clad with green moss ; little
tufts of leaves here and there adorn the lower part of
the stem ; but it is about fifteen yards above the ground
that the branches begin to spread out and unite tree to
tree in one continued vault, pierced by parallel rays neck-
ing the ground. The forest's aspect is severe, yet hospi-
table ; a soft light composed of all these radiant clusters,
dyed green by the reflections of the leaves, fills the ave-
nue and blends with their gloom, producing a vague ash-
en-hued day, void of all flashes of light and yet of all
darkness. In this light we can clearly distinguish every-
thing living at the foot of these great trees: the creep-
ing insects, the tiny waving flowers, the fungi and moss-
es carpeting the soil and roots ; but upon the trees them-
selves the white or golden-yellow lichens and rays are
mingled in confusion. The beech forest constantly
changes its aspect, according to the season. When au-
tumn comes, its foliage is tinted with a diversity of hues
wherein brown and red shades predominate ; it then with-
ers and falls to the ground, covering this with thick beds
of dried leaves, quivering in the least breath of air. The
sunlight penetrates freely into the forest between its bare
branches, but so do the snow and fog ; the wood remains
sad and melancholy until spring arrives, when its early
flowers open out beside the flakes of melting snow, when
the blushing buds spread over the branches like a vague
gleam of dawn.

FORESTS AND PASTURES. H7

The forest of .firs, growing at the same elevation as the
beeches upon the mountain's side, but in a different situ-
ation, is gloomy and forbidding in a very dissimilar man-
ner. It seems to be guarding some terrible secret; dull
noises issue from its branches, then die away, to be re-
newed again like the distant murmuring of waves. But
it is up above, among the boughs, that this noise is prop-
agated ; below all is calm, impassive, sinister ; the branch-
es, laden with their dark foliage, bend almost to the
ground; we shudder as we pass beneath these gloomy
vaults. When winter loads their stalwart boughs with
snow, they will not give way, or allow more than a sil-
very dust to fall upon the sward. Any one would say
that these trees possessed a tenacious will, the more pow-
erful in that they are all dominated by one and the same
idea. When climbing up through the forest to the sum-
mit of the mountain, we see that the trees have to make
a greater struggle to keep themselves alive in the chilly
atmosphere. Their bark is rougher, their trunks less
straight, their branches more gnarled, their foliage hard-
er, less abundant; they could not resist the snow, the
tempests, the cold, save for the shelter which they
furnish one another; isolated, they would perish; united
as a forest, they continue to live. Yet when, on the side
of the peak, the trees forming the first defensive palisade
begin to give way at any one point, their neighbors are
soon shaken and thrown down by the storm. The forest
presents itself as an army, placing its trees in a row like
soldiers in battle array. Only one or two firs, more ro-
bust than the rest, remain in front like champions. Se-
curely anchored upon the rock, resting upon their thick-
set loins, covered with wrinkles and knots as if with ar-

118 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

raor, they defy the storm, and here and there proudly
shake their little plume of leaves. I saw one of these
heroes who had taken possession of an isolated peak, and
thence overlooked an immense tract of dales and ravines.
Its roots, which the very shallow vegetable mould had
not been able to cover, enveloped the rock for a great
distance; creeping and tortuous as serpents, they unite
again in a single low gnarled trunk, which seemed to take
possession of the mountain. The branches of the strug-
gling tree had become contorted beneath the efforts of
the wind ; but, firmly united, they can still brave the on-
slaught of a hundred tempests.

Trees will still grow above the forest of pines and its
little outpost, exposed to every storm ; but they are of a
species which, far from soaring straight up to heaven,
rather creep along the ground, and glide timidly into the
surface irregularities to escape from the wind and cold.
They develop in breadth ; the branches, serpentine as
the roots, stretch out above them and take advantage of
the small amount of heat radiating from them ; it is thus
that sheep crowd up one against another to keep warm .
during the winter nights. By making themselves small,
and presenting but slight resistance to the storm and a
small surface to the cold, the juniper-trees of the moun-
tain succeed in preserving their existence: we still see
them creeping towards the snowy summits, hundreds of
yards above the fir, daring as it is in its ascent. In the
same way, shrubs, such as alpine roses and heaths, con-
trive to raise themselves to great altitudes ; owing to the
spherical or domelike form possessed by all the stems
pressed close up together, the wind readily passes over
these vegetable balls. Higher up, however, indeed, they

FORESTS AND PASTURES. 119

are obliged to relinquish their conflict with the cold;
they give place to the mosses spreading out over the
ground, to the lichens incorporating themselves with
the rock. From the stone vegetation came, to it vege-
tation must return.

120 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER XV.

THE ANIMALS OF THE MOUNTAIN.

*

RICH in its growth of forests, shrubs, grass, and moss,
the mountain seems to be very poor in animals ; it would
appear to Be almost utterly deserted had shepherds not
led to it their herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, which
we can see a great way off upon the green pastures like
red or white specks, and if the ever-zealous sheep-dogs
did not incessantly run from right to left, making the
rocks resound with their barking. They are temporary
emigrants who have come up from the low plains in
spring-time, and must return there in the winter, unless
they be concealed in the depths of cattle - sheds in the
hamlets of the valley. The only children of the moun-
tain to be met with while climbing the acclivities are
insects crossing the footpaths and gliding through the
grass ; butterflies, among which we see the black Erebus,
with its changing reflections, and the magnificent Apollo,
that living flower fluttering above other flowers, are buzz-
ing in the air ; here and there some reptile steals away
between two stones. The forests are very mute ; rarely
are birds to be heard singing in them.

Yet the mountain, a natural fortress rising up in the
midst of plains, has its visitors too ; some, timid fugitives
seeking an inaccessible retreat ; others, daring robbers,

THE ANIMALS OF THE MOUNTAIN. 121

beasts of prey, which, from the height of their watch-
towers, scan the horizon from afar before rushing out
upon their pillaging expeditious. It is a strange fact,
teaching us only too well to understand man's cowardice,
that the beasts of the mountain which destroy and kill
one another are precisely those which we most admire.
We should readily convert them into kings; and in all
myths, fables, legends, and many an old book of natural
history, that name is really given to them.

To begin with, there are the eagle and other rapacious
birds of prey, which all the lords of the earth have
chosen as emblems, sometimes endowing them with two
heads, as if they themselves would like to have two beaks
wherewith to devour. The eagle is beautiful when he is
proudly perched upon a rock, inaccessible to man, and
much more magnificent still when he sails tranquilly
through the air, lord of the skies ; but what signifies his
beauty ? If the king admires, the shepherd hates him.
He is the enemy of the flock, and its keeper has vowed
war to the death against him. Soon, eagles, vultures,
and griffins shall exist nowhere, save in our museums ;
even now in many mountains not a single nest is to be
seen, or, if one does remain, it contains but a solitary de-
fiant bird, so old as to be semi-impotent, and to be eaten
up by parasites.

The bear is also a destroyer of sheep ; and, sooner or
later, the shepherd will exterminate him in our moun-
tains. Despite his prodigious strength, and the skill with
which he can crush bones, he is not the favorite of kings,
who doubtlessly do not consider him sufficiently graceful
to assign to him a place in their escutcheons ; but, on the
other hand, many a tribe cherishes him for the sake of

122 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

his qualities. And even the huntsman who pursues can-
not resist a certain affection for him. The Ostiak, after
having dealt his death-blow and having stretched him
bleeding on the snow, throws himself upon his knees be-
fore the corpse to implore its forgiveness : " I have killed
you, O my God ! but I was hungry, my family was hun-
gry, and you are so good that you will pardon my crime."
Yet the bear does not impress us as being a deity; but
how honest, frank, and benevolent he seems ! How he
appears to practise all the family virtues! How gentle
he is towards his young, and how gay, frisky, and frolic-
some are they ! We must go to the bear's den, or his
enormous lair comfortably carpeted with moss, to find
those patriarchal customs which have been so greatly
vaunted. It is true that from time to time the huge an-
imal gives a fatal bite to the shepherd's flock ; but is he
not, as a rule, sobriety itself? He contents himself with
browsing on leaves, feeding on whortleberries, devouring
combs of honey; perhaps he may even venture down
into the valley, calmly to eat grapes and pears. A Swiss
naturalist, Tsendi, asserts, upon his honor, that if, on his
way, the honest beast should meet a little girl carrying a
basket of strawberries, he would content himself with
delicately placing his paw upon the basket to ask for his
share. And when he has entered man's employment he
is willing, good-humored, magnanimous, and contempt-
uous of insults ! I cannot refrain from regretting this
good beast, whom we shall soon see no more in our moun-
tains, and whose paws the huntsman proudly nails up
against his barn-door. The race will be suppressed, but
with what superior intelligence might we not have tamed
and admitted him to take part in our labors ?

THE ANIMALS OF THE MOUNTAIN. 1^3

As to the wolf, no one will regret him when he shall
have entirely disappeared from the mountain. He is a
thoroughly malevolent, perfidious, sanguinary, cowardly,
vile fellow. He thinks of nothing but tearing his victim
to pieces, and drinking the warm blood as it flows from
the wound. All animals hate him, and he hates them ;
yet he only ventures to attack the feeble and wounded.
The madness of hunger alone urges him to throw him-
self upon those who are stronger than himself. But then
with what- eagerness does he rush upon a fallen prey, an
enemy who cannot defend himself ! Even when a wolf
falls, still alive, beneath the huntsman's bullet, all his
companions cast themselves upon him to complete the
work and to quarrel over his carcass. Certainly blood-
thirsty Koine has charged her memory with all imagina-
ble crimes; she has razed thousands of towns, destroyed
millions of human beings, gorged herself with the earth's
riches. By violence and perfidy, by infamies without
number, she became the queen of the ancient world ; and
yet, in spite of all her crimes, she has calumniated her-
self by claiming a she-wolf as her mother and patroness.
That people, whose laws under another guise still gov-
ern us, were certainly hard, almost ferocious, but yet not
so bad as the symbol chosen by them would lead us to
believe.

It is a satisfaction for any one who loves the moun-
tain to know that the wolf, that odious creature, is an
animal belonging to wide plains. The destruction of his
native forests and the increasing number of huntsmen
have obliged him to seek refuge in the gorges of the
heights, but he is none the less an intruder ; he is so or-
ganized as to be able to perform, in one stage, journeys

124 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

of fifty miles across the steppes, not to climb the acclivi-
ties of rocks. The animal, the form of whose body and
the elasticity of whose muscles render him best adapted
for springing from rock to rock, for crossing crevasses, is
the graceful chamois, the antelope of our countries. He
is the true inhabitant of the mountain ; no precipice
alarms, no slope of snow stays him ; in a few bounds he
climbs dizzy escarpments where the most eager hunts-
man dare not venture. With one leap he springs on to
points smaller than the space which his four feet, closely
put together, would cover; certainly he is an animal be-
longing to the earth, but any one would believe him to
be winged. Then, too, he is gentle and sociable ; he
\vould love to mingle with our flocks of goats and sheep.
No doubt, a few efforts would suffice to add him to our
small category of domestic animals ; but it is easier to
kill than to rear him, and the few chamois still left are
reserved for the delight of sportsmen. In all probability,
that race will soon disappear. After all, is it not better
to die than to live a slave?

Other animals have chosen their dwelling higher still
than the chamois, upon the slopes and rocks surrounded
on every side by snow. One of them is a species of hare,
which has understood cunningly to change his livery in
such a manner, according to the season, as alwa}7s to be
indistinguishable from the surrounding soil. It is thus
that he escapes the eagle's piercing eye. In winter, when
all the slopes are clad with snow, his fur is as white as
the flakes ; in spring, tufts of plants and pebbles appear
here and there through the snowy bed, simultaneously
the animal's coat becomes dotted with gray spots; in
summer he is the color of stones and burnt-up grass ;

THE GRACEFUL CHAMOIS,

THE ANIMALS OF THE MOUNTAIN. 125

then, with the sudden change of season, lie again as sud-
denly changes his skin. Still better protected, the mar-
mot passes his winter in a deep hole, where the tempera-
ture always remains equable, in spite of the thick layers
of snow covering the ground ; and during whole months
he suspends the course of his life, until the perfume of
flowers and the rays of spring come to awaken him from
his lethargic sleep. At last, one of those ever-active, ever-
wakeful rodents which we encounter everywhere has
undertaken to reach the summit of the mountains by
hollowing out tunnels and galleries beneath the snow — I
mean a field-mouse. Covered with this cold mantle, he
seeks his meagre nourishment in the ground, and, won-
derful to relate, finds it !

Such is the fertility of the earth that it brings forth,
for the incessant battle of life, populations of consumers
and victims who carry on their conflicts in obscurity
more than a thousand yards above the limit of perpetual
snow ! Here again, beneath the beds of the frozen earth,
I find once more that terrible struggle for existence, the
almost invariably hideous spectacle of which had driven
me from the plains.

Frequently the bird of prey soars higher still, but it is
to travel from one mountain slope to another, or to gaze
far away over the extensive country and to discover his
quarry. The butterflies and dragon-flies, carried away
by the delight of flying up towards the sun, sometimes
ascend as far as the loftiest zone of the mountains, and,
without foreseeing the cold of the night, do not cease
gayly to mount towards the light. More frequently still
those poor little creatures, such as flies and other insects,
are carried off to the lofty peaks by hurricanes, and their

7

126 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

remains, mingled with the dust, are strewn over the sur-
face of the snow. But in addition to these strangers
who, either voluntarily or by force, visit the regions of si-
lence and death, there are other indigenous dwellers who
are quite at home there; they do not find the atmos-
phere too cold or the ground too hardly frozen. The
immense dreary tract of snow lies extended around them ;
but the points of the rocks, which here and there pierce
the snowy couch, are for them an oasis in the midst of
the desert : it is there, no doubt, among these lichens, that
they find the nourishment necessary for their subsistence.
It is marvellous how they thrive, and naturalists ascer-
tain the fact with astonishment.

Spiders, insects, or snow-maggots — all these tiny creat-
ures must know hunger ; and perhaps the divers phenom-
ena of their life are effected extremely slowly. In this
region of hoar-frost the chrysalides must remain a long
time buried in their apparent sleep of death.

Not only does life exhibit itself by the side of snow,
but the snow itself appears animate in certain places, so
greatly do these animalcula multiply. Far away we see
great red or yellow spots on the white expanse. It is the
snow rotting, the mountaineers say ; they arise, say the
savants, armed with microscopes, from millions and mill-
ions of crawling creatures, who live, love, propagate, and
eat one another up.

