-
Well, I waked up this morning, and the first thought was, "Here I am
in the valley of Chamouni, right under the shadow of Mont Blanc, that
I have studied about in childhood and found on the atlas." I sprang
up, and ran to the window, to see if it was really there where I left
it last night. Yes, true enough, there it was! right over our heads,
as it were, blocking up our very existence; filling our minds with its
presence; that colossal pyramid of dazzling snow! Its lower parts
concealed by the roofs, only the three rounded domes of the summit cut
their forms with icy distinctness on the intense blue of the sky!
On the evening before I had taken my last look at about nine o'clock,
and had mentally resolved to go out before daybreak and repeat
Coleridge's celebrated hymn; but I advise any one who has any such
liturgic designs to execute them over night, for after a day of
climbing one acquires an aptitude for sleep that interferes with early
rising. When I left last evening its countenance was "filled with rosy
light," and they tell us, that hours before it is daylight in the
valley this mountain top breaks into brightness, like that pillar of
fire which enlightened the darkness of the Israelites.
I rejoice every hour that I am among these scenes in my familiarity
with the language of the Bible. In it alone can I find vocabulary and
images to express what this world of wonders excites. Mechanically I
repeat to myself, "The everlasting mountains were scattered; the
perpetual hills did bow; his ways are everlasting." But as straws,
chips, and seaweed play in a thousand fantastic figures on the face of
the ocean, sometimes even concealing the solemn depths beneath, so the
prose of daily existence mixes itself up with the solemn poetry of
life, here as elsewhere.
You must have a breakfast, and then you cannot rush out and up Mont
Blanc _ad libitum_; you must go up in the regular appointed way,
with mule and guides. This matter of guides is perfectly systematized
here; for, the mountains being the great overpowering fact of life, it
follows that all that enterprise and talent which in other places
develop themselves in various forms, here take the single channel of
climbing mountains. In America, if a man is a genius he strikes out a
new way of cleaning cotton; but in Chamouni, if he is a genius he
finds a new way of going up Mont Blanc.
As a sailor knows every timber, rope, and spar of his ship, and seems
to identify his existence with her, so these guides their mountains.
The mountains are their calendar, their book, their newspaper, their
cabinet, herbarium, barometer, their education, and their livelihood.
In fine, behold us about eight o'clock, C., S., W., little G., and
self, in all the bustle of fitting out in the front of our hotel.
