Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

storm of thunder, lightning, and snow burst upon us; there was as much lightning below us and around us as above us, and the grand scene was wild and awful. It was so thick that we could see but a very short distance in advance; so we were roped together, about twelve feet apart. When the storm ceased the guides struck up a song, and away we went tearing down the slopes, and up to our knees in snow. They never faltered, but ran as true as hounds on a burning scent. Our return was as enlivening as the ascent was toilsome, and so ended a day as full of excitement as I ever spent. Time, thirteen hours.

CHAPTER XX.

NEXT day being Sunday, I walked down to Zermatt. Service was held in the hotel, which it was delightful to attend again. Over the St. Theodule Pass into Piedmont, and down the fine Tournache Valley; one last fond look at the towering Matterhorn, and thence to Aosta under the blue Italian sky. The Valle d'Aosta is very interesting, with its vine terraces on steep mountain-sides; great moraines of extinct glaciers, like gigantic railway embankments left unfinished; cottages thousands of feet up the precipices, and Mont Blanc itself at the head of the grand valley.

Over the Col du Géant, eleven thousand feet above the sea, and down the Mer de Glace, leaping over unfathomable crevasses, guide and I were roped together, or worked independently when getting over the complicated and labyrinthine masses of ice in the sérac. The scenery was magnificent-the glacier valley piled with

ice, and bounded by noble rocks towering up, and running off into needles, like the slender pinnacles of a Gothic cathedral. The day was perfection, and the view of the beautiful valley of Chamounix, coming down from Montavert, with its winding silvery river lit up by the afternoon sun, was a picture.

On the nineteenth of September a party of us left for Mont Blanc.

The wind was North, the sky was clear,
The mountain summits glistened bright;
None doubted but the Grands Mulets
Would be our resting-place at night.

With axe in hand the guides led off,
We travellers four fell into line;
Four porters stout brought up the rear,
With needful stores of food and wine.

The Châlet of the Pierre Pointue

By pleasant path we entered soon,

And calling for some Beaujolais
We halted at the hour of noon.

Our pipes we smoked, and up we got,
Ready to start again, when lo!
Opening the door to sally forth,

A voice exclaimed 'By Jove, there's snow!'

The wind had changed, the fog came down,

And slowly fell th' unlovely snow;

Fell with it too the ardent hopes

We cherished but an hour ago.

The long-lived afternoon we sat

And watched in vain for sign of change :
Dismal and dark the night closed in,

Dismal and dark, and weird and strange.

We dozed, guides talked, the night slipped by,
Cocks crowed, and wildly broke the morn,
And plunging in a sea of mist

We struggled onwards to our bourne.

O'er deep crevasse, up steep snow-slope,
Through densest fog we pushed our way,
And reached at length the wooden hut
Perched on the rocks of Grands Mulets.

Short time it took to light a blaze,

To make all snug, clear up the room;
The guides trolled out their German lays,
Or sang some wild Swiss Buy a broom.'

[ocr errors]

Some drew the corks, some chopped up wood,

Or spread the board with fowl and wine,
Good things that there were doubly good
Ten thousand feet above the brine.

But we shall never get to the summit at this rate, so must push on more rapidly in plain prose. We passed a wretched night, at first trying to sleep, until the biting cold proved to us what a perfect absurdity was our attempting it; so at three o'clock we started, roped together, for the grand ascent. A hard frost had set in, and it was a clear, starlight, windy

morning, and piercing cold.

The snow was

very deep, and the walking consequently heavy. We tramped on in the cold for three hours. and a half in silence; our mode of travelling, roped together in single file, in the wild morning, not being conducive to conversation, except when we shuffled past a place where avalanches fall, and where a guide was killed a few months back, when oneself and one's next astern compared sensations, and enquired after one another's toes, from which all feeling had by this time departed. On our route we heard the avalanches falling like the sound of distant thunder. When we got to the Mur de la Côte, which is a perpendicular iceberg, it was blowing half a gale of wind. Steps had to be cut all the way up that steep wall of solid ice, during which operation we were in instant nearness of being blown off the face of the wall by the force of the wind, which was dead in our teeth, and which we had to lean forward against to preserve our equilibrium. We were upwards of half an hour climbing this; and when we cleared the mur we were nearly frozen. Up the remaining snow-slopes we were almost smothered by the dry snow-dust of the tourmente. At last,

« AnteriorContinuar »