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.