GRADATIONS OF CLIMATE. 127

•CHAPTER XVI.

GRADATIONS OF CLIMATE.

THOSE naturalists who wander about the mountain,
studying the living creatures, plants, or animals inhabit-
ing it, do not confine themselves to studying each species
in its actual form and habits; they also desire to know
the extent of its domain, the general distribution of its
representatives upon the slopes, and the history of its
race. They consider the countless creatures of each spe-
cies— plants, insects, or mammalia — as one immense in-
dividual, whose abodes on the surface of the earth, and
whose duration during the course of ages, we ought thor-
oughly to understand.

In climbing up the side of a mountain, the traveller
first remarks how very few are the plants which accom-
pany him to the summit. Those which he saw at the
bottom, and on the lower levels, he does not meet again
upon the more elevated slopes; or, if a few should still
exist there, they disappear in the vicinity of the snow, to
be replaced by other species. It is one constant change
in the aspect of the flora as we approach the frigid peaks.
But when a plant indigenous to the lower hills contin-
ues to exhibit itself beside the footpath close to the snow,
it appears gradually to change ; down below, the flower
has already faded, while on the heights it is hardly yet

128 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

in bud ; here it has already spent its summer, yonder up
above it is yet in spring.

We could not measure with a cord the exact elevation
at which this plant ceases to grow and that one makes
its first appearance. A thousand conditions of soil and
climate labor incessantly to displace, to widen, or to con-
tract the limits separating the natural domains of the va-
rious species. When the ground changes, rock succeed-
ing soil, or clay replacing sand, a great number of plants
also give way to one another. Contrasts bring about
similar results; as, for instance, whether water washes
away the earth, or there is a deficiency of it in the
parched-up ground ; whether the wind whistles freely in
all its fury, or it encounters obstacles acting as protec-
tion against its violence. At the outlet of those necks
of mountains where the hurricanes blow hardest, certain
slopes are so completely swept by the bitter blast that
trees and shrubs as suddenly cease to grow beneath this
formidable breeze as they would before a wall of ice.
Elsewhere the vegetation varies according to the steep-
ness of the slopes. Nothing but moss grows upon verti-
cal cliffs ; brushwood only can find a footing upon the
dry, steep walls of precipices ; where the incline, al-
though less sharp, is yet inaccessible to man, trees creep
along rocks and anchor their roots in the fissures; on
the other hand, upon the terraces their trunks rise up
erectly, and their foliage spreads out. The nature of the
trees usually varies as greatly as their elevation. Wher-
ever the difference of the slopes is caused by the rocky
strata, being more or less injured by atmospheric agents,
the mountain presents a succession of parallel tiers of
vegetation of the most curious effect. Both stones and
plants change in regular alternations.

" FIR-TREES, \VITH THEIR SOMBRE BRAXCHKS."

GRADATIONS OF CLIMATE. 129

Of all the contrasts of vegetation, the most important,
upon the whole, is that which is caused by the different
degrees of exposure to the sun's rays. How many times
— when penetrating into a very regular valley, overlooked
by uniform slopes, the one turned to the north, the other
exposed to the due south — can we see how this difference
of light and heat modifies vegetation on the two sides
of the mountain ! The contrast is frequently absolute ;
they might be two regions of the eartli some hundreds
of miles apart. On one side are fruit-trees, cultivated
lands, rich meadows ; facing it, nor fields nor gardens,
nothing but woods and pastures. Even the forests
growing on the two opposite slopes consist of totally
different species. Up yonder, beneath the pale light re-
flected by the northern skies, are fir-trees with their som-
bre branches; beneath the life-giving brilliancy of the
south are larches of a tender green, luxuriant as an im-
mense espalier. Man, as have these plants which strive
to expand beneath the sun's rays, has chosen for his
abode the slopes turned towards the south. On yonder
side houses border the roads in one almost continued
line ; snug cottages are scattered, like gray rocks, upon
the upper pastures. On the other cold side rising up
facing it, hardly a single little house is to be seen shel-
tering itself within the bend of a ravine.

Very different are the mountain slopes in aspect, cli-
mate, and vegetation ; yet all possess this phenomenon in
common, that in ascending them we might imagine we
were going towards the poles of the world : if we climb
up a hundred yards, we seem as if we were transported-
fifty miles farther away from the equator. Yonder peak
which we see rising above our heads contains a flora sim-

130 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

ilar to that of Scandinavia. Let us pass that point to rise
still higher, and we enter Lapland ; at another still great-
er altitude we find the vegetation of Spitzbergen. Each
mountain is, in its plants, a sort of recapitulation of all
the country extending from its base to the polar regions,
across continents and oceans. Botanists, in their narra-
tions, often evince the joy, the emotion, they feel when,
after having climbed the naked rocks, crossed the snow,
walked beside yawning chasms, they at last reach a free
spot, a " garden," whose blooming plants remind them
of some beloved distant northern land, their own country
perhaps, situated millions of yards away. The miracle
of the " Thousand and One Nights" is being realized for
them at the cost of some hours' walking ; here they are
transported into another nature, beneath another climate.
Every year some violent but temporary disturbances
are produced in this regular stratification of flowers.
When walking amid the most recent landslips, or upon
the accumulations of earth brought by the torrents from
the top of the mountains, the botanist frequently ob-
serves some confusion in the distribution of the vegeta-
ble tribes ; these are phenomena which affect him, for
the result of studying plants is that he ends by sympa-
thizing with them. This sight, making his heart beat,
is caused by the forcible expatriation of plants and
mosses violently carried away into a climate for which
they were not created. In their fall or descent from the
top of the upper slopes, the rocks brought with them
their flowers, seeds, roots, whole stems. As would the
fragments of a distant planet which might land the in-
habitants of another world upon the earth, these rocks,
descended from the summit, serve as a means of convey-

GRADATIONS OF CLIMATE. 131

ance for colonies of plants. The poor little things, as-
tonished to be breathing another atmosphere, to find
themselves amid other conditions of cold and heat, of
dryness and moisture, of light and shadow, strive to be-
come acclimatized in their new country. Some strangers
succeed in holding their own against the throng of native
plants surrounding them, but the greatest number have
hard work to form themselves into groups, to keep close
together like refugees ; hated by all the world, and lov-
ing one another all the more fondly, they are doomed
soon to perish. Attacked on every side by the ancient
possessors of the soil, they end by relinquishing the place
which the fall of their mother-rock had obliged them to
take by force. The botanist, studying them in their
novel surroundings, sees them perish by degrees; after
some years' sojourn, the colonies are composed of but a
small number of miserable individuals, then even these
remaining creatures are finally extinguished. It is thus
that in our human race strange colonies successively die
in the midst of a people which hates them, and beneath
a climate that is adverse to them.

Despite temporary irregularities, the stratification of
flowers upon the mountains' sides does, after all, pre-
serve the character of a steadfast law.

Whence proceeds this strange distribution of plants on
the globe's surface? Why have the original species of
the most distant countries thus herded in tiny colonies
on the high slopes of mountains ? No doubt the pollen
of some may have been carried by birds, or even by
stormy winds ; but most of these species possess seeds on
which no birds feed, and which are too heavy to have
adhered to their feathers or claws. Among those plants

7*

132 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

from the cold regions which colonize the mountain there
are even entire families growing from bulbs; and cer-
tainly neither wind nor birds could have carried them
across continents and seas.

Thus, then, these plants must have been propagated
from one place to another by gradual encroachment, as
they are in our h'elds and meadows. Small colonists
whom we now see in the high "gardens" surrounded
with snow have slowly ascended from the lower plains ;
while other plants of the same species, moving in a con-
trary direction, bend their steps towards the polar regions
where they are now located. No doubt, then, the cli-
mate of our fields was as cold as is in our days that of
the most elevated summits and of the boreal zone; but
little by little the temperature becomes softer, the plants
which luxuriated in the rude, cold breeze were obliged
to take flight, the one to the north, the other to the
slopes of the mountains. Of these two fugitive bands,
separated by an unceasingly increasing zone, occupied b}7
hostile species, the one, that which retreated towards the
mountains, beheld the space diminishing before it pro-
portionately with the augmenting mildness of the cli-
mate : first it occupied the lower chains of the base, then
the medium points, then the lofty peaks, and now some
have for their last refuge the supreme ridges of the
mountain. When the climate becomes cold again, in
consequence of some cosmical change, the little plants
will recommence their journeys towards the plain ; vic-
torious in their turn, they will drive away before them
the species demanding a milder temperature. Accord-
ing to the alternations of their climates and of their im-
mense cycles, the armies of plants advance or retire along

GRADATIOXS OF CLIMATE. 133

the surface of the globe, leaving behind them bands of
laggards which reveal to us what was formerly the route
of the main body.

The same phenomena exist among human tribes as in
those of plants and animals. During the variations of
the climate, the people of the different races who could
not accommodate themselves to the changing medium
moved slowly northward or southward, driven away by
the cold or excessive heat. Unhappily, history, which
had not then begun to exist, has not been able to relate
to us this wandering to and fro of the different peoples ;
besides which, in his great migrations, man invariably
obeys a variety of passions which he cannot analyze.
How many tribes have thus moved and changed their
dwelling without knowing what was urging them for-
ward ! They then related, in their traditions, how they
had been guided by a star or a pillar of fire— even how
they had followed the flight of an eagle, or planted their
feet in the tracks left by the sabot of a bison.

If history is mute, or at least very reticent, as to the
marches and counter-marches imposed upon the people
by the changes of climate, it suffices, on the other hand,
to see how, upon the opposite sides of most of the moun-
tains, the differences among men respond to those of the
temperature and of the atmosphere. When the contrast
of climate on each side of the mountain is very slight,
either because the direction of the whole range of heights
is from north to south, or because winds of the same ori-
gin, and bringing the same amount of moisture, irrigate
the same slopes, then the men of one and the same race
can spread freely from one part to another ; give them-
selves np to the same culture, the same industries, prac-

134 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN,

tise the same customs. The wall rising up between them,
and which is, perhaps, interrupted with numerous breach-
es, is not a separating rampart. But when, every here
and there, one of the slopes belonging to the mountain,
and the whole series of summits attached to it, are turned
to the north and its cold winds, while the opposite incline
receives an abundance of soft rays from the south ; or,
again, when on one side the vapors of the sea pour down
in torrents, while on the other side the ravines always
remain dry, then, certainly, flora, fauna, and humanity,
on both sides, will present the most remarkable contrasts.
Each step made by the traveller after he has attained the
crest places him in the presence of a new nature ; he
penetrates into another world, where discovery succeeds
discovery. Now he stops before a sweet-smelling plant
which he had never seen ; a strange butterfly flutters be-
fore him ; while he is studying new species, vegetable
or animal, or is seeking to explain to himself all the
features of this hitherto unknown nature, a shepherd
comes towards him : it is a man of different race, of dif-
ferent civilization — his very speech is different.

While separating two zones of climate, the crest of the
mountain thus also separates two nations: it is a con-
stant phenomenon in all countries of the world where
conquest has not ruthlessly mixed or suppressed the
races; and, even in spite of the violence of conquests,
this normal contrast between the populations of the two
sides has been frequently re-established. Take, for in-
stance, the history of Italy. The splendor of this coun-
try fascinated the barbarians of the north and northeast.
How often have the German and French people, attract-
ed by the riches of its territory, by the treasures of its

GRADATIONS OF CLIMATE. 135

towns, the flavor of its fruits, the beauty of its women,
flung themselves in armed bands upon the plains sur-
rounded by the stupendous barrier of the Alps! In
vain have they massacred, burned, destroyed; in vain
installed themselves in the places of the vanquished ;
built towns and constructed citadels for themselves ; the
native population has always resumed its power, and the
strangers, Celts or Teutons, have been obliged to recross
the Alps.

The mountains,- too, relatively insignificant protuber-
ances on the surface of the globe, simple obstacles which
man can ordinarily cross in one day, acquire great his-
torical importance as the natural frontiers between the
different nations. They owe this role in the life of man-
kind less to the want of roads, to the steepness of their
escarpments, to their zone of snow and sterile rocks,
than to the diversity, and frequently to the hostility, of
the populations seated at the two opposite bases. The
history of the past teaches us that every natural boun-
dary placed between two peoples, in the form of an ob-
stacle difficult to surmount — be it plateau, mountain, des-
ert, or river — was at the same time a moral frontier for
mankind ; just as, in fairy tales, people fortified them-
selves with an invisible wall, erected by hatred and con-
tempt. Any man coming from beyond the mountains
was not merely a stranger, he was an enemy. The na-
tions hated one another ; but sometimes a shepherd, su-
perior to all his race, would sweetly sing some simple
words of love while gazing far away beyond the moun-
tains. He, at least, knew how to surmount the lofty
barrier of rocks and snow; by means of his heart he
knew how to make a home for himself on both sides of

136 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

the mountain. One of our old Pyrenean songs relates
this triumph of love over nature, and over the traditions
of national hatred :

" Baicha-bous, montagnes! Pianos, haoussa-bous ;
Daqne pousqui bede oun soun mas amons!1'

" Baissez-von«, montagnes! plaines. liaussez-vous;
Et que je puis.se voir oil sent mes amours!"

THE FREE MOUNTAINEER. 137

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FREE MOUNTAINEER.

THE crumpling-np of the terrestrial surface into moun-
tains and valleys is thus a leading feature in the history
of nations, and often it explains their journeys, their mi-
grations, their conflicts, their various destinies ; it is thus
that a molehill, rising up in a meadow, in the midst of
eager populations of insects hurrying to and fro, imme-
diately changes all their plans, and causes the route of
the travelling tribes to diverge in various directions.

While its enormous mass separates the nations beset-
ting the slopes on every side, the mountain also protects
the inhabitants, usually very few in number, who have
come to seek refuge in its valleys. It shelters them, it
makes them its own, imposes special customs upon them,
a certain style of life, a peculiar character. Whatsoever
may have been his original race, the mountaineer has be-
come such as he is beneath the influence of his surround-
ings ; the fatigue of the ascents and toilsome descents,
the simplicity of his food, the rigor of the winter's cold,
the struggles with hardships, have made an exceptional
man of him — have imparted to him carriage, gait, and
movements very different from those of his neighbors in
the plains. Besides this, they have endowed him with a
mode of thinking and feeling which distinguishes him;

138 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

they have, reflected in his mind, as in that of the sailor,
something of the serenity of great horizons; in many
places, also, they have guaranteed him the inappreciable
treasure of liberty.

