Two
guides, Balmat and Alexandre, lead two mules, long-eared, slow-footed,
considerate brutes, who have borne a thousand ladies over a thousand
pokerish places, and are ready to bear a thousand more. Equipped with
low-backed saddles, they stand, their noses down, their eyes
contemplatively closed, their whole appearance impressing one with an
air of practical talent and reliableness. Your mule is evidently safe
and stupid as any conservative of any country; you may be sure that no
erratic fires, no new influx of ideas will ever lead him to desert the
good old paths, and tumble you down precipices. The harness they wear
is so exceedingly ancient, and has such a dilapidated appearance, as
if held together only by the merest accident, that I could not but
express a little alarm on mounting.
"Those girths - won't they break?"
"O, no, no, mademoiselle!" said the guides. In fact, they seem so
delighted with their arrangements, that I swallow my doubts in
silence. A third mule being added for the joint use of the gentlemen,
and all being equipped with iron-pointed poles, off we start in high
spirits.
A glorious day; air clear as crystal, sky with as fixed a blue as if
it could not think a cloud; guides congratulate us, "_Qu'il fait
tres beau!_" We pass the lanes of the village, our heads almost on
a level with the flat stone-laden roofs; our mules, with their long
rolling pace, like the waves of the sea, give to their riders a
facetious wag of the body that is quite striking. Now the village is
passed, and see, a road banded with green ribands of turf. S.'s mule
and guide pass on, and head the party. G. rides another mule. C. and
W. leap along trying their alpenstocks; stopping once in a while to
admire the glaciers, as their brilliant forms appear through the
pines.
Here a discussion commences as to where we are going. We had agreed
among ourselves that we would visit the Mer de Glace. We fully meant
to go there, and had so told the guide on starting; but it appears he
had other views for us. There is a regular way of seeing things,
orthodox and appointed; and to get sight of any thing in the wrong way
would be as bad as to get well without a scientific physician, or any
other irregular piece of proceeding.
It appeared from the representations of the guide that to visit Mer de
Glace before we had seen La Flegere, would no more answer than for
Jacob to marry Rachel before he had married Leah. Determined not to
yield, as we were, we somehow found ourselves vanquished by our
guide's arguments, and soberly going off his way instead of ours,
doing exactly what we had resolved not to do. However, the point being
yielded we proceeded merrily.
As we had some way, however, to trot along the valley before we came
to the ascending place, I improved the opportunity to cultivate a
little the acquaintance of my guide. He was a tall, spare man, with
black eyes, black hair, and features expressive of shrewdness, energy,
and determination. Either from paralysis, or some other cause, he was
subject to a spasmodic twitching of the features, producing very much
the effect that heat lightning does in the summer sky - it seemed to
flash over his face and be gone in a wink; at first this looked to me
very odd, but so much do our ideas depend on association, that after I
had known him for some time, I really thought that I liked him better
with, than I should without it. It seemed to give originality to the
expression of his face; he was such a good, fatherly man, and took
such excellent care of me and the mule, and showed so much
intelligence and dignity in his conversation, that I could do no less
than like him, heat lightning and all.
This valley of Chamouni, through which we are winding now, is every
where as flat as a parlor floor. These valleys in the Alps seem to
have this peculiarity - they are not hollows, bending downward in the
middle, and imperceptibly sloping upward into the mountains, but they
lie perfectly flat. The mountains rise up around them like walls
almost perpendicularly.
"_Voila!_" says my guide, pointing to the left, to a great, bare
ravine, "down there came an avalanche, and knocked down those houses
and killed several people."
"Ah!" said I; "but don't avalanches generally come in the same places
every year?"
"Generally, they do."
"Why do people build houses in the way of them?" said I.
"Ah! this was an unusual avalanche, this one here."
"Do the avalanches ever bring rocks with them?"
"No, not often; nothing but snow."
"There!" says my guide, pointing to an object about as big as a
good-sized fly, on the side of a distant mountain, "there's the
_auberge_, on La Flegere, where we are going."
"Up there?" say I, looking up apprehensively, and querying in my mind
how my estimable friend the mule is ever to get up there with me on
his back.
"O yes," says my guide, cheerily, "and the road is up through that
ravine."
The ravine is a charming specimen of a road to be sure, but no
matter - on we go.
"There," says a guide, "those black rocks in the middle of that
glacier on Mont Blanc are the Grands Mulets, where travellers sleep
going up Mont Blanc."
We wind now among the pine tree still we come almost under the Mer de
Glace.
