"Where's His Mother?" Said I, Desiring To Enlarge My Sphere Of Natural
History As Much As Possible.
"_On a tue sa mere_" - "They have killed his mother," was the
reply, cool enough.
There we had the whole story. His enterprising neighbors had invaded
the domestic hearth, shot his mother, and eaten her up, made her skin
into chamois leather, and were keeping him till he got big enough for
the same disposition, using his talents meanwhile to turn a penny
upon; yet not a word of all this thought he; not a bit the less
heartily did he caper; never speculated a minute on why it was, on the
origin of evil, or any thing of the sort; or, if he did, at least
never said a word about it. I gave one good look into his soft, round,
glassy eyes, and could see nothing there but the most tranquil
contentment. He had finished his cabbage leaf, and we had finished our
call; so we will go on.
It was now drawing towards evening, and the air began to be sensibly
and piercingly cold. One effect of this mountain air on myself is, to
bring on the most acute headache that I ever recollect to have felt.
Still, the increasing glory and magnificence of the scenery overcame
bodily fatigue. Mont Blanc, and his army of white-robed brethren, rose
before us in the distance, glorious as the four and twenty elders
around the great white throne. The wonderful gradations of coloring in
this Alpine landscape are not among the least of its charms. How can I
describe it? Imagine yourself standing with me on this projecting
rock, overlooking a deep, piny gorge, through which flow the brawling
waters of the Arve. On the other side of this rise mountains whose
heaving swells of velvet green, cliffs and dark pines, are fully made
out and colored; behind this mountain, rises another, whose greens are
softened and shaded, and seem to be seen through a purplish veil;
behind that rises another, of a decided cloud-like purple; and in the
next still the purple tint changes to rosy lilac; while above all,
like another world up in the sky, mingling its tints with the passing
clouds, sometimes obscured by them, and then breaking out between
them, lie the glacier regions. These glaciers, in the setting sun,
look like rivers of light pouring down from the clouds. Such was the
scene, which I remember with perfect distinctness as enchaining my
attention on one point of the road.
We had now got up to the valley of Chamouni. I looked before me, and
saw, lying in the lap of the green valley, a gigantic pile of icy
pillars, which, seen through the trees, at first suggested the idea of
a cascade.
"What is that?" said I to the guide.
"The Glacier de Boisson."
I may as well stop here, and explain to you, once for all, what a
glacier is. You see before you, as in this case, say thirty or forty
mountain peaks, and between these peaks what seem to you frozen
rivers.
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