One of the great causes contributing to maintain the
independence of certain mountain tribes is that, for them,
mutual assistance in work and combined efforts are a ne-
cessity. All are useful to each, and each is useful to all ;
the shepherd, who goes to the elevated pastures to watch
flocks belonging to the community, is not least neces-
sary to the general prosperity. "When any disaster takes
place, all are obliged to give their help to repair the evil :
an avalanche has buried some cabins, all work at remov-
ing the snow ; the rain has made ravines in the fields cul-
tivated in terraces on the slopes, all busy themselves to
restore the earth that has slipped down into the bottoms,
and bring it back in basketfuls to the declivities whence
it fell down ; the overflowing torrent has covered the
meadows with pebbles, all are employed in freeing the
grass from the debris which smothers it. In winter,
when it is dangerous to venture into the snow, they count
upon each other's hospitality ; they are all brothers ;
they are members of one family. Just the same when
they are attacked ; they resist with one accord ; are stir-
red, so to say, by one single idea. Moreover, the life of
incessant struggles, of unbroken combats with dangers
of every kind — perhaps, too, the pure, healthy air which
they "breathe — makes hardy, death - despising men of
them. Peaceable toilers, they never attack, yet they
know how to defend themselves.

The protecting mountain provides them with the
means to shield themselves against invasion. It defends

THE FREE MOUNTAINEER. 139

the valley by narrow defiles, where a few men would
suffice to guard the entrance against whole bands; it
conceals its fertile vales in the hollows of lofty terraces,
whose escarpments appear to be insurmountable ; in cer-
tain places it is perforated with caverns communicating
with each other, and capable of serving as hiding-places.

Upon the wall of a defile which I frequently visited
stood one of these hidden fortresses. It was with the
greatest difficulty that I could reach the entrance, by
clinging to the fissures of the rock, and by calling to my
aid several stems of boxwood, which had inserted their
roots in the clefts. How much more difficult would the
escalade have been for besiegers ! Blocks of rock piled
up before the entrance to the cave were ready to roll
and rebound from point to point down to the very tor-
rent. On each side of the entrance the rock, absolutely
upright and polished, did not leave room for an adder to
slip through ; above, the cliff overhung, and like a gigan-
tic porch protected the aperture. In addition to this, a
great wall half shut it in. Thus, then, unless taken by
surprise, the grotto was unapproachable for all assailants.
The enemy would be obliged to limit themselves to keep-
ing watch from afar ; but when at last, hearing not the
slightest sound come forth, they finally ventured in to
count the bodies, they would find the subterranean gal-
leries perfectly empty. The occupants had glided from
cavern to cavern, until they reached another still more
secret place of egress amid the brushwood. The chase
had to commence afresh. Sometimes, alas ! it terminated
in the capture of the game. Man is the prey of man.

In certain localities, where the mountain does not offer
propitious cavities, an isolated rock in the valley, one

140 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN,

with upright facets, would serve as a fortress. Cut per-
pendicularly on the three sides whose base is surrounded
by the torrent, it was inaccessible excepting from one
quarter ; arid on that side the little troop of mountaineers
who desired to make it both their watch-tower and their
hiding-place, in case of retreat, had but to continue the
work begun by nature. They cut away the rock, render-
ed it impassable for human footsteps, and left but one sin-
gle subterranean entrance hewn out of the thickness of
the rock with a crow-bar. Once they had entered their
eyry, the inhabitants of the fortress blocked up the en-
trance by means of huge pieces of rock ; a bird only was
thus able to pay them a visit. Architecture was not at
all needed for this citadel. Perhaps, however, from a
species of coquetry, the mountaineer would border the
edge of the precipice with a crenellated wall, which per-
mitted his children safely to play upon the whole extent
of the plateau, and from whose top he could more easily
spy out everything showing itself on any portion of the
mountain's slopes. In many mountainous countries of
the East, where the valleys are peopled with races hostile
to one another, and where, consequently, the murder of
a man is esteemed a mere peccadillo, numbers of these
rocky fortresses are still inhabited. When a guest ar-
rives at the foot of the escarpment, he announces his
presence by shouting. Thereupon a basket descends
through an open trap in the rock, the traveller gets into
it, and the stalwart arms of his friends above slowly hoist
up the heavy conveyance as it gyrates in the air.

If the abrupt rocks of the high valleys served to de-
fend peaceable populations against all incursions, the
little protuberances of the plain, on the other hand,

TIJ1-: 1--REE MUL'XTAL\EER. 141

acted as watch and pillage stations for some predatory
baron.

How many villages, even in our country, show by their
architecture that until quite recently war was permanent,
and that at every moment it was necessary to expect an
attack from lords or brigands ! There are no isolated
houses on the hill-sides void of means of defence ; all the
hovels, like sheep frightened by the storm, have been
huddled together, resembling one vast heap of stones.
From below it looks like a mere continuation of the rock,
an indentation of the summit, now shining in the light,
now black in the shadow; it is approached by dizzy
steps, which each morning the peasants must descend to
cultivate their fields, which they must wearily ascend
each evening after the day's long toil. One entrance
alone gives access to the hamlet, and upon the side tow-
ers can still be seen the traces of portcullises and other
means of defence ; not one window looks out over the
expanse of the surrounding valleys; the only openings
are loop-holes, through which formerly passed javelins
and the muzzles of guns. Even nowadays the descend-
ants of these unhappy people, besieged generation after
generation, are afraid to build their dwellings in the mid-
dle of their fields. They could have done so, but cus-
tom, of all tyrants that which receives most obedience,
still pens them up in the ancient prison.

The higher valleys of the mountain were free to the
mountaineers ; but outside the narrow passages, wherein
no aggressor had ever ventured with impunity, an almost
isolated cliff bore the strong castle of a baron. From up
yonder, the brigand, ennobled by his own crimes and by
those of his ancestors, could command the surrounding

142 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

plains as well as the ravines and defiles of the mountain.
Like a serpent coiled up on a rock, and raising its restless
head to watch a nestful of tiny birds, the bandit watches
from the height of his keep ; he dare not attack the
mountaineers in their valley, but at least he promises
himself to surprise and subdue those who venture into
the plain.

The castle belonging to the noble destroyer of all way-
farers now lies in ruins. A stony footpath obstructed
by briers has replaced the road along which the warriors
made their glad horses caracole when setting out upon
an expedition, up which toiled the captive merchants in
chains, and their mules heavily laden with booty. At
the spot where the drawbridge stood, the moat has been
filled up with stones, and since then the wind and the
feet of the passers-by have brought to it a little vegetable
soil into which elder-trees have forced their roots. The
walls have, to a great extent, given way ; enormous frag-
ments as big as rocks lie scattered on the ground ; else-
where stony rubbish fallen into the moat fill it half-way
up ; its sides are thickly covered with chickweed. The
great court wherein formerly armed men assembled be-
fore all pillaging expeditions is encumbered with rub-
bish, intersected with quagmires. We hardly dare at-
tempt to make our way through the thicket of shrubs
and tall grass ; we are afraid of stepping upon some vi-
per hidden between two stones, or of falling into the
opening of some still yawning oubliette • let us, how-
ever, proceed, carefully picking our way. We arrive at
the edge of a well which, fortunately, is encircled with
the remains of coping-stones. Timidly we bend over the
black jaws of the chasm, and strive to sound the depth

THE FREE MOUNTAINEER. 143

through the hart's-tongue and bracken grown over it.
We fancy that we can discern at the bottom the feeble
reflection of a ray of light which has strayed into the
abyss ; we fancy -that we hear ascending to us a sound
as of a suppressed murmur. • Is it a wandering current
of air eddying in the well ? Is it a spring whose water
oozes through the stones and trickles down drop by
drop? Is it a salamander crawling about in the water,
causing it to hiss — who knows? Formerly, says tradi-
tion, the confused noises issuing from these depths were
the despairing cries and sobs of victims. The water of
the well rests upon a bed of bones.

With an effort I turn my eyes from the chasm which
fascinates me, and bring them back to the square mass
of the keep, shining in broad daylight. The other tow-
ers have fallen in, this alone remains standing ; it has
even retained some of the battlements of its coping.
The walls, grown yellow beneath the sun, are still pol-
ished as on the morrow of the day when the lord held
his first feast in the great hall; hardly a crack or a
scratch is to be seen ; only the wood and iron work of
the narrow windows set in embrasures have disappeared.
In the thick walls, five yards above the ground, is an ap-
erture which was the en trance -door; a large stone jut-
ting out forms the threshold, and the top of the pointed
arch is ornamented with rude carving bearing a curious
monogram and relics of the ancient baronial device.
The movable staircase which used to be attached to the
threshold no longer exists, and the zealous archaeologist
who seeks to read, or rather to divine, the few proud
words carved in the stone is obliged to have recourse to
a ladder. In order to obtain access to the interior of the

144 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

tower, the peasants have made use of more violent meas-
ures— they have cut a hole in the wall on a level with
the ground. This, no doubt, was rough treatment ; but
perhaps they were animated by their thirst for vengeance
upon this keep, wherein numbers of their people had died
from starvation or torture ; perhaps, also, they imagined
that they should find some hidden treasure within it.

I pass through this breach with some sense of appre-
hension ; the air inside, to mingle with which no ray of
sun ever comes, freezes me before I have fairly entered.
Yet light descends to the bottom of the tower ; the roof
has fallen in, the floors have been burned in some bygone
fire, and here and there are to be seen, half fastened into
the walls, the remains of blackened rafters. All this
wreck of stones, wood, and cinders has become mixed up
together by degrees into a sort of paste which the waters
from the sky, descending as if into the bottom of a well,
constantly keep damp. Sticky mud covers this soft
ground, whereon slips my foot as I venture to put it
down with a feeling of repugnance. I seem to be im-
prisoned in this horrible dungeon ; my only feeling is
one of disgust as I breathe this stale, mephitic air. And
}7et it is pure in comparison with that odor of decay and
bones issuing from the jagged mouth of the under-
ground dungeons. I bend over the black hole and seek
to discern something ; but I can see nothing. I should,
indeed, have to possess sight sharpened by long obscurity
to distinguish the reflections, lost in this obscurity. Sin-
ister hole ! I am ignorant of the murders in which it
had been an accomplice, but I shudder with fear when I
see it ; and, as if to seek strength, I look up towards the
blue sky enframed by the four great walls of the tower.

THE FREE MOUNTAINEER. 145

A disturbed screech-owl whirls about up above, uttering
its shrill cry.

A staircase formed in the thickness of the wall enables
yne to climb up to the battlements. Several steps are
worn away, and the staircase is thus converted into an
inclined plane, most difficult to ascend ; but by support-
ing myself by the walls, clinging to the projections, slip-
ping into the dust only to raise myself up again, I end
in reaching the coping of the tower. The stone is broad
and I run no risk, yet I hardly dare move a couple of
steps lest I should be overcome by dizziness, I am
perched up so high, in the regions of birds and clouds,
between two abysses.

On one side is the black gulf of the tower, on the other
the luminous depth of the rocks and slopes lighted by
the sun. The crag bearing the keep looks like another
tower, several hundred yards high, and the river winding
at its feet produces the effect of a mere moat of defence.
Tradition tells how one of the ancient lords of the dis-
trict sometimes amused himself by making his prisoners
jump down from the terrace of the keep. He reserved
for his most detested enemies a lingering death in the
hole of the oubliettes; but the captives against whom he
had no cause for hatred were called upon to show, when
casting themselves from the tower, with what courage
and good grace they could die. Of an evening these
deeds would be talked over round the smoking-board ;
the contortions of those who recoiled in horror from the
abyss would be laughed at, those applauded who with
one bound had flung themselves into space. The noble
lord died in a convent in the neighborhood in the " odor
of sanctity."

146 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

The lowly little houses, with their roofs of slate or
thatch constituting the ancient feudatory village, were
irregularly clustered at the foot of the crag. What
changes have been accomplished, not only in the institu-
tions and customs, but also in the human mind, since the
Ion} thus kept all his subjects under his eyes and feet —
since the heir to his name grew up — saying to himself, of
those badly clothed beings whom he saw moving about
below, " If I wish it, all these men are food for my
sword !" How, then, would it have been possible for
even the gentlest, most gifted son of these nobles not to
feel his bosom swell with fierce pride at the contempla-
tion of all this expanse of country subject to him, of this
grovelling village, these abject clods herding on the
dung-heap? He might have been ready in his infancy
to believe that all men have an equal right to happiness;
he might have deemed himself to be born of the same
clay, when one single glance over the country, from the
top of the lordly terrace of his keep, would have sufficed
to undeceive him. To believe in equality — not in joy,
but in despair or remorse — it was necessary for him to
leave his castle, to fly to the gloomy convent in some
narrow valley, and to beat his brow upon the floor of
some church. I

In our days the descendant of these ancient cavaliers
no longer requires to act as the jailer of a village, nor to
watch the inhabitants with a jealous eye, unless, at least,
he has become the proprietor of some works, while the
villagers people his factory. The villa which he has
built upon the slope of some hill-side is, so to say, kept
out of sight. The nearest group of houses is marked by
a curtain of big trees ; and if the remote villages do peep

"AT THE CONTEMPLATION OF ALL THIS EXPANSE

THE FREE MOUNTAINEER, 147

out here and there, they are but simple motives in the
landscape, features in the grand picture. The lord of
the castle is no longer the master; of what use, then,
would it be for him to give to his house a commanding
position? — solitude, in which he could enjoy nature in
peace, were "better for him.

Thus, since the Middle Ages, village and castle have
ceased to Constitute a world of their own ; voluntarily or
compulsorily, they have entered into a larger one — into a
society in which there is more room for conflicts, in
which progress brings about a result grander in a very
different way. The little kingdom of which the lord
was absolute master is in these days but a simple dis-
trict, and the descendant of the ancient barons has now
no work for his ancestor's rusty sword to do. Perhaps
he may still try to retain some of those apparent or real
privileges of his father's power which are left to him ;
perhaps, while resigning himself to his role of subject or
citizen, he simply loses himself in the crowd. In all
cases, it is other kings and nations who have benefited
by his ancestor's fights and conquests. While they, dur-
ing long years of warfare against the mountaineers, had
succeeded in forcing the latter into their retreats, oblig-
ing them to remove the frontier of their domains to the
snowy crests, in their turn they have had to receive the
visit of some invader, and the limit which they had set
to their possessions became lost in the vast circumfer-
ence of a powerful empire.

A curious name which is to be met with in many parts
of the mountains caused me to dream of things of the
past. In a ravine, merely a slight dip in the ground, a
spring, which would hardly be visible did not a ray of

148 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

the sun reveal its existence, gleams from afar like a little
sparkling diamond. I draw near, the leaves of the water-
cress alternately bend and rise np again beneath the sil-
very drops passing over them ; birds flutter round me,
and the plant, bathing its roots in the hidden water,
darts its green stems and flowers out far above the with-
ered turf of the pastures. This little patch of verdure,
which the shepherds see from afar upon the gray burnt-
up-looking face of the mountain slopes, is the " Fountain
of the Three Lords."

Why this strange title ? How could so trivial a spring
have thus assumed the name of three potentates ? The
legend of the mountains tells us that at a very ancient
period, in the times when strong castles surrounded with
moats rose up on all the crags of the defiles, three
counts, who chanced not to be at war, went out hunting
in the vicinity of the little fountain. They were weary
with their long chase in pursuit of wild boars and stags,
and the sweat ran down their brows. Their crowd of
servitors pressed round them, vying with one another in
offering them wine and metheglin ; but the tiny thread
of water trickling through the fissure of the rock seemed
a more agreeable beverage than any of the liquors poured
into silver goblets. One after another they bent over the
little basin of the spring, pushed aside with their hands
the weeds floating on the surface of the water, and drank
as if simple shepherds or fawns from the mountains.
Then they looked at one another, held out the hand of
friendship, and, lying down on the grass, began to chat
merrily. The weather was fine ; the sun had already de-
scended low on the horizon ; some scattered clouds cast
long shadows upon the ripening cornfields in the plains ;

THE FREE MOUNTAINEER. 149

here and there delicate smoke curled up from the vil-
lages. The three companions felt in a good humor. Un-
til then their vast domains in the mountain had had no
precise limits; they decided that henceforth the spring
whose icy thread of water had allayed their thirst should
be the point of separation for the three counties. The
one was to follow the right, the other the left bank of
the streamlet ; the third should occupy the whole of the
brow of the hill extending from the source to the neigh-
boring summit, and from there to the opposite side. In
testimony of the treaty just concluded, the three lords
filled their hands with several little drops from the foun-
tain, and each sprinkled them over the turf of his do-
main.

But, alas ! those beautiful days are not to last, and the
noble counts are not always smiling or good friends.
The three comrades quarrelled ; war broke out. Vassals,
burghers, and peasants cut each other's throats in the for-
ests and ravines, with a view to removing the boundaries
of the three counties. The plain was devastated, and
for several generations torrents of blood flowed for the
sake of the possession of that drop of water trickling up
above upon the peaceful heights. At last peace is made ;
and if war commence again, it will not now be among
the three barons, nor for the conquest of a simple foun-
tain, but between puissant sovereigns, and for the posses-
sion of immense territories, containing mountains, for-
ests, rivers, and populous towns. They are no longer
badly armed bands massacring one another; they are
hundreds of thousands of men provided with the most
scientific means of destruction, who fling themselves
upon and kill each other. There is no doubt that hu-

150 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

inanity does progress, but at the sight of these terrible
conflicts one is sometimes led to doubt it.

How happy, then, it would appear, must be those
retired populations in the loftily situated valleys who
have never to suffer warfare, or who, at least, in spite of
the flux and reflux of armies on the march, have ended
in preserving their pristine independence ! Many races
of mountaineers, protected by their enormous groups of
mountains joined together, have experienced this good-
fortune of remaining free. They know that it is not
merely to the heroism of their hearts, to the strength of
their arms, to the unity of their purpose, that they owe
the bliss never to have been subdued by powerful neigh-
bors. It is also to their great Alps that they must re-
turn thanks ; these are the steadfast columns which have
defended the entrance to their temple.

CRETINS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CKETINS.

BY the side of these strong, valiant men, with their
stout chests, their piercing glance, who climb the rocks
with steady steps, hideous masses of living flesh drag
themselves along; they are cretins, with drooping goitres.
Yet among these masses are many who cannot even do
so much; there they sit upon filthy chairs, swinging
their bodies and heads from side to side, allowing the
saliva to run down their dirty rags. These creatures
cannot walk ; there are some who have not even been
able to acquire the art of carrying their food to their
mouths : they are fed with pap until they are surfeited,
and when they feel the soft nourishment slip down into
their stomachs they utter a little grunt of satisfaction.
Such are the last representatives of that humankind
" whose countenances were created to look upon the
stars." "What a wide distance lies between Apollo of
Pythion's ideal head and that of the poor cretin, with
his sightless eyes and his distorted grimaces ! Much
more beautiful is the reptile's head, for it resembles its
own type, and we do not expect to see it different, while
the face of the idiot is a hideously degenerate form ; we
see from afar what seems to us to be a man, and the in-
telligence of the beast is not even displayed upon those
discordant features !

152 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

As a climax of horror, the rudimentary sentiments
revealed in this unhappy creature are not always good.
Some cretins are malevolent. These grind their teeth,
utter fierce roars, make angry gesticulations with their
clumsy arms ; they stamp upon the ground, and, if they
were left alone, would devour the flesh and drink the
blood of those who tend them so devotedly. What mat-
ters this rage to the simple and good mountaineers ? In
spite of it, they have given to the poor idiots the names
of "cretins," "crestias," or "innocents," in the belief
that these creatures, incapable of reasoning about their
actions and of arriving at the comprehension of evil, en-
joy the privilege of bearing no sin upon their conscience.
Christians from their cradle, they could not fail to go
straight to heaven. It is thus that in Mussulman coun-
tries the crowd prostrates itself before madmen and
monomaniacs, and glories in being touched by their
spittle or excrements. Since, in their human form, they
live without the pale of humanity, there can be no doubt
that they constitute a divine dream !

Yet among these unfortunates there are some who are
really good, who love to do their best in their narrow
circle. One day I had gone down into the valley to as-
cend by the other side to a plateau of pastures, in the
midst of which I had seen from afar the waters of a
small lake. Without stopping, I had passed a little damp
hut, surrounded by some alders, and leisurely pursued a
path faintly marked by animals' feet, at the side of a
rapid stream. I had already gone more than a stone's-
throw beyond the hut when I heard behind me a heavy,
hurried step; at the same time, stertorous, almost rattling,
breathing proceeded from the creature pursuing and

CRETINS. 153

gaining upon me. I turned round and saw a poor cretin,
whose goitre, shaken by the chase, swayed heavily from
shoulder to shoulder. I had great difficulty in restrain-
ing an ejaculation of horror, on seeing this human mass
advancing towards me, throwing herself alternately first
on one leg and then on the other. The monster made
a sign to me to wait, then stopped before me, look-
ing fixedly at me with vacant eyes, and puffing her rat-
tling breath into my face. With a warning gesture, she
pointed to the defile into which I was about to enter,
then joined her hands to show me that sharp rocks barred
the passage. " There, there !" she uttered, indicating a
more distinctly marked-out footpath, rising as it winds
up the incline and reaches a plateau by which it goes
round the impassable defile in the bottom. When she
saw me follow her good advice and begin to climb the
slope, she uttered two or three grunts of satisfaction, fol-
lowed me with her eyes for some time, then retired quiet-
ly, happy to have performed a good action. I confess I
felt that I was humiliated rather than she. A creature
afflicted by nature, horrible, a kind of thing without form
and without name, had not rested until she had saved me
from a wrong step ; and I, a proud man — I, who knew
myself to be endowed by nature with a certain amount
of reason, and who had reached the sense of moral re-
sponsibility— how many times had I not, without saying
a word, allowed other men, and even those whom I called
my friends, to enter upon much more formidable paths
than a defile in the mountains ! The idiot, the goitrous
woman, had -taught me my duty. Thus, even in what
appeared to me to be lower than humanity, I found that
benevolence so often lacking in those who think them-

8*

154 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN,

selves great and strong. No creature is too low to fall
beneath love, and even respect. Who, then, is right —
the ancient Spartan, who threw all malformed children
into a chasm, or the mother who, while weeping, suckles
and caresses her idiot, deformed son ? Certainly we can-
not say that the mothers are wrong who struggle against
all hope to rescue their children from death ; but society
must come to the assistance of these unfortunates, with
science and affection to cure those who are curable, to
gi\% all happiness possible to those whose condition is
hopeless, and to do its utmost, that hygienic practice and
the comprehension of physiological laws may more and
more reduce the number of similar births.

A regular course of education can refine these dull
natures ; and when a mother's affection is followed up by
the solicitude of a companion who succeeds in teaching
the poor innocent to accomplish some rude task, he by
degrees becomes developed, and ends by showing some-
thing like a gleam of intelligence upon his face. Among
the innumerable pictures graven in my memory while
crossing the mountain, I discover one which still, after
long years, touches and moves me. It was evening, tow-
ards one of the latter days in summer. The meadows in
the valley were mown a second time, and here and there
I perceived little haycocks whose sweet scent was wafted
to me by the breeze. I was walking along a winding
path, enjoying the freshness of the evening, the perfume
of the plants, the beauty of the peaks lighted up by the
declining sun. Suddenly, at a turn in the road, I found
myself in the presence of a singular group. A goitred
cretin was harnessed by cords to a species of cart filled
with hay. Without any difficulty he drew the heavy ve-

" WITH HIM THE LAD FORMED A YOKK.

CRETIXS. 155

hicle, seeing neither bogs nor the great scattered blocks,
and pulling as if with blind force. But by his side was
his little brother, a pretty, active child with an intelligent
smiling face; it was he who saw and thought for the
monster. By a sign, a touch, he made his brother incline
to the right or the left to avoid obstacles, hastening or
slackening his speed ; with him the lad formed a yoke,
of which he was the mind and the other the body. As
they passed, the boy greeted me with a pleasant gesture,
and pushing Caliban with his elbow, made him remove
his cap and turn his soulless eyes towards me. Yet I
seemed to see something in them like a gleam of a human
sentiment of respect and friendship ; and I, with a feel-
ing of reverence, greeted this touching group, this sym-
bol of humankind.

Left to himself, and rejoicing merely in the instinctive
lights of an animal, the cretin can sometimes accomplish
things which would be above the power of an intelligent
man filled with the consciousness of his own importance.
Frequently my companion the shepherd had related to
me the story of a fall he had met with down a crevasse in
the glacier ; and when he spoke of it, horror would still
be depicted upon his face. He was sitting upon the talus,
close to the edge of a glacier, when a stone, in falling,
caused him to lose his balance, and, without being able
to stop himself, he slipped into a yawning chasm open-
ing out between the rock and the compact mass of the
ice ; suddenly he found himself as if at the bottom of a
well, hardly able to perceive one ray of light from the
skies. He was stunned, contused, but none of his limbs
were broken. Impelled by the instinct of self-preserva-
tion, he managed to cling to the walls of the rock and to

156 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

climb up from projection to projection, until within a
few yards of the aperture ; there he beheld the sun once
more, the pastures, the sheep, and his dog, who was watch-
ing him with fervent eyes. But, having reached this
ledge, the shepherd could climb no farther ; above, the
rock was smooth on every side, leaving nothing for his
hand to grip. The animal was as desperate as his mas-
ter ; he flung himself from side to side, upon the edge of
the precipice ; he gave vent to several short barks, then
suddenly sped off like a dart in the direction of the val-
ley. The shepherd had nothing more to fear. He knew
that the good dog was gone in search of help, and that
he would soon return accompanied by shepherds with
ropes. Nevertheless, during the period of suspense he
passed through horrible agonies of despair ; he felt as if
the faithful brute would never return ; he saw himself
dying of hunger upon his rock, and asked himself with
horror if the eagles would not come to tear morsels of
flesh from his limbs before he was quite dead. And yet
he recollected perfectly how, in a similar case, an " inno-
cent " had behaved. Having fallen to the bottom of a
crevasse, whence it was impossible for him to ascend, the
cretin had not exhausted himself with useless efforts;
he waited patiently, beating his feet upon the ground so
as to keep up animal warmth, and thus waited patiently
through a whole evening, a whole night, then through
half of the following day. At last having heard his
name shouted by those in search of him, he responded,
and soon after was drawn up out of the gulf. His only
complaint was that he had been very cold.

But whatever, alas ! may be the privileges and immu-
nities of the cretin, even although the unfortunate creat-

CRETINS. 157

ure has no need to fear the cares and deceptions of the
man who carves out his own path in life, it is not the less
necessary to strive to wrest the cretin out of his " inno-
cence " and his disgusting maladies, in order to give him,
at the same time as physical strength, a sense of his own
moral responsibility. He must be made to enter into the
companionship of free men ; and to cure and elevate him
it is necessary first to know what have been the causes
of his degeneracy. Learned men, bending over their re-
torts and books, offer opposite opinions ; some say that
the deformity of the goitre proceeds principally from the
want of iodine in the drinking-water, and that by inter-
breeding moral deformity ends in being added to that of
the body; the others rather believe that goitre and cre-
tinism are produced by the water, which, descended from
the snow, has not had time to be sufficiently stirred and
aerated before it reaches the village, or else by* having
passed over rocks containing magnesia. It is certain that
bad water can frequently contribute to germinating and
developing disease; but is that all?

It is enough to enter one of those cabins in which the
idiots are born and vegetate to see that there exist other
causes for their lamentable position. The habitation is
gloomy and smoky ; the chests, the table, the rafters, are
worm-eaten ; in corners into which our eyes cannot thor-
oughly penetrate we perceive indistinct forms covered
with filth and spiders' webs. The earth which does duty
for a floor is left constantly damp, and as if viscous from
all the rubbish and impure water covering it. The air
breathed in that confined space is foul and fetid. Some-
times the odors of smoke, rancid lard, mouldy bread,
worm-eaten wood, dirty linen, human emanations, can all

158 THE HISTORY OF A MOU.VTALV.

be simultaneously perceived. At night every aperture
is closed to prevent the cold from without penetrating
into the chamber ; grandparents, father, mother, children,
all sleep in a sort of shelved cupboard, whose curtains are
closed by day, where during the night's slumber a dense
air accumulates, far more impure even than that in the
rest of the cabin. Nor is this all ; during the cold of the
winter, the family, in order to keep themselves warmer,
migrate from the ground-floor and descend into the cellar,
which at the same time serves for a stable. On one side
are the animals, lying on dirty straw ; on the other the
men and women, sleeping beneath their grimy sheets. A
gutter separates the two groups of vertebrate mammals,
but the air breathed is common to all. Nor, again, can
this air, penetrating through narrow chinks, be renewed
for many weeks, on account of the snow covering the
ground* it is necessary to dig out a sort of chimney
through which nothing but a wan ray of light descends.
In these cellars day itself resembles a polar night.

Is it astonishing that in such dwellings, scrofulous,
rickety, deformed children ^should be born? From the
first week numberless newly born babes are shaken by
terrible convulsions, to which the greatest portion suc-
cumb ; in certain countries mothers are so used to the
death of their children that they hardly consider them to
be alive until the formidable passage of the " five days'
malady " has been gone through. And how many of
those who do escape live anything but a life of sickness
and insanity ? Excellent as the surrounding air of the
free mountain and the outdoor work are for developing
a sound man's strength and agility, so, in proportion, do
the confined space and humid gloom of the cabin con-

CRETINS. 159

tribute to render worse the condition of the cretin and
the goitrous victim. By the side of the one brother who
becomes the handsomest and strongest among the young
people, another brother drags himself along, a sort of
fearful, living, fleshy excrescence !

In many localities, people have already begun to build
asylums for these unfortunates. Nothing is wanting in
those modern abodes. Pure air circulates freely through
them, the sun lights up every room, the water is pure
and wholesome, all the furniture, and especially the beds,
are exquisitely clean, the "innocents" have attendants
who look after them as would nurses, and professors who
strive to cause a ray of intellectual light to enter into
their impenetrable brains. Frequently they succeed, and
the cretin may gradually awaken to a superior life. But
it is not of so much importance to labor at repairing an
evil which has already occurred as it is to guard against
it. These infected hovels, so picturesque sometimes in
the landscape, must disappear to make room for commo-
dious, healthy houses ; air and light must enter freely
into every habitation of man ; sound bodily health as
well as perfect moral dignity must be observed every-
where. At this price the mountaineers will in a few
generations purchase complete immunity from all those
maladies which now degrade so great a number among
them. Then the inhabitants will be worthy of the coun-
try surrounding them; they will be able with satisfac-
tion to contemplate the lofty snow-clad summits, and to
say, with the ancient Greeks, " These are our ancestors,
and we resemble them."

160 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER XIX.

MOUNT A IN -WORSHIP.

THE worship' of nature still exists in the world to an
almost incredible extent. How often has a peasant, un-
covering his head, pointed to the sun, and solemnly said
to me, " There is our god !" And even I — shall I confess
it? — have many a time been impelled by real feeling, at
sight of lofty eminences, enthroned above valleys and
plains, to call them divine.

One day I was laboriously making my way up a nar-
row pass, very steep, and obstructed by rolling stones.
The wind poured down the pass, and beat upon me, with
blinding dashes of rain and sleet ; a gray veil of mist hid
the rocks from my sight, but here and there, in the ob-
scurity, I caught glimpses of black and threatening mass-
es, which seemed by turn to retire and to approach me,
according as the fog was more or less dense. I was be-
numbed, depressed, miserable. All at once a gleam of
light, reflected by the countless particles of water in the
air, caused me to look upwards. Above my head the
cloud of water and snow had parted ; the blue sky was
beaming upon me, and high up in this clear azure ap-
peared the serene brow of a mountain : its snowy cover-
ing, embroidered by sharp points of rock, as if with fine
arabesques, shone with the brilliancy of silver, and the

MO UN TA IN- WORSHIP. 161

sun edged it with a line of gold. The outlines of the
mountain were true and precise, like those of a statue
standing resplendent in a background of darkness ; but
the superb pyramid seemed to be absolutely detached
from earth : tranquil, strong, unchangeable in its repose,
it appeared to hang suspended in the sky, and to belong
to another world than this heavy planet, all wrapped in
clouds and fogs. In this apparition I thought I saw
something more than the valley of happiness — more,
even, than Olympus, the abode of the gods. But a
vicious cloud came suddenly, and closed the opening
through which I had beheld the mountain : I found my-
self once more in the wind, the mist and rain, but I con-
soled myself with the thought, " a divine revelation has
appeared to me."

In the earliest historic times, all people had this feel-
ing in regard to mountains : they saw in them divinities,
or, at least, the throne of superior beings, alternately visi-
ble and hidden under a passing veil of clouds. It was
to these mountains they ascribed, generally, the origin of
their race ; in them they fixed the seat of their tradi-
tions or legends ; to them they looked as the scene where
their ambitions and their dreams would be realized in
the future ; and it was always from them their saviour,
the angel of glory or liberty, was expected to come down.
So important a part have lofty mountain-peaks always
borne in the life of nations that one might almost tell
the history of humanity by that of mountain-worship ;
they are like great milestones set here and there on the
march of advancing races.

It was in the valleys between the great mountains of'
Central Asia, accordihg to learned scholars, that those of

162 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

our ancestors to whom we owe our European languages
established themselves in civilized tribes, the first that
were ever known ; and at the southern base of the high-
est mountain range in the world live the Hindoos, that
Aryan race whose ancient civilization comes down to
them as a sort of ennobling birthright. Their ancient
songs tell us with what pious fervor they celebrated
their " eighty-four thousand mountains of gold," which
rear themselves heavenward in the light beyond the
plains and forests. To the inhabitants of that region
the grand mountains of Himalaya — with their snow-clad
summits, their great glaciers — are gods themselves, glo-
rying in their power and majesty. The Gaurisankar,
whose peak pierces the sky, and the Chamalari, not so
high, but more colossal in appearance, by reason of its
isolation, are doubly worshipped as the great goddess
united to the great god; their ice-fields are a bed of
crystals and diamonds ; the purple and gold clouds are
the sacred veil which enwraps them. There, above, is
the god Siva, who destroys and creates ; there, also, is
the goddess Chama, the Gauri, who conceives and pro-
duces; from her are descended plants, rivers, animals,
and mankind.

In this wonderful growth of epic poetry and tradition
have taken root many other legends relating to the moun-
tains of Himalaya, all of which represent them as living
a sublime life, either as goddesses or as the mothers of
continents and nations. Such is the poetic legend which
pictures the habitable earth as a great lotus-flower, whose
leaves are the peninsulas spread out upon the ocean, and
whose stamens and pistils are the mountains of Merou,
the springs of all life. The glaciers, the torrents and

MO UNTA IN- WORSHIP. 163

rivers which bring down enriching soil from above, are
also living beings, gods and goddesses of a lower rank,
who place the humble mortals of the plains in indirect
communication with the superior divinities sitting above
in luminous space.

Not only Mount Merou, the culminating point of the
planet, but all the other ranges, all the mountain heights
of India, were worshipped by the peoples who dwelt on
their sides and at their base. Mounts Yindhya, Satpu-
rah, Aravulli, Neilgherry, had all their worshippers. In
the flat countries, where the faithful had no mountains
to look at, they built themselves temples, which, with
their rows of unshapely pyramids of huge blocks of
granite, represented the venerated heights of Mount
Merou. Perhaps it was a similar sentiment of awe for
great elevations which led the ancient Egyptians to con-
struct the pyramids, those artificial mountains reared
upon a foundation of sand and clay.

The Island of Ceylon, Lanka, " the resplendent," that
happy spot where, according to an Eastern legend, the
first of our race were sent, by divine mercy, after their
expulsion from Paradise, also has its sacred mountains.
Such, among others, is Mihintala, an isolated peak in the
middle of a plain, with its sacred city of Anarajapura.
It was on the rocky summit of Mihintala that the Hin-
doo missionary Mahindo alighted, twenty -two centuries
ago, after his flight from the banks of the Ganges, to
convert the Cingalese to the religion of Buddha. A
temple now marks the spot where the saint descended;
and though it is an immense edifice, the pious zeal of
the pilgrims is so great that they have often covered it
entirely, from base to dome, with a mantle of flowers.

164 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

A blazing carbuncle glitters at the pinnacle of the tem-
ple, flashing back from afar the rays of the sun. For-
merly a rajah caused a great carpet, six miles in length,
to be spread from the top of the mountain to the plain
below, so that the feet of the faithful might not touch
the impure dust from unconsecrated earth.

And yet the fame of this sacred mountain Mihintala
pales in comparison with the celebrated Adam's Peak,
which is visible far out at sea to sailors approaching the
Island of Ceylon. The impress of a gigantic foot, be-
longing, apparently, to a man ten yards high, is hollowed
into the rock at the extremity of the peak. This foot-
print, say the Mohammedans and Jews, is that of the
first man, Adam, who ascended the mountain to get a
view of the earth, the vast forests, the mountains and
plains, the shores and great ocean, with its islands and
its dangers. According to the Cingalese and Indians,
this is not the footprint of a man at all, but of a god,
who has left this trace of his presence. This reigning
deity, the Brahmins tell us, was Siva; the Buddhists say
he was Buddha; while the Gnostics of the early Chris-
tian period call him Jehovah. When the conquering
Portuguese landed on the Island of Ceylon, they, so to
speak, degraded the mountain, which, in their opinion,
did not at all compare with the Holy Land ; in the mys-
terious footprint they saw nothing more remarkable
than a trace of St. Thomas, or, perhaps, of the Eunuch
of Candace, an ancient missionary and second-rate apos-
tle. Moses Choreuensis, an Armenian, jealous of the
claim of his own noble Mount Ararat, was still less re-
spectful, and saw on the top of Adam's Peak only the
footprints of Satan, the eternal enemy. Finally, the

M 0 UNTA IN- WORSHIP. \ o 5

English travellers who, more and more each year, made
the ascent of the holy mountain, saw in the " divine im-
print" only an ordinary cavity in the rock, enlarged and
rudely carved into shape. You can imagine with what
contempt these strangers are regarded by the faithful
who come to prostrate themselves on the rock, devoutly
kiss the footprint, and place their offerings in the house
of the priest. To them everything bears testimony to
the authenticity of the miracle. At a point some yards
below the summit a small spring flows from the rock : it
was the staff of the deity that caused it to issue forth ;
numbers of trees grow upon the mountain-side, and these
trees, they say, incline all their branches towards the
summit, to blossom and grow in the act of worship.

The rocks on the mountain are strewn with precious
stones: these are the tears which have fallen from the
eyes of the deity at sight of the crimes and sufferings of
mankind. How could they fail to believe in the miracle,
in view of all these riches, which suggested the tales of the
" Thousand and One Nights ?" The streamlets which
flow from the mountain do not wash down common peb-
bles and sand, like our streams ; they bring with them a
deposit of rubies and sapphires and garnets, and the
bather who disports himself in their waters wallows, like
the sirens, in a bed of precious stones.

Those races of the extreme East, whose civilization
has followed a different course from that of the Aryan
race, have worshipped their mountains with the same
fervor. In China and Japan, as well as in India, the
mountain-tops are crowned with temples consecrated to
the gods, when they are not themselves regarded as tu-
telary or avenging deities; and to these divine moun-

166 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

tains the people try to connect their history by legends
and traditions.

The most ancient historic mountains are those of Chi-
na, for the people of the "middle race" were among the
first to arrive at a knowledge of themselves, and the first
to write down their connected history. Their sacred
mountains, five in number, are all in districts famous
for their agriculture, their industries, their dense popu-
lation, and the remarkable events which have occurred
near by. The most sacred of these mountains, the Tai-
Chan, overtops all the other heights in the rich penin-
sula of Chan-Toung, between the two gulfs of the Yel-
low Sea. From the top, which one reaches by a paved
road and steps hewn in the solid rock, one sees stretched
at its feet the rich plains which the Hoang-Ho crosses
as it goes winding about between the two gulfs, supply-
ing water to multitudes of people more numerous than
the leaves of the forest. The Emperor Choung made
the ascent four hundred and thirty years ago, so the his-
tory of the country records. Confucius, also, tried to
climb to the top, but the ascent is difficult ; the philoso-
pher stopped short, and the spot is still pointed out where
he turned back. All the superior gods and the principal
genii have their temples and altars on this sacred moun-
tain, and so, likewise, have the clouds, the sky, the Great
Bear, and the Polar Star.

Here the ten thousand genii pause in their flight to
contemplate the earth and the cities of mankind. " The
honor of Tai-Chan equals that of heaven : it controls the
world ; it collects the clouds and sends us rain ; it decides
upon births and deaths, upon good and bad fortune,
honor and disgrace. Of all the peaks which touch the

MO UNTA IN- WORSHIP. 167

sky, none is worthier of a visit." And so pilgrims flock
there in crowds to pray for all mercies ; and the way is
lined with caves where beggars with hideous sores lie
in wait, a horror to passers-by.

The Japanese, with more reason "than the Chinese —
for their volcanic mountains are wonderfully beautiful —
look upon their snow-clad summits with adoration. Is
there any idol in the world could rival their magnificent
Fusi-Yama, the "mountain beyond compare," which
rises almost isolated in the middle of a plain, its base
covered with forests, its sides with snow ? Formerly the
volcano poured forth smoke, and seethed with flame and
lava ; now it is silent, but in the Archipelago there are
several volcanic mountains which still emit rivers of fire
upon the trembling earth.

Among these mountains there is one, the most terrible
of all, which people thought to appease by throwing
into the crater thousands of Christians as an offering.
In the same way, in the New World, they tried to calm
Mount Monotombo by casting into it the priests who
had dared to preach against it, declaring it was not a god,
but the mouth of hell. On the other hand, volcanoes
do not generally wait for victims to be thrown into their
craters; they know only too well how to lay hold of
them when they rend the earth, pour down lakes of mud,
and cover whole provinces with ashes : at one stroke
they destroy the inhabitants of an entire country. Is
not this enough to inspire worship in the minds of those
who bow their heads before power? The volcano de-
stroys ; therefore it is a god.

So mountain- worship, like all other religions, takes
possession of man through various instincts in his nature.

9

168 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

At the foot of a volcano ejecting lava, it is terror which
makes him bow his face to the ground ; in the parched
fields, it is need of help that makes him look appealing-
]y to the snowy mountains, the source of streams ; grat-
itude, also, has made worshippers of many who have
found a safe refuge in the valley or on the rugged moun-
tain-side; finally, admiration would inspire religious
feeling in all men, in proportion as the love of the beau-
tiful was developed in them. What mountain is there
that has not its beautiful scenery and its safe place of
refuge, and which is not either terrible or beneficent —
generally both together? Wandering tribes can easily
connect all their traditions with any mountain which
happens to be upon their horizon, and bring their relig-
ion to it ; so at each stage in their long journeys a new
temple erects itself. Formerly the wandering tribes on
the plains of Persia towards evening always saw a moun-
tain rising up from the middle of the sandy plain : it was
Mount Telesme, the holy " talisman," which followed
its worshippers in their wanderings about the world ;
and when, after a long journey, the mountain seen from
afar proved to be not a deceptive image, but a real
height with its snows and rocks, who could then doubt
that their god had made the journey to accompany his
people ?

In the same way, the mountain on whose top the fugi-
tives from the Deluge landed has never ceased moving
about from place to place. A Samaritan version of the
Pentateuch asserts that Adam's Peak is the point on
which Noah's ark came to anchor; other versions de-
clare that Ararat is the real mountain ; but which Ararat
is it ? — the one in Armenia, or quite a different one on

M 0 UNTA IN- WORSHIP. 169

which the priests have found remains of the sacred ship ?
In every part of the East the people claim this honor
for their own special mountain, whose waters irrigate
their lands : that, they say, is the mountain from which
the stream of life came back to earth, following the
course of the snows and brooks. Proofs are by no means
wanting to sustain all these traditions: have they not
found pieces of petrified wood, even under the glaciers?
and in the rocks themselves, have they not discovered
traces of those "rings of the. Deluge" which our modern
scientists call ammonite fossils?

Besides these, more than a hundred mountains in Per-
sia, Syria, Arabia, and Asia Minor claim to be the land-
ing-place of the patriarch, second father of the human
race. Greece also points to her Parnassus, from which
the stones were thrown upon the ground, after the Del-
uge, and became men. Even in France there are moun-

O f

tains .where the ark is said to have anchored : one of
these sacred heights is Chamechande, near the Grande
Chartreuse of Grenoble; another is the Puy de Prigue,
above the sources of the Aude.

The myth has the merit of consistency ; men have
always descended from high elevations : it is also from
a lofty eminence, the throne of the Deity, that the great
Voice is heard declaring their duty to mortals. The God
of the Jews sat on the summit 'of Mount Sinai amid
clouds and lightnings, and spoke with the voice of thun-t
der to the people assembled on the plain. In the same
way Baal, Moloch — all the sanguinary gods of those
Oriental races — appeared to their faithful on the tops of
mountains. In Arabia Petrsea, in the land of Edom and
Moab, there is not a mountain height, not a hill, not a

170 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

rock, which does not possess its great pyramid of stones,
the altar on which priests have sacrificed blood to propi-
tiate the Deity. At Babel, where there was no moun-
tain, they substituted that famous temple which was de-
signed to touch the heavens. The poet has restored
this giant edifice, not as it was, but as the people pict-
ured it :

" Each of the largest mountains with its granite sides
Would furnish but one stone."

In their jealous hatred of foreign religions, the Jewish
prophets often cursed the " high-places," on which their
neighbors set their idols ; but they themselves did not
act differently, and it was to the mountains that they
looked, thence to evoke their succoring angels. Their
temple was erected upon a mountain, and upon a moun-
tain was it that Elijah conversed with God. When the
Galilean was transfigured and floated in uncreated light
with the two prophets, Moses and Elijah, it was from
Mount Tabor that He ascended. When He died be-
tween two thieves, it was upon the summit of a moun-
tain that he was crucified; and when He shall come
again, says the prophecy — when He shall come again,
surrounded by saints and angels, and shall take part in
the punishment of His enemies, it is upon a mountain
that He shall descend, which one touch of His foot will
suffice to break. Another mountain, an ideal summit
bearing a new city of gold and diamonds, will spring up
in the luminous space, and it is there that the chosen
will live for evermore, far above this world of weariness
and woe.

OLYMPUS AND THE GODS.

CHAPTER XX.

OLYMPDS AND THE GODS.

JUST as the glory of invisible Greece surpasses in brill-
iancy that of all other empires of the East, so has
Olympus, the loftiest, most beautiful of the Hellenes'
sacred mountains, become in people's imaginations the
mountain par excellence; no other peaks, not those of
Merou, of Elbnrz, of Ararat, nor of Lebanon, awaken
in the minds of men the same memories of grandeur and
majesty. And few, indeed, were so admirably and con-
spicuously situated, or served so well as a beacon to the
races overrunning the world. Placed in an angle of the
.^Egean Sea, and by fully half its height overtopping all
the neighboring summits, Olympus can be perceived by
sailors from enormous distances. From the plains of
Macedonia, from the rich valleys of Thessaly, from the
mountains Othrys, Pindus, Bermius, Athos, its triple
dome, and its slopes with the "thousand folds" of which
Homer speaks, can be distinguished on the horizon. The
fertility of the country extended at its feet attracted pop-
ulations from every part, who rnet there to mingle and
amalgamate in various ways, or mutually to destroy one
another. Finally, Olympus commands the defiles which
the tribes or armies on the march from Asia into Europe,
or from Greece to the barbarous countries of the north,

172 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

were obliged to pass through ; it rises up like a milestone
upon the great highway then pursued by nations.

Several other mountains of the Hellenic world owed
to their sparkling snow the name Olympus, or the "lu-
minous ;" but none better merited it than that of Thes-
saly, whose summit served as a throne for the gods. It
was in the plains and valleys extended beneath the shad-
ow of the great moimtain that the people of Hellas had
passed its national infancy. It was from Thessaly that
came the Hellenes of Attica and the Peloponnesus ; it
was there that their first heroes had done battle with
monsters, and that their first poets, guided by the voice
of the Pierides, had composed hymns and songs of glad-
ness and victory. "While flocking towards distant lands,
the Greek tribes never forgot the divine mountain which
had produced and nourished them in its dales.

Almost every great event of mythical history was ac-
complished in that portion of Greece; the most impor-
tant among them being the struggle which decided be-
tween the sovereignty of the heavens and the earth.
Olympus was the citadel chosen by the new gods, and
on every side were encamped those ancient deities, the
monstrous Titans, sons of Chaos. Standing upon the
mountains of Othrys, the giants seized enormous rocks,
whole mountains, and hurled them against half-uprooted
Olympus. That they might rise still higher towards
the sky, the old Titans piled mountain upon mountain,
forming a pedestal for themselves, but the great snowy
summit always overtopped them ; it surrounded itself
with dark thunder-belching clouds. Supplied with the
same powers by the earth, the giants' voices were filled
with the roaring of the storms, their arms with the vigor

OLYMPUS AXD THE GODS. 173

of the tempest ; with their hundred arms they hurled at
random their hail-storm of rocks ; but they were fighting
with the blind fury of the elements when pitted against
the young intelligent gods. They succumbed, and be-
neath the ruins of the mountain entire nations were crush-
ed with them. It is thus that the caprices of kings have
often caused nations to be massacred as if inadvertently.

Many generations had passed away since these prodig-
ious conflicts of Olympus, ere the Ionic and Doric tribes
first possessed poets to sing their exploits, and subsequent-
ly historians to recount them. Then Zeus, the father of
gods and men, sat in peace upon the sacred mountain ;
his throne was placed upon the highest peak ; by his side
was the goddess Here, virgin and matron ; around him
were placed the immortals, with their eternally beautiful
and glad countenances. A luminous atmosphere bathed
the summit of Olympus and played amid the locks of
the gods; never did tempests come to trouble the repose
of these happy beings ; nor rain nor snow fell upon the
radiant summit. The clouds collected by Zeus were un-
rolled at his feet around the rocks forming the magnifi-
cent base of his throne. Through the interstices of this
veil, which the Horse opened and shut according to their
master's will, the latter looked down upon the earth and
sea, the cities and their inhabitants.

He held inflexible destinies suspended above the heads
of these struggling men ; he decreed life or death, dis-
tributed beneficent rain or vengeful thunder, according
to his caprice. Ko lamentation ascending from below
disturbed the gods in their eternal quiet. Their nectar
was ever delicious, their ambrosia always exquisite.
They inhaled with relish the odor of hecatombs; lis-

174 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

tened, as if to music, to the concert of suppliant voices.
Beneath them was unrolled, like an endless picture, the
spectacle of struggles and of human miseries : they beheld
armies dash against one another, fleets become ingulfed,
towns disappear amid flames and smoke, the poor toilers
(almost invisible myrmidons) exhausting themselves in
efforts to gather in harvests of which a master should
despoil them ; even beneath the roofs of the dwellings
they saw women weeping and children wailing. Afar
off their enemy, Prometheus, was dying upon a rock of
Mount Caucasus. Such were the pleasures of the gods.

Did ever a Hellene, shepherd, priest, or king, dare to
climb up the slopes of Olympus, away above the lofty
pastures of its dales and crests? Did even one only
venture by placing his foot upon the great peak, to find
himself suddenly in the presence of these terrible gods?
Ancient writers tell us that philosophers are not afraid
of scaling Mount Etna, although much higher than Olym-
pus ; but they never mention one single mortal who has
had the temerity to ascend the mountain of the gods,
not even in the days of science, in that age when philos-
ophers taught that Zeus and the other immortals were
mere conceptions of the human mind.

Later on, other religions, disseminated among the va-
riolis people living in the surrounding plains, took pos-
session of the sacred mountain and consecrated it to new
divinities. There the Greek Christians worshipped the
Holy Trinity instead of Zeus; they still look upon its
three principal peaks as the three great thrones of heav-
en. One of its loftiest points, which formerly perhaps
bore a temple of Apollo, is now surmounted by a mon-
astery of St. Elias; one of its dales, wherein the Bac-

OLYMPUS AND THE GODS. 175

cliantes were wont to sing Evoe! in honor of Dionysos
or Bacchus, is inhabited by the monks of St. Denys.
Priests have succeeded to priests, and the superstitious
respect of modern times to the worship of the ancient ;
but perhaps the highest summit is yet untrodden by
human steps ; the soft light, resplendent above its rocks
and snow, has not beamed upon any man since the Hel-
lenic gods took their departure.

A few years ago it would have been difficult for a
European to attain the summit of the mountain, for
the Hellenic Tdephtes, unerring shots, occupied all its
gorges ; they had entrenched themselves in it, as within
an enormous citadel, and thence, recommencing the con-
flict of the gods against the Titans, they set out upon
their expeditions against the Turks of Mount Ossa.
Proud of their courage, they believed themselves as in-
vincible as the mountain upon which they lived ; they
endowed Olympus itself with life.. " I am," said one
of their songs — " I am Olympus, illustrious in all ages,
and renowned amid nations; forty -two peaks bristle
upon my brow ; seventy-two fountains flow down my
ravines, and an eagle is perched upon my highest sum-
mit bearing in its claws the head of a valiant hero !"

o

This eagle, no doubt, was that of ancient Zeus. Even
nowadays he feeds on man, by man destroyed.

People's imagination knows no limits concerning the
gods it has created. In the course of centuries it has
changed their names, their attributes, and their powers,
according to the alternations of history, the changes of
languages, the individual and national variations of tra-
ditions ; finally, it has caused them to die, as it gave
them birth, and has replaced them by new divinities

176 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

It thus costs them but little to make their journey from
mountain to mountain. Each summit, too, possessed its
own god or even its Pleiades of celestial beings. Zeus
dwelt upon Mount Ida just as he did upon the Olympus
of Greece, upon that of Crete, of Cyprus, and upon the
rocks of the ^Egina ; Apollo had his dwelling upon Par-
nassus and Helicon, upon Cyllene and Taygetus, upon
all the scattered mountains rising out of the JEgean
Sea. The peaks, gilded by the rays of dawning day,
when the lower plains still lay in shadow, were to be
consecrated to the god of the sun. And almost all the
isolated summits of Hellas at the present day bear the
name of Elias. The Jewish prophet, by virtue of his
name, has thus become the heir of Helios, son of Jupiter.
" Behold this throne, the centre of the earth," said ^Es-
chylus, in speaking of Delphos. This central pillar rose
up in many another place, according to the poet's fancy
or popular imagination. Pindar beheld it in Etna ; the
sailors from the Archipelago pointed out Mount Athos,
that great landmark which could always be discerned
above the waters, whether on quitting the shores of Asia
or while sailing on the seas of Europe. So lofty is this
mountain that upon it the sun is said to go to rest three
hours later than in the plains at its feet ; it can overlook
the most distant confines of the earth. When Hellas,
formerly free, was subjugated by the Macedonian, when
it became the slave of a master, it found a flatterer vile
enough, a man sycophantish enough, to implore Alexan-
der, who. had decreed that he should be proclaimed a
god, to employ an army to transform Mount Athos into
a statue of the new son of Zeus, "more powerful than
his father."

OLYMPUS AND THE GODS. 177

This impossible task might have tempted an upstart
god, who was mad with pride ; yet even Alexander dared
not undertake it. The mariners sailing at the foot of
the great mountain continued to look upon it as an an-
cient deity until the day whereon began another cycle
in history, bringing with it a new religion and new di-
vinities. Then people told how Mount Athos was the
very mountain to which the devil transported Jesus the
Galilean, to show him all the kingdoms of the earth ly-
ing outstretched at his feet — Europe, Asia, and the isl-
ands of the sea. The inhabitants of Athos still believe
this; and would it, indeed, be possible to find a peak
whence the view, if not more vast, at least were more
beautiful or more varied ?

Outside the Hellenic world, where popular imagina-
tion was so poetical and so fertile, the people looked
upon their mountains as the thrones of the lords of
heaven and earth. Not only were the great summits of
the Alps worshipped as the dwelling-place of the gods,
and as the gods themselves, but even as far as the plains
of Northern Germany and of Denmark, little hills, rais-
ing their brows above the uniform level, were Mounts
Olympus, not less venerated than that of Thessaly had
been by the Greeks; even in distant Iceland, in that
land of fogs and eternal frosts, the worshippers of celes-
tial sovereigns turned to the mountains of the interior,
believing to behold in them the throne of their deities.
Without doubt, had they been able to climb to the top
of these volcanoes, furrowed with deep ravines, if they
had beheld the horror of these craters wherein lava and
snow incessantly struggled together, they would never
have thought of making these terrible places the en-

178 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

chanted homes of their happy divinities. But they only
viewed these mountains from afar; they perceived the
peaks sparkling through the riven clouds, and pictured
them the more beautiful in proportion as the plains at
their base were wilder and more difficult to traverse.
These mountains, separated from the earth of mankind
by barriers of impassable precipices, were the city of
Asgard, where, beneath an ever -clement sky, dwelt the
blissful gods. The great cloud of vapors, ascending from
the summit of the divine mountain, and stretching far
athwart the sky, was no column of cinders ; it was the
giant ash-tree Yggdrasil, beneath whose shadow reposed
the masters of the universe.

" THEY PERCEIVED THK PEAKS SPARKLING THROUGH THE RIVEN CLOUDS.

GENII. 179

CHAPTER XXI.

GENII.

RELIGIONS are slowly transformed. Those of the an-
cient world, apparently extinguished for so many gener-
ations, continue to exist beneath the exterior of modern
beliefs. The names of the gods have frequently been
changed, but the altar has remained the same. The at-
tributes of the Divinity are still what they were. two thou-
sand years ago, and the faith which invokes it has pre-
served the "holy simplicity" of its fanaticism. In the
wild valleys of Olympus, where gambolled the dishev-
elled Bacchantes, monks now mutter their prayers ; upon
holy Mount Athos, worshipped from the surface of the
murmuring waves by mariners of every race and every
tongue, nine hundred and thirty-six churches rise up in
honor of all the saints ; the God of Christians has become
the heir of Zeus, who himself succeeded more ancient
deities. Just so at Syracuse, the Temple of Minerva,
whose golden spire the sailors saluted from afar by pour-
ing a beaker of wine into the waters, has been changed
into a church of the Holy Virgin. Every promontory
running into the sea, and on land every brow of a hill,
every mountain crowned with a temple, has retained its
worshippers while changing its name. A traveller wan-
ders over the Island of Cyprus in search of a temple of

180 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

Venus Aphrodite. " "We no longer call her Aphrodite,"
devoutly cries the woman whom he questions ; " we now
call he*r the Chrysopolite Virgin."

But not only have Christian nations continued to ven-
erate the sacred mountains of the Greeks and Romans,
they have also propagated that religion in their own
fashion throughout every country inhabited by them, in
the same manner as our forefathers in legendary days.
Our nearer ancestors, living in the Middle Ages, could
not look upon a mountain without their imagination peo-
pling its mysterious valleys and radiant summits with su-
perior beings. It is true that these beings had no right
to the title of gods : cursed by the Church, they trans-
formed themselves into devils, into malevolent demons ;
or perhaps, tolerated by it, they became tutelary genii,
unrecognized gods, merely invoked by stealth.

Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, having descended from their
thrones, took refuge in the depths of caves ; they whose
august faces had beamed in light were condemned hence-
forth to live in the darkness of caverns.

The Olympic feasts were transformed into nocturnal
revels, whither went hideous witches riding on brooms,
to evoke the devil on tempestuous nights. Then, too, the
cold climate, the cloudy sky of our northern countries,
must have greatly contributed to the imprisonment of
the ancient gods. How could they, beneath wind and
snow, in the midst of storms, carry on their joyful ban-
quets, enjoy their ambrosia, and play upon their golden
lyres ? "We can hardly even in our dreams picture their
presence in these fantastic palaces, constructed in one
moment by the sun's rays upon those effulgent peaks, and
vanishing not less quickly like visions or vain mirages!

GENII. »* 181

Gods and genii are the personification of all that man
dreads and desires. All his terrors, all his passions, for-
merly assumed a supernatural form. Some, too, among
the mountain spirits are redoubtable magicians, who burn
the grass of the meadows, kill the cattle, cast a spell over
the passers-by ; others, on the contrary, are benevolent
beings, whose favor is conciliated by the libation of a
bowl of milk, or even by a simple incantation. It is the
good spirit that the shepherd implores to make his lambs
grow strong and his heifers unblemished. It is of him
especially that young and old, male and female, ask that
which unhappily would be for almost all the supreme joy
of life — gold, riches, treasures. Old traditions tell us how
the genii of the mountain glide into the veins of the
stones therein to insert crystals and metal, variously to
mingle earth and minerals. Other legends tell us how
and at what hour we must knock at the sacred stone hid-
ing the riches ; what signs must be made, what strange
syllables must be pronounced. But let one item be for-
gotten, one sound assume the place of another, and all
the formulas of incantation are futile.

I have seen enormous excavations undertaken by moun-
taineers at the top of a rocky point concealed by snow
during nine months in the year. That point was conse-
crated to a saint, who himself had succeeded to a pagan
deity as the guardian of the mountain. Each summer
the treasure-seekers returned to dig farther into the sum-
mit, making use of sacramental words and gestures.
They found nothing but slabs of schist beneath other
similar slabs; yet, unwearyingly, some greedy digger
would continue his work, striving to invoke the spirit
by some novel formula, some victorious cry.

182 * THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN,

More interesting than these guardian deities of treas-
ures are those who, in the mountain caverns, are charged
to preserve the genius of a whole race. Concealed in
the depths of the rock, they represent the entire people,
with its traditions, its history, its future. As old as the
mountain itself, they will endure as long as it ; and so
long as they live will that race exist of which the vari-
ous groups are scattered in the surrounding valleys. It
is the spirit who, in his profound thought, concentrates
all the bustle, all the flux and reflux, of the busy nation
at his feet. Thus the Basques look with pride at the
peak of Anie, where hides their god, unknown to the
priests, but all the more real. " So long as he is there,"
say they, " we shall be there too !" And willingly they
would believe themselves to be eternal, they whose lan-
guage will disappear to-morrow !

To the same order of popular beliefs belong the leg-
ends of those warriors or prophets who, hidden in some
deep mountain cave, are awaiting the coming of the day.
Such is the myth of that German emperor who sat dream-
ing, leaning his elbows upon a table of stone, and whose
white beard, constantly growing longer, had taken root
in the rock. Sometimes a huntsman, perhaps a bandit,
would penetrate into the cavern and trouble the dream
of the mighty old man. The latter would slowly lift up
his head, ask a question of the trembling intruder, then
resume his interrupted dream. " Not yet !" sighed he.
For what was he waiting that he might die in peace ?
No doubt the echo of some great battle, the odor of some
river of human blood, an immense revel in honor of his
reign. Ah ! may that last battle have already been de-
livered, and the gloomy emperor now be nothing more
than a heap of ashes !

GENII. 183

•

How much more touching, much more beautiful, is that
legend of the three Switzers who are also awaiting day-
break in the depths of a lofty mountain of the old can-
tons ! They are three, like those three who in the mead-
ows of Gratli vowed to set themselves free ; and all three
bear the name of Tell, as did he who overthrew the ty-
rant. They, too, sleep — they dream. But it is not of
glory that they are thinking ; it is of liberty — not only
of Swiss liberty, but of that of all mankind. From time
to time one will go forth to look upon the world of lakes
and plains, yet sadly he returns to his companions. " Not
yet !" sighs he. The great day of deliverance is not come.
Ever slaves, the people have not ceased to worship their
masters' hats.

184 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER XXII.

MAN.

LET us wait, however, wait with confidence ; the day
will come ; the gods will pass away, bearing with them
the corteges of kings, their melancholy representatives
upon earth. Man is slowly learning to speak the language
of liberty ; he will also learn to practise its customs.

Those mountains which at least possess the merit of
being beautiful belong to the number of gods whom
we are beginning not to worship. Their thunders and
avalanches have ceased to be for us the fulminations of
Jupiter; their clouds are no longer the robe of Juno.
Henceforth we can fearlessly invade the high valleys, the
abode of the gods whither the genii repair. It is pre-
cisely the once-dreaded summits which have become the
aim of thousands of travellers who have set before them-
selves the task of leaving not a single rock, not a single
bed of ice, untrodden by human footsteps. In our popu-
lous countries of Western Europe every summit has al-
ready been successively conquered ; those of Asia, Africa,
America, will be so in their turn. Now that the era of
great geographical discoveries is almost at an end, and,
with the exception of a few lakes, the world is almost
entirely known, other travellers, obliged to content them-
selves with lesser glory, dispute with one another, in

MAN. 185

great numbers the honor of being the first to ascend the
as yet unvisited mountains. These climbing amateurs go
as far as Greenland in search of some unknown summit.

Among them are some who, striving annually during
the summer season to ascend a difficult lofty peak, are
stirred by a vainglorious motive. People say that they
seek a contemptible means of causing their names to be
repeated in newspaper after newspaper, as if by a simple
ascent they had performed some work of use to man-
kind. Arrived at the summit, with hands stiffened by
the cold, they indite a detailed report of their triumph,
noisily uncork bottles of champagne, fire off pistols like
true conquerors, and frantically wave their flags. They
bring several stones to that part of the mountain-peak
which is not clothed with a dense cupola of snow, adding
a few inches to its height. They are kings, lords of the
world, since the whole mountain is to them but an enor-
mous pedestal, and they behold kingdoms lying at their
feet. They put out their hands as if to grasp it. It was
thus that a rustic poet, invited for the first time to visit
a royal castle, asked permission to ascend the throne for
one moment. No sooner did he find himself there than
the dizzy sensation of power took possession of him.
He saw a fly flitting beside him. " Ah ! I am a king
nowr ; I will crush you !" and with one blow of his
doubled-up hand he stretched the poor insect upon the
arm of the gilded chair.

Yet even the modest man — he who never talks of his
ascents, and does not aspire to the ephemeral glory of
having scaled some difficult peak — even he experiences
great delight when he plants his foot upon a lofty sum-
mit. It was not merely with the wish of assisting science

186 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

that De Saussure kept his eyes fixed for years upon the
dome of Mont Blanc, that he made so many attempts
to ascend it. When, subsequently to Balmat, he did
reach the snow, until then inviolate, he was not only
delighted to be able to make fresh observations, but he
also indulged in the naive happiness of having at last
surmounted that rebellious mountain. Both the hunts-
man who pursues animals and he who, alas ! pursues man
are also delighted when, after a desperate chase through
woods and ravines, hills and valleys, they find themselves
face to face with their victim, and succeed in bringing
him down with a bullet. Fatigues, dangers, nothing has
stayed them, supported as they were by hope ; and, now
that they rest beside their fallen prey, they forget all
that they have undergone. The mountain-climber, like
the huntsman, experiences the delight of conquest after
toil ; yet he enjoys the pleasure all the more in that he
has risked none but his own life ; he has kept his hands
unstained.

In making great ascents, danger is often very near,
and the risk of death run every moment; but on the
climber goes, feeling supported, kept up by a strong
sense of gladness at the contemplation of all those per-
ils which he knows how to avoid by the strength of his
muscles and his ready presence of mind. Frequently he
is obliged to creep along a slope of frozen snow, whereon
the slightest false step would dash him over a precipice.
At other times he crawls upon a glacier, hanging on to
a simple ledge of snow, which, if it were to give way,
would cast him into a fathomless gulf. Often, too, it
happens that he must scale walls of rocks by projections
hardly wide enough for one foot to find standing-room,

MAN. 187

and which are covered with a crust of sheet-ice, trem-
bling, so to say, under the influence of the icy water
trickling beneath. But such are his courage and calmness
of mind that not a muscle allows itself to make one
wrong movement, arid all is in perfect harmony in the
effort to avert the danger. A traveller slips upon a steep
rock of polished slate, ending abruptly at the edge of a
precipice a hundred yards deep. He descends with
dizzy rapidity down the slippery incline; but he stretches
himself out at full length so as to present a larger sur-
face of friction and to take advantage of every little
asperity of the rock ; he uses his arms and legs so skil-
fully as brakes that at last he stops himself on the edge
of the abyss. Just there a tiny streamlet ripples over
the stone before tumbling down as a waterfall. The
traveller was thirsty. He coolly drank, dipping his face
in the water, ere he thought of getting up to resume his
path over a less perilous rock.

The traveller loves the mountain all the more for the
risk he runs of perishing upon it ; but the sense of dan-
ger overcome is not the only pleasure of the ascent, es-
pecially to a man who during the course of his life-time
has been obliged to undergo hard struggles in order to
do his duty. In spite of himself, he cannot refuse to
look upon the road just traversed, with its difficult passes,
its snow, its crevasses, its obstacles of every kind, as an
image of the toilsome path of virtue ; this comparison of
material matters with the moral world forces itself upon
his mind. "In defiance of nature, I have succeeded,"
thinks he; "I have placed the summit beneath my feet;
I have suffered, it is true, but I have conquered, and the
task is accomplished." This feeling acts with all its

188 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

force upon those who make it a truly scientific mission
to ascend a dangerous height, either to study its rocks
and fossils, or to set up their instruments and sketch a
map of the country. They have, indeed, the right to
applaud themselves when they have gained the top; if
any evil befalls them on their journey, they have a right
to the dignity of a martyr. Grateful mankind ought to
remember their names, noble in a very different manner
from that of so many fictitiously great men !

Sooner or later the heroic ages of exploring mountains
must come to an end, as will that of exploring the earth
itself, and the fame of the renowned travellers will have
been transformed into a legend. One after another the
ascent of every mountain in populous countries will have
been made ; easy footpaths, then driving-roads, will have
been constructed from the base to the summit, in order
to facilitate the means of access, even for those who are
worn out and feeble; a mine will have been sprung in
the crevasses of glaciers to show cockneys the texture of
the crystals; mechanical hoists will have been erected
upon the walls of mountains formerly inaccessible, and
" tourists " will allow themselves to be whisked up dizzy
heights while smoking their cigars and talking scandal.

But are we not already enabled to ascend mountains
by rail? Inventors have now produced hill locomotives,
so that we can plunge into the free air of the skies dur-
ing the postprandial hour of digestion. Americans,
practical even in their poetiy, have invented this novel
mode of ascent. In order, more quickly and without
fatigue, to reach the summit of their most venerated
mountain, to which they have given the name of Wash-
ington, the hero of their independence, they have con-

MAN. 189

nected it with their railways. Kocks and pastures are
encircled by a winding iron road, which the trains alter-
nately ascend and descend, whistling, and revolving their
wheels like gigantic serpents. A station is built upon
the summit, as are refreshment-rooms and kiosks in the
Chinese style. The traveller in search of -views finds
biscuits, liquor, and poems on the rising sun.

"What the Americans have done for Washington the
Swiss have hastened to copy for the Rigi, in the midst
of that grandiose panorama of their lakes and mountains.
They have also done it for the Uetli, and will erelong
do it for other mountains ; they will, so to say, bring the
summits down to the level of the plains. Locomotives
will pass from valley to valley away across the tops of
mountains, as a ship rising and falling passes over the
waves of the sea. As to such mountains as the loftiest
peaks of the Andes and Himalayas, too high up in the
regions of cold for man to go to their summits, the day
will come, after all, when he shall be able to reach them.
Balloons have already carried him two or three hundred
thousand yards high ; other aeronauts will bear and de-
posit him on Gaurisankar, as far as the " Great Diadem
of the Dazzling Heaven."

In this great work of regulating nature, man does not
confine himself to rendering mountains easy of access ;
in case of need, he labors to do away with them. Not
contented with making driving -roads that ascend the
most arduous mountains, engineers pierce the obstruct-
ing rocks, enabling their railways to pass through from
valley to valley. In spite of all the obstacles placed
across his path by nature, man moves on ; he creates a
new earth adapted to his wants. When he requires a

10

190 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

great harbor of refuge for his vessels, he takes a cliff on
the sea-coast, and rock by rock casts it to the bottom of
the ocean in order to construct a breakwater. Why, if
the fancy seized him, should he not also take great
mountains, triturate and scatter the remains upon the
plains ?

But stay! this work, too, has already been begun. In
California the miners, weary of waiting until the streams
should bring down the sand spangled with gold, have
been inspired writh the idea of attacking the mountain
itself. In many places they crush the hard rock to ex-
tract the metal ; but this work is difficult and expensive.
The task is easier when they have a movable soil before
them, such as shifting sand and pebbles. Then they in-
stal themselves before it, and with enormous fire-pumps
unceasingly wash down the sides with great jets of water,
thus little by little demolishing the mountain to obtain
every particle of gold it contains. In France they have
thought of clearing away, in a similar manner, enormous
heaps of ancient alluvions accumulated in plateaux in
front of the Pyrenees ; by means of canals, all this detri-
tus, transformed into fertilizing mud, would serve to raise
and cultivate the barren plains of the Landes.

These are, indeed, considerable steps of progress. The
time is past when the only mountain roads were such
narrow tracks that two pedestrians coming from contrary
directions could not pass, and the one was obliged to walk
across the back of the other lying upon the path. Every
point of the earth will become accessible even to the sick
and delicate ; at the same time, every resource will be
utilized, Und man's life will thus find itself prolonged by
every hour gained by his efforts, while his possessions

MAN. 191

are increased by all the treasures snatched from the
earth. But, like everything human, this progress brings
with it corresponding abuses; sometimes we should be
on the point of cursing it, as formerly speech, writing,
books, and even thought were cursed. Whatever the
lovers of the good old times may say, life, so rough for
the bulk of mankind, will yet become daily smoother.
It is for us to see that a sound education shall arm the
young man with an energetic Mall and render him ever
capable of an heroic effort, the sole means of preserving
mankind in its moral and natural vigor ! It is for us to
replace by methodical trials this hard battle of existence
by which it is now necessary to purchase strength of
mind. Formerly, when life was one incessant struggle
between man and man or wild beasts, a youth was looked
upon as a child until he had brought a bleeding trophy
back to the paternal hut. He was obliged to prove the
strength of his arm, the steadfastness of his courage, be-
fore he dared to lift up his voice in the council of war-
riors. In those countries where there was less danger of
having to measure his valor with that of an enemy than
of having to endure hunger, cold, and hardships, the can-
didate for the title of man would be left in a forest with-
out food, without clothing, exposed to the biting wind
and stinging insects; he was obliged to remain there,
motionless, his face calm and proud, and after days of
waiting he would, uttering never a complaint, still have
determination enough to allow himself to be tortured,
by assisting at an abundant repast without stretching out
his hand to take his share. In these days such barbarous
ordeals are not imposed upon our young people, but, at
the risk of injuring and stupefying them, we must know

]92 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN.

how to arm our children with a lofty steadfast spirit, not
only capable of resisting all possible evils, but especially
all the temptations of life. Let us labor to render man-
kind happy, but let us at the same time teach it how to
make its own happiness subservient to virtue.

In this excellent task, the bringing-up of our children,
and through them of the future human species, the
mountain has to play the principal part. Free nature
with its beautiful landscapes, upon which we gaze, its
laws, which we eagerly study from life, and its obstacles,
too, which we must overcome, ought to be our real school.
It is not in narrow rooms with barred windows that we
can produce brave, true-hearted men. Let us rather grant
them the delight of bathing in mountain lakes and tor-
rents ; let us take them out to wander over glaciers and
fields of snow; let us lead them on to climb up lofty
heights. ISTot alone will they thus learn without diffi-
culty that which no book can teach them, not only will
they remember all that they shall have learned in those
blissful days when their impression of the professor's
voice became blended with the view of lovely and vast
scenery, but they will also find themselves confronted
with danger, and they will have merrily faced it. Study
will be a pleasure to them, and their character will be
formed in gladness.

No one can doubt that we are on the eve of accom-
plishing most important changes in the aspect of nature
as well as in the life of man. The external world, whose
form we have already so powerfully modified, we shall,
according to our custom, even still more vigorously trans-
form. In proportion as our knowledge and material
power increase, our will as men will manifest itself more

MAN. 193

and more imperiously towards nature. At this very time
almost all so-called civilized nations still employ the
greatest portion of their annual savings in preparing the
means of killing one another and in mutually devastat-
ing their respective territories; but when, wiser, they
shall apply themselves to augmenting the produce of the
land, of jointly making use of all the powers of the earth,
of doing away with all the natural obstacles raised by it
against our free movements, then the whole appearance
of the planet bearing us along in its vortex will be
changed. Each nation will, so to say, give a new vest-
ment to the nature surrounding it. By its fields, its
roads, its dwellings, and its buildings of every kind, by
the grouping of its trees and the general arrangement of
the landscape, each nation will display the extent of its
own taste. If it really possesses a sense of beauty, it will
render nature more beautiful ; if, on the contrary, the
great mass of mankind should remain such as it is to-day,
coarse, egotistical, and false, it will continue to imprint
its sad qualities upon the world. Then would the poet's
cry of despair become truth — "Whither shall I fly?
Mature increases in hideonsness !"

Whatsoever may be the future of man, or the aspect
of the world which he may create for himself, solitude
in that portion of nature which .is left free will become
more and more necessary to those men who wish to ob-
tain renewed vigor of thought far from the conflict of
opinions and voices. If the beautiful spots of the world
should one day become a mere rendezvous for the worn
and weary, those who love to live in the open air will
have nothing left for them but to take refuge in a bark
in the midst of the waves, or to wait patiently for the

194 THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN,

day when they shall be able to soar like a bird into the
depths of space; but they would ever regret the fresh
mountain valleys and the torrents bursting from un-
trodden snow, and the white or rosy pyramids rising up
in the blue vaults of heaven. Happily the mountains
will always contain the sweetest places of retreat for him
who flies from the beaten paths of fashion. For a long
time yet we shall be able to turn aside from the frivolous
world and find ourselves alone with our thoughts far
from that flow of vulgar and factious opinions which dis-
turbs and distracts even the most sincere minds.

"What astonishment, what a breaking -off of all my
habits, when, crossing the outlet of the last mountain de-
file, I found myself once more in the vast plain, with its
indistinct and fading background, its boundless space !
The immense world was opened out before me ; I could
go to any point of the horizon whither fancy led me.
And yet I seemed to be walking in vain ; I could not
get on, so completely had nature around me lost its charm
and variety. No more could I hear the torrent, no more
see the snow or rocks : it was ever the same monotonous
landscape. My steps were free, and yet I felt that my
imprisonment was very different from that of the moun-
tain. One single tree, a mere shrub, sufficed to hide the
horizon from me ; not a road which was not bounded on
both sides by hedges or fences.

As I moved away from the beloved mountains rapidly
receding from me, I often looked back to distinguish
their fleeting forms. Gradually the slopes became con-
fused in one uniform blue mass, the wide dips in the val-
leys ceased to be visible, the lower peaks were lost to
view, the contour of the higher summits alone stood out

MAN. 195

against the luminous background. At last the mist of
dust and impurities rising from the plains hid the nether-
most slopes of the mountains; nothing more remained
save a sort of ornamentation bordering the clouds, and
my eyes could hardly recognize any of the peaks I used
to climb. Then all the outlines disappeared in vapor.
The plain, void of all visible boundaries, surrounded me
on every side. Henceforth the mountain would be far
from me, and I had returned to the busy tumult of hu-
man beings. My memory has at least been able to pre-
serve the sweet impressions of the past. Once more I see
rising up before my eyes the beloved outlines of the
mountains ; mentally I re-enter the shady valleys, and
for some moments I can enjoy in peace my intimate ac-
quaintance with the rocks, the insects, and the blades of
grass.

THE END.

RECLUS'S EARTH.

THE EAETH. A Descriptive History of the Phe-
nomena of the Life of the Globe. By ELISEE RE-
CLUS. Translated by the late B. B. WOODWARD,
M.A., and Edited by HENRY WOODWARD, British
Museum. With 234 Maps and Illustrations, and
23 Page Maps printed in Colors. 8vo, Cloth,
$5 00; Half Calf, $7 25.

Not only the vast amount of information concerning the phenomena of
the physical world that is embodied in its contents, but the compactness
and lucidity of its method, and the chaste beauty of its style, commend it
to the attention of the intelligent reader, and promise equal delight and
improvement from the diligent study of its pages. The writer treats, in
the first place, of the Earth as a planet, comparing its dimensions with
those of the sun and fixed stars, describing its motions and the succession
of days and seasons, and discussing the various theories of its formation,
and the duration of geological periods. The distribution of land and wa-
ter is next considered, comprising a detailed account of continents, plains,
deserts, mountains, glaciers, rivers, islands, lakes, and other prominent top-
ics of physical geography, and concluding with the explanation of the sub-
terranean forces which produce volcanoes, earthquakes, and great terres-
trial upheavals and depressions. The chapters devoted to mountains and
glaciers possess a fascinating interest, both on account of the clearness
of their expositions and the picturesque grace of their natural sketches.
The writer looks upon the wonders of the physical world with the eye and
the heart of a genuine poet. — N. Y. Tribune;

For more than fifteen years this distinguished French savant travelled,
explored, and studied the Earth, and the working of the elements which
compose it. He has embodied the results of this travel and experience in
a volume which, while satisfying the questions of an inquiring mind, does
not tire. It is " exhaustive without being exhausting." — Boston Traveller.

Essentially popular in its character — that is, it is readable with pleasure
by persons of ordinary intelligence, and a genuine attempt to popularize
sound knowledge. — Nation, N. Y.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

jy HAEPEB & BROTHERS will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any
part of the United States, on receipt of the price.

THE OCEAN, ATMOSPHERE, AND LIFE. Be-
ing the Second Series of a Descriptive History of
the Life of the Globe. By ELISEE EECLUS. Trans-
lated from the French. Profusely Illustrated with
250 Maps or Figures, and 27 Maps printed in Col-
ors. 8vo, Cloth, $6 00 ; Half Calf, $8 25.

Very many works have been written about the sea in its physical and
emotional aspects, in its influence on the life of the planet, and its connec-
tion with mental development, but not one of them all is more remarkable
than this, or contains a greater amount of information concerning " old
Ocean's gray and melancholy waste." — N. Y. Evening Post.

For thorough research, rich attainments, and graphic style, M. Reclus
holds high rank among the scientists of the day. It should be borne in
mind that this work and its predecessor are written not for those already
thoroughly versed in science, so much as for that much larger class of
persons who seek to relieve the monotony of daily routine by the acquisi-
tion of some degree of knowledge, and who need books which, while ac-
curate and in some sense profound, shall be free from technicalities and
open to general understanding. Such books M. Reclus has furnished in
these two volumes, which, taken jointly, cover a wide range of discussion.
— Boston Journal.

It completes his descriptive history of the life of the globe, adding to
the comprehensive description of the solid foundation, the bones, as it
were, of the globe in the first volume, a like full statement of its circulat-
ing and life-giving media, the blood, of this greatest of animals, as some
would have it. The first part, of two hundred pages, is a wonderfully
thorough and philosophical, while popular, study of the ocean, its currents,
tides, shallows, and shores ; the second devotes as much more space to the
atmosphere and meteorology ; the third treats of animated life : the flora
of the sea and earth, the fauna, " earth and man," and finally the work of
man in his reaction on nature. The work is wonderfully comprehensive
and informing, a very cyclopaedia on its subject, interestingly readable in
style, and in every respect of very great merit. — N. Y. Evening Mail.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

HAKPEB & BROTHERS will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any
part qf the United States, on receipt of the price.

FLAMMARION'S ATMOSPHERE.

THE ATMOSPHERE. Translated from the French
of CAMILLE FLAMMAKION. Edited by JAMES GLAI-
SHEK, F.R.S., Superintendent of the Magnetical and
Meteorological Department of the Royal Observa-
tory at Greenwich. With 10 Chromo-Lithographs,
and 86 Woodcuts. 8vo, Cloth, $6 00; Half Calf,
$8 25.

The style is very simple and comprehensive ; there is an entire absence
of puzzling technicalities, and everything necessary to be told is told in
such a charming manner that even the most indifferent reader will find his
interest excited, and his attention chained. We know of no other work
on a similar subject which covers so wide a field. M. Flammarion appar-
ently entered upon his task with an enthusiasm which shows no sign of
flagging from the beginning to the end of the work. We do not know
when we have found instruction and amusement more pleasingly combined
than they are in this book, which is destined to enjoy a popularity second
to none of the many works that have lately been issued with the laudable
intention of popularizing science. — Saturday Evening Gazette, Boston.

This work is very comprehensive, treating of the form, dimensions, and
movements of the earth, and of the influence exerted on meteorology by
the physical conformation of the globe ; of the figure, height, weight, col-
or, and chemical components of the atmosphere; of the phenomena of
light, heat, wind, clouds, rain, electricity ; of the laws of climate, and, in
short, of the wide range of subjects included under the general topic. It
is very pleasing in style, and is profusely illustrated, ten full-page chromo-
lithographs picturing the more remarkable phenomena mentioned. — Boston
Post.

This is truly a superb volume, both externally and internally. As a
piece of book-making, it marks the high degree of perfection to which the
art is carried in the manufactories of the publishers. The literary side of
the work is creditable alike to the French author and the English editor,
who here bring their several national traits into a happily combined co-
operation.— Christian Advocate, N. Y.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

ARPER & BROTHERS will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any
part of the United States, on receipt of the price.